#88 – Managing Your Web Design Business Finances with Rocky Lalvani

Shannon Mattern (00:02.274)

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Profitable Web Designer podcast. And I'm so excited to introduce you to today's guest, Rocky Lalvani. He is the profit answer man and he teaches entrepreneurs how to get, ensure that they get paid and make profit a priority. I'm so excited to have you here to talk about one of my favorite topics, which is money, profit, and getting paid. Welcome to the show, Rocky.

Rocky (00:28.065)

Thank you so much for having me, excited to be here with you as well.

Shannon Mattern (00:31.634)

Yeah, so can you just tell me a little bit like more about you and how you became the Profit Answer Man?

Rocky (00:40.225)

So actually, I was shocked to learn that business owners didn't understand the business of business. I just assumed if you went into business, you understood how to do business. And what I came to learn was people went into business to do what they loved, and accounting was usually way down on the list. But at the end of the day, if you don't understand your numbers and you don't know how to read your financials,

How are you going to effectively run your business, make a profit, and take home the money that you want to take home to enjoy the life that you want to enjoy? Because of that, I think there's a whole lot of problems that creep into businesses, and we'll talk about many of them. It starts with just the appropriate pricing, because if you don't appropriately price your

you're never gonna be profitable, right? So it's understanding that. And then it's understanding where is your money going? Because for most businesses, everyone keeps reinvesting their money for growth, and they go, oh, I'll be profitable when, and I'll pay myself, then instead of saying, look, I run a business, I'm profitable day one, I pay myself, I'm worthy of it.

I'm going to make sure I charge the appropriate pricing to be able to deliver that. Also just understanding, hey, in order for me to meet my financial needs at home, this is what I need to do. Now we have targets, and then we can hit those targets.

Shannon Mattern (02:27.498)

I am so excited to dig in and talk about all of these concepts with you. But I want to know a little bit about you and your background. So what made you want to spread this message? Like what's your background?

Rocky (02:46.433)

So I've always been a personal finance junkie. And so I spent all my time on the personal finance side trying to teach people how to build wealth. And I came to learn something, which was when it comes to wealth building, everybody wants to get rich this weekend. And so if you can show them how to get rich this weekend, they'll give you all their money. But if you want to show them how to get rich over time, how to build wealth slowly, nobody wants to talk to you.

So I had this market mismatch. On top of that, I'm a spreadsheet geek. I've been playing with spreadsheets for over 40 years now. And in my life, everything's done on a spreadsheet and it's the way you can analyze, plan and do data. So when I look at numbers, like they tell me stories, I see things, I didn't realize that wasn't normal.

and that everyone couldn't do that, and that was a special gift. And then, like I said, I learned that business owners didn't understand their financials, and I'm like, hey, now we've got product-market fit where the skills I have can bring tremendous value, which allows me to do what I love, have fun, and earn enough money to support my lifestyle.

Shannon Mattern (04:10.618)

I love that. And I love when you were saying that everybody wants you to tell them how to get rich this weekend. I hear the same thing from new web designers where they're like, oh, I just want to tomorrow book my dream clients, make all the money in one fell swoop and never have any challenges or problems along the way. Can you show me how to do that? I'm like,

No, I can't. I'm here for you. I can show you how to get a client, but you know, you're never going to avoid the challenges that come with other humans being involved. Yeah, I love that. So I see that you have the book of profit first, behind you on the shelf there. I know podcast listeners, you can't see that. I

I read that book very early on in my journey and it was just, I run my business that way and now can you tell our readers, or our listeners, more about how you came across that method and why it intrigues you so much?

Rocky (05:26.933)

So like I said, I was in the personal finance space, understanding personal finance, and just trying to figure out how do I create that right market fit. And somebody introduced me to the book, Profit First. And I started to read it and I'm like, oh, this is personal finance for business owners. Okay, it's pretty basic. It's the way we do things. And then in the book, you start to realize, wait a minute.

