 I'm really excited to be here. My name is Andreas Kramer and I am the executive director of Just Float in Pasadena. I'm also an executive business strategist with my company, Conscious Profit. We work with mission-driven business owners like this man here who are experiencing underwhelming results, exhaustion, stress because they aren't making the profit and the quality of life they want while they change the world. And I wanted to say this specifically because he has worked so hard. He's one of the hardest working people I've ever met. He's put in thousands of hours to the principles we're going to talk about today. So I just want to take a second to formally introduce and thank Mike Rusko, the co-founder and owner of Just Float for sharing today. It's really an honor to be here today. I absolutely love floating and want to give back to this industry as much as I can and I'm hoping that some of the lessons that I've learned along the way that took a lot of time and were extremely costly in some areas that you guys can learn from today and take away from this talk back to your own businesses because these principles apply regardless of the size of your business or really even what industry you're in. So if we can do it at a center as large as ours, you guys can definitely do it in all of your centers. Yeah, so before we start here, I just want to let you know it's going to be an interview format. I'll ask Mike some questions. There's going to be a lot of information. We're going to talk about how the journey happened from surviving to thriving in the seven pillars of business. But there will be slides for you to get at the end, so don't worry if you don't take it all in right away. You don't have to worry about writing it down. We can send some to you. And of course the Q&A afterwards, we'll be happy to answer all of your questions. So why don't we jump in, Mike? Perfect. Let's do it. Okay. So before we start, Mike, would you be okay with sharing where you were in November of 2017? Yeah. So I had a problem. I received an email out of the blue from my former business partner stating that he was resigning effective immediately and that if I didn't want the company to fail, I was to step in and take care of the day-to-day responsibilities of the company. And at that time, I really had no idea of the issues that my company was facing. We had co-founded the company together and did all of the research and development and construction and really worked side-by-side on not only building our own tanks, but the world's largest float facility. However, after opening, we had created far more debt than we expected and I had to go back to work. I really had no input or knowledge in the day-to-day of the company and he made 99 percent of the decisions there. When I stepped in, I quickly learned that we were $80,000 more than I expected it in debt. We were late on several critical bills. I identified that the staff was untrained, unruly, unhappy. There were problems with gossip and poor methods of communication and no directives for responsibilities really around the company. The branding was unclear. The Just Float Luxury brand was really being offered as a discount brand with incongruent pricing and our spending far outpaced our income. We had the metrics that we were using for our advertising were far unbalanced and what I realized is that we had no idea what the customer acquisition cost. We were spending 20 to 25 percent of our gross revenue on marketing. Because the ROI was in balance, we were actually spending more on marketing than we were able to bring in. There was no real financial numbers at all. There was no budget in place. There was no projected earnings analysis. There was no break-even point that was ever defined. We had no metrics at all for our company's money going in or coming out. The facility was uncamped. There was mold in the showers. The tank water was dirty. There was even a sewer stench that permeated our building. I was overwhelmed and stressed to the point where even my daily meditation practice and my floating practice were not enough to get me through. My wife and I, I had to quit my job to step back into the business. We weren't able to draw any income from the company because of the way that it was. We moved out of our house of eight years and into our RV for about 18 months or so and really just jumped from fire to fire trying to put things out and get the company back on track. We were days away from closing at that point. We needed another $25,000 cash infusion in order to keep the doors open. And I realized that I needed to take some swift action and it had to be bold. And not having run a company of this size before, I knew that I wanted to bring in a business strategist and that's how Andreas Kramer came to just float. I also floated there and it was beautiful and amazing and I could feel that something special was there. I would like to call out quickly, thank you Mike for sharing all that. I know it's a lot and part of what's so amazing about it is that we might all have different parts of this that we can resonate with and the pillars cover that because the point of this talk is for you to not have to deal with it when it's almost the end. Okay, so the seven pillars of business. The seven pillars of business are mindset, branding, marketing, communication, culture, structure and finance. There are two points I'd like to make about this. First of all, that the