May 15, 2026 – WorkMoney Carrie Joy Grimes and Greatest Hits Mike Michalowicz

Intro 1 0:04
Broadcasting from am and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration award winning school for startups radio where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk or passion. Jim Beach,

Jim Beach 0:26
hello everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for startups radio. I hope you’re out there taking the reins of life and holding it in your hands really tight and letting that horse ride, just going out there and riding life and trying the opportunities that present themselves to you, and going to the restaurants you don’t like to see if they’ve gotten better, and talking to the people you used to hate to see if they’ve changed, and looking at new products to see if you can figure out a way to make them better today and figure out a business for them. I just want all of us entrepreneurs to be the ones that are doing what everyone else is not doing. We are working harder than them. We’re saving the country better than them, and we deserve to be special, and we should get recognized for what we are giving back. Got two fantastic guests to share with you today. First up, we have Carrie Joy Grimes. She is going to talk about work and money. She has a website called Work money, where 9 million users hang out every day. Unbelievable, really impressive. And then we’re going to have a greatest hits with one of the most important thought leaders in entrepreneurship. I will let you discover who that is in just a few minutes. But great show. And thanks for being with us.

Intro 1 1:56
Introducing the real environmentalists, the bold new book by Jim beach, it’s not about activists, politicians or professors. It’s about the entrepreneurs, real risk takers, building cleaner, smarter solutions, not for applause, but for profit. The entrepreneurs in the book aren’t giving speeches. They’re in labs, factories and offices, cleaning the past and building clean products for the future. The real environmentalists is available now because the people saving the planet aren’t the ones you think go to Amazon and search for real environmentalist. Thank you.

Jim Beach 2:27
We are back and again. Thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce our first guest today. Please welcome Carrie Joy Grimes to the show. She is the founder and CEO of work money and nonprofit, national organization devoted to helping Americans lower cost, increase incomes and build financial stability. I think that’s the formula, cost, down, income, up, better off, right? Work, money has had an amazing connection with 9 million members, which is amazingly impressive, and they have the tools and resources that have helped people save over $2 billion Carrie joy has just released a new book called The Joy of money, how to do more feel better with what feel better about Your money no matter how much you have Carrie. Carrie, Joy. CJ, welcome to the show. How you doing?

Carrie Joy Grimes 3:27
I’m so great. Jim, thanks. I love being here. I love the way that you think about entrepreneurship, and it really mirrors how I think about money.

Jim Beach 3:34
Awesome. How do you think about money?

Carrie Joy Grimes 3:38
Well, you know, I don’t think personal finance is about being a math genius or a finance bro or a cowboy investor. It’s getting your mind right and understanding the math and then running the system. It’s you don’t nobody needs to invent a new way. We can all literally copy what works and just work it better.

Jim Beach 3:56
I love the copy idea that makes a lot of sense to me. Are there some rules out there that are copyable, that are safe to copy,

Carrie Joy Grimes 4:04
I definitely think so. The one rule that I think most of us skip over is getting your mind right, just like an athlete, does. You know when you picture yourself doing better and then you got to go and do better. Money is math plus motivation or feelings, and usually we focus on one side of that equation. You know what? I mean, we’ll be like, Oh, well, this is what the math says. I’m going to do it. And then we end up deep, fixing ourselves or kind of coming in from the side. I mean, who here listening hasn’t gone to target or the grocery store for something and come out with like, 10 other things that weren’t in the budget or on the list, or in our minds, like

Jim Beach 4:41
that business, that’s how they keep the Cheerios. You know, you’re not you’re there to get Cheerios, and then you get Frosted Flakes and Apple Jacks too.

Carrie Joy Grimes 4:51
That’s right, they count on it. And so the financial system is the same way people count on us, not understanding the motivation and the feelings part. Of how money works. And so I always say money is math and feelings. Get your mind right. First, understand why you’re doing stuff, and once you understand a why you want things to be more secure for yourself financially, then be how you’re going to do it. That’s your budget. And then there’s a whole bunch of other very normal mathy things that are that are not that complicated. So the first rule is always know why you’re doing it, and know what might get in your way, you know, in the feelings part. And the second part is that, and this part is a little controversial, I’m so curious what you’re going to say, because you are somebody like me, where you have relatively non standard opinions about things. I’ll say this money is not rocket surgery. It’s pretty easy. You got to have a budget. You got to spend less than you make. And there are a series of things. Have an emergency fund. Do that. First, make sure that you have a 401 K match. You take the 401 K match with an employer. Do not get in to high interest credit card debt. Pay it off. There’s no investment you can make that’s going to earn you more than you’re paying every month on your credit cards. And then make sure you get up to three to six in this economy, I say nine months of savings, savings in a high interest savings account, not an investment account. And then the other thing I say that sometimes surprises people is make sure you are maxing out your tax advantage retirement accounts. This stuff sounds pretty boring, but it’s not. You’re going to make more money doing that than anything else, and only after that should you be thinking about cowboy investments or putting your money right into the stock market, et cetera, et cetera.

Jim Beach 6:29
What about adding another one only paying for college tuition for classes that make sense and are government funded in some way? I’m a big fan of forcing government education on kids as well.

Carrie Joy Grimes 6:43
Oh, I love this. Say more about that. Like, talk about what you mean. I’m a huge fan of this. I think we’re I think cost of education is outrageous. And also, if you look at lifetime earnings against what you spend, it doesn’t actually pencil out to spend like, a house’s worth of education on, you know, on like, a college degree.

