Like Clockwork – Designing your biz to grow without you, with Mike Michalowicz

My guest today is Mike Michalowicz, who has just written another great book, and it's going to disrupt this nasty cycle of the grind. The book is called Clockwork. Here's the thing. Mike can be trusted. If you've read any of his other bestsellers like Profit First or The Pumpkin Plan, you know he's hilarious, wildly transparent, and incredibly strategic, especially as he talks about his adventures of building and selling multiple million-dollar businesses as well as helping many entrepreneurs around the world. I have appreciated his wisdom and strategies, especially in the area of making your business more profitable, so when I heard he was going after the subject of time... I knew I had to get him on the show. Listen To The Podcast: RESOURCES: Clockwork Book: https://amzn.to/2wOwpkn Profit First Book: https://amzn.to/2M1bH5F The Pumpkin Plan Book: https://amzn.to/2NoQKpM INTERVIEW: Mike Michalowicz, welcome to DREAM THINK DO, buddy. Thank you, Mitch, so much for having me on your show. Absolutely. All right. The new book is called Clockwork. There's some timeless wisdom in here, but especially for entrepreneurs, helping them to build a business so that they can actually breathe, so they can actually have more of the life they want, all of that. Why go after time? What was the catalyst for you to say, "All right, it's time to go after this subject?" It's time to go after time. Right. I just noticed that I did that, right? I was going to break into Time After Time, but nobody wants to hear me sing, so… Good song. Yeah, right? A good song. Anyway, I had a realization when I was reading about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Basically, he said there are these foundational needs we have, which are like food and water, and it builds up to shelter, and belonging, and self-actualization, but if we are missing a base function, like if we don't have any food or water, we will ignore everything else to get that priority. That's the base need of all of humanity. Well, I believe there's this Maslowian hierarchy of needs for business, for entrepreneurs. I think what the base is, the oxygen, if you will, is sales, meaning we need sales coming into our business to sustain. If there is no inbound revenue, nothing else matters because our lives are in jeopardy, our corporate, our business life is in jeopardy. Once we have some degree of sales, then the next level up, what I consider the nutrition, the food, and the water, is profitability. Sadly, I discovered something about my own business that I think applies to entrepreneurs in general: When I didn't have profit, meaning there was no money going into my pocket, I thought the solution was more sales, so I'd actually push harder to sell more. In fact, if sales is oxygen and profit is food and water, I was starving to death but instead of getting nutrition, or profit, I was trying to breathe in more air. I was gasping for air, more oxygen, more sales. What a business needs to move up this hierarchy of needs is sustainable sales. We need predictable profit. That's the next level up in the hierarchy of needs. Once a business achieves those two, then the next level of needs is time. Many entrepreneurs work simply to sustain the business, and that's it. It's a perpetual work. The demands on us are ridiculous. We compromise any form of life. We just work, work, work. Now, once we have sales and profit, now it's all about capturing time so we can bring back a balance so that we can live life the way we want, and we can work in our business the way we want. Instead of doing everything, we can become selective. That's why the subtitle for Clockwork is Design Your Business To Run Itself which, in turn, frees you up to do what you want, when you want in life and in business. That's beautiful. As I was reading through Clockwork, one of the things that struck me - I've seen that in businesses that are struggling,