health of the individual pillars added up is what equals the health of your company and that is what creates the health of your profit and the quality of life. Each one of these pillars is integral and each one is valuable on its own. So what we're going to do is walk through each one and talk about where you were Mike, what you took away from that and then a couple of steps that you can take to make sure that you're on your way to health in each pillar. The second thing that I wanted to say there was leadership. So how does leadership fit into this? Leadership is when you as the leader, whether you're the owner or the manager, in my mindset really anybody, I am accountable for the health of each pillar. So a leader is somebody who's accountable for the health in each pillar. So saying, for example, well the money I don't know, you need to know. Pillar one is mindset. So the definition that we go by is that mindset is the perspective you adopt in order to stay on track when you encounter obstacles. A quick point on that. Mindset is not so much about when things are going great. That might seem obvious sometimes but it's important to remember when you're feeling conflict or feeling pressure or feeling stress. That's the time that you want to kick that mindset in, right when you're feeling the obstacle. So, Mike, where were you mindset wise when you started the journey? I was living in a state of reactivity. I was constantly putting out fires, identifying what the biggest one for that moment was and then jumping into the next one. Sometimes back and forth all at the same time. I was totally overwhelmed, not sleeping. It took a huge toll on my relationships, both with my wife and my friends and everything just really fell out of control. We talked about some other things too. Sometimes resentment can happen. Why did I do this? What am I doing? Disconnection, losing motivation. And Mike, from this journey, let's talk about what you took away from that. Mindset's really the fundamental pillar. You know, that is what needs to change that is the Archimedes Lettever that really will affect everything else in your business. And it was really about making a decision to live in responsibility versus reactivity and really being able to look at the larger picture and make decisions based upon the options that were available to me instead of being reactive to what kind of came my way. Yeah. So for optimal company health, the goal here is for you to self-manage and commit, commitment's a big word. You'll see it twice once with our first pillar and once with our last. To using obstacles as opportunity for growth. In achieving your ideal chosen outcome. So this is where we say, what is the outcome I actually want? What's the best outcome I actually want? And when I encounter obstacles, I'm going to choose to grow in there. First steps to lasting company health. Choose between being an owner operator or facilitator of sale and scale. What I mean by that is how long do you want to be tied into your business? How long do you want it to depend on you being there night and day? Think earlier about what your exit strategy is. You may never take that. You might say, I want to do it my whole life. That's awesome. But at least you're prepared. It's never too early to think about that. It's definitely never too late to think about that. The second point, objective honesty with yourself equals power as an owner. Never forget that analyzing your strengths and weaknesses, looking for help, creating community, letting your staff take on new things. These are wonderful, wonderful techniques and will only help you. Don't depend on the baby for your health. You make your baby healthy, not the reverse. The business is your baby. You can't take food from the baby. The baby dies. We debated a bit about what analogy I was going to use. I want to be effective. So we can't tell our baby, hey, can you call the doctor for me and pay the bill? So the mindset is, I'm going to plan and get all the help I need community to raise a baby in order to let it grow, be empowered, be structured, and be able to take off on its own feet. All right, pillar two, we've got branding. One of my absolute favorites. The definition of branding is your presentation to yourself and the world of the problem you solve, whom you solve it for, how you do it, and your ultimate goal. What's not in here? Who you are. It doesn't matter. To somebody who is suffering and doesn't know how to answer their problem, it's not important to hear who you are. They just want to know that you can see their problem and you can help them. Who you are is a wonderful thing. If it's important for your marketing or your ideal guests' problem, let's say they want a deep sense of community, they want to be able to interact closely, and you've identified that by all means. But the purpose of the brand, number one, is to identify the person with the problem and what that problem is and how you can help them. Mike? Yeah, so when I took over this project again, the branding had never been fully developed. And the Just Float luxury brand was incongruently being presented as a discount brand with incongruent and below market pricing. We had never clearly identified who our ideal customer was and or the problem that our brand was solving. One of the most important things here that we'll probably talk about over and over is that floating is the solution that your company happens to offer