Is he talking about real people? Is that the way business owners think? They don't look at the numbers, they look at their bank balance and that's how they make decisions? And I was like, interesting. So I kind of literally went on a two-year journey to test this out, to talk to people, to say, is this real? And do I have the skill set to be able to help these people? And

I was told it was real. I'm pretty sure I had the skill set. I have an MBA. I'm an EA, so I know taxes. I know all the numbers. And then it came down to the question, do I want to build my own system, or would I rather just partner with somebody who's done all the work and use their system? Here's the thing. Building that was not like something I would do.

wake up every morning thrilled to do, helping clients make more money, that lights me up. So I'm like, all right, I'll get certified from Profit first and I'll join their system. And we'll use that to roll it out too, to help clients get what they really, really want. So that's how I kind of partnered with them and came to be. Now, the book is by Mike McCallewitz, serial entrepreneur. He had a...

a large exit from a couple of companies. And he walked away with a lot of money, thought he was a smart business owner. He was lucky, not smart, didn't realize that. And within a couple of years, he lost all his money. They were coming for the keys to the house and car. So it's that rollercoaster journey of entrepreneurship. And he said, how did I get this so wrong?

Rocky (07:52.761)

And as he was thinking through this, he realized, wait a minute, my accountant gave me the wrong equation for profit. We're told sales minus expenses equals profit, which means profits are leftover. It's an afterthought, right? It's not the variable you control really. And Mike goes, no, if we're supposed to be profitable, why isn't it sales minus profit equals expenses?

And now if you take your profit first, you control your expenses, and you're more or less guaranteed to be successful. And so that's the premise of the book. And then the book goes in to show you how to actually implement it.

Shannon Mattern (08:38.386)

So you said something earlier about, you know, the difference between someone looking at their bank account to make business decisions and looking at, you know, different metrics to make business decisions. Can you expand upon that a little bit?

Rocky (08:54.453)

Well, sure. I mean, you're, you're all in the website business, right? Um.

It's almost in the sense that when you look at a website, you're looking at, hey, how many people show up? How long do they stay? Do they click a button that drives an action that then is what the desired outcome is? So those are the kind of metrics that you all understand and they make a lot of sense.

It's the same thing in business. Are you actually looking at those metrics in your business that are driving sales? And then are you looking at the metrics that are sucking all the money out of your company? And where is that money going? And is it appropriate? Too often business owners throw money at every problem because it's the easiest way to fix it. And then pretty soon, the fact that you threw all that money at the problems is the problem.

And then you have to fix that. But the reality is, I think a lot of business owners don't have good bookkeeping software. They don't have a bookkeeper. So they don't really know what's coming and going. They have no clear idea of it. Sure, I know what my revenue was, because I see what the deposits are. But I'm not sure what's going on going out. And I'm not sure where it's going. And if I don't know where it's going,

I don't even know what to do about it, right? I can't fix that problem. The reality is most business owners kind of go on that, hey, there's money, I'm going to spend it. Oh, there's no money, I better go collector sale, you know, do some more business. And it works to a certain extent, but it's quite stressful.

Shannon Mattern (10:45.566)

I know just hearing you describe it gives me anxiety. Too much of a control freak to operate that way.

Rocky (10:48.065)

Hehehehe

Rocky (10:56.961)

Well, so how has Profit First helped you?

Shannon Mattern (11:01.282)

Gosh, yeah. So when I read the book, I know he recommends setting up the different accounts. And one of the concepts we teach here, and this is kind of how I operationalize it in my business, we teach minimum baseline revenue. And we talk about how much do you want to pay yours? This is the first number is like, how much do you want to pay yourself as a paycheck to live and do life?

You know, what, like, what do you want to be available for your business expenses, your training, your, your tools, your team, um, your mentorship and what do you need to set aside for taxes? And, you know, if, if you're taking home this, like, what do you need to set aside for taxes? So now if let's for just easy numbers in my mind, cause I just, you know, easy numbers, like if I'm like, Oh, I want to take home 5,000.

I need to create between 7,500 and 10,000 just depending on what those expenses are and whatnot. That's what we call minimum baseline revenue here. The way I operationalize that just personally in my business is I have the different accounts and when money comes in, I at the beginning of every month.

