Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Excuses. Here I am. So, hi guys, and welcome to step one on the Profit first program. This is a nine step journey, a nine step program.
[00:00:14] And the first topic is all about your mindset around profit first.
[00:00:21] So you might be tempted to skip. You might be thinking, actually, I just want to dive in, give me the numbers, give me the templates, let me do the allocations, let me create the bank accounts, let me do all that stuff. But the question I ask you, as you can see on this screen, is are you ready for profit first? Are you really ready for profit first? And what does that mean? Why am I asking that question? So that's what I'm going to talk about today. Because we've worked with dozens and dozens of business owners and there's a, there's a trend, there's hints, there's clues to success for the people that make it work. And also there's a trend for people that don't make it work. And a lot of it starts with your mindset.
[00:01:03] So I really want to ask you, are you really ready for profit first? So let's dive in, guys.
[00:01:10] Okay, so one of the things that I've realized and in my own life, and I'm actually working on a book for this topic is I believe that there's four Ds to success. We can find different words for it, but it's easy to remember four Ds and I'm going to walk you through those four Ds to success.
[00:01:28] And I'm going to specifically apply it to profit first.
[00:01:32] However, I promise you, you can do this for anything in your life. And one of the examples I love to give, just to really hammer it home, the four Ds is someone who wants to change their body, get in shape at the gym, know, really get healthy and make that difference. And often it, you know, people decide to do this when it's New Year's Day and it's a New Year's resolution. And I, I'll use that as an example, but I want you to apply it to profit first. And the reason why this is so powerful is it will give you a lens to ask better questions. Do I want to want this or do I really actually want it? And we're, we're diving into those, those areas.
[00:02:13] Okay? So the first D for success is the desire. So all of you watching this, you will have the desire to make more profit in your business because you wouldn't be interested in profit first if it wasn't for the fact that you want to make more profit but when we actually get a little bit deeper, is it more profit you really desire, or is it the things that more profit allows you to do in your life?
[00:02:40] So, you know, I'm going to give you some exercises and a way of thinking about this at the end, but when we're talking about desire, I want you to think about the why. Why do you want more profit? What are you looking to do with that extra profit? Are you looking to hire better team members and work with amazing people? Are you looking to create more freedom and space in your own life? Are you looking to help family members? Are you looking to move into a bigger house? Are you looking to have more holidays?
[00:03:08] None of this is selfish in any way whatsoever. It has to be personal to you. So we're talking about the desire to want to make more profit, and profit first is the vehicle to do that. And again, let's keep this thread going. If I talk about going to the gym, so it's in, it's December. My new, you know, New Year's Eve is about to come up. Let's say I want. I'm. I'm five stone overweight. I'm just making up this scenario, and I desire to lose that weight. I want to lose that five stone. And, and I've already kind of thinking about New Year's Day. I'm thinking about 2026, because I'm recording this in 2025. I'm thinking that this could be the year I'm going to lose that weight. So I desire it. Okay? So that's the first step. However, it's not enough on its own. Lots of people desire to win the lottery. Lots of people desire to be whatever they want to be. You know, we, we're not probably short of desire, is the truth.
[00:04:09] Although they're, you know, they're certainly different levels to desire. Most people don't struggle to some extent on step one, okay? They've got the desire to lose the weight, they've got the desire to grow a business, to start a business, or whatever it is. But in this case, profit first, you've got the desire to make more profit and to go and follow through profit first. And. And that's the vehicle to help you do that. But the decision you need to. Is different, is different to desire. So essentially, it's like the switch being flipped from on from off to on, and you've decided it's a must.
[00:04:47] So it's no longer a should, it's now a must. If we go back to the gym and we think about People at New Year's looking to get into the gym, the desire to get fit and healthy might be there.
[00:05:00] The decision might be, you've joined the gym, you've actually joined the gym, you've paid for the year. Even better, you've paid for the year. And sometimes I call this a determination. You're determined, but it becomes a must. I am going to do this. It's not a nice to have, it's now a must. So with profit first, are you all in? That's what I'm asking you. Are you like, right, this needs to happen. I am fed up with my.
[00:05:28] Let me just elaborate on that a little bit. You don't need to be fed up with your business because you could already be, you know, doing really well, but you want to take it to a level up, or you could be fed up with your business and you finally want to pay yourself what you deserve. So either way, you need to make the decision, you need to take that step up. So it becomes a must instead of a should.
[00:05:51] And the best way of thinking about that with the gym is someone actually joins the gym foreign.
[00:05:59] So when we're making that decision, what are we actually committing to? You know, I've. I've started talking about this at the beginning. We're talking about your life.