through this industry. And the most important thing about the business is identifying who you're working with and what their pain point really is and what that person needs to have resolved. And we basically identified it for our brand as people that didn't take time for themselves or needed to relax and restore. But it was, you know, other self-care methods were too complicated or difficult. And once we identified that, we're able to talk to that problem and then say, well, our solution happens to be floating. But what we're really doing as an organization is solving that problem for that client. So for example, listing the benefits of floating to somebody, and I come from a different, you know, different businesses than this business, so I hope that's helpful to have that perspective. I just wanted to know I didn't have to do anything and that I was going to do something nice for myself. Later, I'll listen to the benefits of floating, but my problem was I live in LA, I never have time for anything, I'm too stressed, it's too hard to find a good massage person, this and that. So what you're saying there is extremely valuable. All right, so here we have what he just said. And in addition, we were doing very high volume with no profit. So something's wrong if that's happening for you. And if it's the pricing, you need to figure out who the person is you're talking to and what price they actually need. Mike, what's your takeaway here? So it really is, once again, about finding out who your ideal client is going to be and creating what they call an avatar for that client. And one of the things that we did when we started Just Float is that we had a target client in mind who we wanted them to be, and that just didn't work. Like we actually needed to identify who the client is, what their pain points are, how to talk to their pain points, and then, oh, by the way, we can solve your pain points with a float tank. Right, really important. Who we want it to be. Do the time to see, is there somebody like that? Am I stretching and pushing here in a way that doesn't work? It can be so much simpler. I'm not saying it's easy, but it can be much simpler. Okay, so the optimal company health for this is clarity and alignment between the founder and the business and through all five brand points. I'll explain this a bit with the first steps. The five points in branding are vision, which is your ultimate goal. What happens if this all goes well? How does the world look? Your mission, how am I actually doing that right now? That's where you get a sort of day-to-day, how am I doing this? Your values, your tone. Tone is a personality of the company and your ideal avatar. The guest whose problem you're solving, and this is an add-on here. The problem is their biggest problem and you're solving it the most easily. Team and brand alignment is essential. It starts at the top. This is what I mean by founder and business alignment. It might be possible you don't really love your brand. That's not bad or good. You just need to be aligned because the team needs to believe in what you believe in too. So take a good look, make sure that you still believe in it. It might change six months from now, a year from now, five years from now. Keep on looking at that. And finally, brand governs everything interactive. So from the obvious things like what your location looks like to how you communicate with each other. To maybe extra benefits for your employees. Those are all brand related. If it doesn't align with the brand, Michael and I behind closed doors, just the two of us, speak a certain way. Because that's the brand. All right, pillar three. Marketing. Definition of marketing. Marketing is how you communicate your brand to your ideal client. So nothing in there about what I think is fun. It's again the person and how we're going to tell them, oh, you have a problem we can help you with. This is how we do it. Mike? Yeah, so I quickly identified that we really had no metrics at all for our marketing. The marketing campaigns themselves were highly imbalanced. And we were spending between 20 to 25% of our gross revenue on our marketing campaigns. And the problem is that because they were imbalanced, we were actually spending more money on advertising than that advertising campaign was bringing in. So we were losing money every time we ran an ad. And because we also had a lack of clear branding, it was very difficult to communicate what we wanted or what we needed to the advertising firms that we were working with. We were unable to communicate to them what our product and we knew what our service was floating, but who we were really talking to and what we were trying to solve and what that client's pain point was. And through our lack of being able to communicate that, it made them very ineffective because they don't know my business. They know advertising. Right. And the instinct might be to say, well, they're really good at what they do. Be in the meetings, give them calls, check up on them. They need your help too. Stand for the brand yourself. That way, at least you know that what's being said is what you'd like to have said to the correct person. And Mike, what was your takeaway for this pillar? Yeah. So my takeaway really, like it says up there, is that by understanding your metrics and your messaging, it really allows you to launch marketing campaigns that are effective. And there's a saying, I'm sure a lot of you