Well, like the last day of the previous month or the beginning of that month, I move what's like just been accumulating in my one account to the other accounts. And then when it's time to pay, you know, the credit card bill that I pay off every month, I just have all my charges go on and pay, pay taxes, or I at least move money into the tax account to pay my quarterlies and things like that. And I just always know like.

if I know what my target is and I know if I'm not hitting that tough decisions are going to have to happen. So that's how I do it and I've had to make tough decisions because I haven't been able to create the revenue that I planned to create or that like I had really great revenue and like for example 2023 was like my worst year I had

Shannon Mattern (13:29.918)

amazing years in 2021, 2022. I had expenses from the good years that I carried too long into the bad year. I had reserves. And so had I, and this is kind of getting off track, but I made an emotional decision, not a math decision that I wish I wouldn't have made to maintain some

Rocky (13:41.229)

hahahaha

Shannon Mattern (13:59.106)

people-related expenses, payroll, that when you look at the numbers, that decision needed to be made a lot sooner. And so it's helped me in a lot of ways. And when I chose to, it showed me exactly what I needed to do. I chose not to do it, but it's not like I didn't know. You know? So that's just my own personal example.

Rocky (14:19.597)

Hehehe

Rocky (14:26.569)

And literally what it does is give you the early warning signal that there is an issue. And honestly, I've dealt with a lot of people in the marketing space. Last year was a bad year for everybody. Even the best of the best suffered.

Shannon Mattern (14:32.143)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (14:42.304)

Yes.

Shannon Mattern (14:45.646)

That's what I've heard, so I don't feel too terrible about it.

Rocky (14:48.337)

No, I don't think anyone was real. Like it was rare to see somebody profitable last year in that space and it wasn't their fault. It's just the changes in the economy and that's going to happen in business. And I think a lot of newer business owners don't realize it is a roller coaster ride. You have to plan for the down times and you have to sometimes make tough decisions and make them quickly because once money's gone, it's gone, you don't get it back.

Like your employees don't go, oh, your business didn't do well, let me give you my paycheck back. Not happening, right? So it helps you to see what's going on faster than anything else will. So it's kind of a speed to your reality of your numbers.

Shannon Mattern (15:34.486)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (15:42.19)

I don't think I would be sitting here today if I didn't have my numbers organized the way that I did to be able to make those decisions, you know, or I'd be like heading for the cliff right now and not know it.

Rocky (15:55.326)

and many businesses.

Rocky (15:59.933)

Many businesses go under. It's the reality of it. And it's because they aren't paying attention. They don't know what's happening. And that's a big good part of what we help them see is even what's happening before revenue even comes in and going all the way back to the beginning, which in a lot of times it's, you know, how many leads came in on your website? How many hits were there on the website? That's where we start to say.

Shannon Mattern (16:02.005)

Yes.

Shannon Mattern (16:27.915)

Yeah.

Rocky (16:28.841)

What does that look like so that we can then see, uh-oh, things are slowing down. We need to start figuring out what's going on now instead of waiting till it's too late.

Shannon Mattern (16:43.774)

Yeah, I mean, and so for our listeners, typically they're doing a lot of one-to-one marketing, networking, referrals, outreach, things like that. I don't want to shame anybody in the audience, but this is one of the biggest challenges that

that they have is just the consistency with their outreach efforts. When you're talking about creating consistent revenue and consistent money, tracing it all the way back to the beginning of what are the metrics. If you're not doing the things that create clients, it won't be a surprise that you're not getting clients.

Rocky (17:15.554)

Mm-hmm.

Rocky (17:35.493)

And the second half of that is we get busy because we found some clients and then we forget to keep doing it. And then six months later, all the work is done and you're like, where are my new clients? Oh, you stopped going after them.

Shannon Mattern (17:40.651)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (17:51.754)

Yeah, I always say like this moment you book a new client, do some outreach, you know, like bake it into your week because it's critical. So I'm curious, like when you work with, when someone comes to work with you and they have been just operating, just kind of in the dark, just like, yay, I made money. I'm delivering the service. Let me go make some more money, deliver the service, get to the end of the year.

try to do all their books at once for tax time, all of that. And then they come to you. What is that transformation that you lead them through? What are the steps that you take them through in your process?

Rocky (18:35.314)

Our first call is figuring out who they are and what they want from their business. We believe your business is supposed to serve you. You're not supposed to be a slave to it. We have to know what do you need and what is that going to cost? Because then that helps us to set revenue goals. It also helps us to understand how much time and effort you can put into the business.

