SPEAKER_02: 0:22

Welcome to another Friday episode of the Business Unscripted Podcast. If you're a business owner or you're an aspiring business owner and you're like, I don't know what to do, how to do it. Maybe you're stuck in an obstacle. You're in the right spot. Our podcast is sponsored and presented by Triumph Business Solutions, where we are here to help you make the most out of your business and overcome your obstacles. Every week we're here at 8:15 a.m. on Fridays, and I'm always generally joined by my partner Dwarne. But we hope you are having a wonderful and fantastic week. So welcome to another episode. Duarn, sir, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_00: 1:00

Not too bad. Couple of sick kids this week, so that's been a challenge. But a bit of flu season going around here at the moment. I hear you being a little under the weather yourself. I am.

SPEAKER_02: 1:11

I am. So I apologize if I cough or sneeze. But I am under the weather. It seems to be that time of year. It went through the house, and now I'm I seem to be getting it. But we're here, we power through. I will say, you know, yesterday I kind of had to take the afternoon and just kind of it's all doubt. But today we're gonna we're gonna fight through it. Sometimes you you gotta throw in the towel some days. But other than that, we're good.

SPEAKER_00: 1:36

Well, this is the body's way of saying rest, all right? Sometimes you have to do that, you just have to take that minute to yourself and listen to your body and go, you know what, I can't fight through this. I have to take a minute to myself, I have to get a little rest in. And don't forget, you got 24 hours in a day. So if you need to take a couple hours nap to recharge, you can just power on a little bit later on and pick it up where you left off.

SPEAKER_02: 2:01

Right, right, right. Yeah, I think I slept for like 12 hours straight.

SPEAKER_00: 2:06

That's a pretty significant nap. So yeah, obviously, you needed it. Where was the last time we actually slept for that long?

SPEAKER_02: 2:14

Never, not not a while.

SPEAKER_00: 2:18

Where was it like five, six hours a night kind of guy?

SPEAKER_02: 2:23

Something like that. Yeah, four or five hours is is my typical. Yeah. Hey, we're we're uh we're here. But uh so we are we are we were talking a little pre-show, you know. Obviously, the business unscripted. So if you if you have any questions, if you're listening to this, you're a business owner, you have questions, like drop them down below, drop them in the comments. You can email us at growth at triifbusiness solutions.pro. We'll make sure that we get your questions answered live. Just a you know, kind of bit of housekeeping as well. Remember, you have an opportunity to join us. We're looking for business owners who want to join us starting in October. So if you want to give some educational insights into business owners, tell us a little bit about you and your business and and give some you know tips and strategies as well as possibly maybe talk through a couple things that are going on in your business journey. We are more than happy to invite you to join us. So down below, let us let us know your interest and we'll get you into the show as well. But Warren, it's been it's been a crazy week, you know. I I think for me one thing that I've been focusing on this week is trying to do more intentional outreach, right? Prospecting. And and and it's it's one of those things where as a business owner and as a human, you kind of especially when it comes to like calling, it's one of those things where you you're I guess you focused on the negative side of it, you focused on hearing the nose way too much. Have you ever have you ever been like a prospector for your business, or is that something where you've kind of outsourced this had other people do it for you?

SPEAKER_00: 4:03

Uh look at a little bit of both, right? I've had previous roles where I was a BDM, so that was my role, right? I was out there, my job was to develop the man the business for the business, right? You know, I had to get it all coming in. So I remember I did a sales training course with a guy called Wayne Berry, I think it was. Oh geez, 18 years ago. And I feel old when I say that. And it was described as because it, you know, you didn't have instant messaging outreach, and email outreach wasn't really a thing that people did a lot of back then. It was mostly just pick up the phone and call someone, right? And it used to be described as like getting a handcuffs and training yourself to the desk for two hours a day to make those calls, and that was your task. And you'd pick, and there was an optimal period of the day you'd use to do that. But even then, I hated it. I just like I thought, you know what, it's very having that script you have to run through, it just it's horrible. But it's one of those things though that I think you can do without being on the nose, and you can do it in a way where you're just doing that genuine outreach and offering, especially when you've got a product that you know you can help somebody with or a service you can help somebody with. If it's something that's very, I don't know, like everybody's selling, if you're trying to sell a TV and everyone's trying to sell a TV, it's really hard. You know, that's just not something you can get on a call and do. So for me, I've always found like in-person selling a lot easier than cold calling, just walking up with people on a sh on a retail floor and starting the conversation. You know they're there for an event, it's a warm lead. Warm leads always better, reporter leads always better.

SPEAKER_02: 5:45

I think you know, this I had this conversation with a client uh this past week where you you have to realize when you're cool calling, you're you're not trying to sell. Like your whole point is to prospect, is to get them into the next step. And if you realize that and you and you kind of change your focus a little bit, you can create a more direct script. Hey, the reason I'm calling is I want to set an appointment because we've been talking with a lot of people about ABC. Here's what's in it for you. You know, get right to the point, right? Because you're interrupting somebody's day. Um if your script is directly to the point, what's in it for them? Hey, would you feel like this is worth 15, 20 minutes? Great. I got a couple slots. Let's have a conversation and have the meeting. That's your ultimate point with a cold call, essentially. You're not gonna try and sell anybody in the first 15 minutes of knowing them.

SPEAKER_00: 6:39

And I think it's interesting, right? Well, some of the most successful calls that I've heard are the ones that catch you off guard where it's like, so I'm just gonna let you know this is actually a sales call, or this is a call where I'm I'm gonna offer you an appointment. If you don't want an appointment, let's just end the call now. You know, if you don't want to hear me out, I totally get it. Not a problem. If you're too busy, you can jump off the call right now.