Jim Beach 7:02
Yeah, I went to Middlebury, which, at the time, claimed to be the second most expensive college in the country, and they were proud of that. And it was, you know, at that time, it was 50,000 I’m sure it’s up to 80 or something, $1,000 a year. Now, I lied to my parents, Carrie and told them for a year and a half that I still had more classes to take when I didn’t, I could have graduated a year and a half earlier than I did. I spent another $75,000 to stay on campus because I wasn’t ready to graduate yet. I mean, who the hell wants to graduate early from college? That’s the dumbest thing you can do, right when you’re parents. And so I paid for another 75,000 learned nothing. You know, I don’t think I learned anything during college. I don’t remember a single thing I learned during college. I learned a lot during high school and a lot during MBA, and a lot during life. But in college you can, you know, go for years without going to class and still get B’s and get by, which I did successfully. You know, I never went to class and having ruined all that money myself, I just, I just have no respect for any of my prodigy to actually go to class and spend the money effectively, which I do think they did. Actually, I’ve got two already through college. They were very, very good about actually going to those class things. But why pay $50,000 or $75,000 a year when you can pay 15 and get the exact same textbook, exact same PowerPoint slides? I just don’t think that’s worth the money you know you can get. I

Carrie Joy Grimes 8:45
do know

Jim Beach 8:45
billion time better education at Georgia State than you can get at Harvard.

Carrie Joy Grimes 8:50
I totally know what you mean. I went to Northern Illinois University. I like to joke around and say it’s a state school with a direction in its name, very August. But I had a great education, and the math really does bear out what you’re saying, that lifetime earnings, when you look at all the schools, this study is from a few years ago. Now, I haven’t seen that they didn’t want in about five or six years. But last time I checked lifetime earnings, don’t don’t pencil out. You don’t make more depending on where you go. You make more depending on what you do with it afterwards. And that’s the thing that I think is really, really interesting, especially for going to ask your opinion about this in the in the kind of the volatile economy that we have today, where it’s kind of hard to know up from down, and it’s and I have a 19 year old in college years are out. Mine is she’s just finishing her first year. And I will admit, I get a lot of questions from my listeners and my readers about, what do I tell my kids to study right now? Like, what do we do in today’s economy? And I always say back, well, if they have a particular thing that they really care about, you know, there’s obvious there were, there were some obvious trades not too long ago, right? Like computer science or law lawyers or doctors. Think a lot of that’s feeling a little bit unsure for people. And what I tell my kid is, is grit. You know, like find something that makes sense, you know, preferably not things that have no, no no career path. But the most important thing I want you to learn how to do is work hard. Because when you get out of college with a college degree, the chances are good. As long as you’re willing to work hard, we can figure out a path for you, especially if you’re willing to think about entrepreneurship. And so I wanted to ask you what your opinion is in this economy, what how are you what are you hearing from your listeners, and how are you talking to folks about starting businesses? Is it different than it would have been like five or 10

Jim Beach 10:30
years ago? Well, I think it’s a lot easier. Every day it gets easier because the resources get better. I’m totally addicted to you. Chat GPT and, yeah, I think that the business advice that it gives there is the best I’ve ever seen. It’s better than what I would do. You know, I use it all the time. So you type in, I want to start a dog kennel in Texas, and eight hours later, it’s still asking you provocative questions that make you think and then helping you do the research to find the answer, you know. And so it’s incredible at that next question, would you like me to suggest a next step? You know, yes. And then would you like me to do research on that? You know, if you just keep doing their prompts, eight hours later, you’ll have a 20 page business plan that’s absolutely gorgeous. And then the money part, I think, is easier than before. You know, there’s just more people doing more programs. There’s better places to get money. And then plus, a lot of people are figuring out that raising money is a bad thing. I think that message is finally getting out there, that the old fashioned way of bootstrapping and that kind of stuff works a lot better a lot of times, and

Carrie Joy Grimes 11:50
it sure is better when you don’t have to give away the thing that you’re building to somebody else before it’s been a success.

Jim Beach 11:56
Yes. So that’s one of the things I’m proudest about this radio show, is that we’ve had, I’m just going to pull numbers out of my mind 1000 guests that have bootstrapped 750 industries, and could tell you how to bootstrap a business in your industry, you know. And so that’s what I want our index about. You know, we work really hard to keep our index up to date, and much better than search. You know, we have search, of course, but we also build an index by hand for a reason, so that it’s easy to find Joey Tatum, who bootstrapped a restaurant empire with $5,000 he built a restaurant empire with $5,000 and you know what? It’s coolest thing that he owns now Carrie the ATM at the University of Georgia stadium parking lot. He

Carrie Joy Grimes 12:51
went from a fight, he went for $5,000 and built himself a restaurant empire. And he gets to own the ATM of the stadium at the Georgia at the Georgia stadium parking lot.

Jim Beach 13:04
It makes $20,000

Carrie Joy Grimes 13:07
I was just gonna say, yeah, that’s that is fantastic. And you know, this is the thing. As somebody who runs a big nonprofit with 9 million people, our whole goal is to make sure that folks have access to the information they need to build more financial security. So the book that we wrote, which is called The Joy money, the book is really about, you don’t have to, here’s the here’s the formula you can copy individually in your life. It’s not rocket surgery do this. And the part I love the most is I’m thinking a lot about, how do we as everyday folks get together, and you’re so right about this that the the like, the tools are available to all of us to invent the businesses that we wish existed. But that’s why work, money exists. So I wrote this book. It’s like, this is the thing I wanted to have. I wanted to have an AARP for money. That was the thing I copied. I was like, there’s an organization out there when you’re worried. My mom got old, and as she was eight, before she passed away, obviously she was aging, and there were the place I turned to figure out, what are my options. How do I navigate this? You know, it can get complicated, and you don’t want to have to do the math all the time on your own. There’s places you can go to figure it out. And I just figured, well, there should be something like that for money, for personal finance, and people should not only get figure out how to deal with their money individually. Like, okay, here’s how I can manage my investments or my bank account or whatever. But also, like, why can’t we invent the businesses that we want to have, that we can trust, that we’re creating for each other? You know? So like, work money is about to launch a bill negotiation service that people can trust, because it’s because you’re just to your point the tools to understand how to make business plans and how to actually put things together. It’s, it’s, it’s increasingly more accessible for folks. I love that you’re thinking of it that way,

