Recurring Revenue with John Falke (a.k.a Mr. Johnny Flash)

Hello. Welcome to a brand new episode of Raney Day Talks podcast with your host Jennifer Sakowski. And I am here with a special guest, Mr Johnny Flash. Welcome.

Johnny Flash: Hey Jen. Thanks for having me all. It’s always great to connect with you.

Thank you. You know what, I’m just going to go ahead and tell this story right even before we get in, because I always say that we’re going to using this as a learning tool and Mr Johnny, he is so gracious with his time because this is actually take two of recording our podcast. We did this last week and I realized at the end of it when I went to hit record, I was actually hitting record and not hitting stop. So lesson to everyone, just start the recording in the beginning of your podcast and let it go. So thank you so much for joining me again because that is an error that I will not perform again.

Johnny Flash: That’s okay. I’m glad it was you press forgetting to press record and not saying like, actually that first take wasn’t very good. So, uh, I don’t know what happened to it, but we’re going to try again and getting better ones.

Not at all. That was actually a really great episode. So now hopefully my ability to ask questions and engage with you is even better because now I know the story. So let’s talk about who you, who are you and what do you do?

Johnny Flash: Uh, I’m John Pollock, also known as Johnny Flash, um, in the Washington DC area. We’re in a company called Johnny flash productions, which is basically a web design digital marketing agency here just outside the city. And um, yeah, that’s, that’s kind of what we do.

Yeah. And just a little fun fact. I was in a awesome digital marketing web design camp or um, organization when I first met Johnny.And actually like, I have to think back, we met in Philly Kinda, we were at the same event. So can you just give me a rundown, like is has anything changed or how’s business going since then?

Johnny Flash: We’ve been, I’ve been doing the company since 2002 or so. Um, but it was part time while I was working a full time job. So it was only about, uh, just under four years ago when I decided to quit my day job and do Johnny clash production school time. So, uh, when, when we met, it was sometime early, earlier in the, in this four year period that we’ve been in. Um, so it’s definitely been a, a ride in a roller coaster, but it’s been a fun adventure as well. So what made you decide to go full time and do your business? Oh Wow. You know, I was still, I was working at a church and I was doing creative arts stuff and our church had grown from about 500 and weekend attendance to about 2,500 a weekend attendance over like 11 year periods.

Johnny Flash: So crazy. I mean, phenomenal. Like those are the types of things you want to happen. You know, it started out as me doing everything with the graphics and the videos and everything. And then shortly, soon after we were hiring staff and I had a designer, web designer, videographer, all these different staff people that were doing it. So we were like an in house creative agency and I was doing some projects on the side and the little bit of time that I had, um, you know, maybe 10, 15 hours a week. But as my kids, I have four kids, so as my kids got older, um, you know, they were, when my days off would be during the week, um, they started elementary school and stuff. And so my, I had to work alive on the weekends cause we had four services. Um, and so it just got to be kind of to a point for us, for us, like, you know, what, we need to find something that has a little bit better, uh, schedule I guess for, you know, with the kids getting older.

Johnny Flash: And I was missing, I was coaching their foot flag football teams and missing their games and my wife’s taking four small kids, so like all this stuff. And it was just like, it was not what I heard that original plan was. But it was kind of how it had ended up with my schedule at the church and everything. So, um, we just decided to kind of take the plunge. Um, in hindsight I probably could have like worked up to that moment a little bit better because we didn’t have any recurring revenue. I actually tried to stay away from recurring revenue because I didn’t want to like have my few hours per week that I had making website updates and doing little tasks like that. So I was like, you know, I just want to work on new projects, we’ll train you how to, you know, update your website and manage it. And then like here you go, you know, not good luck with it but we’ll check in in six months or a year. Make sure you haven’t like totally, well I went it up but we didn’t really provide like ongoing support or, or that marketing and that kind of stuff. So it didn’t take very long before I realized like something’s to change.

