From the archive: This episode was originally recorded and published in 2021. Our interviews on Entrepreneurs On Fire are meant to be evergreen, and we do our best to confirm that all offers and URL’s in these archive episodes are still relevant.
Donald “Don” Miller is an American author, public speaker, and business owner. He is the CEO of StoryBrand, a marketing company. He is also an author of personal essays and reflections about faith, God, and self-discovery. His first New York Times bestselling book was Blue Like Jazz and his latest book is called Marketing Made Simple.
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Resource
Business Made Simple – On-Demand Courses to Help You Grow a Business.
Marketing Made Simple – Check it out on Amazon!
3 Value Bombs
1) Here’s a formula for creating a mission statement: “We will accomplish X by X because of X.”
2) Wealthy people think that the company exists to make money so they can buy something that makes more money without working.
3) As you create new products, know its profitability. Also, ask if it will confuse the audience on what problem you’re intending to solve in the marketplace.
Sponsors
HubSpot: Starting your year off strong and accomplishing goals like increasing revenue and faster growth starts with the right selling tools. And for that, there’s the all new Sales Hub from HubSpot! Head to HubSpot.com/sales to try it for free!
Airbnb: Have you ever considered hosting on Airbnb? Your home might be worth more than you think… Find out how much at Airbnb.com/host!
CBDistillery: With over 2 million customers and a solid 100% guarantee, CBDistillery is the source to trust for pure, effective CBD products! Visit CBDistillery.com and use code FIRE for 20% off!
Show Notes
**Click the time stamp to jump directly to that point in the episode.
Today’s Audio MASTERCLASS: The Simple Checklist You Can Use to Grow Your Business.
[1:22] – Don shares something that he believes about becoming successful that most people disagree with.
- An enormous driver of individual success is on health. Mixed motives could also be a driver of success.
[4:55] – Don talks about the reasons why we should think of our business like an airplane…
- The cockpit is leadership, the guiding principles and mission statement, and all about identifying where you’re going.
- The wings are your products or services. The wings need to be strong and light, which translates to being in-demand and profitable.
- The body of the plane is your overhead, or your ongoing business expenses, like rent. Like the body of an airplane, you want to keep that small. A giant overhead would make the plane crash.
- The engine is your marketing and sales. They have to create enough thrust to get the product off the ground and lift the overhead with it.
- The fuel tank is the cash. Without cash, your plane is going to crash.
[9:28] – Creating a mission statement for your business.
- Mission statements are worthless because they lack statements and a mission.
- Here’s a formula for creating a mission statement: “We will accomplish X by X because of X.”
- Anything that you’re working on that doesn’t benefit the mission of the organization, stop doing it.
- Missions must have deadlines. A deadline increases the urgency of the story.
[14:27] – A timeout to thank our sponsors!
- HubSpot: Starting your year off strong and accomplishing goals like increasing revenue and faster growth starts with the right selling tools. And for that, there’s the all new Sales Hub from HubSpot! Head to HubSpot.com/sales to try it for free!
- Airbnb: Have you ever considered hosting on Airbnb? Your home might be worth more than you think… Find out how much at Airbnb.com/host!
- CBDistillery: With over 2 million customers and a solid 100% guarantee, CBDistillery is the source to trust for pure, effective CBD products! Visit CBDistillery.com and use code FIRE for 20% off!
[16:30] – The step-by-step process to create a profitable product.
- Audit your existing products and get rid of dead weight.
- As you create new products, know its profitability. Also, ask if it will confuse the audience on what problem you’re intending to solve in the marketplace.
[21:02] – Don talks about his online platform Business Made Simple.
- They offer everything that you need to know to grow a business.
[23:36] – Cashflow is the lifeline for most businesses. How can we manage our cashflow to set our businesses up for profitable and sustainable growth?
- The first checking account is for your operating expenses. All the money for the company goes in and out of this account.
- Two more accounts that sit next to your checking account are taxes and profits.
- Once profit reaches 2.5 million – or whatever you need for 6 months worth of overhead – you have another spillover account called investment holding. It is where you look for other assets that you can buy that create money apart from your company.
- The fifth account is your personal checking account. The operating expense account pays a salary to your personal checking account, and that’s what you live off of.
- Wealthy people think that the company exists to make money so they can buy something that makes more money without working.
[29:13] – Don talks more about his book…
- In his book he shares how he went from a quarter million to 6 and a half million in 5 years, with a 60%+ profit margin!