Jim Beach 14:46
and especially for minorities. You know, there are millions of dollars available only for black men. There are millions of dollars only available for female veterans. There are tons of niche funds out. There now that really do level the playing field. So, yeah, I’m just a big believer that now is the Golden Age, and as things of entrepreneurship and as things change, there’s just more opportunity, you know? So, yeah, that’s right, when you have changed times of a massive change, like we’re going to be suffering through now. Now’s a great time to to expand and to grow into, yeah,

Carrie Joy Grimes 15:30
that’s right.

Jim Beach 15:30
You know, if you were a Coca Cola executive who had a hobby making chainsaw art, you should start a chainsaw art business or education company right now teaching chainsaw art, you’d make more money than at Coke now,

Carrie Joy Grimes 15:47
that’s, that’s, that’s a very vivid example that makes a ton of sense.

Jim Beach 15:52
What do you think about carve the bears out of a tree?

Carrie Joy Grimes 15:55
Oh, yeah, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna admit

Carrie Joy Grimes 15:57
you that

Jim Beach 15:58
country cousins. I mean, I will

Carrie Joy Grimes 15:59
say,

Carrie Joy Grimes 15:59
I’m not gonna admit to you that I may have gotten into a fight with my husband and with my husband about one of us wanting that and the other one being like, No, it’s too tacky. And I’ll just let you imagine which one of us was the tacky one. And it may have been me. That is a true thing.

Jim Beach 16:13
I love a good bear out of a 10 foot bear out of a tree carved with a chainsaw by a man with no teeth. I

Carrie Joy Grimes 16:22
want to know who doesn’t love that. I want to meet that person, and I want to educate them about the value of that kind of art. And here’s my question for you, do you think? Okay, so in this so what I’m advising a lot of my listeners to do and my readers is to is to think, is to build as much of a financial cushion as they can right now because of the volatility that we all see and feel, and I think that in so doing, it creates that creates more opportunities for more entrepreneurs, like when I built my business, I left a stable job, but I had a nine I had nine months of savings that I could use so I knew what my red zone was, and I didn’t raise that much money. I just raised a little bit of money, and then I and then I and then I started working really hard, and then I built and built and raised and built and raised and built. Then they got really big, really fast. But I don’t think I would have been willing to take to do the grind and take that risk. Risk is the wrong word in this case, because I had enough money and a clear plan, but it’s it was unknown, and so I’m really curious how you are thinking. Like, what do you advise folks, entrepreneurs, people who want who have ideas in this climate? Are you? Are you more of a like, if you have the idea, just go for it. Or do you advise people to like, I’m pretty sure I know what you’re going to say, but I want to just double check, like, get your personal money right. Creates more entrepreneurs. And it’s the kind of thing that lets you take bigger swings and have bigger ideas. That’s kind of what I’ve been telling my folks. What do you think in this economy?

Jim Beach 17:46
I love your advice. I think that there’s, it’s just like the tree you have to have planted it yesterday. So I say, start the business now, regardless of anything, and that if you survive this, you’ll be incredibly well situated to survive the recovery that happens after that. You’ll thrive during the recovery and explode if you can build the systems that get you through the hard time that we’re going to have. Now, I have never been conservative in my life in terms of money. And for the first time ever, Carrie, I am paying attention to my spending and cutting back and paying attention to the power bill,

Carrie Joy Grimes 18:35
because

Jim Beach 18:36
I believe that the next one is going to be a bad one.

Carrie Joy Grimes 18:41
Yeah, and

Jim Beach 18:42
so yeah, doing everything I can to personally reduce my, my personal expenses, and kind of pulling back a little bit austerely right now, which I hate to say, then the economy definitely tanks.

Carrie Joy Grimes 18:58
No, I’ll tell you, you’re, you’re not alone, man. I mean, we talked to weekly talk to millions and millions of people and at work, buddy, and this is the story. And this is not a story of just folks who are struggling to make ends meet or living paycheck to paycheck, even folks like me, like you, who are doing very well. We’re all ratcheting back a little bit. We’re all increasing our savings cushions. And I think it’s this. I think that that’s not wrong. I think given what I’m looking at, you’re looking at, yeah, I don’t like what I see happening now. I don’t like the I don’t, yeah, I don’t like kind of the way the market feels like it’s really propped up by we I think we all know when you look at the market, it’s, it’s, it’s when the market is doing this well, and people are feeling this uncertain, that’s not a good sign. Do you know what I mean? That’s not a good sign.

Jim Beach 19:47
Well, the underlying fundamentals of the economy are strong, still, it’s just right. We’re all so scared of what Trump will do next, and even the Trump supporter will say that, you know, they’re clearly. Getting ready to attack Cuba. They’re sending that signal very clearly. And you know, I think it’s just the uncertainty of the political and cultural environment that we all live in. Things that I was so sure of five years ago that I would never even debate them are now being debated, and that produces uncertainty all around when, when you tell me that I don’t know what a girl is, and I’ve been spending 55 years studying girls Carrie and I now told that the definition is even wrong. Oh, my God, you know. I mean, you know that there’s just too many fundamentals being challenged right now?