Sure, sure. And as you mentioned, recurring revenue, that was a big game changer, right? Because you went, cause you grew with your right recurring revenue very quickly. If I remember right, like you went from like none until like a million, maybe not a million, but I’m calling you that like you, you wrote like you quickly gained momentum once you ironed out like what you’re going to do for recurring revenue, right? Like what you’re packaging.

Johnny Flash: Yeah. I mean, you know, it’s like when you, when you, when you like wake up in the, the paycheck’s not coming in automatically anymore, you have to pay for your own benefits. Like all these things that us as entrepreneurs have to like navigate, right? Um, it’s, you know, stuff that we have to figure out. So I quickly realize like if I’m just living like project to project month and month, like this is going to be way too much stress. And so I’m kind of early on, maybe like about six months into it I realized, okay, we need to have some products that were services that we can sell like with their credit card on file and gets charged automatically. And so I basically like reached out to all the clients that I had done work for over the past five, 10 years. And some of them I hadn’t talked to in like several years, you know, or I’d maybe updated their plugins like a year ago or something just to kind of hold them over.

Johnny Flash: Um, and then basically told him I was, I was doing this full time now, wanted to provide better service and really be kind of a support to them, an extension of their team and you know, I thought this package would be the best for them, like a monthly kind of care package and, and then kind of we, we did like some, uh, I guess we threw in some like extras for them since they had been our legacy clients who said, hey, if you come on to one of our monthly plans, we’ll do these three, four, or five things immediately on your website to kind of, you know, some things that we saw or whatever that could be improved. And so, yeah, so we got a handful of clients, like just right off the bat, um, you know, onto those monthly plans.

Hmm. When you’re doing that, because I think recurring revenue is huge for any business. I think that I, and I off the top of my head, I don’t have any example of what would not be a recurring revenue for a product or a company, but I think that there’s always that opportunity that you can provide a service to add massive value that allows you to not be hands off but to [inaudible] position yourself and then allow for you to grow with that, that recurring revenue because as business owners, like you said, there’s a lot of stress that comes in with project to project because there’s a lot of highs and a lot of lows and trying to work out those gaps. I know my own business before I started doing the same. It was crazy because then you’re trying to hold back and like save and position, but with recurring revenue like you can see that that starts to even out for you. When you hit that like initial sin, was there any fears or any like hesitation or anything that kind of went through your mind before you were like, here, here’s this new product and we’re just going to send it out.

Johnny Flash: I mean, I don’t know about you, but I don’t like rejection at all. So there was like tons of fear to send out these emails to clients that like, you know, we had only been like maybe I would contact them every six months or a year and say like, Hey, do you need anything updated? And so it was sort of ad hoc and so to like, I was basically kind of drawing a line in the sand in our business and basically saying like, Hey, if you want to work with us, this is how it’s going to be. It’s going to be on one of our monthly plans. If you don’t want to work with us and that’s fine, but don’t call me next time there’s a problem because there’ll have been a problem because we haven’t been caring for it. So, um, you know, so yes, there’s total like fear, like not wanting to press send on these emails because you know, what if they didn’t say yes and I had just like the few clients that I had were now suddenly not even like on the on the list anymore because they weren’t choosing the plan.

Johnny Flash: So, um, I think, you know, one of the things I did to kind of help myself get over this, besides getting counsel from people who had done this before was, um, yeah, I would send the emails like one at a time and to the most likely to say yes clients first cause that just need to be like a few wins. Yeah, yeah. So I would feel a little bit better than what I knew then inevitably some of the clients wouldn’t be in a position where they can pay a monthly fee or whatever. But so, so that did help when I started getting a few quick wins and then I could also kind of tailor the messaging to what was resonating or what questions they were having. So I can answer those ahead of time to make it really clear like what we’re offering and why, what the benefits were.

Sure. So how did you decide, okay, I’m going to give site support, like, and I know our industry is different than other industries, but how did you start to come up with this is what we’re gonna offer. This could help us make the most financial sense, but also something that we could provide that would add value. Like how did you come up with that?

