“If you have a business that isn’t profitable, it’s worse than having a job.” Angela Proffitt
About Our Guest:
Angela Proffitt is an award-winning 8-figure entrepreneur and CEO of GSD Creative. She is no stranger to the spotlight and is currently the host of the Business Unveiled podcast. As a consultant with several books as well as an in-demand speaker, Angela has appeared on ABC, CMT, TLC, E! as well as other national networks. With a degree in psychology and proven expertise in productivity strategies that scale your business, her work has been featured in publications such as INC, Success, US Weekly & People magazine. When she is not speaking, writing, or creating content, Angela can be found working with other CEO’s, Executives, Entrepreneurs and/or Solopreneurs to implement and master processes that can turn any business, into a profitable business.
Episode Summary:
This episode is powered by the Move to Millions Method
Let’s keep it real: productivity increases profit, period. As an aspiring million-dollar CEO, the sooner you realize this, the better. And to get to the million-dollar mark, according to my guest, Angela Proffitt (yes, that’s her last name) you’re going to need the P’s – People, Processes, Productivity and Profitability. This episode is practical and filled with tangible nuggets to align your productivity to your profit. If you have been trying to understand this powerful correlation, grab your pen and paper to discover how to get more done with the right people so that you make more and do more. This episode will be a blueprint and a gamechanger for your first million-dollar year.
Listen in to discover:
- The 4 types of people you must have on your team
- How to become 100% paperless in your business and how every sheet of paper is causing you productivity
- What color coding your calendar adds times to your day
- 4 must haves to increase your productivity starting today
Powerful Angela quotes from the episode:
- “Give your reminders a deadline.”
- “You only know what you know.”
- “It takes money to make money.”
- “Potty train your brain.”
- “Schedule Everything.”
- “If it’s really hard, no one can determine if it’s profitable.”
Last Book Angela Read: Trust Me I’m Lying Ron Holliday
Quote:
“If you fail to prepare you are preparing to fail.”
Tool Angela Swears By: Marco Polo
How to Connect with Angela:
- Website: theprofitableshift.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/angelaproffitt/
- Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gsdleader/
- Twitter: @AngelaProffitt
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AngelaProffittLLC
Incredible One Enterprises, LLC is not responsible for the content and information delivered during the podcast interview by any guest. As always, we suggest that you conduct your own due diligence regarding any proclamations by podcast guests. Incredible One Enterprises, LLC is providing the podcast for informational purposes only.
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Angela Proffitt: Aligned Productivity
This episode is powered by Shatter Your Income Ceiling, our brand-new private training, where we are giving you the keys to the castle of how our clients are shattering their income ceiling and making more in a month than most people make in a year. You can learn more and apply at WorkWithUs.com. I’m so excited for you because the interview that I have to share with you is going to wreck your brain and change the way you do business. I don’t want you to miss anything that our guest has to share with you. I sat down with Angela Proffitt. Her last name is Proffitt, so you already know this conversation was so stinking good.
There are many different things that we talked about. I do not want to steal the thunder of the episode. I’ll come back at the end and share some of my faves with you. Let me share Angela’s bio with you. Angela Proffitt is an award-winning eight-figure entrepreneur and CEO of GSD Creative. She is no stranger to the spotlight and is the host of Business Unveiled Podcast, which I’ve been a guest. As a consultant with several books and an in-demand speaker, Angela has appeared on ABC, CMT, TLC, and E!, as well as other national networks.
With a Degree in Psychology and proven expertise and productivity strategies that scale your business, her work has been featured in publications such as Inc., Success, US Weekly, and People Magazine. When she is not speaking, writing, or creating content, Angela can be found working with other CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs, and/or solopreneurs to implement and master processes that can turn any business into a profitable business. While you have your pen and paper, I want you to grab your helmet and shoulder pads. You’re going to need to brace yourself for all the juicy gems that Angela dropped with us. Let’s jump into my conversation with Angela Proffitt.
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I am so excited to welcome Angela Proffitt to the show. Angela, I’m so excited that you are here. Tell everybody who you are in your own words.
I’m so excited to be here. We help time-starved entrepreneurs, GSD, which is Get Shit Done.
How did you get there? Where did this all start from? I don’t think anybody wakes up, and they’re like, “I want to help people get crap done.” How does it evolve? Tell us a little bit more about your story and the work you’re doing for your time-starved clients. That’s the one thing none of us can ever get back. When the time is gone, the time is gone. How do we maximize that? Talk a little bit about that.
I’m going to give you the short version. I went to school to be a psychologist and did the college thing. My dad worked for the same company for 32 years. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. I had a somewhat traditional childhood. You don’t know what you don’t know. I only knew what I knew, which was to go to college, get married, and live in a house with a white picket fence and 2 kids and 2 dogs.