And it helps us to see how that is. So once we understand who you are, then we look at the business. We look at what does revenue look like? How consistent is it? What are your cost of goods? What's your cost of delivery for the products that you make? After you've delivered the product, is there enough margin now to actually run the business? All of the things that the business needs to run on.

And then we look at all the different costs that the business is running on and saying, is it appropriate? Is this reasonable? Or are we wasting money? Or do we, you know, where in that whole process is there a problem? So it could be there's not enough revenue. It could be that the cost of delivery is too high. It could be that the actual cost to the running the business is too high. So it's looking at all of those different.

things along with then what's their debt look like, what's their accounts receivable, how do they get paid, you know, what are all those types of things and helping them make that into a better system. Like one of my clients, we were just talking, they were doing websites 25, hitting milestones, right? I'm like, no, that's not a good way to do it. I said, let's do 30, 10.

Because if the client goes south on you at the end, hey, I will at least collect 90% of my money. At this point, if they walk away, so be it, at least I'm not harmed, I'm not negative. And they don't have a big hammer to hold me over at the end, dragging it on and on and on. So those are the kinds of things. And even within the contracting to say,

Rocky (20:53.429)

these are the milestones we hit or this much time. Meaning if you drag your feet, you're still paying us because I put resources to you. That's not my problem. It's your problem.

Shannon Mattern (21:07.998)

Absolutely. I think that is one of the big challenges that web designers run into when they book a project, they get the deposit, that's great. And then the client can't gather all the content or something happens to the project timeline and.

The web designer just is like, well, I can't charge the next payment because I didn't do any work. And it's like, you absolutely can charge the next payment regardless of whether you did the work or not. Like you get to keep, there's lots of boundary setting, project management, and all of that is about your money. It's about your money. It's about your time and your quality of life, but it's also about making sure that you make the money. So I'm so glad you said that because...

I love it when I'm not the only one saying that, yes, you absolutely can collect that money.

Rocky (22:03.745)

Well, I think one of the reasons so many people in the marketing space struggled last year was because businesses were going under. All of a sudden they had to start paying back loans. Things got tight. And let's face it, if things get tight, who's the last person you're gonna pay? The website designer. No offense, but if you delivered the website,

There's no juice left for them. And if they can't pay their bills, you know, then you're on the end of the line at that point.

Shannon Mattern (22:43.286)

So what do you do when you do your analysis and you see that someone needs to raise their prices in order for this to work? How does that fit into your process?

Rocky (22:57.549)

So we do, I mean, we look at it and we show them and say, look, if you build a website, and this is because I've worked with people who make really big websites. So they're like, oh, I got a $50,000 sale, I'm so great. And I'm like, yeah, but it costs you 52,000 to deliver it. Right? That's not so great. It's just showing them the math of what's going on.

If you do this website, A, you've got to be able to deliver it for 30, because the 20 is what's paying the overhead for the company, and the rent, and the marketing, and your pay, and all of that. Once they start to understand what that looks like, then they have the ability to go, okay, I can sell all the websites I want, but I'm never going to make any money. I guess I need to do something different.

Shannon Mattern (23:57.118)

Yeah, absolutely. I think that one of the other things that I see people do is they're looking at, oh, let me look at what everybody else is charging for a website, and that's what I'm going to choose my going rate as, or they're like, oh, well, I've only been doing, they justify all these ways to keep their prices really low instead of actually just looking at the numbers.

to make the decision of what that price is going to be.

Rocky (24:31.829)

And that's true, there's a lot of emotion to it, and I get it, but over time, you have to raise prices. And that's just the reality of it. When you put your proposals out, that's what you do. The other thing is if you have too much business, that's an easy way to raise your prices, because then that becomes a sorting metric. Certain people go away, and then you don't have to worry about it.

Shannon Mattern (24:34.524)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (24:52.235)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (24:56.514)

So what's the next step in your process after you do the analysis? How do you operationalize that and how does the business owner really maintain that system going forward and really use it to make decisions?