have heard in business, that what gets measured gets managed. And you do that through KPIs, key performance indicators of different things. And once you have that knowledge, then you're able to say, you're able to dictate what your advertising spend is. If you know that it's going to cost you 80 cents in order to bring in a dollar of revenue, all the gross overhead and everything else taken into consideration with that, then you're able to spend a significant amount of money until those returns start dropping and you're no longer getting that 80 cent to a dollar return or whatever it might be. And that's just super important because you're able to pour a lot of gasoline on the fire if you know that it's still working for you guys. Right. So in actuality, the 20 to 25% spend for us for gross revenue didn't matter. What mattered was what's the return. If you hear things like, well, industry standard should be, I disagree, firmly. If it's bringing you in money, go for it. Why wouldn't you? More people to help. Okay. So for Optimal Company Health on this pillar, we have consistent on-brand messaging aimed at your ideal client and their problem. So we're thinking about are they going to see a signal fair like, hey, it's me. Oh, you're talking to me. Great. While keeping the spend at the maximum cost yielding measurable benefit. So we've gone up and down on our ad spend, depending on what we're seeing the returns are. And Mike in particular spent a lot of time with the agency just making sure that the metrics are what we need them to be. First steps to lasting company health here. Focus on your ideal client, as if you haven't heard that 19 times, the person whose biggest problem you solve most easily, this is one I really enjoy. Treat your social media presence as an extension of the client's in-store experience. They want, we want them to feel the same thing they're going to feel when they go into your store. It's really an awesome way for them to actually visit your store before they go. So it's important that what you're doing there has the look and the feel. Finally, create and understand metrics, as he just said, and pivot as needed. I'd like to point out the word create here. You'll go to the company, any company really, they'll say, this is how we measure things. And you should look at it and say, I'd also like this, this, and this. So take the time to think about the information you need, not just what they tell you you need. They're doing the best they can, but they don't know. So on we go here, I know this is a lot, but again we have the slides at the end and I hope you guys are able to take a good portion of this in. Pillar four here is communication. I kind of keep on saying to myself, that's my favorite. Definition, communication is the process of sharing information and understanding within the company itself and in client interactions. There's not much more I need to say about that. What we say, how we say it. Mike, how was communication for you? Yeah, so when I step back in, there was no clear communication definitions at all. And without that clarity, it really just resulted in poor methods of communication. There was gossip and really no clear directives for how ownership should communicate with management, should communicate with the floor guides and how the staff can give that feedback that Kim was talking about earlier to management and ownership and open up those lines of communications. The employees really felt like they didn't have a voice and that led to just unhappiness in their work because they didn't feel like co-creators in what we were doing. And the lack of communication just bred stagnation, resentment, decreased productivity, increased staff turnover. There were all kinds of problems. Yep, also like to point out conflict resolution. I definitely want to have clear ideas of how conflict resolution works for you, whether you're a staff of two, which is a relationship, or like us, there's about 20 of us at our location. Really good idea to talk about how we're going to talk about hard things. With whom? What are the expectations in this conversation? Is there safe space being created for the complete thought to come out before management jumps in with how we're going to fix it or how we're not? And Mike, what have you taken away from this? Well, just like I said before, and I almost want to just read this because it's so important, but that lack of communication really breeds that resentment and the stagnation, decreases the productivity. And by creating the clear, effective communication strategies, it allows everybody to have a voice within the organization and an effective way for messages to be passed back and forth. People know what to expect from the management team. They know who to talk to in order to get their issues resolved within the company in the most clear and effective way. Super important. It's like the basis. Communication is the basis for any human relationship. And so it's like a fundamental pillar that once you have pillar, it's the foundation that once you have that, it just allows you to grow on top of it. It's super important. I might even argue that you could have the other pillars set up and not have communication, and it's going to be tough and not fun. And that's the point of what we're talking about, how to have a great time having an impact on the world. All right, communication. So the optimal company health here, the goal is that all