Johnny Flash: Oh, well, I mean we, uh, we, I mean, I definitely talked to some people, you know, like someone like Christina Romero who has done this before and had experience with this. I talked to several people who were already doing these kinds of like web services. So that certainly helped put me in the right direction. Um, but I think with any business, you know, any entrepreneurs that are listening, it’s like, what can you do that solves problems for your clients? You know? So, like for example, we just launched a coffee roaster website yesterday for this client that we’ve been working with for the last few months. Um, they have a coffee roaster, they have two coffee shops in DC, they sell their coffee too, coffee shops all over the country, you know, where they use this coffee roasters, beans and everything. And um, one of the things that they are now offering on the new website that we launched is coffee subscriptions.

Johnny Flash: So that if someone knows like, oh I need about 12 ounces of coffee a week or a month or whatever interval, they can pick their favorite coffee and they can pick a, and they can just have it delivered automatically to them. Like every month that the bag shows up, they get a discount on the shipping because it’s, you know, part of this subscription they can give subscription. So you could give like your family member, like a three month coffee subscription, they get a bag every month. So just trying to figure out a way to solve problems for your clients. And that looks different in every industry, right? But there’s ways that we can go about it. And so I think for us it was just figuring out like, okay, what our clients hate to do, what do they need to do that they haven’t been doing that they should, somebody should be doing and how can we position our clients best to like, um, do what they love doing and let us do what we’re best at, you know, and not have to always be sending them new invoices for things that we’re doing and this and that.

Johnny Flash: Like just kind of have it all built in,

right? Like I can’t help because like this is their resonated. So I’m going to quote from April from our last podcast is when she was like, what if we looked at this? Like what would easy look like? And it is, it’s like how can we make this easy for our client? So that’s awesome. So when you, so once you started, did you hit send and then figure it out or did you have a plan in place on how it was gonna work? Cause you know, sometimes when I’m talking with especially new business owners, it’s like, oh, I’ve got to have everything perfect and like in order and, but there’s also the theory of sell it and then create it. So what did you do if you don’t mind to let go of that secret?

Johnny Flash: I think we were somewhere in the middle. I think we had figured out what our packages were going to be and what price points they were going to be. We had some idea of how we were going to provide some of those services and then some of those, we were still kind of like ironing out which tools or how we would exactly provide it. So I think it was some of both. I’m definitely more of a planner, so it feels more comfortable to me to have the plan in place. But I also realize that I don’t want that to be the stumbling block that keeps me from taking like going all the way through with the action is because I don’t have every single piece figured out. So, um, I think it was kind of in between. And then once we started selling these monthly plans and we realized, you know, that there’s other services that our clients need that aren’t part of these monthly plans.

Johnny Flash: Like maybe email marketing or social media marketing or SEO or other services that we could provide as kind of like add on to there their base package. So to increase the recurring revenue further. And so that’s what we’ve been kind of working on too. And, and realizing like, you know what, we have all these great services and now a lot of our clients don’t even realize all these add on services that we have. And like the best, you know, Opportunity that I have in terms of like easy sell, um, you know, kind of win win would be to, I need to go to my clients now and say, Hey, we’ve got these different services. I think this particular thing would really help your business, take it to the next level and kind of explore that with them.

That’s good. That’s good. It’s like getting him in and try him, trust you and then starting to like snowball more service. That’s smart. So would you have any, oh, like the suggestion or if somebody was starting out, even if not in our industry on going down that, okay, how can we provide a service on an ongoing basis that can provide us recurring revenue? Like where would you say to start with knowing what you know now, how would you, or how would you provide some

Johnny Flash: just helpful tips, helpful tips. So I just got back from this conference called the recurring revenue retreats. Um, and it was fantastic. My friend Robert Christina put this on and the keynote speaker was Mike McCallum wits and I, I had like, he was one of those people that I had heard about for like the last year or two but had just kind of, I don’t know, for whatever reason I guess it’s like one of those things that people talk about it so much. You’re kind of tired of hearing it even though you have no idea when it’s a balance. So people had talked about profit first, profit first profit first and like I’m already barely like financially savvy or like detailed in that kind of way. So like I was like, well, we’ve already, you know, we don’t, we don’t, we operate without debt, all these different things. And so it was like, it kind of felt like I didn’t need it or I was, I didn’t need to hear it or whatever.