SPEAKER_02: 7:03

Right? Right, just be you know, just hey, I that's a cold call. I'm calling you out of the blue. Uh, you know, I know you you probably don't know me from Adam. Can they can you give me 30 seconds? Right to tell you why I was calling why why I wanted to reach out. You know, I wanted to reach out because ABC, you know, our our our company does ABC. We saw you know these A B you know XYZ payments. If you're feeling any of these, would you feel it would be worth 15 minutes of your time? I can kind of give you an overview of what we do. That's it. And they kind of go from there. And and so ultimately, yeah, that's your goal when you're doing a cold call. So you know you don't try to go in and try to sell somebody in the first five, 10 minutes of having a conversation. Go in, be direct. Hey, I know you're I know I'm you know kind of interrupting your day, but can I, you know, set up a 15, 20 minute meeting with you to go over ADC if it's something that's in your business? If not, great, you know, and then you hang up, you move on to the next one. That's the idea, right? You're prospecting, you're trying to get through 100 calls or whatever it ends up being in your hour or two hours that you set aside for it. And I had this conversation with a client where I literally said, you know, she tell me about your process. Like, why are we not scheduling the meetings that we, you know, you said you wanted to schedule every week? And she's like, Well, I'm trying to build a relationship with them when I call them. And I'm like, whoa, like that's the problem. Like, nobody, when you interrupt their day, nobody wants to build a relationship with you cold. I'm like, you're you're so I gave them a script, literally straight to the point, like two-minute script on Monday. And by Wednesday, when I checked in, they had already scheduled eight, eight, book, eight meetings, right? Yeah, isn't that from from from cold out, you know, from cold prospecting. And so it's it's wonderful, you know, and that's your ultimate approach when it comes to prospecting. So if you can change your your shift of mindset when you're calling people to, I'm not trying to sell, I'm just trying to set up a meeting, and I'm gonna give you valuable tips, maybe two or three in our session, and you can take what you want with it, it becomes so much easier to call them because now you're not you don't have that pressure of I have to sell, I have to sell.

SPEAKER_00: 8:58

Well, it's a great point, right? And it's it's changing the narrative a little bit. I one thing I heard from Sabre Stewart with his sell like crazy book when he talks and he does public appearances. That guy just used to smash the phone, thousand calls a week, sort of thing, maybe more, and just get on the phone and call people. And he said he just learned so much stuff. And it's basically like if you're asking for the sale on the first call, it's like asking someone to marry you, just walking up on the street and say, Hey, you want to marry me? It ain't gonna work. It's really freaky, it's really weird, and people don't like it, it's uncomfortable for them. But if you're just simply having that conversation you're talking about, it's changed, it's just changing the narrative. It's like, hey, are you keen to have a chat and another, you know, with someone in our team about this? You know, we've we we've helped some other people with this, and you know, if it's something of interest to you, then we'd love to book an appointment. You know, when's suitable for you? You take it away from interrupting them to when is it more convenient to have that conversation, etc. And we're not talking about are you ready to change your long distance phone calls?

SPEAKER_02: 9:58

Like it's not that conversation that or your your car's extended warranty or whatever that you know that people like to call it. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 10:07

You just bought your car in for a service, we're just calling for a survey just to see how you felt the dealership went last week.

SPEAKER_02: 10:13

And you know, and and again, the idea is that you're not done wasting your time, right? Because if somebody doesn't have the problem that you're solving, get off the phone. Your your goal is to either set up that meeting or get off the phone as quickly as possible so you can go to the next number that you want to dial. And and that's ultimately what you should focus on. And really, you don't have to do this for you know five, six, seven hours a day, like especially as a business owner, you're busy, but you got to make sure you're doing it in the times that are efficient, right? And you don't want to do it after hours. Business owners aren't gonna be available after hours, you know. So do it during the day, schedule an hour. It's much easier to give your attention to it for an hour than it is, hey, I'm gonna schedule my entire afternoon on a Wednesday, you know, to do some prospecting for the business. No, take those, take those hours. You're gonna get way more productivity if you take that those four hours that you would do on a Wednesday afternoon and break it up, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, you know, from 11 to noon, you know, and and stop making excuses about it. Like that was I was reading that, you know, I think I mentioned this book, you know, last time, Fanatical Prospecting, right? You know, he mentions in there that people make an excuse all the time. Well, I don't want to call in the morning because they're just getting in, they're probably checking emails. I don't want to call, I don't want to call like at 11:30 because they're probably just getting in for lunch and they're gonna leave. Or I don't want to call like after lunch because then they're just coming back from lunch or they're probably just catching up and they're probably you know lethargic from having lunch. And then I don't want to call at 4:30 because they're probably getting ready, you know, to leave home for the day and they're probably not gonna pick up the phone either. And so you can make excuses for any time of the day. Yes, and the idea is that you just have to get it done. Like your goal, if they don't pick up, great. Now you go on to the next one and you just you know, call that person back tomorrow. Eventually they're going to recognize and see your name and your company enough to then get comfortable with you. And that's the idea. A cult person needs to see your name and your business name 20 to 50 times before they have that recognition enough to actually feel comfortable having a conversation and buying from you. So seeing your name on your caller ID, leaving a voicemail, pinging them on social media, you know, sharing a post with them, all these things are ping points, right? Touch points. And if you can do that 20 to 50 times, awesome. Like that's what you need to be doing is on cold prospects. But here's the other thing warm only needs one to ten times. So where are you putting your attention to? It's also so are you calling your warm network? People that you've already connected with, possibly had conversations with in the past, they're gonna pick, they're more likely to pick up. So go to your networks on social media, go to you know, your your recent conversations and look back at your calendar and call the people from the last three, four, five months and and touch base with them again. Hey, I want to set up a 15 meeting. I know we haven't had a chance to reconnect again, but of recently working on ABC, would you feel like it might be worth your while? Great. If not, move on to the next one.

SPEAKER_00: 13:10

Another good point, too, is I one thing I was sitting there and I talk to my clients about all the time is if you're not comfortable doing cold calling yet and you need to get used to being back on the phones and talking to people about new opportunities and new products, etc., start by sending out an email blast to all your existing customers talking about new products and services you might have. And then just get on a call and just say, Hey, I just sent you an email a couple of days ago. What about this? Did you have some time to have a chat? And start that conversation about the email you sent them. And they're already one of your clients doing something with you or have done something with you, they're more likely to engage you. So it helps with that warm lead. You'd be surprised how many businesses are out there offering services that their clients don't know about, and when and they just haven't educated them about what these new services are or what the new products are. A lot of people are like getting into that scared zone where like, I don't want to call them because maybe they'll stop doing that service they're already doing with me. And it's like, well, if you've got that mentality, then you're probably something's wrong with your service. Get on the call, get on the offer them more about what you're doing in your business. They're already a client, make them a better client. And that's that warm lead technique. And once you get a few of those under your belt, you're gonna feel better about getting on doing some cold coin because you've got your script work out in your head, you know what you're gonna talk about, you know the flow that you want to take to get a great result.