communication is on brand. I talked about that. So for example, because of how big our location is, we have some standards with the kind of language we can use in-house. It's not going to be right for everybody, but for us it is. And we hold to that even in our one-on-one meetings. And all communication is pace. That's professional, accountable, clear, and empowering. Pretty fun to hold to that and watch what it does. Okay, first steps to lasting company health, create a non-brand communication policy that everyone signs. If you don't have one, have one. It's pretty fun actually when we all signed it. I signed it too as a consultant at that point, right before executive director. Mike signed it, and everybody knows we're all on board for this. Together. Create a clear policy for voicing ideas and concerns. Here's how you do that. Here's where it works. Here's the expectation back. That's important. Management will get back to you within X amount of time. Or you can expect me to get back to you within 24 hours, whatever it is. Just alleviates a lot of concern later. And then the last point, this is a big one for me clearly. Ban gossip. You have gossip. What that means is somebody is talking to somebody else about something that nobody can do anything about. I like that definition of gossip because it tells me if I'm talking to Mike about Brandon and Mike can't do anything about it, it's not professional. It's not okay. It's starting stuff. So he would say to me, hey, Andreas, I'm sorry, but you need to speak to Becky about that. She's the person to talk to there. Okay. More than halfway through. I feel like we just get up and do a quick stretch. All right. Shake it out a little bit. All right. Culture. Definition. This is such a wonderfully amorphous all over the place thing. I did a lot of research on this. So I'm actually going to borrow somebody else's definition. I think it's wonderful. Her name is Sharon Delay. She's the president of a company called GoHR. Her definition is how those within organizations communicate, treat one another and behave. So culture. We'll say our company culture is transparent. Our company culture is joyful, empowering. Those are the words that we're using there. Mike, where were you with this? The culture was completely undeveloped, which led to poor consistency in product delivery. The customer satisfaction and staff morale were at an all-time low. Our membership attrition rates were high, and the conversion rates for first-time clients and repeat clients was extremely low. The customer service model that was in place at that time was reactive and instead of proactive. Yeah. So people don't know what to expect. There's no through line for behavior. It also creates volatility in the workspace. We don't know when it's a good day or a bad day. The guest might not know. Insidious stuff this is. Owner takeaway here, Mike. So, yeah, the culture really defines the boundaries and sets up the expectations for everyone that interacts with your organization. And one of the most important things that I think that we can do with culture is to put our employees first. They are the face of our businesses to the majority of the people, 99% of the time, and their comfort level with their job and the organization itself really manifests in how they interact with our clients. And to foster the enthusiasm that we need them to need, the team members really need to feel appreciated for what they're doing. I think it's just super important. Yeah, and it's an authentic appreciation, of course. It's authentically on-brand. I like to use counter examples sometimes for fun. I used to be in the food and beverage business, and I had sort of, frankly, approachable luxury approach to that, too. But if I was going to open a biker bar in a small town, I'm probably going to get some pretty gnarly bartenders who can be rude to you. That's what I want. We're all going to cuss. We're going to comp some drinks and throw stuff. There might be some fights. I'm going to prepare for that. I'm not going to go against brand here and be like, you guys, you're all going to behave. Nobody's going to cuss in this biker bar. Craziness. So the culture helps everybody to know what to expect. And we've gone so far as to... Actually, we'll get to that in a second. I'm going to leave that. Okay. So Optimal Company Health, we want to prioritize company-wide, brand-aligned culture. And here's the point of culture. It's a bit business, and it's a wonderful thing, which is high job satisfaction. Culture is not actually about feeling good. It's about our staff and ourselves liking what we do. So when you have a good culture, a good sign of that, Ashconn and Graham and Jake have an amazing culture, your staff just loves coming to work. Does it mean they're never going to have a problem? Of course not. Does it mean that there won't be somebody unruly that you need to deal with a separate way? Of course not. But the goal is for them to really be like, man, I love working here. You guys respect me. We know how to talk about things. I have a great time. First steps to lasting company health are to identify the qualities of your company culture. So pick some words, three to five, and make sure that your staff understands that. Talk to them about it. Don't just guess that they're on your page. It's really cool to be able to align with stuff that way as a staff member and say, I know what to do when I come in here. I'm