That wasn’t life for me. After working in mental health and healthcare for a couple of years, when I moved back home, which home for me is Nashville, my parents were involved in the Catholic diocese. Some of their friends’ kids started to get married, and they knew that my sister and I knew how to decorate.
My family had a venue for 35 years and did lots and lots of weddings. I grew up around it. I had a knack for it. I didn’t ever think I would be in any type of industry doing it for a job. I ended up starting a business doing weddings, events, number one parties, getting into the luxury market, doing things on private islands, traveling the world, and doing all these events. What I learned from that was we had something different on the GSD team.
I’m going to share those differences with you, but it’s one of those things that you can’t teach until you understand it yourself. You start to see, “What am I doing differently in my company that I can translate and help other companies do it?” I started doing consulting back in 2010 when our town flooded, and a lot of our vendors lost everything. What that did is they wanted to understand what paperless meant, meaning get your crap in the cloud, people.
I learned very early working in healthcare for EMR, Electronic Medical Records. I saw the power of you can click a button, and you don’t have to use paper. Your prescription goes through this cloud thing, and all you got to do is pick it up. I started to embrace and understand technology. I became a tech nerd. My car was broken, and my computer crashed the last week of college, right before graduation. All of these things at the time, I’m like, “My life is over. I’m losing my planner in my files.”
It was the best thing that ever happened to me because I started to learn that productivity is when you start to have paperless processes. That’s one of the Ps. You can be Productive. I started to travel and teach companies in the hospitality industry, luxury boutiques, and other designers and planners how to GSD. We’ve been saying that term for many years. We have shirts, and people say, “Is that a German Shepherd Dog?” I’m like, “I don’t know what life you live in, but I live in a Get Shit Done life.”
We created a whole brand around it when I retired out of doing events and taking on events and doing more of the consulting, and we took on that brand. We listened to our audience, and it was very catchy. People kept saying, “You’re the GSD girl.” We like to have fun with it too. I want to have fun with it. If you own a business and you’re an entrepreneur, life is hard sometimes. Why not put processes in place and have fun with them?
There are all kinds of other stuff that happened in there, but it’s all about productivity. Looping back to what you were saying in the beginning. What happened for me that did it where I’m like, “God’s put a situation in front of me. I have to choose how I’m going to spend my time,” a few years ago, my dad got throat cancer. My sister was diagnosed with ALS in the same year. I’m like, “My family is going to be needing me.” She has four kids. I’m very involved in those kids’ lives.
I’m like, “I either need to hire more people, or I’m going to have to figure out how to diversify my time and clients.” I got serious about being present, stopping all the distractions, and learning how to outsource even better when those things happen. You got to listen to your audience, your family, and your heart and do what’s right and going to make you happy and how to figure that out.
You said so many powerful things, and I didn’t want to stop you because I was like, “She’s inflow. We’ll pull back the layers on a lot of the things you said.” There was a powerful question that you asked yourself that I want to pull back for the readers and talk a little bit more about the unpacking of that.
You said, “What am I doing differently in my company that I can help others do differently in theirs?” That is brilliant. There’s something magical that happens when you can step back and move away from the thing. Many entrepreneurs and small business owners who have this quest to make millions of dollars and impact millions of lives get stuck here because they’re so busy being in the business instead of moving back so that they can work on the business.
That’s such a powerful question if you want to get stuff done. I’m not usually a cusser. I’m going to say stuff or ish. The first time I felt it happens to be one of the words I will say on the rare occasion. I’m like, “I will drop that.” The one thing you’ll never hear me do is drop the F-bomb because it vexes my spirit. It’s helping people figure out what is that thing that they’ve been able to do. I also love that you initially got to this point in an entirely different work than you do. Now you’re all about consulting, helping clients and businesses in a different way, but you started in the events industry.
I want to say for everybody who’s reading now, regardless of where you are or want to be, a powerful question to ask yourself in order to elevate the way that you show up inside of your business and the way that you can offer service to other people is, “What am I doing differently in my business that I can help other people do in theirs?” There, you can find an opportunity to shift, and in that shift, you begin to do work that shows up powerfully for you.
When you have paperless processes, you can really start to be productive and profitable.
There’s something else you said, and you started dropping the Ps. In one sentence, you said, “Productivity and a paperless process is what will help you to experience profits.” I’m going to need you to back the train up and break that all the way down for the people because I don’t want them to miss all of the magic that is in that one sentence with five Ps. GSD is all about the productivity piece of it. Some people think that productivity is a myth, and there’s no such thing. How have you been able to unearth this myth of productivity so it does help people to GSD?