- A one-liner, a lead generator, a well-wired website that gets results, an email list, and a closing sales letter are the basic 5 things that any small business needs to grow.
- Go through the process step-by-step with the book Marketing Made Simple.
[32:54] – Thank you to our Sponsors!
- HubSpot: Starting your year off strong and accomplishing goals like increasing revenue and faster growth starts with the right selling tools. And for that, there’s the all new Sales Hub from HubSpot! Head to HubSpot.com/sales to try it for free!
- Airbnb: Have you ever considered hosting on Airbnb? Your home might be worth more than you think… Find out how much at Airbnb.com/host!
Transcript
0 (2s):
Light that spark, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Sales Evangelist. Today we're pulling a classic episode from the archives and we'll be breaking down the simple checklist you can use to grow your business. To drop these value bombs, I brought Don Miller into EOFire Studios. Don is an American author, public speaker, and business owner. He is the CEO of StoryBrand, a marketing company. He is also an author of personal essays and reflections about faith, God, and self-discovery. His first New York Times bestselling book was Blue Like Jazz and his latest book is called Marketing Made Simple. And today, Fire Nation, we'll talk about a formula for creating a mission statements and how wealthy people think that the company exists to make money so they can buy something that makes more money without working.
0 (44s):
and so much more
Marketing Made Simple hosted by Dr. JJ Peterson (45s):
And a big thanks for sponsoring today's episode goes to Don and our sponsors, Marketing Made Simple hosted by my friend Dr. JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly make it work. A recent episode on whether vulnerability is a superpower in business is a must. Listen. Listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts.
Thought-Leader by Taylor Conroy (1m 12s):
Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world in four time, 10x Speaker Taylor Conroy from Thought-Leader can help you get there. Visit Thought-Leader.com/fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions.
0 (1m 32s):
Don say What's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.
1 (1m 42s):
Well, it's good to be with you guys. I, I think that most people would disagree with something I, I foundationally believe John, and it's that an enormous driver of individual success is actually unhealth. It's, it's it's psychological unhealth, for instance, needing strangers to applaud for you would be a driver of success. A desire to prove that you are not white trash. That's what, that's a big one for me. 'cause I grew up standing in a welfare line and the healthier I get, the less driven I become.
1 (2m 22s):
Now, that isn't to say there aren't also healthy motives. I believe I'm a strong believer in mixed motives. So I want to help people and I also want to prove to myself and to others that I'm capable of being successful. So I would say mixed motives as a driver of success are actually, I, I firmly believe that those can be drivers of success. In fact, I, I recently, I I watched a documentary about people who had near death experiences that as they died, one woman was underwater for 19 minutes. What? Yeah, 19 minutes. And she went to a spirit world or whatever. There's, there's a, a University of Virginia, there's a professor at the University of Virginia who's, who's sat with more than 10,000 people who've had near death experiences.
1 (3m 3s):
And they go to some place, they're all eerily similar. And they experienced this freedom from their own baggage. And they don't, none of them wanted to come back, but somebody told them, you gotta go back. And they went back. And every one of them, according to this doctor at the University of Virginia, said they struggled with motivation. They struggled with competition and the desire to succeed. And to me, that's, that says something that's amazing. Wow. Even if there's no afterlife, right, even if you don't believe in it, the fact that you realized you were being driven and it just wasn't necessary and it was causing you to not enjoy life as much. Says something to me. So I think, I think the desire to succeed is a mixed bag.
1 (3m 47s):
I am 100% into it. I I get up early every morning. I, I organize my time. But there's part of me that wonders, you know, if I were, and I'm, I'm not unhealthy my wife, I'm not a workaholic. My wife and I have a great relationship. I have good friendships. But I do wonder if it weren't for the fact that I grew up in poverty, standing in line for government cheese and having a crush on the homecoming queen who would never possibly go out with me if I weren't so driven to prove myself
0 (4m 16s):
Fire Nation. This is why you consume content from Don because he says it like it is. Very few people in this world will tell it straight like this. And that's why I love when I hear words coming outta your mouth. Don, quick question before we move on. Have you ever read the book The Pleasure Trap by Alan Goldhammer?
1 (4m 35s):
No, I haven't. But that sounds actually really good.