Johnny Flash: And so then they, so anyways, there’s just all this talk like, then finally I was going to this conference and he was going to be the keynote speaker. I was like, why? I guess I should read something that he’s written. He’s written lots of books and someone had mentioned this, there was book called the Pumpkin Plan. And so I had been, I’d just finished that recently and it’s by Mike McCollins. And, um, and so part of what he talked about at the conference, cause he has a new book called clockwork and stuff, which is on my reading list now. But you know, he was talking about how one of the things that we can do is just go talk to our best clients and figure out what problems they have, what challenges they have in their industry, and figure out how we can solve them. And, um, he really talks about even, you know, who are your top 20% of your clients and really focus on those clients in terms of like solving their particular needs, not all of your clients like your top 20%.

Johnny Flash: How can you really go above and beyond and solve problems for them. And so that’s really got me thinking like, okay, so who we’ve identified our top 20% clients. Like we have a private list in our slack channel for our, my team. Um, you know, with who those clients are. And it’s not necessarily like it could be revenue as the, as the reason that they’re one of your top clients or could be other metrics, right? Like they, they always pay on time, they respect your authority. Um, you know, they refer other people to you. Like there can be all kinds of different ways that you could determine who your top 20 clients are. And one of the questions that he asks in the book, um, is if you are stranded on an island, um, you know, with your top clients, like, or with your clients, let’s just say your clients, like would you want to be stuck on

a deserted island with them? You know, like, are these people that you’d want to hang out with, um, and would enjoy it? Are these the people that are like calling you in the middle of the night and like, you know, always pointing out the problems and different things, or are these like people that you love to be around? And so that’s really gotten us thinking like, okay, who are our top clients? Who Do we want to be stuck on a desert island with? You know, and how can we serve them better? That’s good. That’s that. Let me boom, we’re done. No, I’m just kidding. That’s great. Cause I think, I know from the conversations that I’ve had, it’s okay Jen, that’s great idea. Where do I start? So I think you just solved that.

Johnny Flash: Yeah. So, I mean for us it’s like if they, if those top clients now we don’t tell them they’re a top client, right? We don’t, we don’t say like, oh because you’re a VIP, we’re going to do this. And we don’t say that other clients because you’re not one of our VIP is we’re going to do this, right? This is all internal stuff. We really want to wow those top 20% clients. Cause if we do that, those are the people we want to work with. They’re going to refer their friends because they’re going to, you won’t believe the care that they’re getting. You know, that we’re getting from Johnny Flash, they refer their friends. Um, that’s what we want, right? We want our best clients referring more best clients to us. And so, um, I think it’s just, it’s small things like, you know, when their tickets come in, let’s make sure we get them solved first or move them to the front of the queue so they get solved quickly.

Johnny Flash: Um, maybe they need, we had a one client sent in an email. It was like one of our top clients sending me an email and was like, uh hey, I know we’re over our support time and I totally respect that and our agreement and everything. Um, we have a higher volume kind of leading up to the school year. Is there any possible way that we could just have a little bit of extra time like this month and next month and this would be total grace on your part. And I know that we don’t use a lot of our time the rest of the year or whatever or like just just wanting to ask and it was like, so the way they even asked was like very gracious. It was like not assuming and everything and [inaudible] after had just thinking about all this stuff and like they’re one of our top clients. Like, this is our opportunity to like go above and beyond and not try to like charge them more or whatever cause they’re already paying us a lot of money and just like handle this for them so that when they look back at this six months from now and they have no requests for us and they’re like, why are we paying this? It’s like, oh, because they’re really on our team. They really care about our outcomes. Like we don’t want to lose them, you know? And so that they value us that much.

