#236: Mike Michalowicz – How the author of Profit First stays lean by licensing his ideas [Greatest Hits]

About this episode

Mike Michalowicz discusses his unique approach to authorship and how he efficiently writes and licenses his ideas.

Mike Michalowicz is the author of ⁠Profit First⁠, which is used by hundreds of thousands of companies across the globe to drive profit – Creator Science is one of those companies. Profit First has helped me develop sound financials for my business. He’s also the author of Clockwork, a powerful method to make any business run on automatic, and seven other books as well. With more than 500,000 book sales, all of Mike’s books have the same goal – to help small business owners and eliminate what he calls “entrepreneurial poverty.” Simon Sinek has called Mike “…the top contender for the patron saint of entrepreneurs.” This conversation is divided into halves: The first half explores Mike’s unique model as an author. For each book Mike writes, he partners with a third party to license the frameworks from his books and serve as the done-for-you service provider. This is super uncommon and part of why he’s been so prolific while running a very lean team. So we dig into how that works (and what he’d do differently if he were starting over today). The second half of the conversation is all about writing books. Mike has published nine books since 2008 – including 7 in the last 8 years. So…

People in this episode

Guest: Mike Michalowicz

Topics covered

• Profit First
• entrepreneurial poverty
• book writing
• licensing ideas
• business models

Keywords

• financials
• small business
• book sales
• entrepreneurs

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Profit First, Clockwork

Books & works: Profit First, Greatest Hits, Clockwork

More episodes of Creator Science

• #308: Live Podcast Audit: Jeremy Enns Diagnoses What’s Holding Creator Science Back · June 9, 2026 · 59 min
• #307: Richard van der Blom — The state of LinkedIn in 2026 (based on data from 1.3 million posts) · June 2, 2026 · 50 min
• #306: What 16 Years Behind YouTube's Biggest Channels Taught Josh Mattingly About Hiring And The Current State of YouTube · May 26, 2026 · 1h 11m
• #305: Big 3: Three Wins, Three Concerns, and Three Experiments for May · May 19, 2026 · 36 min
• #277: The best and worst income streams for creators (ranked) [Greatest Hits] · May 12, 2026 · 21 min
• #304: Sam Vander Wielen’s Beautifully Elegant Business: $8M+ From One Product. No Pivots. No New Offers. No Down Years. · May 5, 2026 · 52 min