0 (4m 37s):
You need to listen from what you were just saying. You would find the book fascinating. It's unlocked some of the very things that you were talking about in my mind and I'm like, oh, that's what drives us. Oh, it's, you go down that path, my man. The
1 (4m 50s):
Pleasure trap. Okay, I'm
0 (4m 51s):
By Alan Goldhammer and hit me up with email. I wanna know your thoughts on it. It's super will do. Super valuable. And Fire Nation. Today, as I mentioned, we're talking about the simple Checklist that you can use to grow your business. And who doesn't want a simple Checklist to grow your business. And I wanna start off in a different direction and talk about airplanes. Why the heck should we think about our business as an airplane?
1 (5m 16s):
You know, it's so funny, I just filmed a course called How to Grow a Business and I filmed it in front of a green screen. But what the audience will see is a triple seven out, you know, with, with my, my company logo on it. Business made simple. And, and I realized that as I went through the whole thing, I realized one of my main points is keep overhead low and I'm sitting in front of a $700 million just to triple seven. So only your audience will know that I indeed kept my overhead very low. 'cause all it is is a big green carpet behind me. But that said, you know, I, it, it helped me. I was a memoirist before I started a business, had no business training whatsoever.
1 (5m 57s):
And there was a single analogy, a single metaphor, if you will, that I used when I first started my business. That has allowed me to go to about $20 million in total revenue in five years with a 64% profit margin, no venture capital, no private equity, and no loans from banks, no partners. And, and that was the metaphor of the airplane. I just kept thinking of my business like an airplane. So lemme go through it real quick. You have the cockpit and that's the leadership. So that's the guiding principles, that's your mission statement. That's where are we going, where are we taking this thing? You have the wings of the airplane. Those are your products and services. It's whatever you sell, whatever you decide to sell, the wings need to be strong and light.
1 (6m 39s):
And that translates into in demand and profitable. If you have a product that is not in demand, you're gonna fail. If you have a product that is not profitable, you're gonna fail. The body of the airplane is your overhead. So that's your rent, you know, your mortgage on your building, whatever that is. You know, it's the coke and the Coke machine, the flickering light bulb above the Coke machine. Your, a lot of your salaries I would consider overhead. That's overhead. You wanna keep that small because if you have giant overhead, it's the plane's gonna crash. The, the body of the plane is too big. In fact, we've all been on airplanes, probably a small airplane where they come out and say, look, one of you got is one of you gotta get off. You know, whoever's fattest get off this plane. That's what's kind of a thing.
1 (7m 19s):
And we're taking your bag with you. And so we've all, you know, because it matters, right? They're actually weighing the plane. Then you got the right engine, which is your marketing engine, the sales engine is your left engine. Those two engines have to create enough thrust to get the product off the ground and lift the overhead with it. And then you have the all important fuel tank, which is where your cache is because if you run out of cash, your plane is going to crash. And so if you can manage where we taking this thing, what products are we creating? How heavy is our overhead? Is our right engine marketing working well? Is our left engine sales working well? And do we have enough bank money in the bank account to, to keep this thing in the air?
1 (8m 2s):
If you always build your business in proportion, it's gonna do okay. If you were at an airport and you walked up to a plane and had a giant body, tiny little puny wings made out of paper, little rubber band engines and gas spewing out the back, you would intuitively know not to get on that plane. And yet we don't have that kind, they don't teach that kind of common sense in business school. And, A, lot of people listening to this interview, they've got a really beautiful office. They're paying people way too much money. Their product isn't very profitable, but their business looks really successful. And the reason it looks successful is because venture capital, somebody else is paying for all that stuff.
1 (8m 46s):
Your customers are not. And if you just go back and say, look, we're gonna turn this thing thing into an incredibly efficient airplane. We're gonna lower our overhead ramp up our marketing engine, ramp up our sales engine, the cockpit is gonna reverse engineer a specific destination and we're gonna save up six to eight months of money in our bank account so that overhead is covered in case we need to circle the airport for a, you know, six months until we land. We won't crash and burn this thing. When I understood, and each of those of course has a Checklist, the leadership has a Checklist, the right engine marketing has a Checklist left engine sales has a Checklist. And that's what I've created this Checklist to make sure your airplane is built flight worthy.
0 (9m 26s):
Common sense is not common practice Fire Nation. Something key to think about as we continue talking through this conversation. This simple Checklist that you can use to grow your business. Now, some people don, they rave about mission statements. Some people hate mission statements. What do you think about creating a mission statements for your business?
