Dave: 0:21

All righty right. Good morning everybody. It is Friday, august 15th. We're here for another episode of the Business Uncrypted podcast. So if you're a business owner, or maybe you're an expiring business owner and you're just looking for advice, maybe looking for ways to learn from other people that are going through the same journey as you are well, you're at the right place. This is the show for you. I'm joined by one of my business partners, duarn. We're here to talk about our struggles that we've overcome and things that we've experienced in our business. Talk about how we've overcome it, but also ways that we've helped our clients do the same things as well. So here you are go grab your favorite cup of joe and let's jump into the show. So, duarnie, welcome to another episode. This is episode 23,. Man, we're like almost half a year into this kind of weekly experiment here. We're here every day, you know Friday mornings. But, man, how are things going? Man, we were talking pre-show. It's been a pretty busy week for the both of us.

Duarne: 1:25

Huh, it has. It has. It's been a good week ups and downs, but mostly good things, so I've been pretty happy. We're continuing to do good things. On the client side, we're doing an expansion on our primary office, where our staff are based, so we'll be adding additional furniture in there, which is fantastic, right, so we can expand more staffing over the next six months. We've already got some projected um staff allocations, which is great, and uh, yeah, look, maybe next week or the week after I'll be shooting, I'll have a different background because I'll be moving into my new home. Yeah, different spot, right, that's right. It's been, uh, over the last eight weeks we've been building out a space at the back and you know, we're gonna actually turn this room back into a bedroom for, uh, you know, the kids and uh, yeah, we're going to be relocating to a bigger space out the back.

Duarne: 2:22

So, for those who don know right behind me is during the day shift. I actually have someone sitting right behind me here, so we kind of bump chairs occasionally during the day, which can get a little bit tight, and I bump chairs with my wife who sits over here during the day as well.

Dave: 2:40

Cause you're in the big home office, that's for sure.

Duarne: 2:42

That's right. So it's like legit, we're getting the most out of this home office. But we're really excited about the new home office. We're going from 10 meters to 20 square meters, so doubling the space. I'm getting a desk which is probably double the length of what this one is so or double the width, rather, which is great for me because, like at the moment, basically my keyboard, my mouse and my monitors fit on my desk that's it I don't have much room for anything else. Well, you know it's.

Dave: 3:15

It's funny because you, you know, whenever you go into a new space, typically you try to find furniture that fits that new space right. And and it's the width there, you know, and can kind of take up that new space. And and and it's the width there, you know, and can kind of take up that new space. And sometimes you gotta hold yourself back a little bit. You're like well, I can do this, I can do that I can do this, I can do that, and you're like yeah, wait a minute, but well I look forward to seeing the new spot.

Dave: 3:34

I know you're uh, you're, you're super excited about it this week.

Duarne: 3:36

So I am, I am, I'm very excited and you know it's funny you should say about the furniture. I went out planning the room. The room is what the room is. So we've been planning the layout of the room and one of the requirements that was put forward by some of my team who are going to be sitting in that room with me during the day shift was be cool to have like a coffee shop vibe going on, shop vibe going on.

Duarne: 4:07

So we've actually got a standing bench height um desk which is good for two people to sit on, um, which looks out the windows, and that's really cool, because we went furniture shopping a couple days ago, bought some bar stools for it, so the guys get to choose where they want to stand or sit on. A bar stool there gives them that whole cafe experience. Me, I like sitting on an actual chair in front of my desk with all my monitors in front of me so I can focus and work. So I'm sitting at the back corner with all my desk set up and, um, yeah, I'm just, I'm excited. So we're actually, I'm actually customizing a desk that I've bought and, you know, make it a little bit higher to suit my size and application.

Dave: 4:51

You know, just, you know I love it, I look forward to it and I just want to before we get too far into it, right? You know, if you guys have any questions about anything that we're going to talk about, make sure you drop them down below. You know we'll make sure to answer them live on the show. So you know we'll make sure to answer them live on the show. So, um, you know we're. We have a general idea of where we're going to go, typically in every one of our shows. But, um, if you're watching the replay and you you look at the description, you have more information right now about what this show is going to be about than what we know right now.

Dave: 5:16

Uh, if you listen to any podcast that that dwan and I have any conversation, um, we don't know what we're going to talk about, and typically we go off on a lot of tangents. We may talk pre-show and have three or four different topics that we want to potentially hit, but a lot of times we don't even hit one. So it might be like that today. So you probably know more than us right now what we're about to talk about in the next hour, but we look forward to bringing you some amazing information. But, dwarren, let me ask you just one last thing about your office, and I think a lot of people have. They go into a new space. What was maybe the one thing that kind of caught you off guard when you're trying to plan a new spot, plan a new space for your team? What was one thing that kind of came up and you had to address it?

Duarne: 5:57

Well, here's the one thing. I didn't anticipate putting our executive assistant in the office with us, okay, so I had to adjust the space to fit an extra body. It was meant to be four bodies myself, my ops, uh coo, and my wife who heads up hr, and an extra space for my son, who is always in my office anyway. So we're going to give him his own dedicated space in the corner.

Dave: 6:30

A little small down for the little man.

Duarne: 6:32

Legit man, like legit, in fact. Like the desk behind me is actually covered in paint, that's all dry and stuff, and that's where my COO normally sits. And he comes back after a weekend and he's like what happened to my desk? Like I'm sorry, man, my son got to it, so that's the desk my son's going to get, because he's already like painted it anyway. So he's super thrilled and excited.

Duarne: 6:55

But yeah, so I had to add an extra desk. So basically, I was planning to put a different desk in that location. Couldn't put it there because it's too short and it wouldn't have comfortably allowed for two people to sit. So we did a change. It actually worked out for the better. And the other thing that caught us off guard is we had termites in the window frame. So I ended up ripping the entire window frame out and we're replacing it with aluminium window frames without and had to replace the windows, which wasn't on the original agenda. Okay, so that change um also factored into play. But I mean other than that, um, everything else, kind of just it was okay, right, I mean it's, it's, it's a fun little construction project. And yeah, you, you take swings and you miss like when you pre, when you pre-buy your paint at the beginning of the project. You don't know what color it's going to really look like on the walls and if it's going to work.

Dave: 8:00

We got lucky it works um, you guys don't have like the the. You know typical where you in and you paint a couple swatches to see what it's like when it's dry and then pick the one you want. You guys don't do that.

Duarne: 8:10

I could have done that. You know what? I didn't want to go back and forth, I just wanted everything for my team just to get in and do it. So we decided to just buy pre-mixed colors from the paint shop that were already mixed. We got something called day spa, so it's kind of like a green, and, honestly, before the lighting went in, um, I was a bit concerned. It was going to be too dark. When the lights came on, I'm like, oh, this is great, this is nice, all right, I can live with this. So those things caught us off guard. But at the end of the day, we adapted and things worked out, um, and I and I, basically I, I I had to take off my perfectionist hat and go. You know what? It's just an office. I don't have to, you know, just chill out. It doesn't have to be absolutely perfect, it just has to be a functional workspace that works just gotta be.

Dave: 9:01

Well, I think we talked about this and we'll kind of jump into the show, but you know, the last thing I always said too, was when we were talking on wednesday was. You know, it's funny how and I did this in my offices when I worked in the corporate world too is sometimes you just need like a, a change right in terms of like to help you with motivation that helps to kind of, you know, get you kind of the juices flowing again, and so like you mentioned how you know yourself, kind of getting into this new office is kind of like reinvigorating for you.

