How to Have Your Business Run Without You with Mike Michalowicz, Author Fix This Next

Mike Michalowicz is the author of Fix This Next, Profit First, Clockwork, The Pumpkin Plan, The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, and more. By his 35th birthday, Mike had founded and sold two companies, one to private equity and another to a Fortune 500 company. Today he’s running his third multi-million dollar venture, Profit First Professionals.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• Mike Michalowicz talks about The Pumpkin Plan methodology
• Mike shares how he got the idea for his book, Fix This Next
• How to determine the biggest challenge of your business
• Why Mike decided to become an author about entrepreneurship
• Mike shares the story of Savannah Bananas and a lesson he learned from funeral directors
• Mike discusses how entrepreneurs can manage four weeks off without checking in on their business
• What Mike learned from Burt Shavitz, Founder of Burt’s Bees

In this episode…

The most significant challenges entrepreneurs face are not knowing their biggest challenge and not having the time to figure it out. This is why many entrepreneurs end up devoting their lives to serving their business instead of the other way around. And according to Mike Michalowicz, there is a way for entrepreneurs to be able to make their businesses run like clockwork, giving them more time and bandwidth to do other things.

Tune in to this episode of Inspired Insider as Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Mike Michalowicz, renowned author of the book Fix This Next, about his insights on how to have your business run seamlessly without you. They’ll be discussing tips on how to determine the biggest challenge in your business, what you need to put in place in order to be able to take four weeks off, and the valuable lessons Mike learned in the course of his entrepreneurial journey.

Resources Mentioned on this episode

• Profit First Professionals
• Fix This Next 
• Mike Michalowicz on LinkedIn 
• Mike Agugliaro on LinkedIn 
• Fix this Next: Make the Vital Change That will Level Up Your Business by Mike Michalowicz
• Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by Mike Michalowicz
• Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself by Mike Michalowicz
• The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow a Remarkable Business in Any Field by Mike Michalowicz
• The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur: The tell-it-like-it-is guide to cleaning up in business, even if you are at the end of your roll by Mike Michalowicz

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Episode Transcript

Jeremy Weisz
Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs leaders authors, the founders some you’ve heard of something you’ve never heard of in you know I have today Mike Michalowicz.

I’m gonna introduce in a second but um, if you have not checked out any of his work his books you need to I mean absolutely need to if you’ve heard titles like Profit First, Pumpkin Plan all of those you can see them behind them by the way if you’re watching the video basically work that is perfect. You need to check it out. Um I’ve listened to every single one of them on Audible, some of them more than once. But the if you check out inspiredinsider.com. I love hearing the challenge stories and Mike gives the real deal in the trenches. He doesn’t hold back on some of the big challenges and mistakes and with this journey that’s what happens. And so you can listen to the Pipedrive co-founder Urmas Purde as he talks about brain surgery getting married moving to from Estonia to the us all in one year. It was a tough year for him. And they had at the time, Mike 10,000 customers, and I was looking it up the other day. Now they over have over 100,000 customers. Oh, and so they’ve been growing and doing amazing, but it’s not without its big challenges. So check out that many more on inspiredinsider.com This episode is brought to you by Rise25 which I co founded with my business partner, John Corcoran, you know, we help businesses connect to their best relationships or dream 100 through running their podcast. I’ve seen no better way and giving mic to people, giving me my relationships and putting on my platform and whatever they’re working on through the podcast and it’s not just about business it’s about leaving a legacy and and Mike does talk about in his book Fix This Next about legacy and I consider Mike when I have you on having you leave a legacy more than what you’re doing and me legacy more of what we’re doing too. So, if you have questions about podcasts, we’ve been doing it for over 10 years, you can believe it to rise25.com. Today’s guests like I said, it’s Mike Michalowicz he’s the author of Profit First, Clockwork, The Pumpkin Plan, my favorite title, The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. And if you listen to any of his audios I consider don’t read them listen to him because Mike has a sense of humor. And he adds in some ad libs and you just get that sense of humor when you listen to him read the books, rather than I mean, you could read it but I love the audible part. And of course Fix This Next make the vital change that will level up your business. And by his 35th birthday, Mike had founded and sold two companies one to private equity another to fortune five Hundred. Today he’s running his third you know, big venture which is profit first professionals. Mike, thanks for joining me.

