Pushing Beyond the Obvious - Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed
PBTO19: Profit First - A Simple System To Transform The Way You Run Your Business (@MikeMichalowicz)

Who is on the show today:

In today’s episode, we host Mike Michalowicz. Mike is an entrepreneur and author of three books – The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, The Pumpkin Plan & Profit First.

 

Why is he on the show

By his 35th birthday MIKE MICHALOWICZ (pronounced mi-‘kal-o-wits) had founded and sold two multi-million dollar companies. Confident that he had the formula to success, he became an angel investor… and proceeded to lose his entire fortune.

Mike is now running his third million dollar venture, is a former small business columnist for The Wall Street Journal; is the former MSNBC business make-over expert; is a popular keynote speaker on innovative entrepreneurial topics; and is the author of Profit First, The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, which BusinessWeek deemed “the entrepreneur’s cult classic.”

Not only is he a successful entrepreneur and a best selling author, he is also extremely insightful, funny and energetic. His insights might sound very common sensical but as they say, common sense is not so common after all.

What are we talking about

In this free wheeling conversation, we talk about a wide range of topics which are critical for the success of any business. I was blown over by his ability to be candid and practical. He shares with us the underlying principles of how to bootstrap, grow and profit from a business.

Most important learnings from the conversation:

  • The new formula for business: Income – Profit = Expenses.
  • Mike shares with us some of the key insights about how can someone bootstrap and grow from their.
  • We also talk about how to find your best customers and continue to become an expert for that kind of customers so that you can grow your business and stay profitable.
  • We also talk about how just by changing the way we look at profits, we can have a completely new system by which we run our business – leading us to make much more profit.
  • How Entrepreneurs can go about implementing this system and profit from the same.

You can reach Mike on Google+, Twitter and Facebook.


Who is on the show today:

In today’s episode, we host Dr. Howard Moskowitz and Stephen Rappaport.

Dr. Howard is a market researcher and psychophysicist. He is best known for the detailed study he made of the types of spaghetti sauce and horizontal segmentation. He is CEO of i-Novation Inc & has written/edited sixteen books, and has published more than 300 articles. 

Steve consults and writes about brand growth through consumer insight, digital strategy and measurement.  He is the author of 3 books The Online Advertising Playbook, Listen First! and his latest one being The Digital Metrics Field Guide:

Why are they on the show

In his 40-year career span, Howard has literally helped create billion dollar product line in the food industry. He has also won numerous awards for outstanding research including The Market Research Council Hall of Fame Award. Malcolm Gladwell did an entire TED Talk focusing on Howard’s work.

Both of them research and write about comprehending people using the science of mind genomics in a specialized area called cognitive economics.

What are we talking about

In this free wheeling conversation, we talk about mind genomics, cognitive economics and how it is much more effective to segment the market based on, what they call Vignettes and/or mindsets rather than the usual demographic, psychographic or behavioral segmentation and how can businesses understand their customers best by their behavior and preferences.

Most important learnings from the conversation:

  • Market Segmentation: 
    • It is critical for brands to understand the fact that there is no perfect product but a set of perfect products, i.e, an opportunity for horizontal segmentation.
    • Once brands understand the mindsets of their customers and tailor their messaging accordingly, the conversion rates can at times even double.

You can find more information about their work and connect with them on their email ID’s: (Howard & Stephen). You can follow Steve on twitter @steverappaport.

PS: The TED Talk that Malcolm Gladwell delivered based on Dr. Howards work is here:


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