We’ll quickly glaze over the four Ps. We can go back to it. The four Ps for us is what I realized in working with so many, not just people, but cultures all over the world. The first P is People. You cannot do this alone. I know what you’re thinking if you’re a solopreneur or a newer entrepreneur because I was that girl too. I’m like, “Nobody’s ever going to do it like me. Nobody’s ever going to do it as good as me.” You’re good at something, but you’re not good at everything. That’s okay.
You’ve to have the right people. There are so many psychology methodologies out there, but I learned about every one of them when I worked in mental health. We did so many assessments on our sick patients that it was so sad to try to connect with them and pull things out of them. Psychology helped me understand people, have patience, and not take them personally. Usually, you can look at somebody, and they can be perfectly put together and have all the money in the world. You have no clue what’s going on. They could have a mental illness or be dealing with something. You never know what’s going on with people, so be kind.
You’re good at something, but you’re not good at everything. I was one of those people. I thought, not even that long ago, a couple of years ago, that my clients were hiring me, and there was no way anybody else could serve them. I was this unique unicorn. If I wasn’t involved, there’s no way there was going to be a business. I realized that if I wanted to scale up to and beyond the million-dollar mark, there needed to be some other people involved in the process.
That’s such a great lesson. We have people reading this blog at every stage of the entrepreneurial journey. For those of you who are earlier stage, start getting it into your mind about the way you think and move inside your business now that if it is to be, it’s up to we, not it’s up to me. You’re going to need some people if you want to do this thing and do it at the million’s levels. That was good. What’s the second P?
I want to tell you there are four types of people. Pick a psychology methodology that works for you, but there are four types. You’ve got the analytical person who oversees your numbers, looks at your analytics, and all your social media analytics. I would call it a controller, a project manager, very type-A, keeps people on track, follows up, and make sure the loop is closed. You then have the customer service who wear their heart on their sleeve. They lead with happiness and empathy. They’re the ones that are going to be super genuine in taking care of people. You ten have the creatives. I don’t need any more creative energy around our team.
We won’t get anything done if we have more creative energy. We need some people who do the things that have been created.
I got the ideas all day long, made a list, and gave it to our controller. She checks with the analytical person to make sure that it’s a good idea and going to work. They test all this stuff. The other one is making sure it’s going to make people feel good and not piss anybody off. You’ve got to make sure you’ve got all four. Otherwise, you’ve got a bunch of blind spots. You cannot be everything to everybody. That wraps that up.
Before we move on to the next P that we brought this part in, I want to dial back. If you’re reading this, you got the magic formula of who you need to look for to be on your team. You’re going to have some people crunching the numbers, making sure that every goal that is set is achieved, and tracking it all of the way. You’re going to need some people who care about your clients, the service, and care of those clients. You’re going to need some people who are focused on making sure that every project line gets done in the timeframe in which it was said so that there are no delays in the results. You already have you. 9 times out of 10, you might be that creative person.
If you are not the creator, you need someone on the team who has that creative, visionary energy that will keep innovating and moving your company forward. Angela, I get on my team’s nerves because every week, there could be a new idea. There could be something else that we should be doing, or I want to change my mind about what we talked about before. I know I get on their nerves. I’m so grateful that none of them quit. They all still work with me because I am in that energy. I took the wealth dynamics assessment a couple of years ago. It was like, “You make your wealth through creation.” I was like, “That is so true.” I’m telling you. I will whip something up in a minute.
That it’s so important that people understand the roles that people play. If it needs to get done, it can not only be done by you. It is up to we, not it is up to me. Surround yourself with the people who believe in your brand, want to help you expand your mission, and are willing to do the work outside of your realm of capability to do so that you don’t burn out before you can cash out inside of your business. Are we ready for P number two?
The second P is all about Processes. I’m going to break it down for you. You’ve got internal and external processes, which both should be 100% paperless. For everyone reading, who loves their pen and paper, there’s nothing wrong with it. On a strategy day, you better believe we have a huge whiteboard now. Before we had that, we had those big Post-it notes. I was drawing, sketching, and all over the place. By the end of the day, we take pictures and put it in their Dropbox. If the building was to burn down, I’m not being funny because I’ve been through fires and floods. I’ve had patients and clients go through that.
You can’t live like that’s never going to happen to me because you don’t flip a no. Back everything up. With your internal processes, make sure that you have some processes with your team. For example, we still love Google Drive and Dropbox. A lot of the things we use are free up into a certain space. With Dropbox, you get 350 megabytes, which doesn’t get you a lot, but it gets you something. It’s the same thing with Google Drive.
