185: How Licensing Helps Serve the Queen Bee Role + Stop Keeping up with the EntrepreJoneses with Mike Michalowicz
I'm excited to bring you an episode from the Pivot podcast vault today. This is a conversation with a longtime friendtor, Mike Michalowicz, that stuck in my mind long after we recorded on February 5, 2020. The episode launched on March 20, 2020, and the last group gathering I attended was Mike's in-person Fix This Next workshop at his office in New Jersey on Friday, March 13. Boy, was the world about to get weird!
Mike explains how to identify and serve the Queen Bee Role in your business, the cliffhanger phrase that freed up even more of his time to write and speak, his unique approach to IP licensing, “guinea pigging” new book ideas, how to stop keeping up with the EntrepreJoneses, and the secret to how he has been so prolific in publishing 8+ books in the last 15 years.
This was a live Book Club call for my private community for Heart-Based Business owners that has been going strong for eight years now. We meet twice a month, with a forum for exchanging ideas and best practices and a private podcast feed where I release bonus content each month.
Recent bonus episodes include developing your unique decision criteria, a special workshop on Trademarking and protecting your IP, and how I've been experimenting with ChatGPT to help draft podcast episodes.
→ If you join now, you’ll be just in time for Pamela Slim’s upcoming workshop on May 11, covering the details of Certification (training others in your method) and Licensing. **Learn more and join us here** (apply promo code PODCAST for 50% off your first month).
More About Mike Michalowicz: By his 35th birthday, Mike had founded and sold two multi-million dollar companies. Confident that he had the formula to success, he became a small business 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. Mike has devoted his life to the research and delivery of innovative, impactful entrepreneurial strategies to you.
Mike is the creator of Profit First, which is used by hundreds of thousands of companies across the globe to drive profit. Today, Mike leads two new multi-million-dollar ventures as he tests his latest business research for his books. He is a former small business columnist for The Wall Street Journal and a business makeover specialist on MSNBC. Mike is a popular main-stage keynote speaker on innovative entrepreneurial topics; and is the author of Get Different, Fix This Next, Clockwork, Profit First, Surge, The Pumpkin Plan, and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur.
🌟 3 Key Takeaways
Identify the Queen Bee Role (QBR): The core function in your business that is the biggest determinant of your company’s health and success—it’s “thrive factor”—where the uniqueness of your offering meets the best talents of you and/or your staff. “When this function is at full throttle, the business thrives, and when it is slowed or stopped, the entire business suffers.”
There is an order you should follow when solving problems in your business, following what Mike calls the Business Hierarchy of Needs (sometimes oscillating between stages). You must address sales and cash flow first, followed by profit, order, impact, and finally legacy. If you try to optimize or improve things outside of this order, you may be missing the biggest problems hindering your progress.
Try Mike’s “guinea pigging” approach for new IP: Test ideas through workshops for your target audience before developing them further into a book, course, or broader program. You can make these free or low cost to learn as much as possible from your users.
📝 Permission: Stop trying to keep up with the EntrepreJoneses!
✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Identify or clarify the Queen Bee Role in your business as it relates to your personal purpose as the owner. For example, the QBR in Mike’s business is thought leadership, and his personal mission is “eradicating entrepreneurial poverty” through his books and speaking (which also help serve the company’s QBR).
🔗 Resources Mentioned
Mike on the web: Mike Michalowicz, Twitter: @MikeMichalowicz, IG: @mikemichalowicz
Run Like Clockwork business and programs
Interview: AJ Harper – Write a Book that Changes Lives (Including Your Own!
Podcasts: The Gentle Business Revolution
People: AJ Harper, Jacob Limmer
Articles: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Who Created Maslow’s Iconic Pyramid?, Biomimicry, What Happened to We Work
📚 Books Mentioned
All books written by Mike Michalowicz, including Fix This Next and Clockwork (Revised and Expanded Edition)
Write a Must-Read: Craft a Book That Changes Lives — Including Your Own by AJ Harper
E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
Built to Sell by John Warrillow
Measure What Matters by John Doerr
Company of One by Paul Jarvis
🎧 Related Episodes
115: Successfully Taking Over as CEO from a Founder (MBS) with Shannon Minifie
103: How to Land a Literary Agent and Publisher with David Moldawer (Part One)
105: “Don’t write the wrong book!” with David Moldawer (Part Two)
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