Dave: 9:30

Uh. And if you're watching this like, and you're just like, hey, man, I just feel like I'm in a funk, just try to change around your office. Like, even if you work at home, like just moving your desk around, you know, in the room, or you know, um, changing what you're looking at can sometimes like it feels like an entirely new spot. At least it works for me, uh, in terms of you know, I, I did it like I said, I did it in my corporate world. I would change my office like every three or four months just to kind of keep it fresh. Um, you know, keep it, keep it. You know new and it, it. It helped me, so maybe it'll help you. So if you're feeling like you're in a funk, try and change around your office a little bit.

Duarne: 10:03

See how it works. But absolutely, like you're spot on, my wife's like kind of feeling the same thing. She's, like you know, saying to me like you know what I'm really excited about moving into the new office, I bought her some new monitors so we've got like three new monitors going up on a stand for her. So she's super excited about her. She's getting the same desk but it's got three monitors across it. So she's like thrilled at that idea. She's like, oh, so cool, I'm so excited.

Duarne: 10:30

And just one little change like asking her, like what color monitor would you like? And she's like, can I go white? And I said, sure you can. So we've got a white monitors. So just that one little thing to personalize her space for her and pulls her out of that funk as well. Right now she's current, she's super excited at the opportunity of being able to get a new workspace to work in and she's excited again. So I totally agree. I think, um, I'm excited about the workspace. I've got a new computer that I just built myself which is going to go in the new workspace and I'm not going to use it in this workspace. I'm going to wait till I get to the new workspace and then use it there, just so cool.

Dave: 11:08

Let's um reset. I know we got, we got a big topic. We're going to kind of like hit up and kind of so I know. So if, if we bored you about office fives, we're sorry. But sorry guys. But jordan, tell me a little bit. You know, I know there's a topic you wanted to bring up and then you know, kind of you know, jumpstarted some ideas, juice and flows for us when we were kind of talking on Wednesday. But what was this topic that you wanted to talk about this week?

Duarne: 11:35

Well, it's a little off topic. Actually, it was kind of funny. I saw something really intriguing over the last few weeks in my feed and it's something I wouldn't normally associate with business. But the more I looked at it the more I realized it had a lot of association with business and I'm really into it. I think it's great. So, for those who are not aware, what I'm talking about is something called banana ball. So banana ball. It seems like every time I talk to an American about it now they're like oh yeah, hello, that's so cool.

Dave: 12:11

I love that you see all the clips. I mean it's all over social media for sure.

Duarne: 12:15

It's everywhere and like the teams are entertaining. It's basically, for those who are not sure, like they've taken baseball and integrated it with, like you know, the harlem globe trotters style entertainment. But it's not completely structured. It's not completely um choreographed for the entire game. The baseball's real but there's a whole bunch of intermediate shows and game and you know, entertainment that happens in between. The closest thing I can relate it to is like um wrestling wrestlemania, something like that. It's got that whole entertainment level.

Dave: 12:56

There's a showmanship factor in it, right, like very good showmanship, right. Right, you know the batters, have they? You know essentially every the script of the, the game, right, the dances, the, the in-game entertainment, that's all scripted. But like you said the baseball part of it, like that that's live.

Dave: 13:14

Oh, absolutely, and it's crazy to see, sometimes, like you see the clips and it's just like they're doing backflips to to make a catch right, and you would never see that in the mlb. Right, you would never see people walking up to a dance, you know, um, where everybody dance right on the entire infield.

Dave: 13:28

Right, not be lined up in the perfect spot, like you know, and and so you know at first I didn't know what it was like you know, it looked like it was a little crazy, but you know, like you said, it also reminds you of the harlem harlem globetrotters, but for baseball, and I think it's way more entertaining. Exactly, and it's definitely taken off in the last four or five years. But it's funny because the company's been around for a while.

Duarne: 13:52

Well, this is it, and I was watching some. I got really intrigued so I started watching as much as I could about it. Right, and Jesse Cole, the guy who basically set this all up and Jesse Cole, the guy who basically set this all up, turns out he basically kind of bought, kind of inherited a team, from what I could figure out, from one of the minor minor leagues, and his team wasn't doing that great and they said, well, just pay us when you can. If you can turn the team around, then you can do it. He was a professional baseball player that couldn't play anymore is from what I can tell and he got himself a start with his team. Didn't really know what he was getting himself into.

Duarne: 14:36

When he's asked the question like how many people turn up to a game, and he's like, oh, you know, we get 50, sometimes 100. We had 200 once turn up to a game. Like that's the sort of level of business that he bought, right, it got involved in. So he had a mission. He had to turn this around, make some money out of it and hopefully do something good with it. So one of the first things he did, from what I saw, was he decided to change the name of the team and everyone thought he was bonkers for choosing the name the Savannah Bananas. And they went on to actually, you know, win one of their first seasons in their minor minor league, from what I saw and then he started creating a whole other league, which is Banana Ball, and the concept behind it was to play it in the offseason and also to make rules that were more fun, more entertaining and more engaging for the audiences, for the fans.

Dave: 15:43

What I think is the first kind of lesson here, right, is that one their company is actually named Fan First Entertainment. 100% Right, because they realize that it's not about the players on the field, that it's really about the people that they're entertaining. And they realize that they're entertaining so it is. They have a good approach there. So you can learn too, like listen to your customers, listen to your clients. You know whatever they're telling you, whatever they need. You know that's the problem that you're trying to solve. You know. So you know. Survey your clients right, which is what they did. You know they went out and they surveyed the fans.

Dave: 16:18

Hey, what are some of the biggest headaches that you experience? Right, when you go to an mlb game and you're like, well, we're nickel and dime for everything. Right, you know, we got to pay for hot dogs, we got to pay for beer, we got to pay for, you know, parking. We got to pay for x, y and z right throughout the entire experience of the game. And that's where you know, savannah bananas. They actually came up with the um, the all-inclusive ticket, right where it includes everything, includes parking, includes your food, includes your drink, uh, includes obviously being at the game, and so it's one of those first things that they were innovative in because they listened to their, their, you know, in this case, customers but you know what's interesting about that is like when you hear jesse talk about this, he refers to the fact like they completely fucked up.

Duarne: 17:35

Basically, when they first did this like the inclusive ticket, the lines were out with two hours long to get a serving from the food because, like, oh my gosh, we totally messed up. Here Now people are lining up to be able to get their unlimited food and he's like, well, anything over a 10 minute wait, that's horrible. No one wants to do that. So they had to change things. They had to make. They failed so many on so many things. He was talking about how they were doing a live stream to espn recently and the transmission broke. The broadcast broke for 10 minutes and he's like this is a live stream, national and this happens. I mean, whatever you could possibly imagine failure-wise. These guys had constantly experienced so much failure.

Duarne: 18:22

One of the things he was talking about is how he takes snapshots of this is a fly-by night. This is not going to last. This is a gimmick. He takes all of those. He's got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of those comments that he's had over the years and he uses those as motivation to keep improving the fan experience. Um, and he constantly makes references to, like walt disney and how walt disney tried to improve the fan experience. And it was all about the fan experience, the immersion into the stadium, making sure that it's an experience that everyone really enjoys and it's a show that everyone wants to go to and enjoy introducing your crazy new teams, right like it's all about now, I think they have like four different teams.