If you’re on G Suite or Google Business, it takes money to make money. You’ve got to be able to create these processes that no matter where people are in the world, whether it be your team members or your clients, you are able to make sure everything is backed up in the cloud and shared. Create a process and a naming convention, so all our clients have a folder. It’s the first name and last name. If there’s a project deadline, the date goes in front because I want to know how many things we have in January and February. It’s on our calendar, but I can always look in our Dropbox and Google Drive, which the two mirror each other.
I had a bad experience with Dropbox. We had a 50-page timeline open for a 4-day production. The client was somewhere. The mom was somewhere. My sister was somewhere. We were all in different parts of the world and OCD about hitting save. Eight hours later, the document saved nothing. I’ve not lost my mind. That was years ago.
It taught you something valuable as a result of that. I was doing a live event back in 2012, and someone broke in and stole our computer. I had a hard drive. It was a bad scene. We shouldn’t have been there in the first place. It’s not anything that our brand is now. They broke in and stole the computer. They took the hard drive. My whole life was on that external hard drive. I wasn’t using the cloud at all.
Know that you’re really good at something but you’re not good at everything. You can’t do it all alone.
I had to go back to every client and be like, “If I’ve ever sent you a document, a template, a worksheet, can you please send it back to me to try to rebuild?” From that moment on, we’ve been on Dropbox. I’m like, “We’re never dealing with this again. We’re not going to have anything not available, no matter where we are outside or in the world, wherever we are. We are going to be able to access everything.” I get the feeling that it must have been produced.
It’s this empty feeling. I was like, “My clients are going to lose confidence in me.” What you said is important because a lot of people wait until something happens. They wait until a tragedy. Don’t do that. You can be proactive and don’t have to go through that. Set everything up. Here’s something that we did, which is a pro tip. We would start to share Dropbox and Google Drive with all our clients. It reduced our email by 300 a day. We tracked it for a whole year, years ago.
You do have to potty-train their brain. I’m like, “Give me your phone. I’m going to put some free apps on there. This is how you get to your stuff.” You have to tell them a few times, but what’s neat is they start to use that process, either in their own business or at the company they work at, and in their own family. It’s neat. The other thing with Google Drive is everything in Google Drive we’re constantly editing and updating. There’s a time stamp on everything if the client’s ever wondering where we are on that. Another project management software does it now, too. We stick to our process because we’ve been doing it so long, and it works. Internally, that’s important.
Externally for the clients, you want to make sure that you’ve got your contract in Adobe Sign or DocuSign. What happens after that? For example, we use a third party called Zapier. When someone signs an electronic contract or anything, it zaps and can go into their Dropbox. That would be an example. When you onboard a client, what happens? If you don’t have a team, get all that out of your head, make a Google Doc, or better yet, we make a video library with Loom, another free service up to a certain amount of space.
Make sure that those processes are internal and external. There’s a huge myth by a lot of business owners that I work with who are over 50. A lot of our clients are over 50 because they’ve been in business for 35 plus years. They know if they don’t change something, they’re going to end up going under. They have to stay relevant and fresh. If I hear one more person say, “I’ll hire a Millennial and give them an iPhone.” I’m like, “No, it doesn’t work like that.”
They know how to play on the phone. They don’t know how to make money on the phone. You have to teach them how to do that. Some do have their own brand, but when you’re bringing somebody into your company, who’s going to be working with you, you have to train them. You can’t expect them. If you don’t have Processes, it can be a complete mess. That’s the second P. Make sure that you have a paperless process.
There are so many great things you said in there. There was a tip you gave me. We use Zapier to work between DocuSign and Infusionsoft, which is our CRM, but I didn’t know we could do another zap to take that signed agreement and put it in their Dropbox folder. We have every SOP documented but also have a video version of it so people can read it or the team member who developed the process walking through it because it’s so important if you want to build out a team.
We don’t have time. We’re not physically in the same space where you come and shadow me while I do this thing. It makes it easier as you’re building things out. You take the time to document it and create a video around it. Paperless processes are the bomb. I believe in them. I want everybody to start using those as well. What’s our third P?
Our third P is Productivity. A couple of key things here with productivity is the number one thing is time blocking on your calendar. I don’t mean your paper planner with highlighters. You can use iCal or Google Calendar, or Outlook Calendar. If you’re that person who loves your planner and you love to write it down, you can do both. I tell you this because if you lose something, spill something on it, or somebody steals your purse, as it happened to me, you at least have it electronically.
There are a couple of little things to break down in the time-blocking. Number one is to color code. I had a coach that taught me this. I like the week view. I like to see my week Monday through Sunday, and we color code. For example, all the red are meetings that I have to be at. My team may be part of it, but I have to be there and lead it.
