By his 35th birthday Mike Michalowicz 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.

Then he started all over again, driven to find better ways to grow healthy, strong companies. Among other innovative strategies, Mike created the “Profit First Formula”, a way for businesses to ensure profitability from their very next deposit forward.

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, Surge, The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, which BusinessWeek deemed “the entrepreneur’s cult classic.”

In this episode you’ll learn:

• [01:07] What does Mike’s day-to-day look like and what he’s involved with?
• [02:24] How Parkinson’s law affects our decision making process in business?
• [03:50] How entrepreneurs can be at fault when being run by emotions instead of logic?
• [04:37] How Ramit Sethi uses artificial constraints to control his finances?
• [06:00] How Mike thinks about niches and mass appeal?
• [08:15] Why did Mike use his books to target the mass market?
• [10:40] What does Mike’s process look like when he goes towards a new niche?
• [12:33] “Sustainability only comes from profitability.” – Mike
• [12:57] Mikes process on measuring the potential market size (2,000-20,000 rule)
• [15:12] How did Mike overcome his ‘functional depression’ and what drives him now?
• [18:35] How fast did Mike spend his money after he sold his business?
• [20:34] How is Mike controlling his finances right now?
• [22:25] How to implement the ‘profit first’ method?