1 (9m 48s):
I think most of them are ridiculous. They're worthless. They, here's what they, here's what they, they lack, they lack a statement and they lack a mission. You ever noticed that we will increase shareholder value with sustainable practices That lawyers wrote that blah, blah blah, that clearly lawyers wrote
0 (10m 7s):
That, blah, blah,
1 (10m 8s):
Blah. And you know, I was in a a a C-suite once with a group of executives and I, and I was talking about a formula that I'll share with your audience for a mission statement that is foolproof. It will impassion everybody working for you. But I, I said, you know, I said, you know, I I like this formula. He said, well, we, we spent 48 hours at a retreat. We, we sweat blood over our mission statement. In fact, it's painted on the wall outside of this conference room and it guides this whole company. So we don't need help on that, Dom, we've done that. And I turned to the CFO. Yeah. And I said, were you on that retreat? Were you on the 48 hour retreat? The CFO said, yes I was. I said, what's the mission statement? And he couldn't remember. Oh, come
0 (10m 49s):
On.
1 (10m 50s):
I said, how can you not remember? It's painted on the wall in blood outside of this room. It, you know, there most mission statements are not memorable. Lemme give you a formula for one. And we use it. It's We will accomplish X by X because of X. That's it. We will accomplish X by X because of X. So here's mine at business made simple. It's this, we will have 250,000 people in our online platform. 5,000 certified business coaches and 2,500 certified marketing guides by 2025. Because everybody deserves the help they need Growing a business. It's so specific and the reason it's so specific and the re is because everybody has to defend their job against our mission statement.
1 (11m 35s):
So if I go to our events coordinators say, tell me what you're working on, they would say, well, we're sending out these VIP packages to Instagram influencers because we want them to talk about it so that more than more people will join our platform and we'll get to that 250,000 number. In other words, anything that you're working on that does not benefit the mission of the organization, stop working on it, don't do it. And maybe we'll go back and change our mission statement, but don't do it. What that did, does is creates a very lean airplane so that there's not all this waste and overhead of people working on things they don't need to work on. The other thing is we put a timeline on it. We're gonna do all this before 2025 because we know in story structure, a deadline increases the urgency of the story.
1 (12m 19s):
So a mission has a deadline, we're gonna attack this country and take down the dictator by this time. So that's a mission. But if you just say, our mission is not to like such and such country because they're just not very democratic. Nobody knows what to do. That's not a mission. It has to be specific. And you say, well don, your mission statement's really boring. You know what? People remember it. They can recite it. They, they filter their job description through it. Everybody in my organization knows the three tactical priorities of this organization. You find me an organization or you walk in and say, What are the main three priorities of this entire organization. They'll say, well, excellence, safety, gimme a break.
1 (12m 60s):
Come on. If you, if you're not safe and don't do excellent work, get out. I I need to know what are you supposed to be working on? What's the goal? Right? A football team you go into, you go to an NFL football team and see what's the goal? Every one of 'em gonna say win the Super Bowl. It's exactly, it's not like play excellent football. It's not, it's not the goal. The goal is to win the football game. So I think corporations mission statements aren't very good. And, and the other thing is, you know, if you're a nonprofit, that mission statement attracts donors. It attracts resources 'cause it's a mission. You know, we will, my wife is chairman of the board for an anti-human trafficking organization. So we will free over 100,000 women caught up in sex trafficking by the end of the year.
1 (13m 43s):
And we will throw this many people in jail because no woman should be a slave to anybody else. You just go, where do I, can you get my checkbook honey? Get the checkbook. We're writing a check to this. But if we just say, look, we, you know, we believe that everybody deserves to be free and you know, it's just not specific enough for people to get their heads around
0 (14m 6s):
Mission statements, lack of mission, And A statement, Fire Nation, you know is true. It's across the board. Don't fall into that category. And if you think Don's even close to dropping Value Bombs, you get another another think coming. We're gonna be talking about step-by-step processes in creating profitable products When we get back from thanking our Sponsors,
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0 (17m 26s):
Don, we are back. And listen brother, I'm all about step-by-step processes. I'm all about profits. I've been publishing an income report for 91 months in a row, which by the way also publishes our NET profit percentage to our gross revenue. So I love that you know those numbers as well. What is the step by step process that we can use to create profitable products?