Carrie Joy Grimes 20:39
I think, you know, I think the uncertainty problem here is very, very real. And I, and the thing that I notice is that I is that the the way that we I am 50, so, you know, this is, this is not my first rodeo, but I’m also not 80. You know what I mean? And the way that I think I think I just sort of there were some fundamentals of the way that we made decisions in our economy, the way that we could count on a set of principles that we would adhere to. By we, I mean the government, I mean private sector businesses. I mean the big we, and watching some of the those assumptions just be proven wrong. There are things we will do. It both creates some opportunity in the economy for some folks. But I’m going to say I think the uncertainty turns out to have been a much, much bigger cost than I think any of us would have predicted, and I would I’m looking forward to a time when things are quite, not quite this volatile, like I don’t think we’ve seen the full impact of the closure of the Straits of Hormuz. There’s so many goods and services that come out of that region that we have not yet seen the full the full price increases from I don’t like the the holding of my breath to see what tariffs are coming next. I think that the This isn’t that money is math, but feelings part. You know, I think that happens for individual people, but all individual people, but it also happens at the market level, and I’m watching all of us restrict our spending. I think your point you just made earlier is really smart, that if we all keep in a crouched position and become more conservative with our money, I’ve also not been a typically conservative person with my money, if we keep doing that, we are going to see economic effects that none of us like, and I so that’s part of why in this moment, I’m doing a lot of what you’re doing when I’m telling folks save up a bunch of money. Just, you know, be careful in this moment, give yourself a cushion. But also look for the opportunities to take a swing, because in this kind of volatility also comes opportunity to redo stuff. You know, I’m very excited about look same things that you are, like the opportunities with all the new AI tools, I think we can really take a lot of advantage of those. And I also think I just wanted to ask you this too. I also hear what you’re saying, which is for the coming disruption, you know, like the economic disruption. How are you what are you thinking about? What you see coming, not just in the volatility sense of the market, but also the like the economic transition that I think we might be facing.

Jim Beach 23:06
Yeah, I think that this is probably going to be bigger than a lot of the others. Either they told us the internet was going to transition and it just created millions of jobs, and we told, you know, even the printer, they told us printer was going to save millions of trees. But you know what I print with every revision, and I think most people do, and so I print a ton more than I used to, because I want the most up to date version in my hand, and it’s, you know. So I don’t think that, you know, the predictions are always true. The AI one, though, I think will create lots of jobs people running AI, but I do think that you need to ladder up a little bit the and you pointed this out earlier, the CS degree is no longer the security that it used to be. But, you know, someone’s got to run the AI. So, you know, I think that

Carrie Joy Grimes 24:00
that’s right,

Jim Beach 24:00
the technology degrees are still the future sales, you know. So is another great security item, you know. And then consumer products, you know, I like staying consumer products, because people are always going to need to eat and need linens and, you know, trash bags and stuff, you know. So I certainly think that choosing your industry is incredibly important, and that you need to double down on your decision and make sure that you come up with a good idea. I think now, though it’s ever, never been more critical, if you want to excel, you need to take your life into your own hands, and you need to make your own decisions. And that means entrepreneurship. I think that it’s harder and harder to win the game as a lawyer, you know, because that’s going to be affected by AI tremendously. That’s. Me, I think that you know, it’s forcing you to be an entrepreneur. If you want to stand out in the crowd, you want to be the one different at the 25th reunion for high school, this is what you have to do.

Carrie Joy Grimes 25:13
So, oh, that’s really well said. That’s really well said, I’m going to make my daughter listen to this episode of your show, because she never listens to me, but she’ll listen to you. So I’m going to just be like, Hey, here’s check out this one, and then she’ll roll her eyes because she’ll hear my voice, but I think that’s a great lesson for

Jim Beach 25:27
her. I like to make my kids remember, you know, there’s only one of the 10 Commandments that comes with any sort of gift or reward. You know, everything is, Do not murder. That’s not very exciting. But there’s one commandment that comes with a gift. You know what that is, Carrie,

Carrie Joy Grimes 25:44
tell me,

Jim Beach 25:45
honor your mother and father and you receive long life. That’s

Carrie Joy Grimes 25:51
right. Nobody remembers the second half of that.

Carrie Joy Grimes 25:53
Right? Sorry,

Speaker 1 25:54
nobody remembers the second half

Jim Beach 25:55
honor your mother and father. And

Carrie Joy Grimes 25:58
that’s right.

Jim Beach 25:58
You know, it’s very clear that you honor your parents as an audition for the way you’re going to honor God. And you know, parents need to make kids understand that better. My millennial age kids, I don’t know what generation, Gen Z or whatever, the my kids that are over 25 ish, I think you’ve done a really poor job, as has the generation at understanding some of the basic moral code of our society, you know? Oh,

Carrie Joy Grimes 26:32
I think that’s really interesting. It’s funny. My job.

Jim Beach 26:35
We’ll give you a finite example, and then I’ll shut

Carrie Joy Grimes 26:38
up and let

Jim Beach 26:39
you talk a family funeral. You know, it’s inconceivable to me, inconceivable. But Hamilton was the same night.

Carrie Joy Grimes 26:52
Oh, I hear you, buddy. That is a very concrete example,

Jim Beach 26:56
conceivable to me.

Carrie Joy Grimes 26:57
Yeah, no, I hear that on the concrete example. You know, it’s funny, where

Jim Beach 27:01
thoughts on the youngers?

