Description

One of our favorite guests, Mike Michalowicz, joins Dr. Sabrina in today’s episode to talk about his latest book Fix This Next. 

Mike was the very first guest on the Profit By Design Podcast, and today marks his third occasion of being on the show.

Listen in to find out what inspired Mike to write his latest book, learn about the Business Hierarchy of Needs as a basis of applying our business fixes, and why we need to be asking our clients what they need from us.

Mike Michalowicz (pronounced mi-‘kal-o-wits) is the author of Profit First, Clockwork, Surge, The Pumpkin Plan, and his newest release Fix This Next. By his 35th birthday, Mike had founded and sold two companies - one to private equity and another to a Fortune 500. Today he is running his third multi-million dollar venture, Profit First Professionals.

Mike is a former small business columnist for The Wall Street Journal and the former business makeover specialist on MSNBC. Over the years, Mike has traveled the globe speaking with thousands of entrepreneurs and is here today to share the best of what he has learned.

Profit by Design is a Tap the Potential Production in collaboration with Small Business Consulting Group.

Show Highlights:

• The biggest challenge business owners have is knowing what their biggest challenge is.
• The Business Hierarchy of Needs is based on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and Mike explains how the five levels of need apply in business:
  1. Sales
  2. Profit
  3. Order
  4. Impact
  5. Legacy
• Where you need to apply your fix is always in this hierarchy. Start at the foundation, work your way up, and pinpoint where you’re compromised, where that thing is not adequately satisfied, then fix that and go through the cycle again to find the next fix.
• Many small businesses try to skip levels.
• Being profitable is the only way you can be of service to your clients.
• Dr. Sabrina shares a quote from Mike in his interview in Episode 1 that made a significant impression on her: “Our clients and customers crave for us to be profitable.”
• Fear and lack of confidence have affected a lot of business owners, especially since the beginning of the coronavirus event. Mike has online training, The Confidence Course, that will help develop what you already have.
• We should be asking our customers what they need now.
• Valuable elements from Mike’s prior books, Profit First and Pumpkin Plan are discussed.
• Understanding the needs of our top 20% clients that are responsible for 80% of our revenue historically in the business is a powerful way to move forward.
• If we increase revenue from our top 20% by 25% we can replace the revenue from the 80% that we may have lost or we just might not want to do business with because they were not our ideal clients.
• “Sell the Tell”: The new process to cater to that top 20%. Go to your existing client base and ask what they want, and bring imagination to it. Mike details this project.
• Fix This Next pulls together Mike’s work. It helps us to understand where we need to focus. His previous books support different levels of the business hierarchy needs.
• Tap The Potential has 50 copies of Fix This Next to give out! The first 50 to take the entrepreneurial burnout assessment and have a debriefing with the Success Team Lead will receive a FREE copy!

Links and Resources:

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