SPEAKER_02: 14:35

Well, and you said the second piece of that. So the second part that I wanted to talk about is if you're not practicing, that's your downfall because you're gonna stumble through it every time. So I just did this this past week, right? ChatGPT is great for this. I actually right, I was driving to my fiance's daughter's soccer game, and it was like 30, 40 minutes away. So I just put ChatGPT on my on my you know, my car and I said, Hey, I want you to role play with me. I want you to be business owners, I want you to give me objections, typical objections, and I want to run through, right, you know, my call script. And then then at the end, when I say end call, I want you to coach me, you know, because I have a custom GPT on on a couple sales people that I that I follow, right? One of them's Andy Elliott, and here's some other people. And and so it did it. So we and the the idea here is not one, I'm actually getting to practice on the fly the script that I've created for myself, and I have to remember it because I can't read off of anything while I'm driving. But then two, I'm actually working through it and I'm getting comfortable when I hear those same responses when I'm on the phone. And if you're not practicing, if you're not scheduling time in your day to run through your intros that you want to make at networking meetings or the script you want to have of an exploratory session, you're missing out. Because what then happens is that when you do have an exploratory session, you're gonna fumble through it and you're not gonna control that conversation. And the minute you lose control of that conversation, then you know the person's lost, they don't really know the outcome. So I think who was it? I was talking, I don't remember who exactly I talked to this week, but I loved it. I love the point that they made. They said when they get on a call, they have a purpose statement, right? And that purpose statement, when you get onto exploratory calls, hey, you know, I great, you know, glad, glad we're here, and uh, you know, paraphrasing here, and you can kind of make it yourself. But the reason what we're here's what we're gonna accomplish in the session. I'm gonna find out a little bit more about your business. I'm gonna give you a little bit of oversight of kind of like the solutions that we do with our clients, and then at the end, if you feel it's appropriate, we can decide on next steps. Now you're in control of that conversation as a business owner. So many people, and I can say this because I've been in this situation too. They just get down, hey, how are you? What's your you know, how you what's new? How you been doing? Oh, tell me a little bit about yourself. Okay, you know, well, do you have XYZ problems? And then you lost control because they don't feel like there's any structure. But when you get into that meeting and you have the structure and you give that purpose statement right at the beginning, you're setting the tone for that meeting. And I like that, hey, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00: 17:12

I like that. I'm actually taking a note of that. Yeah, setting the tone with a purpose statement. I like it. I think that's really clever. Like, and you a lot of the times when you it's it's like having an agenda when you're gonna have a meeting with people that you're catching up with, right? That are not a cold call. Obviously, you can't have an agenda with them, but there's no reason why you can't have an agenda which is based on what your purpose is on the call. And you're right, if you pass the you've got to maintain the control of the situation, otherwise it goes all over the place and you go in circles and you start doing that thing we talked about earlier where you just end up building some rapport on the first call, right? And then people kind of sit there scratching the head going, Well, it's been great talking to you, but I don't really understand why you call me. Like, right, um, have a lovely day. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02: 17:58

Yeah, have and there's no next step, there's no there's no clear kind of you know action that you're taking. And so, you know, and practice it. Like it goes back to actually practicing it. So, you know, running it through, you know, all right, hey, I want to practice my exploratory call, you know, kind of outcome. Well, do it with Chat GPT or find somebody, find your significant other or you know, an accountability partner in your business. Hey, I just want to run through this. Can you role play as a business owner as a prospect? The more you do that, the more comfortable you get in those scenarios, and the easier it is to you know walk through it. And that it doesn't feel like you're reading off a script because now you can use your tone and you're comfortable in the responses that you want to give. And and don't get me wrong, it's gonna take a while, but you have to put in the effort. So we talked about this. If you're not scheduling it on your calendar and you're not blocking off the time on your calendar, your calendar will manage you instead of you managing your calendar. So that's the two things that we talked about, right? You got to shift your mindset from from trying to sell to prospecting and that you're only trying to set appointments, right? And then when you change that mindset, it it you can you you're you're realizing that it's like, oh, it's not so much pressure to just set an appointment. And the idea is that you're you're getting you know through as many calls as you can. So when somebody says no, the idea is that you either want to get to know as quickly as possible, or you want to get to yes as quickly as possible. That's it. Like you're not trying to drag on the conversation or do anything from there. And then after that, right, then the second piece is you need to be practicing.

SPEAKER_00: 19:31

And if you're not practicing, you're gonna fumble through your words, you're gonna fumble through you know the next steps every time you come into that conversation, and so you know I know I mean the reaction from practicing with ChatGPT. How was that experience?

SPEAKER_02: 19:49

So initially it was it was frustrating, and here's why, right? So I didn't give it clear instructions the first time. I said, Hey, let's just role play. And so what it was doing is instead of going through the entire conversation, it was actually trying to coach me every single time I gave a response. And then it would say, Oh, and here's what I would say next as a business owner. No, no, I so like once I said, No, I want you to be a business owner, I want you to throw random reactions at me. Sometimes you might not even have the pain points that I'm trying to solve. That's great. Like, you know, I'm trying to get to a no if that's the case. And I said, I don't want you to coach until I say end call. And so that made it clear with Chat GPT, right? That okay, we're gonna run through the entire scenario, we're gonna try to get to some sort of outcome, and then he'll say end call at the end of it. And so once I figured that part out, like and kind of fumbled through that whole process, then it was then it was fine. But the first ones I'm like getting frustrated, I'm like, man, will you stop? I kept saying, Will you stop? Like coaching, like just be a business owner. And then I and then I had to give it the clearer instructions that you kind of have to do sometimes.

SPEAKER_00: 20:48

So it's it and look, that's it, right? I mean, it's about the clear instructions. I thought I was curious how you went with it. So you build a custom GPT to do that, right?