Sure, sure. That’s huge. That’s huge. So I know I’m going to switch gears on you cause I just thought, oh like you mentioned something and I’m like I, I didn’t even ask. So along with your recurring revenue and kind of systemizing, we’ll say systemizing some of your processes and ironing out that you also have a side niche or a focus as well. Right. Can you talk a little bit about that niche and like what it has, it has impacted on focusing in on that area as well. So almost like having those two areas

Johnny Flash: of services. Yeah. So, about half of our clients are from a area in the church space. Obviously I was on staff at a church for 11 years. I have a lot of church connections. Um, I would speak at conferences and do workshops for other churches on kind of what was working for us as a church with all of our growth and everything. So, um, I kind of have, you know, a little more, I guess, authority in that space, Simon, too much information, but I went to seminary and all that stuff and you know, got ordained and all those things. So I really understand how churches work. Um, and so, you know, probably about half our clients are churches or you know, some kind of nonprofit. Um, that’s, that’s doing good. And so, um, you know, that’s one area that we’ve tried to speak to a lot. So we have different emails that will go to like follow up with our church clients versus like business clients.

Johnny Flash: We have, um, you know, different language that we use. Um, churches take longer to usually make a decision because they’ve got maybe a board or elders or some kind of leadership structure that doesn’t just allow one person to just kind of be like, okay, we’re going to sign and you know, do this $10,000 project or whatever. The sales cycle is a little bit longer. Um, so those are all things that we know kind of going into it, what tools they’re going to tend to already be working with, whether it’s like a church content management system or giving platform that they’re gonna want to integrate into their website or their marketing and stuff. And so, um, we’ve really tried to, uh, help churches, you know, as many ways as we can. We have extra websites that have, we have a church communication training program that’s a six weeks program that church communication leaders can go through.

Johnny Flash: Uh, we give free resources to church leaders for sermons that they can like work or graphic or video into their sermon content. Um, so lots of different resources, uh, there, but you know, it’s trying to position yourself as an authority in whatever area that you’re working in. And so by being able to say, when I’m talking to a church, oh, we have this training program where we have this site over here, oh, I was on staff this, you know, it makes it much eat. Most everybody else that they’re talking to who builds websites aren’t going to have those kinds of credentials and experience. And so it makes the sale a lot easier to the point where we’ll be talking to a church and it gets near the end. Then there’ll be like, um, yeah, so you’re the most expensive out of everybody that we’re talking to for our website or our rebrand or, or combination or whatever.

Johnny Flash: Um, but then in the end they ended up going with us anyways, you know, and it’s, it’s part of that because we’re personal. It’s part of that because they didn’t feel like they were just going to get handed off. Like I was going to be involved in the process. Um, our experience, the tools that we offer, all those things. So I think figuring out what that is for your industry and how you can position yourself, um, you know, as a rock star, as somebody who really knows what’s going on and then leverage that, you know, in your conversations and helping people in your industry and stuff like that. So I think that’s definitely made a difference when we’re talking to churches. Um, in that way.

Yeah, most definitely. And if you are a church that are looking for those resources, I’ll make sure to drop those in our show notes when we hit publish so I can help see it. So are you taking applications for it to be, to marry, to be an ordain, to, to marry off people too? Is that another side job as an ordained minister,

Johnny Flash: I have done, I have done a number of weddings, um, including I got to do my brother. Uh, I have six brothers, but one of my brothers, I’m the oldest of six younger brothers, but I got to do a few years ago, one of my brother’s weddings officiated, which was pretty cool. And I’ve done other weddings as well. But um, so that’s not really something that like I advertise, um, I actually, I kinda like get more when it’s people that are in my life that I know and have a relationship with. It’s a little bit more, it feels a little more natural to like appreciate their wedding. It’s like one of the biggest moments in their life, you know, and to not just be some stranger like officiating that. So it’s not something that I like advertise or whatever. But I’m sure I’ve got several unmarried brothers and other friends and stuff. So I know that there’ll probably be some more of those in my, in my future.