Carrie Joy Grimes 27:03
Well, we’re big. Fourth commitment, fourth, fourth commandment. People in our household too. You know, the father and mother people. And I will say this, and this is a weird take on this, I have never been more grateful that my daughter is interested in the humanities in this moment. Because I think that part of what we’re going to see with AI adoption is the need to and I think we’ve, we’ve been seeing, we saw this with the rise of the of the internet and then social media, you know, where, where things just technologists just move so fast. And then we are, you know, the companies that own that tech and move it around, kind of beg pardon, not permission, but it has these incredible social impacts on all of us. And I love that my daughter is really thinking through how to make meaning of things. And that’s this moment I just feel like the technology we’re in, the economic moment we’re in, we have a chance as a as a country, to really decide how to make meaning. Like, who are we? What do we want? How should this future go? And I couldn’t agree with you more that there’s been something has frayed at the edges over these last few decades. And that’s when I think about the AI transition. You know, I think a lot about, again, social media, the internet adoption, the industrial revolution and these things. The Industrial Revolution took a long time. AI is happening really fast, and in our lifetimes, I think we might be the only, is probably an overstatement, but the only generation of humans that’s going to see more than one big, huge technological change in their lifetimes. You know what I mean, like, like, back to back. And so I think we have this chance to learn and not repeat the mistakes of just letting things run amok. I what work money wants to do is I want to hold our decision makers accountable to the to the moral and ethical standards that I think we should be already have and should have. And I think that there’s this really interesting, excellent opportunity for us to get together as people, as part of why I built work money, and say, here’s the America that we want. And, you know, I just, I think you and I agree on a bunch of stuff. One of them is Ain’t nobody coming to save us. This isn’t going to happen because somebody comes down from on high and decides for us, like, if we want to sit at the table. We’re making decisions about what kind of place we want to live in. We got to show up and do the work. And I love that AI is giving us an opening to have that kind of a conversation, and with both like Ashley, but also like me, with my kid, you know what I mean? Like, she doesn’t know how to she doesn’t know where she wants to go after college, she’s trying to figure out what her path is. And I think that if there’s a the uncertainty of the time is kind of making an opportunity for a moral and ethical conversation I don’t think we’ve ever had before. Okay,

Jim Beach 29:48
we’re very out of time. Carrie, but I want to add one positive thought at the end, as we run out of time, I believe that entrepreneurs have also solved the environmental crisis. I don’t believe in the world dying from all this stuff anymore. I’m not worried about the environment anymore because I’ve met the entrepreneur who is solving every single problem you can think of. And the government’s not. Academia is not. That’s right, non the government, non government organizations, the NGOs, are not solving the problem. The American entrepreneur is. And so that, I think is a good news. Don’t worry about the world dying, because we’re going to be just fine.

Carrie Joy Grimes 30:32
I’ll add one sentence, which is, America’s entrepreneurs are our most valuable natural resource.

Jim Beach 30:39
There you go.

Carrie Joy Grimes 30:41
There you go. How

Jim Beach 30:41
do we get in touch with you? Find out more. Find out about the book. Find out about work, money, etc.

Carrie Joy Grimes 30:47
Go to the

Jim Beach 30:48
do that again right now.

Carrie Joy Grimes 30:52
Go to the joy of money.com. And or go to work money.org either way, you can order the book and you can sign up and be part of our community.

Jim Beach 31:03
Fantastic. Thank you so very much. Carrie,

Carrie Joy Grimes 31:06
thanks. Jim

Jim Beach 31:07
Grimes, we’d love to have you back. You were great. Thanks a lot.

Carrie Joy Grimes 31:10
Really appreciate your time. Bye, folks.

Jim Beach 31:12
We will be right back.

Intro 2 31:25
Olis, oh my gosh, I’d love the opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jim, wow, that’s, that’s, that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question. And, and I don’t have a great answer, that’s a great question. Oh, that is such a loaded question. And that’s actually a really good question. School for startups radio.

Jim Beach 31:48
Welcome back to school for startups radio. I hope today is the day you decide to go change your life and do something interesting with it, instead of sitting on the sofa with a remote in your hands. I’m really excited to introduce you to my next guest. He is a true icon in the entrepreneurial education space. He’s one of the best selling entrepreneurial writers of all time. It’s an incredible honor to introduce Mike. Michael Olis to the show. Mike, how are you doing?

Mike Michalowicz 32:16
I’m doing well. Jim, thanks so much for having me.

Jim Beach 32:19
Well, it’s an honor you have two of the best selling books of all all time for entrepreneurship. Of course, you have the toilet paper entrepreneur, the I love the subtitle, the tell it all guide to cleaning up a business, even if you’re at the end of your role. I love that. And you’ve recently published the Pumpkin Plan, simple strategy to grow a remarkable business in any field. And these are two of the bibles of entrepreneurship. They’re used all over the country. So congratulations on the great success. Before we talk about the books, let’s go way back. Tell us about your first business that you started before you were even 25 years old?

Mike Michalowicz 33:02
Yeah, sure. So my first business was computer networks. In other words, I was a computer guy, and it’s nothing I ever aspired to. But when I graduated out of college, I couldn’t get a job like I thought I would was like a large corporation or something like that, so I got a job at a local computer store working there, and became disenchanted. I was the guy trying to sell a computer and a printer, and while the owner was in the back, you know, presumably making all this money off of my sweat. So three stories, I went out one night with another guy that worked there for some drinks and liquid courage kind of kicked in, and we said, screw this. Let’s go start our own company. So me and this guy next morning, I quit first, he quit second, and we’re off and running, starting a business. And by the way, realize how wrong I was, like I seen the back room. Wasn’t sitting there racing in money. He was doing tons of work in managing the business, handling vendors, managing the cash flow, all the stuff I had no clue about, but I dove into it head first. Dangerously fear drove me forward, and over time, I learned trial by fire. I learned and grew the business, lucky enough to sell it

Jim Beach 34:21
was it painless at the beginning?