1 (17m 50s):
Well, even before we create a profitable product, I think you need to do a product inventory or a product audit. So this was really eyeopening in my company. We sat down, we listed all of our products that we sell and then we turned around, we listed them in order of profitability. So that was really eye-opening. 'cause some of the things that we were spending the most bandwidth on, the most energy on trying to grow were actually not very profitable. And what we came up with was, there's really six things that we need to focus on. And that is business made simple. My online platform, we need to focus on that and renewals 'cause it's an annual fee.
1 (18m 30s):
So to there then we certify coaches who go into companies all over the world and help them understand our processes. We need to focus on growing that program and their renewals. And then we have StoryBrand marketing guides and we need to focus on getting more guides and renewing those guides. So each one has a renewable fee associated with it annually. And what that did was it decreased. This is what's amazing. It decreased the amount of work we were doing as a team when we focused on three products with three sub products underneath those products. Six things is all we sell as an organization.
1 (19m 11s):
So we, we let go of all sorts of live casts that were one off that, you know, we'd make $800,000 on a live cast. We're not doing that anymore. 'cause we say no. The long term plan are these three things plus their renewals. And we, we believe that over time that's gonna pay massive dividends because we don't wanna be known for 23 or 25 things. We wanna be known for three things because it's easier to be known when you only are carrying three things with you than if you show people 25 things. So that's, that's the first part is just auditing your existing products and getting rid of dead weight. You want to throw baggage out the back door of that airplane. So it's lighter consumes less fuel.
1 (19m 52s):
The marketing doesn't have to work as hard. Or if marketing sales is working hard, the plane goes faster and farther because there's less weight. So that's the first thing. Then the second thing is As, you create new products. There are a couple questions to ask. How profitable is this for real? And there's all sorts of questions. Are we gonna have to hire staff? What's the research and development fee? What's the run up? Do we have, how much is this gonna cost us to create? All of those kinds of questions are the questions that you're asking. But here's one that very few people ask. Is this going to confuse our audience? You know, we're known for making this, if we add this, will people get confused about what problem we solve in the marketplace?
1 (20m 35s):
That's a question that very few people ask. And so, you know, you do it an audit on existing products. And then you also run any product idea through a filter before you create it. I've got a, there's a book I wrote called Business Made Simple and it's 60 daily videos and 60 daily entries. You almost read it like a devotional. And I spent an entire week just talking about the auditing process for new product creation, product
0 (21m 4s):
Audits, dump the dead weights. And then I also love how you talked about, hey, is adding this product gonna add confusion to our business? Or is it going to, you know, add to what we're creating right here? And frankly, I needed that book. I needed that knowledge a number of years ago when I launched an incredibly successful Journal called The Freedom Journal. And in 33 days it did $453,000 on a Kickstarter for a $39 Journal. Like it hit the spots. That's amazing. Yeah. Crushed it. But then brother, I, I made the mistake a year later to Launch another Journal and now what did I do? Like now people are like, well John, do I buy The, Freedom Journal or do I buy the Mastery Journal? Like, do they work, work together?
0 (21m 44s):
And then, and I was like, oh my God, people are actually asking me this question. But a lot of people are just not buying either 'cause nobody wants to think, they just want, oh, this is John's Journal, let's buy it, let's go, let's go home. But now there's like, what do I do? I'm confused. And then they don't do anything. They, they, they do, they take inaction. So it's all about like, what is that product ascension model? So like knowing that Don, and let's not go deep into this 'cause this isn't the point, but like, like what would be an example of something that, you know, you would create as a product and instead of creating something that would be confusing as a potential competitor and cannibalizing your own initial product would actually be a benefit and help that product.
1 (22m 21s):
We have a, an online platform called Business Made Simple. So we have a bunch of courses on negotiation, on management execution, on sales, on mission statement, guiding principle on marketing, on messaging, everything you need to know to grow a business. So my team and I know that when Covid hit, we did a Donald Miller teaches writing livestream. Yeah, we made about eight, $800,000 off that. We come back this year and we're going, you know, we're coming up on March last year, we got an extra $800,000 when we did that livestream. Do we wanna do it again? But you know what John, it's not one of our three tactical priorities. Our three tactical priorities are online membership to our platform coaching and marketing guides.