Mike Michalowicz
Jeremy thanks or should I say Dr. J? That’s actually better. Dr. g. I’ll take Dr. J. You can call me JT. Oh, thanks. Thanks for having me. Yeah,

Jeremy Weisz
totally. And I mean that you know, I think about your book on a weekly based your books on a weekly basis, I was, you know, planting tomatoes with the family and what makes me think a pumpkin plan and I ripped off some of those stems on my tomato plant. Not just in business, but you know, so I want to talk about how the Fix This Next came about but just talk I always think about that Pumpkin Plan methodology just talk for a second about that because I think that’s really core to a busy night. I know in the beginning of this book, you’re like, we’re like what book do I start with? And I my opinion is actually the Pumpkin Plan because of that methodology. So Tara I mean, my opinion may be different from yours which you get priority because your books but

Mike Michalowicz
wow. I don’t know if that’s true. I, I think I think ultimately we have to know what our biggest challenges and address I with the pumpkin plan it’s based upon biomimicry, something I’m just fascinated by it’s basically if we have a problem, instead of trying to just find solution, why don’t we find the answers already exists and nature. You know, Mama nature has spent a lot of time kind of resolving some issues, so maybe she knows something. And in the case of the pumpkin plan, I discovered how pumpkin farmers were using the growing process that nature’s developed to pumpkins, but to extraordinary size, healthily, organically, rapidly. And one of the elements you’re doing your tomato plants is remove the, the the growth of the stunted tomatoes or pumpkins, remove the dying vines. Don’t try to grow as much as possible, try to grow the select few It’s interesting in in pumpkin farming, tomato farming, all kinds of farming, most of those people are in the quantity game. So any growth is good growth, but a select few go after this colossal growth and they do it by selectivity. That’s what I found happens is entrepreneurship most entrepreneurs are in the quantity game I need more customers and they don’t grow. the select few are saying I need the right customers and I need to clone them. So that’s what the pumpkin plans about how to pick them, how to protect them, and how to how to actually remove the distractions.

Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, and you’re right it depends where people are at and maybe I just need to hear the message over and over because I’m more add than most of don’t go after the shiny object and focus in on what is really driving the business. So maybe that’s the message I need to hear Mike so not for everyone but I’m Fix This Next. Okay. I always wondered, and I you know, how do you come up with the next book when when is it right to do the next book and you said this was interesting how this one came about

Mike Michalowicz
is what was unexpected Dr. J, hey, um, so I sent out an email. It takes me about five years to write a book. And I do write a book, or produce a book every year. So people like how can it take five years and turn out a book every year to? Well, I write three or four simultaneously. So there’s a research phase, there’s testing. So I’m writing three books right now. There’s one slated for 2021. And so I emailed my my readership five years ago and said, What is the biggest challenge you’re facing this year? Because there’s a lot of clarity in those surveys, you get 1000 or 2000 responses and you see a consistency. That’s probably something I should pursue. Well, I’m not the most technically savvy guy. I don’t know. Why did I click the same button multiple times to send it I guess, because the same email went out three times that day. But what was fascinating is in certain cases, the same person answered the same question for their biggest challenge of the year, multiple times that day with different answers. Well, so this one guy’s like,

Jeremy Weisz
sales. Do you think Like joking with you at that time, you’re like, yeah, they’re just playing.

Mike Michalowicz
Maybe but it happened with enough desiccated joke. But But I think not because they answered it enough times with enough specificity hmm clearly there was thought about it in the moment. So the morning guys like the biggest challenges here we have sales in the afternoons like we’ve hiring issues, actually our goal for this year’s hiring, and you’ve just seen this person iterating through not knowing where their challenges, and that’s when it became clear the thesis of Fix This Next was this, the biggest challenge business owners face is knowing what their biggest challenge is. That’s the biggest challenge we have. And without that clarity, we get stuck in this kind of we’re mired in this, this circle of just doing the same thing over and over putting out fires after fires. And, you know, we come in with a vision for the day, a plan for the year. And it’s it’s more dictated by our email and the questions lined up outside the door, then is by our vision. So how do we know what the biggest challenge of the businesses that’s became the The book find it and resolve it.

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