The green is client work in the background billable time. We track all of our hours and our time. We completely changed our business model years ago because of a consultant who said, “You have to track your time, so you understand how long it takes you to do some of these things.” We customize everything the client needs. Our process and our strategy are the same for every single client. What goes inside of those documents is completely custom to that client.
It could take us 40 hours or 400 hours. I can give an estimate after I know what the overall needs are. We sell in twenty-hour time blocks. Sometimes there are 4 or 10 people working on a project. It depends on what’s needed. All of our team members block their time and put that on the calendar in green.
Blue are things that I need to do at home or things that I need to work on the business, not in the business. I can usually do it from home, especially after the pandemic. The next color is orange, which the orange is the most important to you all because the first ten years I had my business, I never made myself a priority. I didn’t take care of myself. I was a flipping mess.
I didn’t sleep, eat right, and gained so much weight. It was bad. My hair was falling out. My mom’s like, “If you don’t start taking care of yourself, how can you take care of other people?” The orange is when I meet my trainer, see my family, have my sister’s kids, anything personal that is me time. I’m not going to lie. There are some weeks where I look at the calendar, and I’m like, “It’s all red. I’m going to be in meetings ten hours a day for five days.”
On the weekend, I’ve got family. I’m like, “When am I ever going to catch up?” It doesn’t happen very often anymore because we book out. At COVID, I was down for three weeks. My team did awesome at keeping up. When I got better, I looked at my board on a to-do list, and I was like, “What am I ever going to get all this done?”
What I started to do was I looked at the calendar and started to block all the time to know how much time I needed. If I don’t get done, I can move it to another day. You’ve got to be realistic with your time. You’re not She-Ra or a superwoman. I’m being funny, but you have to be realistic. That’s the number one thing. You’ve got to learn to say no. It’s okay to say no.
Your internal and external processes should both be 100% paperless.
I love the color-coding. We do that too. That’s my personal calendar in purple as opposed to orange. That has been a big deal too. To block everything that we do for clients is in green. Everything that I do personally development-wise is in pink. My personal self-care stuff is in purple. Meetings that I have with members of my team or things to move a business forward are in blue. Similarly, we do that because it is so important. I’m like you. I want to see my calendar a week at a time.
I remember when I was in Mary Kay. That’s where I first learned the concept of the weekly plan sheet. Every week on Sunday, I plan out my week or look at what’s on the calendar for the week to get a good idea of what I’m supposed to be doing. Do I need to schedule some self-care? I didn’t realize that I was going to be going from dark 30 to dark 30. I need to be clear about that as well. I hear people saying, “How does time blocking help me be more productive?” Can you talk a little bit about that?
I love that question. Some people think, “I could never do that.” I’m like, “I thought the same thing, but it wasn’t what I thought it was.” My coach was like, “You need to schedule every phone call and turn your notifications off. They’ll be there when you’re ready for them. There was this thing called FOMO.” I’m like, “What is that?” He’s like, “Fear Of Missing Out.” I’m like, “The good thing is I’m missing that sense in my brain. That’s a good thing.” I’m not like, “What’s going on?”
It’s being present. For most of our clients, when we first start, we have a whole strategy day. Usually, I block eight hours. Sometimes it goes nine because I want to wrap it up to make sure I’ve extracted as much information out of their brain as I can because my team can’t move forward until we extract some of that information.
When I’m with you, I am 100% focused on you. I don’t care what’s going on in the outside world. It will be there later. That’s also why I have an assistant who answers emails, does our calendar and takes care of our clients. If something is wrong or someone is on fire, she is there to pick up the pieces and is very well trained to do so. It took a few years to get into that rhythm, but that is setting expectations. When a client hires you, you tell them.
We schedule everything. Once you sign the contract and pay the retainer, we’re going to start scheduling some things. We can be flexible in moving them around. Usually, we book out about a month in advance. We schedule phone calls, “Don’t text me. Please email, please use our system. You’re going to get a way better experience if you follow our system.”
I will say lately here that people do want to text. Anytime clients are doing that, we’re getting a texting software that integrates with Infusionsoft because I can’t be distracted. I’m not going to look at my phone, be texting, and look at social media messages throughout the day. You have to create those boundaries and those systems. Another thing that falls under the productivity part is having software and a little bit of automation, but you’ve got to communicate your expectations before your client hires you.
I thought if I wasn’t answering the phone or the text within 24 seconds, not 24 hours, I would lose all my clients. It was the opposite, and people started to respect my time more. They came to all our meetings and our phone calls more prepared. You have to set the expectation. If someone says to me, “You’re not going to call me or text me back.” I’m like, “No, you can get in touch with Amanda. Her time is as valuable as mine. Her role is a little different.”