SPEAKER_02: 20:57

I did, and so here's and it wasn't just for that, it was more like sales in general. And so what one of the ways that I did this was I I have a lot of people that I like to like listen or you know, kind of follow their topics. And here's the thing, we all we all are limited in our time. So instead of going and and writing down and listening to all their long videos right on YouTube or whatever, I created a transcript from some of their most popular videos, and I downloaded that transcript into a document, and then I created a custom GPT and then uploaded all those transcripts into that custom GPT to then act and and provide advice based on that individual, you know, these individuals that are that are giving out the free advice. And so now Jack GPT is now trained to think like this individual based on the advice that they give in their videos. And so that's what I that's how I created it, right? And so you could do that for anybody. You know, you could do that for yourself too if you really wanted to. You can go back to your videos and download all your transcripts and and create it a custom GPT, and then you know, that essentially think of it as what Alex Hermosy did with his book lost. He took his years and years of notes that he had with all of these business owners and turned it into a custom you know Hermosy AI that would give everybody the advice that he would give based on all these different notes that he had from you know 10, you know, five, six, whatever however many years it was. And you could do that with anybody. You go to their YouTube, you can you there's free YouTube transcript generators, and you can download it and you can you know put it into a custom GPT and create a custom GPT that's trained to do whatever you want based on that advice that that person's giving.

SPEAKER_00: 22:41

So, Dave, like for all those guys and girls out there listening to this who go, that sounds really awesome, but I don't really know how to do that, or I don't have the time to do that, what can they put in the chat that will allow you to know that they're interested and that maybe you'd be willing to share your link to your custom GPT for them to use?

SPEAKER_02: 23:02

Yeah, so I put yeah, so if you want if you want to put, let's put just put GPT in in the in the comments down below. So if you're here and you're like, you know, throw GPT down in the comments and I will open it up and and share the the sales link, the sales trader that I created through tryout.

SPEAKER_00: 23:23

So very cool. I mean that's a great little tool there that people can use. And you know, if you are using it, feel free to give us some feedback and let us know how it's working for you. Because, like Dave said, these things take time to train. So if you don't have that time and you want to test this out and just see how it works before committing to building your own fully custom version, this is a way you can try it out. So GPT in the comments, and Dave will graciously share something that I'm sure it took him quite a bit of training and back and forthing to get right with you to use as a training tool.

SPEAKER_02: 24:32

And and that's and that's the beauty of you know chat GPT when it comes to that. So practice, use it as a tool. If you don't want to use the voice part of it, you can totally use, you can definitely use the text as well. You know, and if you want to try, like it doesn't even just have to be sales calls. Let's say you want to do you, you want to you want to test your exploratory session, just tell it, give it the scenario, right? Give it the parameters of what you want to do. And if you want, give it a persona, or you know, say, hey, I want you to randomly think of a business owner in here's my target prospect, and it'll pick a random business owner and kind of come into the meeting, and then you can practice walking through, and it'll give you the feedback. And so that's kind of step two is you definitely have to practice, you have to put the time in. Otherwise, you're just gonna always fumble through. And it's I can tell the people, right? You know, obviously, as an ambassador for alignable, we do a lot of in-person meetings, networking meetings, and I can totally tell the people that have never thought about what they're gonna say when they stand up and have to introduce themselves. And it's clear, you know, it's they fumble. Well, I'm and I give clear instructions too. I'm like, you have 30 seconds, and I want you to give me your name, your business, and the problem that you solve. That's it. So many people don't know and they fumble when they stand up and they just start giving their this like two-minute speech. I have to cut them off sometimes. Like, that's it, thank you. Like moving on, like you know, we're not here. And so those are the ones that you have to you have to practice about. And if you don't, then then you're then you're you're causing yourself the issue. It's not when you a lot of people go, Well, nobody wants to have a conversation with me. Yeah, because you just had a 30-second introduction and you gave a two and a half minute speech. What do you think is gonna happen if somebody schedules a meeting with you? You're setting that expectation, right? From the moment the first time you talk to somebody, the first time they see you. And if you can't follow a simple instruction like that, what makes them think that they're you're not gonna try to go into a 25-minute un you know uh unsolicited conversation? Yeah, that that's the word I'm looking for. Unsolicited conversation about their business when they schedule a session with you. Like, think about it. So practice your your 15-20 second introduction and and move on. And and let people see that you can be right to the point, and they're gonna be more likely to actually want to you know schedule a follow-up session with you or whatever.

SPEAKER_00: 27:01

Well, think about the attention span of the average person, too. I mean, if you can't get their attention in 30 seconds and they can make it clear as to what you do and who you are, then you're probably gonna lose them. They're gonna just fade off and start looking at that fly up in the corner on the uh ceiling or something, right? They're just gonna pay attention to you. And this is where I think a lot of people miss the opportunity. They go on about this tangent about what they do, and they don't think about it. I've been in situations where, hey, so tell me a bit about what you and your you do in your business. Well, you know, I do a little bit of this and a little bit of this, and yeah, this I do this as well. Just think about what you do really well and just say that. If they show interest, express more and turn it into a conversation back and forth. But so many times I've heard people just waffle on and waffle on, and it's like, so what is it you do? It's like it becomes one of those scenarios like you talked a lot, but I didn't quite get what you did.

SPEAKER_02: 28:02

And those are the people that they probably haven't practiced how they want to respond to that question, they probably haven't practiced what is their unique identifying you know, service or support that they offer within a business. And and so essentially, you know, that's number two. So, with that in mind, before we kind of move on to the next kind of point, Dwarne, that we were talking about pre-show that you wanted to kind of bring up. You know, again, if you have questions or if you're listening to this and you've gotten a piece of some sort of information that you want to use in your business or that you think would be useful, we would highly would like if you could share the session, share the episode. We're trying to obviously reach as many people as we can and make an impact on as many people as we can. So please do all that fine algorithmy stuff. You know, comment down below if you have any questions, give it a thumbs up, uh, and then share it with your network. We would appreciate that. So as we kind of think and move forward, right, Dwarden. One of the things that you brought up earlier was something that we've talked about in the past in terms of employees and you know, sometimes how do you manage them more efficiently and more effectively to make sure that they're just doing what you would expect.

unknown: 29:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 29:12

So I know you're kind of going through, or you kind of just went through a situation. So why don't you give us the the quick background on it and then we can kind of talk through some of the steps that you did to kind of manage that situation?