Yeah. I couldn’t help. I couldn’t help to ask when you said that, I didn’t know that either. What so, and another tidbit of information taking all of the info from Mr Johnny clash is that your wife also works with you. So you guys are a husband and wife duo buying the business.

Johnny Flash: Yeah. You take the leap into the business. So he’s actually sitting like off camera over here, but she probably does not want to appear on the channel, but she’s a little under the weather. But here actually I think I can do this from, at least in terms of my family. Hopefully I guess if you’re, if you’re watching on video, you can see me holding up this picture if you’ve got an audio version of this and uh, but yes, so my wife and I worked in the business. We have a team members as well that work on our team. Um, and so that is an interesting, I guess dynamics that’s probably different than a lot of people in that. Um, all, all my kids are in elementary school or my oldest son now middle school, so they’re all at school. We’re, we work out of the house.

Johnny Flash: Um, our team members all log into slack and, and we, we talk, you know, in real time, but you know, they work remotely and stuff. And so, yeah, it’s totally different. And I guess probably the most unique of that is like working full, basically full time with your spouse. Um, some people would probably love that and other people would probably be like, I couldn’t, I need to go somewhere else. You know, I was gone a couple of weeks ago though and I was glad to hear when I got back to my wife, kind of missed the three days that I was at the conference and she was still here holding down the fort. So I guess, I guess that means it’s working pretty good. Then

you play different roles. Like what roles do you play in the business?

Johnny Flash: So my wife is an amazing designer. Um, she all kinds of design really. She’s, she does logos, branding, graphic design, interior design, and she, the social media and stuff as well. So she’s just like, she makes everything look pretty and look really great and match and coordinate and, you know, be thoughtful and all those things. I do more of the web design, um, you know, digital marketing stuff and I’m really doing a lot of sales, uh, because of our other team members. We’ll handle like a lot at some of the website build stuff and the website support, um, they’re, they’re on slack right now, solving problems while I’m chatting with you, a kind of things. So, um, so yeah, so we have different roles. Some of our clients are the same. Like, you know, she’ll do the brand and I’ll build the website with the team. Other of them, you know, there’ll be just her client that she’s doing stuff for, or maybe it’s just a website the teams building and that she’s not involved with. So, um, but yeah, so we kind of have our, our different skill sets I guess.

Sure. So as a boss, cause I think one of the questions I always ask all of our guests is not only what fears that you might have to overcome or what some of the key impacts in business that’s, um, that either you’ve overcome or implemented that has excelled you to success. How do you start your morning? Is there any, do you have, you’re a routine person because what we find is that most usually are the ones that get up and they have a set things that they have to have done before they start their day. Are you one of those?

Johnny Flash: I guess I have to be now because I have to come up with one on the flyer of, yeah, I mean I’m an early bird. I get up, I get up early, you know, usually by like five 30 it used to be that my house would be quiet til seven, seven 30 but now my middle schooler is getting ready is six. So sometimes I’m helping him a little bit, but yeah, I’ll get up at five 30, maybe read a little bit and then I kind of dive right in. And lately I’ve been trying to really work on our business first before checking email, you know, answering clients and stuff, doing other projects that I know have to get done today because if I don’t do it like first, then it just, there’s too many other things coming in that I just won’t get back to it.

Johnny Flash: Um, so like this morning I was writing an email sequence or follow up to just kind of automate all of that so that I wasn’t kind of manually doing it. And so I was just working on the business. It was our own stuff that I was working on, not like a client request. So I’ve been trying to do that first thing for like an hour or two. Um, my wife Julie and I run three days a week together. So we’ll leave the house Monday, Wednesday, Friday, like around seven 30 and go for a run. She, she runs much further than I do. So, uh, after a little while then I had back and kind of check on the kids getting ready for school and uh, she finishes up. So that’s part of our routine and we have our team call on Monday mornings, so we kind of check in with how things are going with everyone and kind of what the plan is for the week. Um, and stuff like that. So yeah, we kind of have a rhythm to, it’s a good day. That I think helps, especially the start of the day

as a business owner and plus a husband and wife. You, one thing that we talked about in our non recording recording was that you guys have some really unique boundaries set in place to where at, and we’re gonna talk behind the scenes, but you, um, you had mentioned about how like you even have those times where, okay, at this time like we’re done because it’s easy when you’re working from home and you’re working from yourself that you work 24, seven. Can you talk about some of those boundaries that you put in place to kind of give some ideas to other business owners?