Dave: 19:07

But here's the part of the story that I don't think a lot of people know or understand fully, right? Um, everybody and this is typical I with when, when any business gets successful is that you see, oh my God, how lucky are they, right? This guy has this crazy baseball and he just took off and everything's great. Look at him, he's walking around in his yellow suit, his yellow hat and everything's great for him, right? But no, that's not the actual story of the actual team, right? So go back to the to the beginning.

Dave: 19:36

Right, you mentioned, he takes over this failing team. They are 1.8 million dollars in debt, him and his wife, right they lose their house right they they lose, they're basically on the verge of losing everything.

Dave: 19:50

They don't know you know where they're, how they're going to make it. And we've talked about profit first in you know on this podcast before about the importance of profit first in the system and implementing it. And the idea about profit first is it also helps you eliminate your debt, right, and so they are the poster child of profit first. They're actually mentioned in Mike Michalowicz's book, right, they implemented profit first and completely turned around their business, and so they were able to get rid of all their debt. They were, you know, able to kind of you know be able to free up some of their you know kind of you know spending, because they weren't stressed to be innovative, like you mentioned. Right, you know they were able to come up with the all-inclusive ticket. They were able to kind of be flexible.

Dave: 20:35

But here's the thing when you implement profit first, what happens and it's kind of a play on Parkinson's law, and Parkinson's law says, when it comes to business, is that your expenses will expand to meet your income and money available. And so the idea here is, it's like, think of a Thanksgiving turkey. Ok, if you have it all on one one plate, which is like your money in your bank account. What's going to happen? Everybody's going to eat all the turkey. But you got to recognize you have to allocate it to where it needs to go first. Right, and if you're like every business owner, you probably open up your bank account and see, okay, I have x amount of money in it, I can go spend it. And so your, your spending expands to your income.

Dave: 21:16

We also talked about cash flow on this podcast in the future.

Dave: 21:19

And if you don't know where your money's going, where it's allocated to when it needs to be allocated, you may overspend. And what's crazy is using Savannah Bananas in terms of the opposite of this fact is that as you shrink your operational spending, availability of funds so does your innovation goes up, right. So when they're looking at paying down their debt because all their free money is actually going to pay the debt, right, they actually had to use the approach of does this actually, is it warranted? They actually had a whole checklist sheet that they went through any expense and if it wasn't warranted, right, or they couldn't do it in another way, they didn't spend it. And one of the examples of this was, you know, they were looking at ticketing. You mentioned, you know, long waits, um, and so what they did is, instead of going out and investing in a hundred thousand dollar ticketing software, they just went and they bought pre-printed banana shaped tickets for like six grand, because they didn't have a hundred thousand dollars, right, that wasn't allocated. And so that's the importance of the system when you, when you hold yourself to it, you have somebody to hold yourself to it as well, and you implement it. You follow it up. So it allows you to be innovative, because as your availability funds shrink, so does your spending.

Dave: 22:35

Um, and another example is and I just thought about this too, right, you know, you just had a couple babies. Um, you know, think about this, right, if you're standing there and you know pardon the the imagery here, but you know you're changing the diaper, okay, and you have a fresh, fresh pile right of you know, wipes sit next to you. Well, you know you're probably, oh, here's one, oh, let me take one white, maybe two, and then, oh, let me get another one, right, because you have all these extra wipes. Yeah, but I can guarantee you, and you've probably done this, when you're getting to the bottom of the wipes and you forgot to go out and buy some and you have one wipe left.

Dave: 23:09

You can clean that baby's butt with that one wipe with the same that you might have done before five, when you had a relatively large amount.

Duarne: 23:16

Right, it's like going to the bathroom and looking at the after. You're halfway through doing your business and you look at the roll and you go oh shit, I'm going to have to make that work.

Dave: 23:27

All right, here we go, and so it's the same thing with your money in your business. Right, if you have X amount, you're going to make it work. And how you're going to make it work is you're going to call your vendors, you're going to get extended terms, you're going to renegotiate, you're going to cancel things that you don't need to spend anymore because it's not actually useful to the future of your business, and you begin to again. You begin to bootstrap a lot of things that maybe you wouldn't have done, or maybe you think in an innovative way. You know, having limited funds actually makes you become more innovative in what you do and how you do it, and that's why this works.

Dave: 24:03

Jesse Savannah Bananas, they're huge now because they implemented Profit First. Right, they're huge now because they follow the system. They are basically the poster child of Profit First implementation in a business to turn things around. And then you know, with debt, the last thing I'll say here and then you know sorry, I didn't mean to talk, but on the debt front, how you do this right is your Dave Ramsey says it in his his teachings. But also, you know, profit first. We teach it right with profit first is that it's called the debt snowball.

Dave: 24:34

So what you do is you kind of list out all your debts and the lowest balance first is what you want to take care of and you pay the minimum on everything, but you kind of pay down the small balance first, but with your profit distributions, with profit first, instead of you taking it all, you're also taking your profit distributions and applying it to your debt.

Dave: 24:56

And so then what happens is, let's say this $100, you're paying on the small one, right, you pay that off. Well, you add that to what you were already paying on the second one with your profit distributions, and then you add that 100 and the 200. Now that 300 gets added to the third lowest debt, right, and before you know it, you're paying, you know, $1,000, which is what you already have going out the door and all your debts paid off, right. And so it's one of those things that you know as a profit first professional, which I am right. We can help you kind of design that plan and implement it and actually implement the entire system. And that's where Jesse and Savannah Bananas is, where they are today. If I don't think and you could probably ask Jesse himself, and I think he said this in a couple of his own podcast appearances he would not be where they are today.

Duarne: 26:16

They would not be in stadiums, right, if they didn't implement't implement profit first, they would probably be broke and savannah bananas would not be what they are today yeah, and it's interesting because, like for me, I was just genuinely blown away by their fan first approach and his conversations that he has and the press releases that he does about how resilient he is and he's and he's approached two fans first and when we spoke earlier in the week and you said, well, actually profit first he's he's actually mentioned in the program, like no way, and it was something that we, you know, organically realized earlier this week.

Duarne: 26:55

So for me, I I saw a huge value in what they're doing. From that you know position and like, even with those inclusive tickets, like if you look at the general cost of tickets in the NBL, like what are you looking at? Between $50, $60 to $300 a ticket, right, the Banana Ball League, they're only charging between $ and 60 a ticket, depending on where you're sitting. And like all-inclusive tickets because they want more fans at the game, they want more fans watching the game. They broadcast their games on youtube, so you get huge fan. They're one of the most streamed sporting uh leagues in the world because they put it on youtube for their fans to watch. They took out the other side of it.

Dave: 27:47

You gotta you gotta remember like this this is a baseball team, right, that was, you know requires their fans to really be at the stadium to really get the experience right with the dancing and all this stuff. And so what do they do? They're in covet. They innovated, right, they had zero ticket sales, but still was a profitable company. Why? Because they thought of different things that they could do so they had like so what do they do there?

Dave: 28:01

in COVID, they innovated, right, they had zero ticket sales, but still was a profitable company. Why? Because they thought of different things that they could do. So they had, like you know, pop-up drive-through things in Florida where they gave away. You know where they sold drinks Like I don't forget what they call it, but it was like a banana drink or something like that, right? Or they did, like you know, the 24-hour pop-up merch right, where it's like, hey, only for the next 24 hours are you going to get this T-shirt, you know for Savannah Bananas. And so they had the fanfare, but they were able to innovate in a period where they could do their sport and they had no ticket sales, but they were still a profitable organization because they were able to innovate. So there's so many, there's so many like lessons that you can learn from the Savannah Bananas. You know, they're basically disrupting an entire sport, right? In terms of you know will they ever be the MLB?