1 (23m 1s):
Those are the three things we sell. So what we did was we said, you know what, we're gonna give up the 800 grand, but we're gonna do the Donald. Miller teaches writing, but so we don't confuse people about what we do. We're actually gonna do it for free if you are a member of the platform. Ooh. So we're we turned it to sell membership to one of our tactical priorities as a bonus. Now that's gonna cost us probably, my guess is about $250,000 we're gonna lose. But, but just hear me out, it is worth it to not confuse the audience about what we want them to do because in the long run, 10 years from now, we want a million people in that platform.
1 (23m 43s):
And if I keep going, well, you know, I want a million people on my platform, but I wanna run over here and get and get 50 grand here and I wanna go over here and get 75 grand. You are never gonna get to a million people in your platform. It's a long form play. So those are the, the the sort of decisions that we're always making. You know, we're always asking, we're checking it against our mission. It does Donald Miller teaches writing. Does that help the online platform? It doesn't. Well, how can we make it help the online platform? You know what, make it an exclusive for people who are in the online platform. It's free for them. And that's how we justify that. And those are the, that's how we make those decisions. So
0 (24m 17s):
Be willing Fire Nation to take the path of delayed gratification, which is a lot easier to do when you're clear about the actual path you're on. Now Don, you're a busy guy. I'm a busy guy. I want to get to talking about your book Marketing Made Simple in a second here. So let's move kind of quickly through this last point I want you to talk about. 'cause I think this is really important to kind of bring a lot of what we've talked about home, which is cashflow because that's the lifeline for most businesses. So share with my audience Fire Nation, how we can actually manage our cashflow to set up our businesses for profitable and sustainable growth.
1 (24m 56s):
Okay, so go grab a, a piece of paper, pause the podcast, grab a pen, get a whiteboard, whatever you gotta do. But here's how I managed cashflow and I managed it from a a quarter million a year to 16 And A half million a year. And I'll, I'll use this same system all the way to a hundred million. It, it's basically five checking accounts. The first account is your operating expense account. We're all familiar with that one. All the money for the company goes into that account. All the money for the company goes out of that account. All your bills, everything. Then there's two more accounts that sit next to your checking account. Imagine them like beakers in a science lab. Your operating expense account is there.
1 (25m 36s):
Then you've got an account that's called taxes. Mm. And you've got, you've got an account that's called Profit. Now in Puerto Rico, your account with taxes has a lot less money in it. But I'm in Nashville.
0 (25m 45s):
Yeah, I was just gonna say, how, how does this work? What's the tax, what's this word? Taxes you say?
1 (25m 50s):
Well, for those of us who live stateside, what you wanna do is you wanna leave enough money in your operating expense account to cover your biggest bills and then some. So payroll's gonna happen every two weeks. For me, that's between 120 And A hundred $50,000 depending on when commissions get paid. So I've gotta leave about $200,000 in my operating expense account. But let's say I go online, I check my account and I've got $300,000 in the account. Well, what I do is I take 50 and I put it into taxes and I take 50 and I put it into profit. Now quarterly, the taxes is gonna get mostly emptied, although 50% is way over what I pay.
1 (26m 30s):
So I always have more money in my tax account that is also profit, but I don't deal with that till the end of the year. And then in my profit account, I want six, five to six months worth of overhead in that account at all times. For me, that's about 2.5 to $2.7 million that is sitting in a profit account. And the reason it's sitting there and not in some better investment, although I'm about to take half of it and put it into a better investment 'cause I don't need that much liquid is because you never know when you're gonna need it. You never know when there's gonna be a global pandemic. And, and also John, just ease of mind and peaceful.
1 (27m 11s):
Yeah. Night's sleep is worth a lot. Yeah. I've got, you know, when, when Covid hit my company, we, we were 80% dependent on people getting on an airplane, flying to Nashville and sitting in a workshop. I was pacing the floor. Mm. But one of the reasons I felt okay is because I had months of overhead before I had to lay anybody off. We ended up with, with that peace of mind and that, that that nest egg, we re-engineered the company and we met more to a live stream model. We saw about a 20% increase in revenue and about a 30% increase in profit. But I think if I, if I wouldn't have had that money in that account, I might have panicked. Okay, so now you've got, now you've got three accounts.
1 (27m 53s):
There's operating expense, tax, and profit. Now once profit hits 2.5 million or whatever you need for six months worth of overhead, you have another spillover account. And that is called investment holding. And all the investment holding is, is the extra profit. Now all that profit belongs to you as the owner of the company, but I say leave it in there 'cause that's your gas tank for your airplane and you wanna be able to fly and circle the airport for a long time in case you're missing some landing gear and you gotta figure out what to do. But then you have your investment holding account and the spillover from your profit goes into investment holding. And that's where you look for other assets that you can buy that create money apart from your company.