Johnny Flash: So I’m very much like a type a like go get her. Like I can just keep working and working and working, but obviously that’s not healthy. And I have, you know, my family wants to see me and spend time with me and there’s other stuff that I need to do in my life besides just work. So, uh, but I think it’s, you know, as an entrepreneur, I think that’s such a difficult thing. You know, it was easier for me when I had a job that I was going to and I could kind of leave my work there and you know, not have to do too much work in the off hours. Um, but now it’s just, it’s just the lines get blurry. And so we’ve tried really hard to make them not so blurry. So for me, like I try to really, I try hard to stop working when it gets to dinner time because one, I don’t sleep that well if I’m working like after dinner because then I wake up in the middle of the night thinking of that thing I was working on at seven or eight o’clock and which is just not good for me.

Johnny Flash: Um, and it, it robins my family of time that I should be more present. So, um, and then for our phones, we actually charge our, our i-phones in a different room, actually in a different floor of our house than we sleep on. So, um, when, you know, gets to be the evening time, we put our phones on the charger, we, we hang out, watch a show or whatever. We’re going to do read a book. Um, and then our phones aren’t with us, like right next to the bed, you know, um, that whereas we’re going to bed, we’re both, we don’t want to be just sitting there and looking at our phones or waking up first thing and that’s what we’re checking. Um, so it’s just created like more space. Um, and then even like we put our do not disturb on. I think mine’s on from about 8:00 PM to 8:00 AM or something like that.

Johnny Flash: So basically like if you tried to call me after 8:00 PM, you’re not going to get me. If you try to call me before 8:00 AM, you’re not going to get me either eight, including family and friends and all of them. They’d have to call I guess twice to be able to like get through the silence mode or whatever. But, um, so just trying to be work at being more presence and not in setting those boundaries that don’t work on the weekends. Um, you know, last week was Labor Day. Like I could have easily worked that Monday. You know, we, we kind of made family plans to go tubing down the Shenandoah river. And so, you know, I, I might’ve did a little tiny bit in the morning while everyone was sleeping, but then we had our daily activities planned and I wasn’t going to take my phone on the river just right you, whether it’s waterproof or not, like I’m just not gonna I might lose it. So, um, the map just kind of created the opportunity to not work. And so sometimes you just have to plan those things in your calendar so that you can’t work. Like there’s, it’s just not a choice, you know, leave your computer behind when you go on vacation, that’s going to severely limit like how much time you’re working on vacation without your computer. So I guess now that I’ve said that, and I’m going on vacation in two weeks, I have to leave at home before I’ve done it before and it keeps running. So it’s good.

Yeah, that, I think that’s important. And I think, I think we’ve really touched on some key components for a business owner. I mean setting those recurring revenue, what can you offer to even out those highs and lows financially and what value can you add that would allow you to, I dunno, some breathing room and then you talked about also and like the creating space and the boundaries on how you shut off. Because I think we, cause I know for me too, I could sit down and I could work. Like today is one of the days when my husband is picking up kids and I’m like, okay, this is my day. I’m going to crank out all the things until dinner time and then I’ve got to let it go. So, but adding those, those values are the boundaries in place. Um, well yeah, I think, I think that’s been so helpful and I hope that if anyone is listening that one, if you’re a church and looking for more resources that you definitely check out the show notes because we’ll be dropping those in. Can you go ahead and tell me what those sites are?

Johnny Flash: Sure. Yeah. Our W R um, Johnny clash productions that Johnny flash.com. It’s j o h n n y. Flas h.com and then amplified impact.org is our church communication training program and open resources.org is where we have free church sermon media for church leaders.