When I’m doing strategy or design for someone, I block my time. I am able to be submerged and only think about that. You would be amazed when you start with that mindset of like, “I’m only going to think about this person.” For me, it helped me not be so overwhelmed. When I’m done with that, I don’t think about it until the next month when we have that next meeting. Compartmentalize your time and your clients and what needs to be done. That way, you are not like a scattered chicken running around.
I have a client trying to finish a book, and his phone is ringing. We’re trying to do audio for the book, which I was going to use for his podcast, the whole wash, rinse, repeat. His phone was buzzing. He’s like, “Hold on. I got to take this.” Finally, at the end of the day, I’m like, “You got up seven times and answered the phone. I don’t know what those people said to you, but it completely changed your tone and sound different on audio. The next time we do this, you can’t have your phone in the room. You can’t have it on vibrate. You got to have it off or out of there.”
I put mine on airplane mode or do not disturb when I’m doing something that I need to do. There’s nothing that is ever so urgent that I need to stop and do it right at that moment. I had to learn that because I’m a big creative. I am certified in Colby. Every little ding or bell makes me want to focus on something else. Know thyself. I was like, “To my own self, be true. Let me remove my own distraction, and I can focus on getting done whatever is the priority at that moment.”
It’s so important these tips that you’re sharing specifically around this piece in productivity. I want you to take that all in because what Angela is giving you are so many keys to how to not just GSD, but how to be able to operate your business so that you can set appropriate boundaries, clients respect those boundaries and appreciate the work that you do instead of thinking that you were there to babysit them or out their back and call.
They’re only acting that way because that is what you have told them. You have trained them on how to operate with you. You have the ability to shift the way that you’re showing up by putting some of these paperless processes in place, looking at the time stamping, time blocking, color coding, and all of those different things, and getting your team on board with your new philosophy.
The other thing is important that I want to say here, whether it’s Angela or someone else, is looking at bringing a consultant in that can look at how you’re running your business while you’re doing it day in and day out, tell you where the time stamps are and can get time back so that you can be more productive. The more productive you are, the more profitable you’ll be.
The last big thing I’ll say with the productive side is whatever type of laptop or computer or phone, whatever your devices are, make sure your stuff is syncing. If you have all Apple products, when you walk out of that Apple store, it’s not set up the way that you need it to be set up to work for you. I have a ton of free YouTube videos on Apple products and how you can be more productive using your technology.
Things come up through my head throughout the day when I am trying to focus. I’m like, “I forgot.” I’ll be like, “Siri, remind me at 10:00 PM, so and so.” Give your reminders a deadline because the reason I do that is by 10:00 PM, I know that I should be done. I’ll be able to sit down and pull up our project management system, which is called a to-do list. All my team members have a folder. I’ll delegate all those to-dos, but the key is setting a deadline. Even if it’s a moving deadline, set yourself a deadline to make sure that you get those thoughts out quickly. A lot of people reach for a Post-it note and a pen. They start writing things down, and you can delegate that out.
If you have a business and it isn’t profitable, it’s worse than having a job.
I do have all Mac products. I open my notes and make a note there. I know it sinks everywhere. I’m paying for that on my phone. When I come into the office, I look at the things that came up overnight or as I was thinking and laying in my bed or whatever and transfer them wherever they need to go. A lot of the software you use has an app. You can put the app. We use Teamwork PM for our project management.
I can open up Teamwork PM and get a thought that I need to assign something to my assistant. I can go and put that in a task for her at the moment that I have the thought. When she gets in the office the next morning, it will be in her email. I love that you said that you are not only looking at the processes themselves. It’s looking at the software you’re using and what automation opportunities exist inside of those things to be able to make your life easier and streamline the way that you’re working every single day. It’s such good stuff.
Ask your team members how they want to be communicated with. Our processes put everything on in the app with a deadline. However, there are some times when I feel that I need to clarify some things. We also use Marco Polo, which is a video texting app. My team members were like, “Angie, it’s fine. However, there are two things.” Whatever you’re introducing, you got to set up a process. They’re like, “Can you please tell me when you start to vomit all this information on Marco Polo video text if I need to be at my computer because you’re about to vomit off a list, and you’re about to say confidential names?”
I’m like, “What do you mean?” One of my team members said, “I like to work at Starbucks sometimes.” She’s obsessed with coffee and loves the smell. I’m like, “You’re listening to my Marco Polo without earbuds or headphones.” Allow those conversations to happen. I’ll say, “This is an FYI. This is a follow-up from the to-do list. If you’re driving, you can still listen. If you’re not alone, please stop listening or put your earbuds in.” You tell them what to expect, but it’s a two-way street. Make sure that you have that open communication with your team.