SPEAKER_00: 29:23

Yeah, sure. So we had a situation where a team leader raised a concern about two members of his team that had poor communication and response times and communicating. And because that team is a work-from-home team, there's the visual out, the visual side is very hard because they're not in the office. So you've got that whole remote work situation, which already gets some people get a little frustrated when people don't reply instantly. But we're talking about like 20, 30, 40 minute delays, and these guys were previously very quick to respond. So the questions were raised like, what's happening? So we had a situation where we had a management meeting, and we decided to pull these two guys off a regular workflow and put them into a project that'll provide a very detailed scope of this one project they were to collaborate on, which would force them to work together and allow them to and allow us to view if any either of them was missing in action during the day, because they would both work on the same project. That was the strategy. Right. At the end of the first week, it when we got a presentation of the output, it was pretty clear that they both had missed the point and they hadn't comprehended what the original scope document was requesting. So we realigned, reset, and the next week they went out. And towards the end of that week, they'd produced something which did most of what the foundational requirements were. And we let them continue down that path. And then this week, midweek, I pulled them up and gave them some feedback because they said they had a product ready to deliver. And it was pretty clear to me they'd actually missed some key components of the scope document. So when I pushed back on that, one individual of the two I found was a little bit more confrontational in the way they pushed back on what they were feeling the project was. So I set the task at that point that they should both write in a short period of time a 400-word explanation as to what they felt the task they were assigned was and what they felt the outcome should be based on what they were assigned. And it was at that point when they both delivered at on time, which was great, but one of them spot on, 400 about 420 words, spot on, exactly got what it was. The other one who had been confrontational earlier in the day, 200 words, so hadn't even followed the 400-word instruction, right? And it was pretty clear that it was had no idea what he was delivering. And it was at that point I realized that one, his opinion was being pushed onto the other one, which is why we weren't who actually did understand what the delivery was, but that person hadn't been pushing back. So what I realized at that point is that the messy, if you're working with a team, even though you feel you're being very clear in your instruction, not everyone in the team is going to be rowing in the same direction. And that's where we found one was rowing off on a tangent and started to pull the boat in that direction as well. And when I tried to realign it, I realized that something wasn't right. And that was it was at that point I realized that there was one person rowing in the wrong direction. So at that point we dropped him off the project within 24 hours.

SPEAKER_02: 33:50

So let me let me let me kind of ask this, I guess, to start. So what was kind of the the identifier that there was some initial issues?

SPEAKER_00: 34:02

For me, it was when the I I was getting a present, we were getting the presentation the first time, and I was like questioning, I'm I've listened, I was very quiet, I've watched the presentation, like guys, this is okay, this is cool, but this is not what the scope was requesting. And the team leader piped up and said, Yeah, this is not right, guys. I've done a mock-up of what it should have looked like, and this is more like what it looked like. So he brought it up and showed it. It was at that point that one mouthy individual came up and said, Oh, that's not I didn't think that's what it was.

SPEAKER_02: 34:40

So was that mock up? Was it my mock-up given to the team as well, like at the beginning, and they just disappeared?

SPEAKER_00: 34:46

No, no. So we gave him a full scope document. The same scope document was what the team leader used to create the mock-up. So he had the same base information to create that mock-up. The other thing we did is we gave clear instructions to utilize AI technology to be doing this to streamline the process and make it as fast and quick as possible. Fail fast is was the plan. And there was a lot of resistance and negativity coming from one individual on the team. And at that point, I I pretty much had to like just hammer down and say, guys, this is not a request, this is a demand that you have to do, you have to do this. This is the project. I'm evaluating the results from this to see what you know your um output looks like. And I was evaluating communication, I was evaluating the output and the comprehension of this of what they felt the um project was. Now I understood that perhaps there was going to be a problem because it was a fairly complex project, which is why we did a realignment. And what I found is on the the thing that really set me off the second time to realize that something was wrong, is when I got a response to, well, I think this like this doesn't really this doesn't follow the customer journey we talked about. And I created something on chat GPT in 10 minutes as a working interface, recorded the video and sent it to them along with the script, and said, guys, this is more what I was I was thinking in a very gentle way. And then I find the response was, well, that's not what I interpreted from the last meeting.

SPEAKER_02: 36:24

So I thought we'd so I guess this this g this comes to, you know, at when you're managing staff, you know, is uh the openness right to invite them to ask questions, right? Yeah, and I'm sure you guys do that, but you know, for those that are listening, like this is where you have to one uh uh have them ask questions, but then two, maybe and and and Duarn, maybe you guys the other didn't do this in the first meeting, have them actually return back, like okay, what do you guys like what are you guys feeling that this project is right now? We actually we did that, and so they okay, and and so you know sometimes that that could even go awry, apparently, as well. But if you're not doing that, that's probably one of the big reasons.

SPEAKER_00: 37:11

You know what I think it was in that instance? I think the project was it was a big project, and they felt overwhelmed. So what I did is we peeled back and said, just deliver this instead. And what happened is they misinterpreted and went down a different path of what they wanted to deliver. So instead of delivering what we said to strip it down to, they delivered a second one of the other components of the project.

SPEAKER_02: 37:35

Now, when you strip it down, we realigned it.

SPEAKER_00: 37:38

Did you guys have like milestones along the way too to say, like, hey, like reports or check-ins before the end, or how they were doing end-of-day reports, start-of-day reports, and the team leader was checking progress along the way. But yeah, we basically just found that their start of day or an end-of-day reports were too generic without screenshots. So the second week we started asking for more information and screenshots, and that's when we started to see progress happening in the direction that we expected, but it was just the customer journey portion. So, what we saw was whilst things can seem to be going in the right direction, the end game was this is the output we want from a customer usability point of view, and there's a functionality point of view. So they had most of the functionality there, but completely missed on the customer experience and journey point of view. And the reasoning we found for that, based on that little task that I ran at the end, was one knew what the outcome was, the other one felt that it just needed to work as an internal tool. And although we'd had a conversation on a number of occasions during the two, three weeks that we were working on this of what we were going to do with this, what the outcome was, which the secondary individual on the project knew and put into their report, the first person didn't do that. So it became very clear that he'd become fixated on one part and he didn't follow through. So, what that caused me to do was have a conversation with the team leader and say, I've got these concerns. Have you had these concerns in the past with this person? And it was finally raised that yes, we had had these concerns. This was something where you couldn't simply give a simple task and there'd be multiple roadblocks created or too many questions coming back that were irrelevant. So questions. And when I asked the examples, it was quite unsettling as to what actually came back.