empowering, welcoming, and approachable. Awesome. Develop pride of ownership on all levels. So as Mike said, when somebody walks into your space and they see your staff, that person, according to the person walking in, that person is the owner in some way. So we want them to, the staff member, to feel like, wow, I understand what this means to be, in some ways, an owner of this place while you're not around. I'm going to do an awesome job. How do I do that? Leadership must set the example at all times, especially in moments of conflict. This is the second time I've talked about conflict, something I've experienced in a lot of the companies I've helped is that conflict is the big tear down. You don't know how to do it. So it's a great time to stand for whatever your words are, let's say in my case, approachable, welcoming. I'm going to do that there. All right. Second to last, we're getting a little nitty gritty here. This is structure. You notice we were sort of esoteric there for a little moment. Now we're going to get specific into structure. So structure is how the roles, power, and responsibilities are assigned, controlled, and coordinated within the company. Funny example here, I have this relationship with my girlfriend and the dishes. We know who's responsibility it is, and that way we can enjoy our time. It's the same for your staff. Mike, where were you with pain point? There was no clear directive at all of the responsibilities and the tasks for everybody at the company. Everyone was responsible for doing everything around there, and including me. And there was no clear focus by anyone on the team because everyone was doing everything. And the problem is that without these definitions, metrics that people can have to know what they're responsible for and what it really looks like when they're doing a good job, they couldn't excel in what they're doing. I mean, everybody wants to do a really good job in what they're doing, but they have to know what that good job looks like in order to be able to strive for that. Yeah, small places that might show up are things like even incentives. We have an incentive program for our employees as a team for sales. We don't do an individual because that breeds competition, and for us that's not on brand. But as a team, they get to help each other. Cool. Mike, what's the takeaway that you'd like your fellow owners or prospective owners to have? That just a flat organization doesn't work. There has to be some kind of structure in place so that everybody knows whose responsibility is what within the organization. And this goes back to the culture thing and communication as well. Who they need to talk to about certain things, who is responsible for the operations in the company, who is responsible for employee grievances to be able to deal. And even all the way down to me, I do not want to run around to my 20 float guides and give them instruction about how I want them to behave or something that needs to change. And through having this structure, I'm able to either go to the executive director and say, this is something that I want to see you make happen within the company, or go directly to my director of operations and say, hey, let's see what we can do about getting this implemented. And then he has his structure that he goes through so that it filters down to everyone in the company. And everybody in the company knows what to expect. When I go to work, they know that I'm not going to be pulling them aside and saying, hey, why aren't the towels folded in the proper way? Because I just don't do that anymore. This is a very big deal. This point that he just said is a very big deal. So if you've got more than two or three employees figuring out how you are when you show up in this space is a big deal. So Mike needs to be able to enjoy his floats. And his staff needs to be able to enjoy helping him have his float. If they suddenly feel like, oh, no, that he might yell at me or say, there's a piece of paper there. I tried so hard today and now I messed up. And for Mike himself to go in and think, I might see something. Now he knows. He can see it. He can put it somewhere. Give it to me. Now Brandon, who I said mentioned before, to take care of it and we'll do that. And the employees feel super safe when Mike is there. It's a classic problem for companies. They feel unsafe when the owner is around, despite the owner's best intent. Ah, and I should say for a heart-based enterprise, which I'm going to guess everybody is in here because they had a passion about helping people. The tendency is to say, let's make this an equal situation. It is not. It's not healthy either. They need to look to you and you need to look to them and be accountable to each other. So we do have a two-way communication there in terms of the structure. Optimal company health here is aim all organizational elements at elite productivity and efficiency. So the changes you're making in structure, protocols, et cetera. If they are efficient, awesome. If they are not, throw it out. Just make it that fast. Just nope, not efficient. Also, is it productive? So if my staff, if I'm doing protocols that they're just tearing their hair out, like this is just too complicated, then it's too complicated. Change it. Help them be productive. First steps to lasting company health, establish a clear chain of command and accountability. Who to talk to about what? Who's responsible for what? On whose