[00:06:08] The. The extra profit is not just to sit in your bank account. It's for your life, it's for you and your family, it's for your dreams.
[00:06:16] So if you've got this extra profit, you can design a life for yourself. You're not just reacting to life. You can actually design and become the architect of your life. And some things just to think of when you're making this decision is you probably will make mistakes. If you think of going down the gym, you're going to join the gym, you might not know what you're doing at the beginning. There might be some mistakes, your form might not be very good, you might have bad days.
[00:06:43] However, you have made that decision to make it a must and not a should. But what I will tell you from experience, people that go on this journey, the people that do have challenges in their business, or they make mistakes, or there's some kind of obstacle in the way they learn more about their business than they've ever learned in their life. I promise you, it will put a magnifying glass, it will be like the best diagnostic tool that's plugged into a business you've ever seen. It will highlight issues in your business when you're going through that journey. If There are any issues, big or small, and you've probably all heard the story of Thomas Edison, and he was asked, when, you know, creating the light bulb, how does it feel to have failed 10,000 times or a thousand times? You know, people debate how many times it actually was. He said, I didn't fail. I found 10,000 ways that didn't work.
[00:07:42] So, you know, even if you've got a slight skeptical mindset, because at the beginning, and I actually skipped this, there's a picture. It's meant to be a magic wand. I wanted to say to you that profit first is not a magic wand.
[00:07:56] It's an amazing system. It works. It's proven there's hundreds of thousands of business owners that have transformed their business and their lives, and it's made a huge difference to our business.
[00:08:09] However, it doesn't mean it's going to be plain sailing. If you've been in business for a few years, you know, business is not this linear, nice, you know, sort of curve going up. It's going to be bumpy. So I just want you to get your mindset right, but I want you to make the decision. This is going to happen for your business. Okay, so what's the third D? It's a design, it's a blueprint, it's a road map. Let's go back to the gym again. So you desire to get fit and lose weight, but you actually take a step up and make the decision.
[00:08:40] You're determined because you join the gym. Ideally, you probably even pay them a year in advance. You can't quit, actually.
[00:08:47] However, where could it go wrong? If you think of someone going to the gym, where could it go wrong?
[00:08:52] It could go wrong because they don't know what they're doing.
[00:08:57] They. Yes, they might get there eventually, but it might take a long time. That I said it's fine to make mistakes, but what if you keep on making the same mistakes again and again?
[00:09:06] And this is what happens to a lot of business owners, actually.
[00:09:10] So you, some of you might have heard this expression before if there could be people watching this who've been in business for 10 years, 20 years, but, however, you've actually only been in business for one year, 20 times. So the, the thing is, are you learning from these mistakes? Are you progressing? And where the design comes in, it's a proven blueprint, It's a roadmap. It works. If we compare it to the gym that's getting a personal trainer, but that's following a program.
[00:09:43] And, and actually the program, the personal trainer might not be perfect, but your chances of success go through the roof. And thankfully, when it comes to profit first, we are your blueprint, we are your design.
[00:09:55] So that's why you, by, you've made an intelligent and wise decision to be signing up and watching this program and hopefully putting in the work behind the scenes as well.
[00:10:06] Because we're giving you the design, we're giving you the blueprint, and it works. And that's the beauty with something like Profit first is you don't need to guess, you don't need to reinvent the wheel.
[00:10:20] Okay, so where can it fail? You know, Spoiler alert. Alert. Discipline. You could. You can see there. So I'm putting on their running shoes. You've got to put the hard work in. You've got to be disciplined. So you, if we go back to the gym, person, they, they desire to lose weight, get fit, they make the decision to join the gym, they get a design, they get a personal trainer, or they get a, A blueprint, a roadmap, a workout plan, whatever it is, however, where can it fail?
[00:10:50] Because they don't follow through, they don't get out of bed early enough, they don't show up, they lose confidence, they lose momentum, they fall off the bandwagon. So we're talking about discipline. And one of the, One of the biggest things that we do with people is actually step three and step four, when we work one to one with our clients with Profit first is we've got the design. So we know the design inside out. But we make sure you're disciplined. We make sure, you know, we've. I've done a newsletter and a podcast a couple months ago talking about falling off the bandwagon of profit First. We've had some very successful business owners take six to nine months and, and they're struggling a little bit with profit first. But the truth is, if they didn't have us, they might give up.
[00:11:39] Because they didn't. They weren't confident in the design.