Dave: 28:47

I don't think so. Right they will be. I think we'll always be around, you know.

Duarne: 28:50

but and Jesse said he's not interested in replacing MLB. He loves the MLB. He's just he wants additional sporting league and entertainment value for people. That's it. There's plenty of. There's plenty of followers available to follow both sports and, if they want, maybe enjoy both sports or just follow the one they like at the end of the day. I mean, I love what you said there about the fact that once you actually start down this path, the innovation side opens up. It becomes a lot more positive from an innovation point of view and allows you to make better decisions and choose. And you're right. When you don't have choices, you start to be smarter in the decisions you make. You start deciding well, hey, you know what? Yeah, I could pay sixteen hundred dollars a year for that software, or maybe I just do that in a spreadsheet until I can afford to spend $1,600. Or do I need it, or is there another alternative?

Dave: 29:46

Or can I build something that accomplishes the same thing Exactly? And if you look at your bank account and I care if you're watching this or you're listening to the replay I want you to think over the last week, how many times did you look at your bank and and just say, okay, well, I have money I can spend? Right. Or somebody said, hey, you know? Um, maybe you thought, hey, I need a new, new keyboard, or I need a new mouse, or I need money for my personal living, right, that's the other thing. You know. If you're not paying yourself on a regular basis as a business owner, how do you pay? Your personal expenses is just, hey, whatever, there's money in the bank account, but how do you know that that's not encumbered from the business and that's part of the other side of the profit? First is you need to take care of yourself first.

Duarne: 30:28

Because, dwarren, let me ask you this If you had to name a person in your organization and if you're listening to this same way If you had to name a person in your organization who is the best employee, who is I'd say that would probably be my team leader for my development team for a number, and you are like probably everybody else watching this video?

Dave: 30:56

who said somebody else and you're wrong. Will your team leader come into work and work for free? Will your team leader work till midnight every day? Start every day at 8 am, right, not a chance, and work for free. And if you miss a day?

Duarne: 31:11

exactly.

Dave: 31:15

The only person in the organization who's willing to do all of that is you, and you are your number one employee. But so many people, as a business owner, think otherwise. And what happens? You take care of yourself last, when, in fact sorry about this, if you're listening to this and you're an employee like you, as a business owner, have to take care of yourself first, but this is where proper management allows you to do that right. This is where proper allocation of the money coming into the business can help you do both right. This is where proper, you know, allocation of the money coming into the business can help you do both right.

Dave: 31:44

But you have to make sure you take care of yourself first, or what's going to happen? One, you're going to be stressed out, you get burned out, you resent the business okay, and then you end up going under and then you just become an employee somewhere else right, and that's not what anybody wants when they start a business. And so, from the beginning of owning a business, you have to do it right, and so, no matter if you're listening to this and you're just signing the paperwork to start your business, you're 10 years into your business or maybe right you're you're about thinking to close your business like savannah bananas, like they were on the brink of closing. You can turn it around and all it takes is a little bit of, you know, a cash management system, a little bit of discipline and consistency, and it can be done.

Duarne: 32:28

I love that because I mean we all know having good cash flow in a business just makes life a lot easier. I mean, right from the beginning, it just makes it a lot easier. It's a lot less stress. You're not wondering how you're going to get paid. The one thing I like about this is, I mean, we've all been guilty of looking in the bank account and going, all right, so which bill do we pay this month? Or you know what that doesn't look like. I'm going to be able to pay myself this week. I'm eating two-minute noodles for the next week. Let's just make this work. I mean, that's just as a business owner. You're right. But what do we do? We make sure all of our staff get paid. We make sure that all of our staff are taken care of. So, but you're right. I mean, if it wasn't, you know most businesses, it's only the owner that's going to come in and do those 12, 14 hour days, 16 hour days, as necessary.

Dave: 33:22

We're going to wake up at two in the morning to do that video call that we need to do with a client, because it's the only time that works for them right and but our default like you just you just proved right is that we think of other people in terms of our best employees, when in reality it's us, um, and a lot of times it's only us, right, um, you know, and even if you're contractors, you know you probably go oh yeah, I couldn't do it without this person Like, yeah, but that person, if you don't pay them for 30 days, is not going to continue to work for you, you know, and so you have to make sure you do it right.

Dave: 33:50

And again, these aren't like, we're not like when we implement profit first. It's not about completely restructuring your entire business. We take into account what's going on, you know, and it's small, incremental kind of changes, right, but it's building that habit, right. So we're not going to say, oh, you're going to go from, you know, 80 operational expenses down to 30, like it's just not going to happen that way overnight, right, but it's. It's small, consistent changes that you can build the habit within your business as we work and look at expenses that are happening or things that are happening that are going on that you can cut or adjust or renegotiate or find a better alternative.

Dave: 34:26

I was just having a discussion with a client earlier, you know, and I was like, hey, by the way, like you know, you have like internet company and then you have a cell phone company, but they both offer, right the same, your kind of agreement. I'm like, when was the last time you actually like looked at these expenses and negotiated. It was something like they were paying like two thousand dollars a month, right between the two organizations, yeah, and he's like, well, um a while, I'm like okay, and I'm like okay with your cell phone company, like how many lines do you have? And they're I don't know 12. How many are you using? How many are you using Three? So for months they're paying all this extra money. And the other company, right, the internet company already said if you port these over and bring these over, we'll give you like a crazy deal, you know, and so they can almost be saving $1,200 a month. But it's something that, because it just happens every month, they don't think about.

Duarne: 35:27

They're caught up in daily activities and it activities and it's time to think of that as a big enough problem. Right, it's like we've talked about before. If you yeah, if you want to stub your toe yeah, it's irritating you're probably gonna be cursing for a minute, you're gonna get irritated, but you're probably not gonna take any action to go to get medical treatment.

Dave: 35:41

But if you were to break your toe or break your leg, you're going straight to them, or you can't walk, you can't put weight on it, and that's sometimes what's going on with business.

Duarne: 35:51

Exactly, it's the same as business. So I mean, this is why, like you know, it's so good. If you've got home insurance, car insurance, one of the things that's recommended is shop around at the end of your contract, go back out and don't just renew at the regular rate. Go back in and sign back up on their site. You'll generally get a discount on their site If you sign back up as a on a fresh account, a fresh plan. We'll contact them and say, hey look, I'm not going to sign this new agreement because it's really. I want a better deal. They'll normally negotiate with you and the same goes with telcos and all that. We literally, just here at home, cancelled one of our service providers for our um internet fiber connections because we're able to save 50 by moving to another carrier and you know, and you've probably been paying that same rate for 12, 18, 24 months.

Duarne: 36:47

Exactly, exactly, I mean, it just becomes normal for us and we've had situations where we're like looking down, going shit, is this connection out of? Is this out of contract? Not sure, we'll check it out. We check it out, find out. Yes, it is out of contract. Wow, we'll check it out. We check it out, find out. Yes, it is out of contract. Wow, look at all the new plans that are out there and, like you said, telephone and mobile, cell, landline and even voip and internet connections these things are always getting better, better, better, better, better.