Rocky (25:11.629)

So what we do is we actually figure out each part of the equation. So we will, like I said, you know, if they're an online business, we start with website traffic. We look at conversion rates. We look at average transaction value, which is pricing. We look at how often do customers repeat business. Each of those metrics has maybe a whole bunch of things behind it. And so that's the first half. What are you doing to drive revenue

How can we be more efficient in driving revenue? What are the tweaks we have to make? And how do different tweaks end up generating more revenue? And so that's a big part of what we look at. And then every business is a little different. So each one's going to have their own answer, and we'll figure it out. The next thing is we look at all their expenses. And we also look at their efficiencies. OK?

You have somebody on your staff, you're paying them for full-time work. How much are they actually billing? Like, are they billing four hours a day and you're paying them for eight? That's not going to work. How are you maintaining to make sure that they're delivering what they, what is expected of you? Do you have 20 different softwares, six of which do the same as each other and three aren't being used anymore?

Let's do an audit to look at all of those types of things and eliminate what's wasted. And then we're also looking at the debt service and how they collect money, how they pay money. And then we'll also predict out cash flow. If you've got a backlog of business, we can predict cash flow going forward and say, this is what it's going to look like. Here's where the problem is. Two and a half months from now, oh, you're going to have a little bit of cash flow crunch.

what can we do today to fix that problem that's going to happen in 75 days? So we're constantly helping them figure out the next steps they can take now to improve their profit, drive their revenue, and be able to take more money out of the company.

Shannon Mattern (27:25.079)

I love that. That is so good. And as you were saying that I was thinking, you know, cause our listeners, they're web designers, but you know, that's the, and we were talking, chatting about this earlier, you know, that's like the deliverable at the end of the project. But like when we talk about pricing and value and the things that you do for your clients, like Rocky just gave you guys a clue as to how you create more.

revenue for your clients when you are, you know, helping them consolidate redundant systems on the back end and all of the things that you do to help them streamline operations, spend less money going forward, shorten the length of time from visit to sale, all of those things you guys play a part in all of that and he's helping

clients with that stuff on the back end of their business every day. But you guys are the ones who are like building the thing that operationalizes that. And that is so valuable. Like, I just want you to hear how valuable that is. It's not just a 10-page website with a logo and branding and colors. It's all of this that leads to the longevity of the business.

Rocky (28:39.405)

So I think this is where the problem is coming in. You're not selling websites. If you're selling websites, you're gonna compete on price and you're probably gonna lose. That's just the reality of it, okay? And again, it's different for everybody, but in my world, people are buying a marketing machine and they want the best marketing machine that delivers to them consistent, reliable leads

Shannon Mattern (28:45.453)

Right.

Shannon Mattern (28:49.708)

Yes!

Rocky (29:09.977)

and automating that whole process so they don't have to fuss over it, so that they have consistent and reliable sales. And there's a cost associated with that. And if you can increase their sales, that's really where the value comes in. If you can remove people from the process and automate it, that's where the value comes in. If you can tailor their messages,

because maybe they've got a couple different audiences. Or even more importantly, here's the reality of it. Most business owners have no idea what they're selling or why people are buying from them. If you can help them understand that, there is tremendous value in that because now the messaging resonates with the people who are coming there and they're not bouncing in two seconds. They're hanging out on the site. Have you ever heard of They Ask You Answer? That book?

Shannon Mattern (30:05.455)

I don't think so, no.

Rocky (30:07.469)

Oh, it's a phenomenal book. I forget who wrote it. But they ask you answer is about a guy who was a pool salesman.

And he realized, when I sell a pool, people call up, and I drive an hour to their house and talk to them about a pool. And he's like, three quarters of these people are tire kickers. I'm spending four hours, six hours a day in a car, and this is not working. How do I make this better? And so what they started to do was create content and put it on their website of, hey,

this is how we build pools. This is why you should have a diving board. This is why you should do, you know, a concrete pool versus a liner pool. This is why you should do saltwater versus fresh water. So they were literally teaching their clients and what they found was that people were coming to their website and spending five, six, eight hours on it, watching all these videos.