shoulders something falls. Explicit, clear and efficient protocols. I told you this was technical stuff. Policies and governing, that govern responsibilities. Those are in place. And this is one of my favorites. Identify what needs to be done as a whole. You're the leader. You need to see the whole business. Put the team members in position to succeed according to their strengths and their desire. As much as possible. Get creative with that. So we moved away from the traditional sort of general manager model because that wasn't how it worked for us with the staff we had and also with what the building needed. We have a director of operations and mind you, that title, it's a wonderful title. The person who has it is proud of that title. Great, go for it. We're all making it up. We have a director of experience as well. A wonderful, wonderful guy who has very good sense of the feel of a place. An 11 tank center where we get, oh my gosh, I almost want to be like, Brandon, what's the number? 10,000 people a month or something like that, isn't it? We do about 2,500 floats a month. 2,500. Still 2,500 floats. A month. You need to manage the space's energy. So many moving parts, so many employees, they know they got to go to Nico. And he knows he gets to be in the rhythm of handling all of that. He gets to have that flow. And he's amazing because he's responsible not only for our clients' experience within the center, but also our staff's experience while they're at work and with their interaction with our brand and everything else, which is super empowering for them. And if that's not something that you can do at your place or you think it's too small, it is something to consider as somebody having that responsibility. Maybe it's just you and another partner. Well, who's taking care of our energy? It's a real thing to think about. And the last pillar. All right, the bookend. We went from mindset super woo-woo, super, you know, be opportunity and obstacle into straight up money. Piggy bank is there. Definition of finance is the capital structure of your business and the tools you use. So it's not just the money. It's the tools you use to analyze that structure to make capital related decisions. How does my money come in? How does it go out? What's it going to look like in a few years? We had no idea of our financial picture. There was no budget in place. There was no projections for profitability or break even analysis. We had no metrics for the effectiveness of our advertising. We kept throwing money at ads, hoping that it would bring people in the door without getting the returns to justify. And free had become a far too commonly used four letter F word at just foot. I remember that word. Now it's complimentary. But you might like free. That might be great for you. It's just when you use it and how you use it. So this is another point in there that is dependent on people working at below market value. Common for passion driven projects. I just don't have the money to pay people correctly. You got to budget that in and figure out a way because it'll bring. I also happen to believe in manifesting what you put out there. It's a responsibility for you to pay people correctly and there's another reason for that that we'll get into at the very end of this pillar. Mike, the takeaway for your fellow owners. This is actually another slide that I really want to read because and it's not up there. But the budgeting and the financial metrics for your company are not a luxury that you can do as an afterthought. They are a critical foundation to understanding and planning for the health of your business and maintaining it. You need to have a budget and it has to be accurate and specific. You know, change it every month in our budgeting meeting. We modify it every month to what we need but it has to be there because it really allows for planning and proactivity instead of just being reactive to the bills that are coming in. And by doing that, you're able to really reduce your anxiety because you know where the money is going to go. You have your emergency fund set aside for when the salt monster comes and you're able to really be proactive with your spending instead of reactive. Yeah, knowing what's coming. It's reality and you're going to make it work. That's my approach. I know you're going to make it work. If you see it, you'll make it work. If you don't see it and you hide it under the bed and it keeps on growing, you're going to fall off the bed. That was weird. I'm okay with that. Okay, so for optimal company health, commit. As I said, there's going to be two times you hear commit. The most woo-woo part, commit. The most technical part, commit. Solvency. You don't have debts. Long-term viability. I can keep this going pretty easily. You might ask yourself at this point, I don't have those answers. Am I going to fail now? We don't know. You need to look at that. As primary on the journey to maximizing company value. And this is the goal of all of this. Whether or not you sell the company ever, whatever you want to do with it, should you ever need to or want to sell your company, you put it in a place where it's at maximum value. If you've done your P&Ls, you've done your profit projections, if your budget is good, so many ways that people looking at your company for purchase or investment to partner up with you are going to say they know what they're doing. They've confronted the reality of this business. I