[00:11:43] If they didn't have us, am I doing the right thing? And, and all, you know, all the doubt creeps in. However, we hold them accountable. We got them back on the bandwagon. They showed up at the gym, they. They started putting the work in, and it's all about small progress, constant small progress. Is, is the, is the game really? So, yeah, it's all about discipline. So just. This is where the magic wand reference comes in. It's an amazing system. You know, it can feel a little bit like magic because we're talking about human behavior. With Profit first, however, you need to put the discipline in and, and, and you know, you're less likely to be working this one one to one if you've, if you're part of the, one of our Profit first packages, you are welcome to join the live Profit first workshops. Drop in sessions that we're starting to run every two weeks. Reach out if you want to learn more about that. Obviously, if you're working one to one with us, you're all good anyway. But if you've got no one, if it's just you, put something in your diary to keep you accountable, tell your wife, is there someone you can use to keep you accountable to make sure you, you follow through.
[00:12:54] So there it is, guys. There's the four Ds of success. And, and actually I've been talking about the gym. I've been talking about profit First. You can do this with anything. If you're like me and you're a business owner, you've probably had other business ideas as well. Oh yeah. Because I, I, in my mind I created Groupon before Groupon existed, long story, many years ago.
[00:13:14] But actually, and, and it's not a claim, generally had the idea before it existed. This is about 14 years ago, but when I put the lens of the 4DS on my idea, I'm like, yes, I had the idea, but there's no way I was going to do those 4Ds. I had the desire. The desire. I didn't make the decision, I didn't have a design and I was, I didn't have the discipline. So you can apply this to so many things in your life. So it's actually an opportunity filter as well. So if you've got lots of things going on in your Life, use the 4Ds. Am I really committed to make this a success? And I'm sure you'll find it useful as well.
[00:13:51] Finally we started on this and I want to finish on this. Why does all of this matter?
[00:13:57] Tap into the desire even stronger. The four Ds you need to keep on going back to them. Sometimes one might get weaker. Make sure you tap in the desire. You need to stoke the fire of your desire constantly. You need as many wise as you can get.
[00:14:10] You know, family, freedom, the ability to choose what you do with your time. We're talking about profits. I said at the beginning to give you the life you want. And one of the things you can do is you can.
[00:14:25] Sorry, I'm just skipping ahead. One of the things you can do is Design your ideal life and we'll share a tool with you. If you're watching this online in our platform, the Grow Academy, you will have a template, a spreadsheet template where you can map out, you can list on a spreadsheet. What is your life going to cost you? For some of you that have been part of Entrepreneur circle and part of some of their programs, you might have come across this way of thinking before. For others out there, it might seem a bit weird. But I promise you, when people talk about numbers, their ideal life, they don't make it real enough. They don't make it specific enough.
[00:15:04] By listing out your ideal life, how much is it going to cost me for my mortgage or my rent? How much is it going to cost me for my bills? How much is going to cost me for my car? How much do I need to set aside for my pension? How much is it going to cost me for weekends away, holidays, you know, helping out my children, Whatever is important to you. Donation, gifts to charity, whatever's important to you. So when you actually cost it out, you know what number you're working towards and you know why Profit first is important to you because it's not just a means to an end, it's all about your life. You know, your business at the end of the day is just a vehicle to give you the life you want. And again, you've probably heard this elsewhere, but I, at the end of the day, this is true.
[00:15:49] We've. And it's not morbid thinking. Life is short.
[00:15:54] Don't, don't waste it. Profit first is going to allow you to get more out of your life because it's really life first.
[00:16:02] You know, it's called profit first, but it's really life first because it's what we do with the money that counts. How many weeks have we got left in our life? If we take 80 years old as the, you know, like a benchmark of how long you're going to live, figure out how many weeks you've actually got left. If you've never done that before, that might be scary. Every single week is precious. Don't waste it. And the last thing you want to be doing is spinning your wheels in, in a business just trying to pay the bills, just trying to survive. And that's why we're so passionate about profit first. As I said, we can design your ideal life. We're going to share the templates with you. And when you design your ideal life, you need to think longer term as well as short term. But don't worry about being perfect you just need to think about it most people have never thought about this and as I said it's life first it's all about you guys you and your family step one is you know it is it is the decide the desire you're already here because you've got the desire but the next step is I want you to make that decision which was step two in my 4DS I want you to make that decision that it's a must you know you're not here really wishy washy hoping something's going to happen you are all in because you want to make it a success and you're expecting roadmaps in the road and you've got to put the hard work in got to put the discipline in but that's why we're here that's why you've got access to us and that's what this program is all about and that's me done guys and I'll see you in the next step thanks everyone excuses here I am sorry.