SPEAKER_02: 39:41

So from the team team leader's perspective, if these concerns were there before, what what was the breakdown for you not potentially knowing about these ahead of time before it became such a bigger issue?

SPEAKER_00: 39:54

We knew there was communication-related issues. What had happened was the details of the communication issues weren't as clear as I they were different to what I thought they were. Let's just say that. So it was at the it was at that point I asked for incident reports for some of the incidences that have occurred. And when I started seeing reading the incident reports, I started to see where the problems with the communication were. So it opened up a bigger problem, which opened up us to, you know, for me, we have a new strategy in place now where we will be testing communication between team members, and we need to come up with a better SOP around that because so you just kind of brought up the important part, right?

SPEAKER_02: 40:58

You know, what is the SOP around communication between employees, team leaders, managers, managers, and then you know, upper-level staff? So, you know, if you're a business owner kind of listening to this, you know, the important thing that you need to have here is you need to have your processes documented. You know, yeah, what is that process of end-to-day reporting? What's the details that you want that the team leader needs to then review? And then, you know, what's the the criteria for when a team member needs, or sorry, a team leader or a manager needs to respond and bring the it to your attention or that next level, depending on how big of an organization you have, right? Otherwise, you know, you end up with a possible situation like this. It could take it essentially if it was unchecked where the team leader just kind of kept the information to themselves, you could have a big project, you know, being you know, deadline come due, and then now all of a sudden you have nothing close to what you need to have out as an outcome. And the other the other part to that is the morale, right? The the team productivity was was was turned around once you took off this person who was kind of going against all the effort that everybody else was. Now, you know, you you accomplished more 24 hours than you did probably in a week.

SPEAKER_00: 42:10

And that's a big thing, right? I mean, and it really comes down to personality and an understanding and that personality. Obviously, that individual had a conflicting personality in that team. And the other person who's did the who knew what they were doing had a better skill set and was capable, more capability of doing the task, which begs the question: what was the intention of the other person? Were they just covering the fact that they didn't have the skill set to do the role and creating roadblocks intentionally to slow the progress down, or were they bullying for their version their version of what needed to occur because they hadn't done the research themselves? And from the team leader point of view, the team leader who had raised the concern initially before we came up with this strategy to try and test this process out and find out where the problems laid, he had basically tested his own back and forth communication techniques to the point of exhaustion and basically had given up on this individual and said, Look, it's really hard to work with this person. And when this was our last straw to try and figure out is this a salvageable solution or not. And when we witnessed that firsthand what that was occurring, it was a real eye-opener. And I actually made the comment, you've been very patient to this point, to the team leader. And especially when he sent some incident reports and outlined some other situations where what happens is in our chain of command or our SOPs, I report I have the team leader report directly to me, and the team leader is responsible for delegation of work and back and forth communication with the individual development team in this instance. So I don't deal directly with the development team or those that team individually necessarily. I deal through the team leader so that we re I am more streamlining my communication and also it's a clear message between on what goes through back and forth. And it also gets a bit filtered. But what I did see is that it's probably a little too filtered on the other side before it gets back to me. So what we've done is we've introduced another layer where we have extra communication happening to another manager in the team in middle management who actually helps alleviate the problems before they become HR-related issues or performance-based issues. So it's helped us identify more problems and solve those problems. But what it opened us up to is it's sometimes you don't even know there's a problem. And in some cases, you would get to a point where you are so far into a project and it just feels like everything is failing. You wouldn't realize there's just one individual rowing in the wrong direction that's causing that all that problem and that grief that's happening. So when I identified that, I couldn't believe how quick things turned around, like you were saying earlier, just by removing that one individual from the equation. Right. So just to be clear, I took them off the project, I didn't terminate them, I just took them off the project at this point to be and saw that the project actually changed direction, which was fantastic.

SPEAKER_01: 45:32

So so you so you didn't like you know just fire them because they they didn't they got one project wrong?

SPEAKER_00: 45:37

No, we haven't just gone down that path. I mean, we're not we have uh we have pro we have SOPs in relation to all of that.

SPEAKER_02: 45:44

So let me ask you this. So but like what would be then the next step for this person, right? Because obviously they they aren't able to follow directions, even though you you've you've made it very clear that you guys gave clear directions that this individual was not able to follow. So what would you know how would you be approaching that so that somebody can learn from this, right? So because I'm sure people are gonna run into the Yeah, look.

SPEAKER_00: 46:10

I mean, we basically we have HR and operations who step in at this point and they go through a remediation process and see if there's any way to salvage the situation with the individual and see if there's a way to retrain and make sure they understand where they're you know where this all went wrong and make the decision at that point, what disciplinary action has to happen based on our company handbooks. So at the end of the day, they may they fail on this task, but we need to know is it something which is cultural that's going to you know destroy the interior in the culture of the company in that team, or is it something that we can have them become aware of and make changes to to improve? So we're at that point now where we'll be we'll be going through have making doing the awareness and mediation with that individual and hopefully be able to make a determination whether we keep them in the team long term or find an alternative team for them or suggest they find a team outside of our company.