Mike Michalowicz 34:24
Was it painless? No pain?

Jim Beach 34:27
Of course it is. It’s, uh, it’s 20 years later now it’s got to be painless in recognition or in hindsight.

Mike Michalowicz 34:34
Yeah, in hindsight. You know, it was the best thing I could have done if I if I put more thought into it. I was scared myself out out of doing it. It was terrifying living in during the process. But, you know, in retrospect, I’m so grateful for that moment.

Jim Beach 34:50
You know, it’s interesting. Mike, I was 100% sure as a MBA student all that, that I was going to become the CEO of coca co. Cola. And after I worked at Coca Cola and literally saved them a billion dollars over 10 years in the Japanese market. Oh my god, saved them a billion dollars, they still decided that I should go play in someone else’s sandbox, because apparently I didn’t play very well with others, and they invited me to leave with a security guard and all. And

Mike Michalowicz 35:24
best

Jim Beach 35:26
thing that ever happened to me because I also started a business at 25 completely dumb. Had no clue. I had never heard the term venture capital or entrepreneur, I don’t think. And the only reason I succeeded was because I was too stupid to know otherwise. So where’d you live during all this time?

Mike Michalowicz 35:48
Yeah, so necessity is the mother of invention. So when starting a business, especially when you’re young, I had no savings, no money and and now I needed any penny I made from my business, I had to use a penny and a half to grow the business. So I was absolutely scraping. My wife and I, we also had a child this time, by the way, and I was married, I got a very early start on life. We bought out least expensive place we could live that was safe. Found a retirement building, major complex that had an area for the retired folks. And there we were, sitting there because we could afford it. It offered an environment that was quiet, and I could work 24 by seven and kind of flourish there. And I think the lesson I’ve learned is that when, when we don’t have the means do something, that simply means there’s a different way of doing it. I don’t think we’re ever stuck. We’ve had to think outside the box. That’s what we did.

Jim Beach 36:52
Mike, one of the interesting things I’ve learned during this show is that, apparently the people of Uganda are the most creative and innovative in the world, because they have so little that they can look at what we would consider trash, think of 22 uses for it that make their life a little bit better, you know. So it is truly the mother of invention. That’s great. I’m surprised the retirement community let you move in with your rambunctious, loud child and etc, etc. I mean, it seems to me like they would have kicked you out.

Mike Michalowicz 37:24
You would think so, but they’ve never been asked before, and maybe that’s another lesson. When we are fearful of asking something because it may send others, we often find out that they’ve never been asked before, and it’s novel to them. I think the next guy that tried that trick, same group said we already been first for novel.

Jim Beach 37:48
right? What was your second business? Mike, my

Mike Michalowicz 37:51
second business was in computer crime investigation, my first company. It took me eight years, but started getting some legs, and I sold it to a private equity group that still has the business today, continues to grow it substantially. But my, my second company was in computer crime investigation. I was watching that TV show, CSI. It was like, That is cool. I wonder who’s doing that in the real world. I want to do that. And I jumped in and did it. And that business timing is everything. And I went in just a year after I started that business, Enron. The Enron trial hit brought computer crime and forensics the forefront. My company actually got engaged for Enron. We did a major investigation as part of the Enron trial, and the business crew just explosive. And a half years later, I was able to sell that one to a fortune 500

Jim Beach 38:42
that’s unbelievable. Mike, you seriously got the idea for a company that you sold in two and a half years to Fortune 500 company. You got that idea by watching CSI,

Mike Michalowicz 38:54
yeah, yeah. I mean, it sounds crazy, but ideas spawn all the time. Questions, yeah, how many of us grasped that idea? So listen, I didn’t go in with no preparation. I mean, I saw CSI, and that was the spark. That’s a cool idea, and

Jim Beach 39:10
that was your entire due diligence, right? Did you watch the rest of the season to finish out your due diligence? Is that?

Mike Michalowicz 39:16
No, no, I didn’t even watch, but I started investigating who’s doing this in the private sector, and there was a dearth, very few doing this. It was all in the public sector, you know, FBI, law enforcement, but not in private sector. And that’s, that’s what spawned the idea. Was watching the show, but, but after some due diligence, clear, there’s an opportunity in the real world.

Jim Beach 39:40
Let’s take that a second further and pursue this idea of creativity. You know, I frequently get asked, Where do you find ideas to start a business, and how did you get the idea for that? And my answer is always, you know, look for a problem and solve a problem. But also, I don’t think that finding an idea. Is the hard part. As a matter of fact, my wife and I have discovered the hardest part is selecting out of the 1000s of ideas that are out there. What do you think about that? Mike,

Mike Michalowicz 40:10
yeah, wow, you nailed it. Jim, I know there’s the popular buzz word right now is pivot. And the concept of pivot, it used to be change. It used to be paradigm shift. I mean, it’s the new term, but it’s change your business, match what customers want and keep changing your business until you find what the customer is consuming. In other words, it’s like you were saying, find a problem and solve it. The thing is, it ignores what I call Alignment. Alignment is our definition of our life’s purpose, our own passion goals. If we change our business to satisfy what others want, but we don’t like it. We hate doing it. It’s a business that’s crippled from the get go, because if, if two companies go in, one company is excited about what they’re doing, the impact they’re having on the world and serving customers. The other ones is trying to get rich, serving customers. When the dark days come, the guys that are just trying to get rich, they give up. They lose the Mojo. They go elsewhere. People that are aligned with their purpose feel motivated the dark periods and can one so align what the customer needs with what you need. That’s how you become successful in finding the right idea.