1 (28m 35s):
So you're talking about a stock portfolio, although, although it is what, March of 2021, I do not recommend buying stocks right now. I think the market is overpriced. You could buy CDs. I don't recommend buying those right now. You could buy property perhaps and so forth, but that's a way of diversifying your revenue. If you wanna do that, then you've got one more account, it's the fifth account. And that is your personal checking account. And I believe and have lived like this for a very long time, that my operating expense account pays a salary into my personal checking account. And that's what I live off of. So I live off my personal checking account and then I don't get any more money outta the company until it spills over into investment holding.
1 (29m 22s):
And even then, I don't want that money. I wanna buy something that makes me more money. That's how really Wealthy people think their company exists to make money so that they can go buy something that makes them money without working. And then pretty soon you don't have to work. And so that, that's, those are the five checking accounts. That's how I run the other, the other thing those five checking accounts do is, you know, I've got my dashboard with all my metrics, my leads, my emails that come in, my sales yesterday, sales today, sales this week, you know, all all that stuff. It's a great dashboard. But when I log on to First Horizon Bank, which is my bank, I look at the numbers in those five checking accounts, I can immediately tell you how healthy my company is.
1 (30m 2s):
Ooh, immediately it's, it's a real time. These are the actual dollar numbers and it's it, to me it's more powerful than a profit and loss statement. Those five checking accounts,
0 (30m 14s):
Fire Nation. You can see why I love the step by step process and the method of how Don's brain works, which leads us to Marketing Made Simple.
Marketing Made Simple (30m 25s):
So Don, as we close down here, give us some details about why you wrote this book. Who's it for and where Fire Nation can pick it up. Well, If you know, if you asked how I went from a quarter million to 16 And A half million in about five years, again with the 60 plus percent profit margin, it's the answer is the book Marketing Made Simple. I just created sales funnels. Now we all know about sales funnels, ClickFunnels, this is the down and dirty easiest sales funnel to create. If you have a pet store, if you own a restaurant, if you have a grocery store, if you're a financial advisor, if you're a real estate agent, it doesn't matter. The the five marketing tools, pieces of marketing collateral that I describe in that book, which are a one-liner, a lead generator, a well wired website that actually gets results. An email list, And A closing sales letter. Those are the basic five things that any small business needs to create. And I go through step by step how to create them in the book, Marketing Made Simple, it's gonna take you a couple months, but really what you're building, if you build it right is an ATM machine that spits out money. And so I think that's worth a couple months work and it's a literally A step by step instruction book in Marketing Made Simple, I just raised my hand. Fire Nation, I want an ATM machine that just makes money. So if you want to join me on that Marketing Made Simple, get the book invest. And I'm not saying in, you know, the 20 bucks the book costs. I'm saying invest the time, the energy, the bandwidth to follow the steps of people like Don’s success. These clues follow these clues.
0 (32m 6s):
So Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And hello, you've been hanging out with DM and JLD today, so you better keep up that heat. Head over to EOFire.com type don in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up with everything that we talked about today. Best show notes in the biz Don. Thank you brother for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation, today's value bomb content was brought to you by Don and Fire Nation. I have created a treasure trove of free courses for you. I teach you how to podcast, run mastermind, create funnels that actually convert and so much more.
0 (32m 47s):
All you need to do is visit EOFire.com/resources to start learning today. And I'll catch you there or, or I'll catch you on the flip side.
Marketing Made Simple hosted by Dr. JJ Peterson (32m 58s):
Mark Made Simple hosted by my friend Dr. JJ Peterson is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly make it work. A recent episode on whether vulnerability is a superpower in business is a must. Listen. Listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts.
Thought-Leader by Taylor Conroy (33m 20s):
Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world in four time TEDx. Speaker Taylor Conroy from Thought-Leader can help you get there. Visit Thought-Leader.com/fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions.
Killer Resources!
1) The Common Path to Uncommon Success: JLD’s 1st traditionally published book! Over 3000 interviews with the world’s most successful Entrepreneurs compiled into a 17-step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment!
2) Free Podcast Course: Learn from JLD how to create and launch your podcast!
3) Podcasters’ Paradise: The #1 podcasting community in the world!