Dave: 37:16

You can get such great deals now if you shop around I know, if you have the other ones, that people, a lot of people, don't think about too. Or you know, especially if you're a big, you know medium-sized, you know big organization that you know has like an office spot or whatever is, is your electric right, your utilities. You know your gas and your electric, like those things, are things that you can, you know lock in for savings. You know um, and that you can even do that in your personal house. You know, if you work, you work at a home, like sometimes you know it is worth it to look into these things and what the exact answer I got back from a client is what a lot of people say I don't know, it's just, it's just some effort, right, ok, but you know you're you're, you're starving yourself, right.

Dave: 37:57

Let's put it this way it's $1, dollars a month, like you know.

Duarne: 38:01

Or here's the question, dave how much effort would you have to put in to earn an extra twelve hundred dollars a month, versus effort to put in to save twelve hundred dollars a month?

Dave: 38:11

right every month. And that's the funny thing okay, when you save, like when you save, maybe what? An hour, two hours on a phone, okay, that's it. Like then you spend, that savings is cut In order for you to earn an extra $1,200 a month, like you just said, how many hours do you have to do every single month extra to make an extra $1,200 a month? 100%, even if it's two hours every month, you're talking two hours one time or two hours every month to make that $1,200. Most of us know that 1200 is going to come in, two hours.

Duarne: 38:43

Right, it's going to come in pain today pain today to prevent further pain in the future. Right, it's like and this is like I've been in this situation before yes, some things are really complicated, like you know looking into your insurance, comparing insurance, comparing utilities, trying to measure up and see if you can make a saving on things. One common thing that I've seen is I've got a client and they change up their car every three years for a new lease. Every time they do their new lease, they typically find they drop the spend of their lease or maintain the spend of their lease and get an upgrade on the vehicle. Their lease or maintain the spend of their lease and get an upgrade on the vehicle. Right, so they get. They end up finding that it's a win for them every single time and because they're changing their lease.

Dave: 39:30

you know, depending on how you're using it, you could possibly be writing it off on your business if you're using it for majority of your business.

Duarne: 39:35

Right, it is a business lease for his vehicle, 100 percent, because it's the only thing he pretty much does is business related. You know, travel with it. So you're right. So we're kind of going to jump in further.

Dave: 40:29

I want to stop here for a second and if you guys are watching this and you've gotten the pizza pieces or you know bits out of this section right, about banana ball, about, you know, profit first, the cash flow and your operations and all that kind of stuff we want to ask you to help us get this word out right. We want to grow this, this podcast. We want to help, you know, business owners across the world right, you know warren's over in the philippines. You know he's here. It's almost 9 pm his time. You know 8, 30 or 9 am my time. You know. The idea here is that we want to, you know, kind of get this out. So we ask you if you, if you've enjoyed what you're listening to, hit the like button right now, but also share this to your network and let them know. You know, hey, this is a great podcast. We hope it's a great podcast. If you're still here, uh, or you're watching it, and something that you got out of this presentation will help you in your business, please do that for us.

Duarne: 41:16

We appreciate all the support and love that we get from y'all um but yeah, so sorry during I didn't mean to cut you off, but I wanted to kind of give that no, no, no important messages definitely get in and show some support and I'm gonna let you run it.

Dave: 41:28

I'm gonna run to the bathroom real quick, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'll be right back no worries.

Duarne: 41:34

Well, one of the things that uh came up during the week there as well um, we started talking about how chat gPT 5 was released last week and, oh my gosh what backlash there's been over the last week by removing options and choice from people who are using the platform. So I believe in the last 24, 48 hours there's been some changes again to the platform where you can actually roll back to using GPT 4.0, which is very, very useful for some people because it's a far more predictable version of the platform and they're finding that their results are actually much better in that and they're happy with those results. I've also noted that there's a couple of functions in there where you can now choose between let us decide and quick thinking and spend more time researching. So they've actually took away some of that. We're going to figure it all out for you, realizing that, hey, you know what.

Duarne: 42:37

We're probably not at that point, we're probably not doing a good enough job at this yet and actually introduce some more of that. We're going to let you have a little bit of control and choose how you want to use the platform again, or you can just let us run it in autopilot if you want to. So I was a little bit surprised by that, because all that wording that came out and the messaging around the original launch of GPT-5 is there was no choice. It was just this is what we're doing and we're doing it, and there was a lot of mixed reactions at that point. So it's interesting to see that a big company like you know, openai, has said yeah, look, you know, maybe we weren't right and we're willing to throw a compromise out there for those who do want to use it in a specific way that we may not have anticipated.

Dave: 43:29

So what's your take on that? It's an interesting approach because I've always talked about it before. Right, you want to be nimble. You want to listen to what we talked about at the beginning of the episode. Right, you want to listen to your customers, your clients, et cetera. You know to make adjustments or to be innovative in terms of your product offerings. And I haven't had an issue with ChatGPT5, but I could see why people would, especially because I didn't know there was an announcement.

Duarne: 43:56

The only reason I knew there was an announcement was from what you said.

Dave: 44:00

They didn't put it in the platform at all. Like, hey, watch the announcement here. Like Apple and stuff, they do banners, different things like that, which I think is fun. They can learn, I think, from that way too. Um, but I like having the choice, especially if you're like, hey, I want to, you know, test it. Because even in their uh presentation they even say like take a prompt and go. And he even did it.

Dave: 44:20

He went to three different kind of tabs right, and it all came up with kind of different versions of what he was asking for, because it was like asking three different people, um. So I could totally understand why people would want to have that option to say hey, here's gt5's response. Let me see what 4o says. I've been, then, kind of doing a comparison between the two to make the best version that you would like, right, um, so yeah.

Duarne: 44:45

Um, I totally, I think. So I think it's an interesting one because they're a software company, right, and a software company that uh. Thanks, carrie, I love that feedback. I'm glad you're getting something out of this. Um, dave's pretty good when it comes to financial information, so if you do have questions, feel free to reach out to him. I'm the guy about AI and marketing and, yeah, I love numbers, but from a completely different point of view, you love when they're in your bank account.

Dave: 45:15

You don't love dealing with it.

Duarne: 45:16

Oh, absolutely. I love it when they're in the bank account.

Dave: 45:19

I love to see numbers soaring on social media accounts and views to websites for sure absolutely I love it, but yeah, it is interesting to see a company like that, like be innovative and kind of be willing to you kind of take one right and say hey, we messed up oh, 100, I mean and I think the thing is people see that and expect that these days I don't think being wrong is a bad thing, and like going back to the banana ball right.

Duarne: 45:49

One of the things that Jesse shared on an interview was they got the name wrong on one of their merch launches and they actually yeah, he's like, can you, we're trying trying to do it, we're trying to do our own merch and sell our merch. Can you imagine we're selling merch that's got the wrong name on it? Like how many people would have seen that and not pointed that out? Um, I was on today. I was just on the local government website because it's a holiday here in the dava, where I am, and um website because it's a holiday here in the Davao, where I am, and um, it's Katiawan festival. So what they're doing is they're talking about um, lots of government, lots of people going to the government website to check for announcements and stuff.

Duarne: 46:33

So I've gone to the website to check something out and, sure enough, there's a article about littering and how the um, one of the local government um groups, had actually put out a bunch of fines to litterers in this certain, on this new coastal road that they've built, which is pretty cool. There's like 43 people, but they'd misspelled the word littering. Uh, litter, they've got litterers, no litterers. So double e it was a doubling up on the er and I'm thinking myself going wow, that's a government website, somebody's responsible for that. How many sets of eyes have looked at that? And now it's being missed. Something as simple as and I'm like maybe it's just, it's just on this page. No, I clicked to the article. The actual article also has a misspelled, so it wasn't just the one page.