And when the phone finally rang or they got the thing, it wasn't, it was like, I want this pool with this thing and this stuff and you know your pools, clearly because I've been learning so much from you, how much does it cost and when can you install it? Like it made the sales process so, so much simpler. Somebody who can go do that for a pool company is gonna make a lot of money, right? Somebody who sold them a website,

not going to make a lot of money. You have to realize, don't sell the mechanism, fix the problem and sell the desired outcome. And they won't care how you do it. They just care that they get the result.

Shannon Mattern (32:01.214)

That is so good. I just everything that you just shared about like getting super clear on what are the business problems that this client has. They might come to you thinking that they just need a website. They don't know what they don't know about how you can solve a lot of their problems. So when you do a thorough consultation, when you aren't just asking, show me another site that you like the design of.

deep strategic questions about their business that you can then solve with technology. If they just sell one or two more pools a year, that is more than going to, that's gonna pay for their investment many times over. And so I just, I can't say it enough, and I'm so glad that you're saying it too, and you're illustrating the example so beautifully, that what you do has so much value.

to a business, you deserve to charge more, and then you can put your money into a system like what Rocky teaches and live that life that you're freelancing for. You don't have a day job for a reason. I mean, truly.

Rocky (33:21.389)

So there is one other thing. We talked about this before you hit record. Let's face it, business income goes up and down, right? And so as a small business owner, you know, your mortgage payment doesn't go up and down, right? It stays the same all the time. That is one of the really cool things about Profit First is it can actually help smooth out your income cycle. So, you know, as Shannon said,

Shannon Mattern (33:25.132)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (33:36.435)

Nope.

Rocky (33:50.941)

Every month you sit down, the money comes in, you allocate it to your buckets. What we tell people is if you have this highly variable business, figure out your base level that says, okay, for $10,000 a month, I can run my entire business and I can pay myself and take care of everything. Then every time you have more than $10,000 a month come in, take the excess

put it in a separate bank account that's your reserve account. And so let's say this month we get 12,000, so I put 2,000 aside. Next month we had 11,000, so I put 1,000 aside. Next month we've got 9,000. Uh-oh. Now I go to my reserve account and I take 1,000 out and I put it in. Now I still have my 10 grand for the month, so I still get paid, my bills get paid. I'm good. And by...

doing that and building up your reserves, you smooth out your personal cash flow and your business cash flow. Too often what happens is, is a business has a good month. Oh, I got an extra five grand. I'm gonna go buy something. What can I buy? And they spend it all. And the next month they have a slow month and they're like, oh my God, what am I supposed to do? Well, this is life. Plan for it, right? And it can also just be seasonal.

I don't know how many people are buying websites in December. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but there's probably seasonality to every business. And so you should plan for those types of things and be prepared for them.

Shannon Mattern (35:32.718)

Yeah, I think what we tell our people is like, lock down some deposits in December for projects to start in mid to late January. But when you were talking about the, go ahead.

Rocky (35:42.753)

Well, plus think about this. In December, business owners are like, uh-oh, I have too much profit this year. I need to lower my profit so I don't pay taxes. You getting that deposit or the prepayment, that's perfect for them. They're more than willing to do that.

Shannon Mattern (35:53.986)

Yep.

Shannon Mattern (36:00.806)

Yeah, absolutely. And I was thinking when you were talking about, you know, your reserve account and the variability of the revenue, the mistake that I made in 2023 was like, oh, I can come back from this. I can make my reserve is getting low. And I'm like, no, I can just one more promotion, one more this, one more that, one more, I'll build it, I'll build it back, I'll build it back. Instead of being like, the writing's on the spreadsheet.

You have some tough decisions to make Shannon, you know, you can try to, you know, hustle your way through this and keep hitting the same roadblock over and over to avoid the uncomfortable thing that you have to do. Or you can do the thing, which is a hundred percent within your control. And we'll make all the math work right now. If you just do the thing that you don't want to do. And that is, you know, let someone go, which is hard, but you know,

I just, you know, so I guess to turn, to circle that back into a question, when do you make difficult decisions in your business? Like how, how do you look at those reserves and like, what are some considerations or questions we can ask ourselves to decide when it's time?

Rocky (37:20.041)

So if your sales are off, the question is why? What has changed? Is there something broken? It might simply be that your website's been offline for a month. Oh, hmm, there's a problem. The other thing is having friends who are in the business because if they're like, I'm off 20%, I'm off 20%, they're off 20%.