So good. So good. And then obviously I’ll put, uh, your main website in@johnnyflash.com. So if you have any questions or just want to check out his, I mean yeah, the sites that you do and I Kudos to your wife cause they are beautiful. Like I love it. I love the touches that you guys do and I don’t know who put the sticky note on the Monitor. That’s the spark joy. That is brilliant.

Johnny Flash: Yes, yes. I think my wife inspired the, uh, the idea of like, Oh lets you know that that’s something that she’s more into. And so I was like, oh that sounds awesome. So we cut that off.

I love it. Just those personal touches are awesome. And then, but my last, final nugget, you said that you’re reading you, you’re reading and you’re a reader. So what book are you reading right now?

Johnny Flash: Uh, I just started clockwork because we got it for free at the conference. They gave us a copy. I got a picture with Mike and, and he signed it. Um, and he said, make your business run like clockwork. And so I’m really, you know, trying to press into that and I’m going on vacation in two weeks. I already told the team like, you know, and I want to work up to more than just one week being gone. But I think, I don’t know, I think the challenge for us as leaders as entrepreneurs is that like, we feel like the business can’t run without us. And a lot of times we set it up that way because, you know, we have this super hero syndrome that might talk to that in some of his books where we like being needed. We like having the answers, we like being able to solve the problems and it makes us feel good, but it also doesn’t, you know, it keeps our business from running like clockwork. And so I’m really trying to force myself to take longer and longer periods. You know, start with just if you work on the weekends, start the weekend and then just don’t check your phone, don’t check your email, they’ll do any work. You know, maybe extend that to a three day weekend. You work your way up to a week. Um, and it’s good cause you’ll see what breaks, you’ll see where things need to be fixed and how you can really, um, make your business run smoother and without you needing to do everything.

That’s so good. And let’s be honest, like if we would stop being in it and actually start working on the business to build the business, we’d probably be in a whole different, not only financial but also like the type of clients, you know, it would just be better.

Johnny Flash: Yeah. And I think we make the mistake that we think that we’re needed for all these different things that we do and we’re the only one that can do them when in reality if we screen or courted, if we documented how we did them, if we had someone over our shoulder like watching for a few times, like they would be able to Redo it. Like, there’s not very many things in our business that only we can do. And so we need to focus on what are those one or two or three things where I add the most value, where we’re, we’re really needs my skillset versus someone on my team or a contractor or some service I could hire that would do that or whatever it is.

Yeah. Yeah. And let’s be honest, like having a team of so much more fun cause cause you have a team you had mentioned, right. How many, what do you all do you have on your team?

Johnny Flash: So it’s myself, my, uh, my wife Julie. And then we have Alexis is on our team. She kind of is the face of the, the ticket best in terms of getting those responses and dealing with them. And then we have gyro who’s more of like a front end developer. Um, and then we have some other contractors that we use sort of as needed in terms of like writing or photography or video or you know, back end development if there’s like a really custom thing that we have to do. Um, so we’re kind of a team of like four plus I guess you could say.

Sure, sure. Doing big, big things right, doing huge, making huge impact. Well, I can’t thank you enough for spending once, not one time, but twice with me on to get this podcast recorded because it has been a pleasure getting to know you and your business and just your wealth of knowledge officially with recurring revenue. I feel like if any, if all businesses can figure out that one thing, it would make a huge impact on their, not only their business but their lives. So thank you for sharing that. And once again, definitely check out Johnnyflash.com and if you find find this helpful and you would please take a screenshot of John of a rainy day talks podcasts and tag us in it. We would love to hear your feedback. Johnny, thank you so much. Thanks Dan. Take care. Bye. That was.

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Thank you to our Sponsor

A huge thank you to Mark Levander of Mark Levander Productions for sponsoring season one of Raney Day Talks. It truly is because of Mark that we’re able to put these podcasts in our YouTube channel and a lot of our videos and load the animations together. So, if you’re interested in launching your own podcast or need work with photography or videography, please contact Mark through MarkLavanderProductions.com.