What’s our last P? We have one more.
It is the most important. If you have a company and it’s not Profitable, it’s worse than a job. That was me for so many years because I was creative. I did not go to business school. My parents were not entrepreneurs. I did not know what the heck I was doing. All I know is there was always money in the bank. I thought everything was okay. I didn’t know how to charge appropriately any of that. I joined a group called The Entrepreneurs’ Organization. Before I did that, I went through their Catalyst.
It was a Catalyst program. I felt like I was getting an MBA in business, which was exactly what I needed at that time. I had a lot of coaches and mentors going through that. This is not the fun part of business, but it is fun now because we have changed our business model. Our accountant bill is the first of every month. It’s exciting. You get excited about numbers when you’re like, “If you have a goal of making X amount of dollars.”
We have a few private clients, but we have online courses now. We have things that have taken us a year to build. Now that it’s finally paying off where it’s that affiliate marketing courses, where you can make money while you sleep. It’s not that easy, but it does exist. It’s fun to get the first of every month to run the reports and see how things did and where people are in the funnels. God put this person in my life to rip my business apart.
He said, “The first thing I want to know is how much you need to live? What are your operating expenses?” I had no idea what he was talking about. We started to list everything that I was paying for. Even if you work from home, there are 32 software that we used to pay for every single month. You’ve got all your hardware things. If you’ve got your car, you got a gas fee to put in your car. You probably take people out to eat.
There were so many operating expenses. I had a huge team. I was paying all these people and wasn’t paying myself. I didn’t understand my numbers. He’s like, “I don’t care what Susie Q and Laura and all these other girls are charging in your space. We need to figure out what you need to live. You don’t have a second income. Everyone is relying on you to sell.” I’m like, “That’s a lot of pressure if you think about it.”
I’m so glad that you hired the consultant and they had you think about things this way. That’s the same thing I say to my clients. There is a market for everyone. That’s why we have Kias and Maseratis both on the road at the same time. You need to find the people who are going to buy your Maserati instead of the people who want to drive a Kia. That’s messaging. That’s all it is.
I’m like, “No, it’s not about what your market bear. It’s what you want your lifestyle to look like. You are making enough money to take out of your business without embezzling. You put yourself in a position to pay your taxes easily and effortlessly, have cash reserves in case something comes up, and hire the people you want on your team.”
It’s such an important thing to do in this entire process. I’m glad that he got you straight and helped you set this up. It is essential. I love what you said. I wanted to pull that back. This might be the quote for the episode, “If you have a business that isn’t profitable, it’s worse than having a job.” Hearing you say it that way, I hope as other people read it, they’re like, “I got to get my ish together.” If I want to get stuff done, I need to get my stuff together because it’s like, “You’re not tripping the light fantastic.” Busy work is not the same as having a profitable business. That is so important, Angela. I’m so glad that you’re talking about this.
There are different types of businesses. You have lifestyle businesses where I have friends that are photographers. They travel the world. They want to cover their expenses for their travel. They’re married, and their husband does well. They don’t need to add anything from a profitability standpoint. You have to look at where you are in your lifestyle. What I will tell every woman reading is to don’t rely on anybody. I learned the hard way. I was married. I went through a divorce. Not that I ever relied on him, but that was a second income. I had a real job in healthcare. I had that direct deposit. When all that goes away, that’s when I was like, “Shoot.”
I never balanced the checkbook. That’s why I hired an accountant. When I hired an accountant and a business manager, and my coach that I was working with, it took us two years to get there. We went from doing and working with 250 people a year to doing 30. It took us two years to get there. After that twelfth year in business was the first year we were profitable.
We had made money that year. I was so grateful. What we changed was we said, “We’re going to go to full service. We’re not going to hodgepodge all these services together. We’re going to give people the red-carpet customer service.” When you’ll hodgepodge things together, communication falls through the cracks. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in.
Lead with passion and the profit will come.
It’s a hot mess, is what it is.
It is. Not that you have to be that control freak and not that you have to employ everybody. Still, to this day, we outsource a lot of stuff. We use Upwork or Fiverr. Find the right people that can be an addition to your team to help you do these things. There are people out there who care. They’re a little hard to find sometimes, but it’s like, “You screw up once, we’re probably not going to use you again unless there’s a good reason.” You can grow your team and use contractors and freelancers. There’s nothing wrong with that. As the project manager, you’re the one that the client is hiring. You have to answer to the client and project manage that project. It’s all about profit and understanding your numbers.