Shannon Mattern (37:33.679)

Sure.

Rocky (37:48.077)

guess what, something's happening outside your control. You really need to start sitting down and saying, okay, if I don't hit my target next month, how am I gonna cut my expenses 20%? You have to have a plan. See, if I have a plan for what I'm gonna do next month, if things go bad, it becomes easy to execute the plan. But if I wait till next month and go, oh my God, things went bad, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna?

Shannon Mattern (38:02.049)

Yeah.

Rocky (38:17.421)

You're not gonna make good decisions. So we try and have plans upfront for what to do when things go bad. How do we pivot? How do we change? What do we do differently? The biggest thing though is always be asking your clients, how is your business doing? Because if their business is struggling, your business is gonna struggle.

And the reality is a lot of small businesses don't have great cash flow and they are struggling. And paying you is taking money off their dinner table and they're expecting a return. And if they don't get it, they're in trouble, which means they're not paying your bill.

Shannon Mattern (39:07.55)

mic drop moment right there for sure. I want to switch gears because I see a ton of books behind you on the bookshelf. And obviously you are a reader and you mentioned a couple of books. What are a few of your best recommendations in addition to Profit First, obviously, for our listeners to read?

Rocky (39:36.653)

So we talked about one, which was they ask you answer. I think that's a great way to think about marketing. Over in the corner is The Road Less Stupid, phenomenal book about how to think about business. It gives you a whole bunch of questions to ask yourself and to think about your business. We're constantly told work on your business, not in your business.

Shannon Mattern (39:40.02)

Yeah.

Rocky (40:04.317)

Keith Cunningham gives you hundreds of questions to help you work on your business and to create the time to think and figure out what's going on and how to kind of build that. Since most of your people are in sales, Never Split the Difference is a great sales book, or Presuasion's another good sales book.

I think you have to ask yourself, what's the problem I'm facing? Who's the expert in that problem? And what are a couple books that can help me with that particular issue? And then always...

Shannon Mattern (40:44.582)

I wrote all of those down. I'll put them all in the show notes. Yeah, go ahead.

Rocky (40:47.709)

Yeah, I think always also understanding the business of business. Because then when you walk into a client's office, you're not a website seller. You're a fellow business owner who can understand their problems and can have a business conversation with them. And that, I think, will take you much, much further.

Shannon Mattern (41:13.226)

So good. So how can people learn from you? What, like how can they learn more about you? What do you have that people can get in touch with you and work with you?

Rocky (41:27.373)

So before we do that, can I ask them a favor? OK. Does Shannon bring you value? Did you hit the Like button? Did you share this with somebody else in the industry who might be able to learn from her? Show a little love. This was all free for you. So that's just a nice way to say thank you. After you do that, you want to come find me. I have a podcast called Profit Answer Man.

Shannon Mattern (41:30.464)

Yeah?

Rocky (41:53.661)

All we talk about is how to have a growing and more profitable business. We talk a lot about marketing and how people lose money left and right in marketing and all the problems that they face in marketing. So the more you understand, the more you can help them through those hurdles. We teach all of that along with, I go through the entire Profit First book as well. All of the stuff is there on the podcast.

So, go listen if you want to learn more about how to be profitable.

Shannon Mattern (42:25.346)

Thank you so much. I appreciate that truly. And yeah, thank you so much for being here for sharing all of your wisdom and taking time out of your day to educate our listeners. I really, really appreciate it. I'll link up everything that we talked about in the show notes. So I have one last question that I ask everybody that comes on the show, and that is what?

belief about yourself or business did you have to change to get to where you are today?

Rocky (42:58.925)

So honestly, just like all of you probably, we all struggle with, you know, am I really worth that much? You know, can I charge that price? Can I get that type of a rate? And am I delivering the value that brings that about? And over time, I think you build that muscle and you realize, yep, I am worth it. And you know what? When I start, you know,

It's really bad when you sell that website for like $5,000 and the client's raving about how it made him a million dollars in business, and you're just mad at yourself. Like that's when you get it.

Shannon Mattern (43:42.734)

Oh, that is such a great place to wrap this up, Rocky. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.

Rocky (43:51.117)

Thanks for having me.