Duarne: 47:23

It was actually misspelled and I was like shaking my head going well, there you go. So even a government website can get something wrong. A big sporting team can get something wrong. We all get things wrong. It's about how we handle. That is what shows the sort of business or the people that we are. Do we hide it? Do we own it? Um, and I guess that's where it really comes down to.

Dave: 47:52

So what I think, I you know, I 100% agree with you, right, because and here's where it also comes into your own self you have to recognize that you are not perfect, right, you can strive for perfection, right, but you have to recognize that you are not perfect.

Dave: 48:04

Right, you can strive for perfection, right, but you have to be able to forgive yourself when you're going to make mistakes and then just own it and just be like you know what I messed up, you know what I mean. Shit happens. We move on, right, we move on, we, you know, own it, we make it correct and we kind of learn from it. Right, and I think no matter if you're just starting out or as your multi-million dollar organization, you are gonna make a mistake here or there and things are not gonna go as planned, and it's how you react that's going to determine what's that next stage for your organization and your company.

Duarne: 48:42

Well, can you imagine if someone like open ai doubled down and said no, not a chance, we ain't changing that, this is how it is now they would have got? There could have been a whole bunch of backlash, which was super negative. By doing this, they've got all this great press now going out. They got all these people talking about it and going oh, did you notice this? Did you see this?

Dave: 49:02

and that's the one thing I always say about OpenAI and this is my negative here right is they make changes without notification?

Dave: 49:13

at least like within the app. Like you know, one thing I can think of is is the task thing. You know, one day I make a video about it. I you know the tests are still running that I made, but now, like you can't, it's not in the same spot anymore and you can't even create a task anymore. You know what I mean and it's like well, why you know, and so you definitely want to. You know, practice that in your business too, is make sure you're notifying your clients, your customers, you know, of changes that are happening especially if you're changing.

Duarne: 49:40

I mean, can you imagine if you're going to change the billing situation to a different day and not tell anyone, just change it, or change your terms, or change the hours of your business, all of these things? I mean, you know you're gonna have to notify and tell people and warn them that this is happening. So, as a software company, I don't know why software companies tend to change stuff and then just go oh, oops, sorry forgot to tell you. We see this all the time with go high level as well. Right, go high level makes so many changes it is so hard to keep up with what they're doing and it just becomes one of those things where it's like oh, oh, they've changed this again, oh, they've moved this, oh, they've added this and they're calling it. You know a fluid process, but for me I think, sometimes too many changes, too quick and too often it just causes way too much confusion with your customer base.

Dave: 50:38

We kind of talked about it. I think it was last week or maybe it was week four, I don't remember exactly the specific time we chatted about it.

Dave: 50:42

But you know, depending on your relationship with your clients and whether it's like one-on-one like you know you're meeting with them versus like it's a SaaS type organization, you know determines one, the medium at which you need to be making these you know kind of announcements and the time period right, yeah, so if you're talking like it's a five dollar change, like it could be like a 30-day, you know, kind of update hey, by the way, like you know, in the next 30 days we're making a small change. But if you're talking like a significant dollar amount, like maybe you know a client, you realize you've been undercharging them and you need to get them up to where they need to be. Maybe you're almost doubling their invoice. Well, that's probably something that you don't want to just do overnight, or even within the next 30 days. They're probably going to be upset, and so that's where the communication comes.

Dave: 51:27

And just to say, by the way, you know and this is maybe six months out here's the plan you know. I want to just let you know, you know, based on new charges, new, new systems, and justify why you're doing it. You know we need to make some changes to your bills and here's how it's going to happen over the next six months. You know, each month we're going to up you a little bit and maybe it'll go all the way to double. But maybe it's like, hey, our plan is the next two years to get you where you need to be, you know, and we realized that we don't want to do this, do this overnight, and they're going to respect you for it too, because if you're doing great work for them, they're going to know that you're worth what you're doing and as long as you continue to do that, they're not going to have a problem kind of continuing to pay those increased invoices.

Duarne: 52:10

Yeah, and I think one industry that does communication notifications quite well for a specific issue is factory faults through vehicles. Most vehicles, the legislations and the rules in place require them to notify people. Uh, personally, who purchased, purchased a vehicle about you know this part is faulty. Please take this letter in when you get your car service next and we will replace it for free. Right, like that sort of thing is great.

Duarne: 52:42

I mean, yes, you get pissed off Cause like, oh man, my trends is my transmissions busted. Ah, I'm going to have to get a fix. I'm going to be. That's going to suck. I'm going to be out of you know, for a few days.

Duarne: 52:55

No, it's not busted right now, but there's potential it could get busted. They're going to fix it without all right, this is okay, they're warning me about it and they're going to give me a chance to get a fix at my convenience. So I mean that's really cool when you can have that sort of communication and not every business allows you to have that sort of level of communication or process. And I understand sas businesses and software businesses if they've got thousands and thousands or hundreds of thousands of clients using their software. Yeah, they can't get around to every single one of them and say, hey, we've done this change or we've moved this over to here. Necessarily as easy, but a lot of these software companies that are doing that are just sending out an email and saying, hey, by the way, we've made these adjustments and changes.

Dave: 53:38

Or put a banner on your website. Put a banner and saying, hey, by the way, we've made these adjustments and changes. Or put a banner on your website. Put a banner and say, hey, look, check this shit out by the way, here's some updates. Oh, my bank did this.

Duarne: 53:45

Recently they moved a button which is actually more convenient, but it's inconvenient for me because when I do a transfer it's now not in the main menu, it's in the bottom menu. But it's now a quick quick. It's one of three quick buttons, but they took it out of the main menu. So every time I go into the app I'm so used to doing it on autopilot I keep messing it up and I'm like oh, where is it? Oh, here it is again.

Duarne: 54:10

Yeah, I remember um, when you go into like I don't know if you get it there, but when you're going to um, pay for something on a fbos machine or um, you know the card payment machines in a store. Some of these machines are set up with security now where they shift the numbers around on the keypad right when you're putting your pin in. So if you're on autopilot, when you know the key that the muscle memory knows where to press on a keypad, you've got to stop, think and go. Shit, the numbers are in a different order and change it. These little changes in our day-to-day annoy us. Imagine doing that in your business and how your customers are going to feel when you do that sort of stuff what do you know.

Dave: 54:52

The other thing like that's funny too right is uh, yeah, I feel like fast food restaurants over here in the united states do a better job of letting you know when things change than some companies Like they do. Like you know what they they always have it Like. When they changed their you know the meal numbers they say hey, by the way, your, your, your, your favorite meal has changed. You know, make sure you check the board to make sure you're saying you want the right meal.

Duarne: 55:23

Like I feel like they do a better job of that than some some companies of notifying people change, but so isn't that interesting, right, I mean? And what and what? What does that have? In fact, you know, they actually are customer first businesses because they're providing a product for their customers and they're generally, they know their customers have an expectation. So by doing that they're reducing the complaints and the and the you know uh, customer feedback and the negativity.