That’s a great point. There’s a time and a place for contractors versus employees, but sometimes people are spending way too much money on contractors that they could be spending way less than an employee. I love to use the online business manager role. No disrespect to anyone out there who’s an OBM, getting paid very well for twenty hours a week for your clients. If you’re paying $2,500 or $3,000 a month for twenty hours a week, you could be getting 40 hours a week out of an operations person that is your employee. You want to think and make sure sometimes it’s twenty hours a month or $3,500 or whatever the case might be.
Don’t be so quick to bring on a contractor if it is going to make more sense to your business’s bottom line. This is why it’s important to understand your numbers, track the right key performance indicators, and know how to read the spreadsheets and the analytics to know what it’s telling you so that you can validate whether or not this is a good thing or not. Another important thing. I want to make sure we stress that in every single program or however you work with clients, some of you have pre-determined programs that fit the masses. Some of you are doing customization in your work.
We have a spreadsheet by the program, every direct cost, every general administrative cost that goes into that, and any overhead associated with that particular product or service. When we put in what it costs, we can see our level of profitability on that program. You need to be profitable by the program, the service, not profitable at the end of the year when it’s all said and done. I’m also a big believer in profit first. Shout out to Mike Michalowicz and his process. Your business should profit. Your business should serve you.
We are not in business to live. Our business funds the life that we crave. I had to make that important distinction because it is essential, especially if you have a desire to make a move to millions. You’re not going to the million-dollar mark without knowing any of these Ps, but especially paying attention to the profitability P. It’s not going to happen.
It doesn’t have to be hard, contrived, or convoluted. It can be simple for you to get an understanding. You might need to find a consultant who can help you break down your business model and the profitability metrics in your business to make sure that you are looking at and tracking the right things. It has to be done if you want to continue to grow and go to the next level.
As I wrap up with my Ps, do your Passion. The profit will come, but the passion should still be first. When you do your passion, learn all these strategies, have the knowledge, and know how to be a profitable business owner, there’s nothing wrong with that. To loop back to what I said, it’s a hard no when I know it’s not going to be profitable. That goes back to your time being priceless, precious, and present. When you say yes and know something’s not going to be profitable, why are you doing that? Let the passion lead, and the profit will come.
This has been awesome. If you are reading this episode, I know that you, like me, have pages of notes. I was writing stuff down for myself because it’s so good. Before I let you go, Angela, I have my three questions that we always ask at the end of an episode to tie it all in and to learn a little bit more about you. My first question is, what is the last book you read?
The last book that I listened to because I’m not a good reader. I love Audible. It is Trust Me, I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday about marketing. It’s so good.
I love Seth Godin’s All Marketers Are Liars. What’s your favorite quote?
I have a new one. Someone sent it to me for a presentation. “If you fail to prepare, you are preparing to fail,” Benjamin Franklin.
The last one is what’s one tool you swear by to grow your business?
Marco Polo, it’s all about communication and people.
I want to thank you so much for being here, Angela. This has been so good. Many good nuggets have come out of this. I know you guys will come back and read this episode over and over and work your Ps. Once you work on those Ps, you will start to GSD. We’ll see you next episode.
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You thought I was lying, didn’t you? You thought that I was hyping up the interview, but you now know that I would never do that to you. I’m always going to keep it real. In fact, I’m not even going to bring you somebody who doesn’t bring the heat to the conversation. Wasn’t that good? Angela was the bomb, for real. There are so many great things that we talked about. We talked about those four Ps that will help you GSD or Get Ish Done. She has many powerful quotes, but I want to break down the P.
The first P was People, and there are four types of people you need on your team, the analytical, the controller, the customer service, and the creative. You are normally going to be creative. The second P was Processes. It’s knowing the difference between your internal and your external processes. The third P was Productivity. The beauty was there was time blocking your calendar and the color-coding system.
She talks about setting boundaries and systems and determining the right software and automation. You’re doing too much. There are so many things you could be automated in your business. That is the reason that you’re not GSD-ing. The final P was Profitability. This was the quote that made me want to smack her in a good way, “If you have a business that isn’t profitable, it’s worse than having a job.” Angela brought the heat, and I hope you enjoyed it. If you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did, you want to go to the links, where you can connect directly with Angela. We put all of our details in there.
You can learn about her podcasts, find her on social media, and stay connected to her. She’s earning eight-figures. She is where we are making a move the inside of our business. What she knows about processes, people and profitability, and productivity will change the game for you. You’re welcome. I want to thank you for reading this blog with Angela. I know that if you take one of the Ps and turn that into a process that you now follow inside of your business, you’re going to be so much closer to getting ish done. I’ll see you next time.