Jim Beach 41:20
Let me ask you a personal question, Mike, and if you don’t want to answer it, that’s okay. Um, I’m fascinated by entrepreneurial marriages, and I didn’t plan on talking about it, but you mentioned your early marriage. I also got married early and then divorced, and I’ve remarried. My first wife couldn’t stand being an entrepreneurial wife. What are your thoughts on supportive spouses and all of the sort of issues that come with being married and being an entrepreneur. Do you wish that you had gotten married when you were 34 instead of 20 whatever, so that your entrepreneurial story would have been easier?

Mike Michalowicz 41:58
So it’s so funny you ask as literally, my wife has been hired now by organizations speak about this subject. She calls it married to mayhem.

Jim Beach 42:08
Oh, yeah, I want to interview her. Please tell her that I would like her on the show. Next is fascinated by this topic.

Mike Michalowicz 42:16
She’s actually doing a keynote tomorrow about it. That’s hysterical. So here’s, here’s why I do wish. I wish I married my wife earlier. And I can say that boldly and confidently, and it gives me chills, because without my wife, never would have had the success. I could have never achieved the balance in life I didn’t have her, you know, I would have gone, I think, all in on my business so much, where it would become an addiction, beyond a purpose and a drive and maybe even compulsion, it would have been a pure addiction. That’s where I would have burned out moving too much, too intense. The key is my wife. She found this process. There’s a book called The Five Love Language,

Jim Beach 43:00
love it. Oh my god. Mike, one of my favorite books of all time.

Mike Michalowicz 43:04
Oh, Jim, dude, high fiving you from here,

Jim Beach 43:07
yes,

Speaker 2 43:07
from New

Mike Michalowicz 43:08
York City. A big high five.

Jim Beach 43:09
I am a touch guy. It is so important to me, and I’m seeing it in my children. It self replicates too.

Mike Michalowicz 43:18
Oh my gosh. So I’m words of affirmation. My wife is quantity or quality time and physical touch, so you’re saying. And what she found is that she kind of modified the system to work within the entrepreneurial kind of 24 by seven mindset, where work could happen on Sunday night, but then Monday, all of a sudden, some free time opens up, and we’re out on a date together. So she took that and kind of tweaked it to fit into the entrepreneurial landscape. So when it comes to being married to an entrepreneur, I encourage every single spouse get that book. It is a life changing book. And sure, and my wife can give you some tweaks to take it a little bit further, but The Five

Mike Michalowicz 44:00
Love Languages, the foundation, no question.

Jim Beach 44:02
I encourage every couple, every person, to read that book. I learned so much about myself and I let’s digress upon digressions here. Mike, have you read another book by Joe Abraham called entrepreneurial DNA? It talks about the four types of entrepreneurs. There’s builders, opportunists, specialists and innovators. And the point is, if you look at a Doberman Pinscher and then a poodle, those are both dogs, but incredibly dramatic. And if you look at entrepreneurs, you look at Bill Gates, who’s incredibly focused in one industry, and really he’s good at software. And then you look at Branson, who’s good at anything. Those are dramatically different types of entrepreneurial DNA, and that also has huge impacts on your marriage. Have you ever heard of any of this?

Mike Michalowicz 44:53
Yeah, you know, I have not read that book, so I’m making a little note to myself entrepreneurial DNA.

Jim Beach 44:57
I will send you a copy of it and send to. You Joe’s information, because it’s fascinating stuff about this same topic. And again, I don’t mean to digress, but let’s get back. Okay, toilet paper. Let’s talk about

Mike Michalowicz 45:09
toilet paper.

Jim Beach 45:11
Where in the world did that title come up? Talk about the book it has become the the industry Bible. But toilet paper is not a very nice

Mike Michalowicz 45:21
name. No, not very nice. And I’ve been very fortunate. It played out well. And Business Week, they call it the entrepreneurship cult classic.

Mike Michalowicz 45:30
I had a fight to get there. It wasn’t overnight success. The idea of the book was, this is entrepreneurship is not necessarily what we see in the trade rags, like you see the cover of Fortune Magazine, it is Bill Gates. You see go on CNN, you see something about Mark Zuckerberg and his, you know, new billion dollar concept. And there was, I believe, many entrepreneurs say, Hey, I’m gonna start a business, and that’s who I’m going to be. Thing is, those media darlings are the exception. They’re not the rule. Entrepreneurship is generally a fight in the trenches, a lot of hard effort, lot of times you’re banging your head against the wall, and success is far from guaranteed, but the upside is you get to really express who you are through your business. You can achieve significant riches, but it’s not likely to play out like Facebook or Google or Microsoft did. So I wanted to share the quote, unquote, real story of entrepreneurship. And what I thought the perfect analogy was something that everyone grasped, is that three sheet moment now, where you’re sitting there and you got three sheets of toilet paper left. No one gives up. Then, when we all kind of figure a way to navigate that situation. Entrepreneurship is

Jim Beach 46:46
really gross. Mike,

Mike Michalowicz 46:47
what

Jim Beach 46:48
about the entrepreneur who plans? I want to be the entrepreneur who plans, who doesn’t get in that position without an extra role in my hand. How about that?

Mike Michalowicz 46:58
Yeah, yeah. But that’s not the reality. No,

Jim Beach 47:02
it’s

Mike Michalowicz 47:02
not.