SPEAKER_01: 47:16

Gotcha. Yeah, I would I would kind of agree with that as well, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 47:20

Um it's not always black and white, right? It's sometimes it's a little bit gray. You've got to you and some people don't know they're doing what they're doing, and some people just they you know, when you point it out, they have a realization maybe go, oh shit, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 47:37

Well, I think the the problem with two is is you have to hold people not only accountable, but then you have to be willing to train them, right? Like, okay, tell me in this in this situation as a leader, you know, okay, obviously we had some issues, you didn't understand the instructions. What was it? You know, where where was the breakdown? How did you get from in the meeting, you know, repeating that you understood it to, you know, going completely off track and going the opposite direction? Like, what changed for you? What was it that, you know, was it do we not check in enough? Do we, you know, and and figuring out from their perspective what the issue was? And it's like you said, sometimes it's just gonna be that they are, you know, they just they're not open to the feedback or they're not open to learning and changing. And at that point, you know, it's probably not good for your organization. But if if they give you some clear steps of where they feel like they stepped off, well, maybe it's as a business owner, as a leader, we have to be open and say, Oh, okay, like maybe I did let you down there, you know what I mean? Like, I apologize. Like maybe we can make some some changes there. And now everybody, everybody can, you know, kind of move forward and and be productive. And you know, as a leader, I've I've had some of those issues where you know I'm leading a team and I I expect something and then I didn't get what I expected. But yeah, on my end, it you know, when I asked for that feedback, it was you know, I kind of just left them off to it and never checked in. You know, I'm I never said, Hey, how are things going? You have any questions? Let me see where you're at. You know what I mean? Let's see if we're still on the same path.

SPEAKER_00: 49:11

Interesting point. One thing that we noted there, sorry to cut you off there, is one of the things I put forward was after one of our meetings where I pushed back, there was a can you just he there was a mention by this individual saying, can you just send us an email after the meeting telling us everything you want? After I just explained it all again, verbatim from the original scope document. And it was at that point where I simply made a comment saying, Well, you have the scope document, you've had it from the start. Why don't you reread your scope document and read your notes that you should have been taking during this meeting as well? Because I shouldn't have to re-email you the same information again that we've that you've already got and we've already just discussed. And for me, like I maybe handled that wrong. I could have just sent an email, but also I have a I detrimentally hate repeating myself. It's one of my and that's one of my personal flaws. I hate repeating myself, and I find myself getting frustrated about to repeat myself. But I do find sometimes that if I've already provided information and I can re-reference where I provided the information and you go and do the research to pull up that information to check it yourself, especially if I've already verified that I've sent it to you and confirmed that, then I feel that's fair. But I can see how some people could take that as, or you could just send them an email with the information again, potentially.

SPEAKER_02: 50:50

Well, I like you said, like, you know, if you've already sent the overview, hey, here's here's the information we just discussed here, you know, previously, right? I I also I'm in the same boat, you know what I mean? Like, I don't like repeating myself, but I also understand that people understand one in a meeting, especially as employees. They will say, Yeah, yeah, I get it. Like, and in this in in the moment, they're right there, they're right in front of you, they get it. But they also know you, and they also know me, they also know that I hate repeating myself. Exactly. What did he say? So, what they're and and this is what it comes down to, and this is where the self-awareness on us comes in, right? Because they know that you hate repeating themselves. So if they are like, oh crap, what did he say? Instead of coming back to you and saying, Hey, would you remind me on what you wanted from this, they just go and do something. Because for in their mind, it's less conflict. They're like, Well, I guess I'll just do something. Hopefully, it's what I remember he said. But if not, I guess I'll just I'll just worry about that down the road, instead of facing the direct conflict right now. Now, if you are if you send them a follow-up email and it's like now they have something to refer back to all the time, and they still don't give you the outcome after you've given them in a rating. Well, now you have something to actually fall back on. And so you actually for me, there was a big I've got a flip side of that.

SPEAKER_01: 52:17

Big thing for that. But I'll be reporting. I totally get it.

SPEAKER_00: 52:19

I've got a flip side of this. I'm thinking a strategy I could put in place for next time is perhaps instead of me sending the overview at the end of those calls, is I'll request for them to send me an overview on what they feel their takeaways are as the ones who are doing the work so that I can then verify and confirm it's correct. So I think that might be something I might try in the future and introduce as part of my SOP related to that. So, Dave, you are you still there? I think Dave might have dropped off for a minute. We might give him a moment to come back. But that was a certainly an interesting situation that we came across this week. And one of the things that we realized is that just because we comprehended something one way, five people in that meeting initially, one of them took it the wrong way and started roaming in the wrong direction. But yeah, Dave, I was just saying before what's one of the things that I'm gonna do.

SPEAKER_02: 53:24

Sorry, I had to I had to run to the bathroom real quick. You know, all that coffee ran right through me. You know, I I I I it's it's a step in the right direction, right? However, I still unless unless your plan is to like respond to them and let them know like whether they're right or right or not, because it's in their words, you still want them to have something to refer back to, I guess, that that puts them in the right direction. So if they respond, I here here's what I'll challenge you on. If they respond or if they if they send you an email after and it's completely wrong, it's not like it's not what you want, it's not it's not in the direction. Now you're still gonna have to take the extra time to write and correct them, right?

SPEAKER_00: 54:08

Yeah, but look, I think that for me, like I totally agree with that, but I think for me, at least I know that that was wrong, and maybe I know I need to jump back on a call again and go through it again and maybe be a little clearer with my direction, or go back and ask the question is like this is what I was intending. How did you come up with that conclusion? So I can at least understand what how they came up with what they came up with, so I know not to do that again, or I know where I lost them on the on the way. So totally get where you're coming from.

SPEAKER_02: 54:43

But what would you say? Either way is gonna take up the majority like more of your time, like take taking maybe a half hour to write one email that gives clear direction moving forward, or waiting for them and taking time out of their day to then tell you what you think they know, you then correcting them, possibly getting on a call, then going back and forth and doing all this again over and over and over, or you can just send one email that has the clear direction that they can refer back to moving forward. I guess not you have to you have to kind of decide what you want to do, right? It's like, do I want to take the time and and summarize everything in one email and then they just refer back to that? Or have them send me what you want to do. And I think that's it, it's not it's not saying that it's bad, it's just you have when you think forward, it's like, hey, what wouldn't it take up most of my time?

SPEAKER_00: 55:30

Well, I think for me, I think in my situation where I want to know if they understood what I was actually referring to, I would test this technique and see if I got something close to what I was expecting, which is what I did kind of today, where I said, give me in in your own words, in 400 words, tell me what you ex what you think this project's about and what the outcome is. And with that point, I realized how off-topic one was, and that was where I identified the problem. So I think it could be an exercise that I test occasionally if I have a doubt on the call that something's not right. But yeah, I could definitely follow up, especially if you're using like call recording techniques and software where it'll actually summarize this stuff and send it to everybody anyway at the end of the call. That could save you all this hassle of having to do this sort of manual work at the end of a call anyway, right?