Duarne: 55:43

I go into a restaurant and if I order the same meal at a restaurant and it turns up one day like we had a situation recently, my wife um looked at the meal and said, oh, I think there's a different chef. And I said why is that? Well, normally we get string beans. And I said why is that? Well, normally we get string beans, roast potatoes, marble potatoes and we get some, you know, mini cherry tomatoes with that dish. It seems like they've doubled up on the tomato and they've left the string beans off the plate.

Duarne: 56:10

And I've looked at her and I'm like that's the sort of stuff I normally notice. You're noticing that now? How cool is that? And sure enough, we asked the waitress and she's like yeah, yeah, we've actually got a different chef in at the moment and she went back and checked and said yeah, so we're out of string beans, so they've substituted tomato for the string beans, but the waitress weren't informed and we had no idea. If you're a new customer you probably won't notice, but if you're an existing customer you know. Oh, I didn't like that this time. That wasn't as good an experience and you might get a little upset by that, or you might get a little bit irritated or annoyed or just oh yeah, that's not what I ordered, but okay, I'll accept it. Maybe they've changed something.

Dave: 57:01

Change is good, but you have to inform people. Yeah, for sure. I 100 agree with you on that one.

Duarne: 57:04

So so yeah. So just to wrap things up for the show, I mean banana ball super entertaining. If you haven't checked it out, definitely check it out. Super fun if you're lucky enough to get tickets right.

Dave: 57:17

You know they're they're so popular. You have to, like, get into a lottery at these cities which is crazy a lottery just to buy their tickets. You know, could you imagine customers for your business having to get a lottery just to get the right to? You know, have, have your service you know what that tells me.

Duarne: 57:31

You know that tells me, brother. That tells me that they need more teams, they more cities, more teams to take this on and grow this league out so they can have more tickets, more shows They've already done four.

Dave: 57:46

Obviously, they're up to four now.

Duarne: 57:48

Yeah, I think, yeah, we're talking. When I was looking at it the other day, I think there's actually I think there's a fifth team now they're introducing. So you've got the tailgaters, you've got the firefighters, the bananas and what's the? There's another one, the pink team, the party animals right, the party animals and they just introduced the visitors. Okay, the visitors and it was like they some sort of play. I saw where they were talking about what's the most common name in every single team on the scoreboard it's the visitors. They created a visitor's team and and there's like this talk about if you do well in the visitor's team, um, you can earn your place on one of the regular teams, um sort of it's like, it's like their minor league team, right, that goes on.

Duarne: 58:37

They've just created their own minor league team, and you know the cool thing about it.

Dave: 58:40

Just think about the opportunities too that this kind of creates for younger kids right Is. You know, the idea of getting to MLB was far off, or any professional sport is far off. But now you can continue to do what you love and you know, make a life out of it and make a living right, still doing it and just doing it in a fun way like you. Just, it opens up way more opportunities for baseball players um to to, you know, continue on after college or whatever, um, that are fun and they want to be sociable and they want to, you know, do social media and stuff like that.

Duarne: 59:13

So I think, it's awesome.

Dave: 59:14

I I mean I could see in the next five to ten years them, you know, having know, having 10 teams. You know what I mean. And what's nice is that they're not. They're also not tied to a specific city. You know which means you can. You know anybody from anywhere could cheer for any team, you know, and the game's the same and you're not really, you know, kind of tied to a specific sort of route. You're rooting for the team versus, like you know, professional sports. You're rooting for the team versus, like you know, professional sports. You're rooting for your home team. You know you're not necessarily rooting for, you know, a team up north or you know a team down south. You're basically tied to your home team. So I know the other thing about it is.

Duarne: 59:48

I love the fact that they've taken the rules that they don't like in baseball regular baseball and removed them. Like you know, all games are capped to two hours and the ninth inning they actually have a point for every score. So you actually anyone's game. And they came up with this idea from what I heard was people wouldn't stay for the full game once they know who's going to win. Like, oh look, five wins, yeah, okay, we're going to leave after the fifth inning. We know who won. You don't know who wins because it could be anyone's game. When it gets that ninth inning, anyone could be the winner and that's crazy. Like you're gonna stay for that. It's entertaining the fact you know it's two hours. It's like going to the movies and knowing you're going to be there for two hours so you can plan an activity afterwards. You can plan something Removing all the boring stuff, like going up and talking to you know the pitcher for five minutes Can't do it. It's not allowed Bonus points for trick shots, just crazy stuff Like having a guy.

Dave: 1:00:54

The coolest stuff to see about it right Is the backflip support catch or they bounce the ball before they throw it to first base or something like that. That's pretty cool.

Duarne: 1:01:03

And I think you're right. I think we're going to see kids who potentially wash out of the major league or didn't quite make it into the major league and maybe don't want to play in the minor leagues, or they have an alternative, an option, now. So I'd love to see you know another 10, 15 teams and really grow this out and become something amazing. And the fact that you can cheer for a team even if you're not in your city. That's super fun, super entertaining.

Duarne: 1:01:36

Jesse made a comment one time that he knew that they'd made the right decision on the entertainment value when he was walking through playing clothes, through the crowd in the stadium one time, doing his little incognito, listening in and being, you know, and joining with the crowd to see what the reactions were. And one of the wives reached over and hit her husband and said shut up, they're about to dance. Of the wives reach over and hit her husband and said and shut up, they're about to dance and he's like these. He said you know, the first time they suggested the idea of dancing, it was like you know, three of the players were like oh yeah, we'll do that, and then none of the others, the other no, we're not doing that but this, and then they had all these people reacting to it the next time they said we're going to do a dance. Apparently, you know, double the numbers of the players wanted to join in and do it, and it just until it got to the way it is now.

Dave: 1:02:27

Now it's mandatory, like if you want to play banana ball, like you have to be willing to dance and do all the fun, crazy stuff.

Duarne: 1:02:34

So, but yeah, All right.

Dave: 1:02:35

Well, hey we we said we can kind of wrap it up because we want you guys to be mindful of your time as well. We appreciate you joining here.

Duarne: 1:02:50

But for yourself, dorn, what's that one, two things that you want people to walk away from? Today's episode with Look. I think people should definitely take a look at this profit first conversation that you have started. It's something which, whether you're an established business, a failing business or surviving business, it's something I think that we could all benefit from and learn from. So I think it's a great thing to look into. I know you've got some special offers going on that, so I'm sure if you reach out or you know, I think you've got some message If you type in there clarity into the chat clarity.

Dave: 1:03:21

We'll talk about your cash flow in your business, um type it down below your comment. Down below we can chat through that and and see what's right and what's, you know, the next steps for your organization, based on where you're at right now I love it.

Duarne: 1:03:34

And the other thing is, trust me going. If you have not checked out Bananable, go and check it out on TikTok, reels, insta, whatever platform you're using on socials, and be prepared your Reels and feed is just going to be flooded with all the different funny shit that's going to come up and you're just going to sit there and shake your head. I'm showing my Filipino friends and family here and they're all like what is this? This is awesome.

Dave: 1:04:02

I want to watch this. I think they want to go internationally eventually. But yeah, for sure, I 100% agree with you.

Duarne: 1:04:07

Like once you catch one, like you're going to be like, oh my.

Dave: 1:04:09

God, like did that just happen? Like kind of thing. And then you're just going to fun. I want to get to a game eventually. I haven't been the only time they've been around me. I did put in for the lottery but we didn't get picked. So that sucks. But what are you going to do For me? I would say, you know, definitely the cashflow, but you know I would take away from this If you answer that question, like Dwarin did earlier, about who is the most important employee in your organization and you name somebody else.