want to do this too. I know what's going to happen. So first steps to lasting company health. Budget everything all the time. Do not relax on this. Mike and I were joking this morning. We had a couple of extra beers a couple nights ago. We're going to have to balance that out on the budget, but we do get that specific, actually. Create an emergency unforeseen capital expenditures fund. If you don't have one, don't panic. Start saving for it. I recommend three months of fixed operating costs. In a bank, you don't touch. You have a big unforeseen expense. Like, I don't know. Our air conditioning goes out in the middle of summer for 11 tanks. Twice. We've been building that cash. Thank God that we've done that. Or any other form of universe. Pay appropriately. This is one of my favorites. Pay appropriately so that when the staff moves on, they can be easily replaced. That's a hard word for some heart-based business people. I'm super heart-based. If you met me outside of here, I'd just hug you and you might be like, how is he smiling? Is that weird? No, I like that. But the fact is, we want people to, at best, move on because they've found their purpose, they've found the next step in their life. That's amazing, but we can't replace them if we're going back to that thing where we can't quite afford to pay them the right amount. Now we have to go look for somebody else who we can't afford to pay the right amount. So build that into your budget so they can be easily replaced by equal or better staff. And that doesn't take away from how much you love them and you're connected to them. It helps your business. Okay, so that's it, guys. See ya. No, that's seven pillars. Mike and I would like to offer one more thought. This is one where we're going to actually just read it off the slide. This is a very chunk like that because if you forget anything else, we'd like you to remember this. Oh, look at that, there was one more thing. This is important, so I'll say it. Hold to the order of cash flow out. When you're thinking about how you're spending your money, three things. Operating cost is number one, debt is number two, distributions is number three. Does this mean if you do distributions before debt, your business is going to go down and that strategist guy said I was going to die? No, you'll be okay. It's just not healthy for your business to have debts on the books. When something happens, you're going to lose market value. Okay, so the overall takeaways, Mike, go for it. Even when your company is healthy, it can always be doing better. Seek out coaching. Myself, I'm always striving to do better in my life and that's why I have both personal consultants that I work with and professional personal coaches. And it may be easy to think that because of the resources or the size of just float or the fact that we're in Los Angeles or whatever, that this is possible for someone like me to get help from consultants and coaches and whatnot, but it's not. Like that's completely incorrect and the most important investment that you can make in your business is on yourself. Absolutely. For me, don't wait for your business to get sick before you take action to keep it healthy. Yeah, it's far harder bringing something back from the brink than it is just doing it right. This guy knows we brought a zombie to life. It was amazing. Achieving optimal profit and quality of life. I keep on throwing quality of life in there because ROI in the business world is usually talking about profit, but ROI in the real world in our lives is about quality of life. To do that through your business, you need an ongoing commitment to company health. So schedule, in my world, you schedule an assessment every quarter of your seven pillars. It's going to take you, let's say, four to eight hours. Get the people you trust with you do an honest assessment. You might be in a great place and go, man, we're just good on everything. Fantastic. But do that. That way you avoid being overwhelmed and overworked and you get to stay proactive in charge and motivated so that you can enjoy the work you do and the incredible impact that you all make. I love being a part of this business. I love it. It's so wonderful. And you get to love the life that you have created. Yeah, and these fundamentals are awesome because they really apply to anyone and anywhere in business. Like Andreas came in from the food and beverage industry having run a bar and done several other things before. And it was because we were able to take these principles and then I was able to apply them to floating and we were able to work together to do that throughout the organization that we were able to make these fundamental changes. So I really hope that this stuff helps you guys. Yeah. And so just a quick exit here before we go. Thank you. Please feel free to connect with us directly at mikeatjustfloat.com and Andreas at justfloat.com. If you'd like a copy of the PDFs, I also have some supplementary notes there. Just write to me at Andreas at justfloat.com. And finally, we of course have the Q&A in the Malibu room at the end of this session. Thank you all so much for having us here and for your patience. Thank you, Mike, for being so transparent with everybody. Please go ahead. Absolutely. I'd just like to take an extra moment and thank my wife for her commitment and dedication and being with me. And it's been a long road. So thank you, baby. I love you. Thanks, everyone. Thanks.