Jim Beach 47:03
It’s not

Mike Michalowicz 47:04
the reality. We’ve all been caught in a three sheet situation. We’ve all survived it. And the thing is, that’s how business is. It’s going to catch you off guard at some point. You’re not going to be prepared. And we have two choices. We can give up then and say it’s over, or we can rebel in the fact that we can innovate around it. Entrepreneurial success is around innovation based upon necessity. It’s like the example you gave out of Africa, the less you have, the more opportunity for innovation if you embrace that, that’s where entrepreneurial success starts.

Jim Beach 47:37
All right, pumpkins, let’s talk about your latest book, The pumpkin. Pumpkin, simple strategy to grow a remarkable business in any field, right? Talk about that.

Mike Michalowicz 47:53
So, yeah. So I applied this to my own business, and what the strategy is I found with pumpkin farmers, and not the ordinary guys, but these colossal pumpkin farmers, and the ones that grow like the one ton pumpkins, they changed him the growing process by only a 5% or so. They change a few things, and the pumpkin response is explosive growth. Why study these guys? Just by happenstance, I ran across them and found that when entrepreneurs make these same changes, that the business responds with explosive, organic growth. And I’m not just saying this from studying other entrepreneurs, I applied it to my own companies. That’s what took my forensic company we talked about earlier, to, you know, many millions of dollars of revenue and sold to, if you want to check out the Wall Street Journal, you can see the article, what we sold it for. So I wrote a book about this process of two things you need to change for the company to start moving explosively, and how to get yourself out of that rat race of working 24 by seven and start having the business run itself.

Jim Beach 48:57
So I assume like that when this business sold for so much money that you moved out of the retirement community and into a farm. Is that where the inspiration for this came?

Mike Michalowicz 49:07
Yeah, kinda, kinda, I did. Yeah, I was out of the retirement community a lot prior to that, but yeah, I did very well for myself. But you

Jim Beach 49:15
should have bought a lot of toilet paper then, so you never find yourself in that three sheet scenario.

Mike Michalowicz 49:20
I should have, yeah,

Jim Beach 49:22
Costco, worth the toilet paper.

Mike Michalowicz 49:25
Yeah, I should have the one thing. And I’m actually just writing the story. Now, the one thing I did, which was ridiculously dumb, is I started believing that I was better than most entrepreneurs. I had figured out everything to be successful and can do it repeatedly. Now that was actually my downfall. I became an angel investor, vested in about 10 to 15 companies, all that failed, all of them that failed. That was it for one. But all that really failed cost me yearly, and actually has become, in retrospect, the defining moment of my life was not making all this money, selling business, actually losing.

Mike Michalowicz 50:00
Uh, all this money when I decided to stop learning and just just coast things out.

Jim Beach 50:05
Well, it’s so interesting. You know that company that I told you that I started when I was 25 we grew it to 700 employees and $10 million in personal debt too. And so it was a fantastic business. But I also in 99 when the market got funky, it ended up in a little bit of a personal problem as well, and it took me two or three years to dig myself out of that hole, and at the top, you know, what I found was a pumpkin patch. So, you know, it’s, I think, imperative some of these analogies. Let’s take it a step further. You know, I know enough about farming to know that you get rid of some of the bad pumpkins, right? If you have one that’s doing well. That analogy really works here with the customers, doesn’t it?

Mike Michalowicz 50:52
It really does. The natural default of entrepreneurs are more customers is better, and I’ll do anything to get the next customer. I need to make that next sale. That’s a mistake. There’s a difference between a good sale and a bad sale. There’s a difference between good customers and bad customers. If you just take your customer list right now, regardless of your business stage, and sort them out by revenue, most revenue to least revenue, you’ll find that usually the least revenue clients also consume the most of your time. They’re the ones who complain the most. They don’t like what’s going on. They need to be reservist. And when we really do an analysis, we’ll find that upwards of 20% of our client base we’re actually losing money on, or they’re costing us an exorbitant amount of personal time and devotion. If we have the courage remove those bad pumpkins, it opens up the space to a serve our better clients and better maybe they’ll come more from us and or pursue cloning our best clients, finding other clients like them. But said, most entrepreneurs just overwhelm their schedule by taking any client every client, and therefore have no more time available to the best client. Have the courage to get rid of the weak, tracking bad ones, losing money on anyway. Go for the best.

Mike Michalowicz 52:08
That’s how

Mike Michalowicz 52:09
you grow.

Jim Beach 52:10
Conversely, once you’ve selected the best ones, you nurture the daylights out of them, right?

Mike Michalowicz 52:15
Oh, my Lord, yeah, yeah. You it’s all about over serving them. Want to keep a client for life serve them better than anyone else ever has or ever will. It’ll keep them for life. If you treat every customer as number one, that means you’re treating no one as number one, and you’re going to struggle.

Jim Beach 52:31
I have a tiny little speaking career Mike, and my number one client is one of the top two or three banks in the United States, and their vice president is spending Thanksgiving at my vacation house,

Speaker 5 52:46
tiny speaking career,

Jim Beach 52:49
so that’s how I try to do it. I love your strategies. We are just about out of time, I’m afraid, Mike, other than going on Amazon or to their favorite bookseller, how should people find out more about you and reach out to you and follow you and all of those things?

Mike Michalowicz 53:05
The best place is go to Mike Olis calm. That’s near impossible to spell, but there is a shortcut. Just go on Google and type in Mike face, MC, M, I C, and I come up in the listing there, you’ll see the longest name, I callowitz. Click on that, they’ll bring you to my website, free resources. We can get in touch that way. Chapter Three, chapters. So the books too are up there. All

Jim Beach 53:30
right. Well, Mike, I greatly, greatly appreciate you being on the show today and sharing your wisdom.

Jim Beach 53:41
We are out of time for today, but back soon. Take care. Everyone. Bye. Now