Dave: 1:04:39

it's time to you know be honest with yourself and realize that you need to start taking care of yourself first, and if you did answer somebody else, you probably aren't taking care of yourself the proper way in terms of monetarily and making sure that you're supported just like you would your best employee. And then, if you also, you know, take a look at your bank account and your spending determines about what's in your bank account and your spending determines about what's in your bank balance, and you only have one bank account, you also need to, you know, kind of create a better habit and begin to allocate and begin to go through the profit first system. So, if you want again comment clarity down below you know, we'll have a conversation.

Dave: 1:05:15

If it's right for you, great. If it's not right for you, you, we'll at least point you in the right direction. Um, ultimately it does come down to like you know, you've got to build a habit and how you're going to do that, um, and it takes small steps. We're not telling you, you got to. You know, go out and be crazy, right and go. You know, all right, I'm going to cut my expenses from 80 down to 30. It's not, that's not realistic. You know, part of the system is being realistic, realistic, you know.

Dave: 1:05:39

I'll leave you with one last example, and I learned this from from Mike himself. Right, they, they, they were doing a study about people that wanted to to run. And you know, and it's the idea of these small kind of changes. And so, long story short, they had two groups. One, you know, the ultimate sort of, you know, optimal running is is a mile, three miles, three times a week, right. So they told one group hey, go out and go, do the optimal, go to three, three miles, three times a week. The other group, they said, hey, we just want you to stand up while you watch TV.

Dave: 1:06:09

We don't want you to do anything crazy, we just want you to stand up for the next two weeks. They come back in two weeks. What happens? Well, about 70 percent of the people that were standing while watching tv 100 of the people did it all. Right, next two weeks, I want you to start marching in place, okay. Um. So the people that were watching tv hey, just march in place while you're watching tv. The other people, hey, continue to go out, run, come back in two weeks. People that were running now it's down to like 10 of the people that started. So out of 100, there's 10 people left. People that are marching, 99 of the people we're still marching. Now.

Dave: 1:06:37

It's like, okay, I want you to kind of touch base and kind of walk in place right now and get out there and start running. And the ultimate goal here is that you can see when it came back the following two weeks, all the people that are supposed to be running at the optimal three miles for three times a week. They were all done. They quit, but still, 99% of the people that started slow, got up to that point or able to get to that point. 99% of the people that started slow, got up to that point, or able to get to that point, and I think by the end of that study, 80% of those people were actually running optimally and stayed with it. That's the ultimate goal is that you don't want to just start with something and then do it and then stop.

Dave: 1:07:10

And I can say this because I myself, when I first read and listened to the Profit First book, I went out boom, I'm going to do this, I'm going to set up all my accounts that I need to, the basic accounts, I'm going to do this. I did it for like two or three months. I had nobody to hold me accountable, and what started happening? I missed one crucial piece, which was taking your profit and your taxes and putting them in another bank that you can't see on a regular basis and you can't touch unless you actually walk into that bank. That's my problem, because what happened the first time I did this?

Dave: 1:07:40

I borrowed from the profit. Hey, I need to pay an expense. I'm going to borrow from my profit account, I'll put it in operations and I'll put it back later. Well, that never happened, and so that's the problem is, I went all in too quick. I started doing these crazy percentages, I was like, oh, I'm going to do 20% of profit, I'm going to do 10% of taxes and as you're growing a business, as you have small numbers, large percentages represent a large amount of money and a large amount of what you're bringing in. And all too often I was like, well, I need to pay myself, I need to pay bills, so I need to take more out.

Duarne: 1:08:20

And it's like, ok, well, I need to to adjust my percentages but I didn't follow the system wholeheartedly um, and that's it's like why it's like when you're trying to lose weight, you can't go out and just do a heavy exercise, big diet. It's all about sustainable uh, sustainability starting off small, etching it up and growing. We had some comments that just come through. Hey, ryan, you can comment down below.

Dave: 1:08:46

If you're interested or shoot me an email I'll also have when this video kind of renders, give me your email, I'll shoot you an email and we'll kind of get in contact with you.

Duarne: 1:08:59

Appreciate it. And I just wanted to add one more thing too when you talk about who the most important person employee in your business is, if you are not saying yourself and you are the only person in your business, that's a huge problem right there as well.

Dave: 1:09:15

So, you know, let's just, let's just hopefully, if you're the only person in the business, your answer was me, I hope. Otherwise, maybe we have to talk, maybe there's like a, maybe you have an imaginary friend that is helping you do some work, or maybe you said chat GPT, maybe chat.

Dave: 1:09:35

GPT is your best friend when you initially answered that question earlier on in this episode. Go back to it. Or you're thinking of it right now and you're like hey, who would you honestly, because now you know the right answer, but who did you honestly say was? The best employee in your business if you didn't say yourself, because you've got to be honest with yourself, and I say this too, and I'll leave you with this At the end of the day, and I've said this. You guys have probably heard me say this already.

Dave: 1:10:02

At the end of the day, you are the one that has to look yourself in the mirror. You can lie to your spouse. You can lie to your friends. You can lie to your business partners about the effort that you put into your business but at the end, actually did so if you let yourself to get distracted, or maybe you, you know, didn't put in full effort. Right? The beauty of this one be honest, hey, I didn't do it today. What happened, why? Right, and then go and correct it tomorrow. But if you lie to yourself day in and day out, day in and day out, it's all those kind of negative habits you're forming. You're just giving them fuel to keep happening. Right, you have to be honest with yourself. You have to look yourself in the mirror. You're the only one that can do that. Right, you know, as a coach, as a mentor, like you can tell me anything you want, but I can't prove or disprove that. But ultimately, you know, I leave it with everybody. You have to be honest with yourself, like you can tell me something. But if you can't look yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that same thing, then you're lying and you need to correct it immediately. Um, and I'll leave everybody with that on today's episode. But, jordan, thank you again.

Dave: 1:11:05

I love having these conversations. I love kind of. You know I knew we kind of sort of what we were talking about, but I knew there were still some things that we were. We went off tangent a little bit. So again, we talked about banana ball. We talked about profit. First we talked about, you know, the parkinson law about how your expenses are going to expand your income, especially if you only have one bank account. You know we talked about being innovative. I mean, we talked about so many different things today. You know notifications making changes. You know I love that. I love having these conversations because you know it sparks a fuel, I think a little bit at the end of the week and if you're watching this again, if you got something out of this, please help us get the word out about this.

Dave: 1:11:45

I have a personal goal to impact a thousand business owners by the end of 2028. And Dorn has a goal to just make an impact. So help us do that by sharing this video. So if you got something out of today's video, like it, comment, share it, put it in your network, share it on your social media for us we love it and subscribe. We would appreciate that if you subscribe as well, so that you can. You know, every Friday we put these out at 815 am Eastern Standard Time. So we appreciate you all being here. We love you. We look forward to seeing you on the next video, dwarren. Thank you, sir. Go give Paige and that new baby a hug and a kiss. Good luck, we'll see you in the new office next week.

Dave: 1:12:20

Yeah, with any luck that'll be where I'll be Absolutely Barring any last minute setbacks, right, all right, everybody, we appreciate it. We look forward to seeing you in the next one. We'll talk to you soon.

Duarne: 1:12:40

Bye. You caught me loose. You set me free. You make me win every way. You showed me how to spread my wings.