SPEAKER_02: 57:03

Correct. And especially, you know, depending on the software you use. It a lot of them have actual steps. Who's responsible for the actual steps? You could just take that and drop it into a summary email. You know, hey, here's what we talked about, here's what we chatted about, here's the outcomes, here's how it's gonna look. You know, if you have any questions, like let me know. And even some of them want to record the whole meeting, and you can actually go back to specific points of the meeting, you know, too.

SPEAKER_00: 57:26

So what's the one you're using? That's a pretty good one, the one that you use, right, for the note-taking.

SPEAKER_02: 57:33

I use fixer.ai. It's f y x er. So it does it does meeting note-taking, it also helps you know bid your your email box as well, too. So it'll help like draft automatic replies and things like that from emails that come in and you know, things that are marketing, it'll move it into marketing and everything like that. So fixers ai is a good one. It does the meeting note-taking, it also does you know your mailbox. But you know, the other thing that I love about it is that you know, even before a meeting, you can go and you can ask for what they call like a pre-meeting summary, and it will you know, kind of look at the person's email address if they have a website, you know, or go out and research the website, what that company does, and then give you, hey, you know, here's some talking points that you could consider based on your business and their business. You know, is so it's a nice you know kind of service that they have. Plus, the other thing that is nice is the AI built in. I could go and say, Hey, I had a meeting with Warren, you know, a month ago, and I believe we talked about XYZ. Can you pull that up or where did we talk about that? And it'll actually go find that meeting as long as it was one of the ones that actually recorded, right, and created the notes, and it'll find it. It'll give me, you know, hey, this is what you guys talked about. You could even ask, like, hey, was this chat about? No, and it'll say yes or no. It'll go through your email too. Like, if you're like, hey, I can't find an email. I remember getting an email from Dwaran about you know an invoice, right? Or something like that. And it'll go and as long as it's in the email box that's you know kind of connected, it'll go and find that email for you too, and kind of give you, like, hey, here's where it was received on you know uh August 1st or something like that.

SPEAKER_00: 59:02

That's really cool. That's really cool. Yeah, I've been using the uh built-in chat GPT email integration recently.

SPEAKER_02: 59:11

Have you played with that yet? I didn't even know that ChatGPT had an email integration.

SPEAKER_00: 59:19

Yeah, so one of the things you can do is you can actually integrate your Office 365 or your Google email account to it now. So you can say, I'm looking for an email with this subject line from my email. Can you go and have a search and see what you can find? Or can you check my email from Dave about talking where I talked about this? And it'll find the emails related to it. And then once it's in ChatGPT, it's you can ask for summaries and whatever inform anything you want to do with it because it's in chat GPT now, and you can have that set up. You can also set it up scan Google Drive now as well.

SPEAKER_02: 59:55

I I've done I've done that. I didn't know you could actually do like the so I've integrated it with my Microsoft. I just didn't know you could actually use it to search your emails like that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:03

Yeah, you can. So you just say, I need I want you to search my my uh my uh email to find this, and you can do it through ChatGPT now, which is kind of cool. So I mean, obviously that comes with the risk if you know ChatGPT was hacked or something like that, or your personal emails could be linked and attached to it. So, but you so you use it at your own, you know, risk or you know, do your own risk analysis on what that means. But for me, I'm having I'm actually testing it, I'm finding it really interesting, and it saves me going and finding the email and then copy-pasting all of the different email back and forth replies and putting them in chat GPT and then saying, Hey, I need to come up with a response. I can simply say, go and read this thread, get a bit of an understanding. Did I make a mention of this, this, this, and this? Can you make a response that talks about responding to their email and addressing these concerns and stuff like that? So, similar to what you're doing with Fixer, but like I'm just using Chat GPT for that portion. Doesn't help with my my meetings when record note-taking, but it's still a really cool feature. So, yeah, I like what you're saying there with the with what you're using, all these extra features are really helpful.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:16

Yeah, absolutely. And and so, like, you know, like you said, it makes it easier when you're you know you're trying to do these after meeting summaries or these after meeting emails. It's you know, it's it's a lot easier than you trying to come up with you know the steps yourself, right? So if you're in an in-person meeting, which is why I've been trying to solve the in person meeting AI note taker and what are what kind of options that I might want to be looking at and kind of doing something there because I am doing a lot of in person stuff as well. And uh, you know, one that I've heard that I haven't tested or done it, you know, is called Plawed. Where it's like a little, you know, like a note card or something that you put in your pocket, it'll record. And I think that might be a good one to kind of try out and make sure that, you know, even for in-person meetings, we have the ability to, you know, record and have the notes, which I think is very important.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:05

Well, about a year, a year and a half ago, I was looking, there's about two or three brand new technologies that came out, devices, and one was like a little wearable unit, another one was like I think it was Red Rabbit or something. And at least one of those has failed as a company. Like it just didn't work out. So Samsung have AI built into their phones now. I think Apple are looking at it. I heard the Apple new AirPods have live translation capability now, where their new AirPod series will actually do live translation. So it's probably not that far away from being able to do note-taking. I can't imagine be too far away for technologies like the meta glasses to be able to integrate with an app that could do that. So if you're going to wear your glasses or just stick your glasses on the table so you can listen to the call while you're having it and take the notes. I'm sure there's ways of doing it. The other option, I guess, is you got there is you can just record the call, old school style, take the transcript later, and then go through and run your notes through it. A few more steps involved, but you know, there's definitely a couple of ways you can handle that for an in-person. But I mean, it's a it's a I think it'd be great to get a device that actually just checks and reads and stuff. Where I think it was Alibar has released a pair of glasses as well. So they've got some technology coming out. So there's a lot of these companies coming out with some great technologies that might help in the future, but each one of these technologies come a cost. And my biggest concern is it's a if you're putting the money out today, is that going to be the technology in six months? Or is it going to be like those devices I mentioned earlier, which were AI wearables, which in 12 months' time they're not even they're not even around anymore. So they're not supported, they're unsupported platforms.

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:56

And if you're if you're a smaller business owner, you're just getting started. I think the idea is that you have to you have to do that cost analysis to figure out is this going to give me an ROI? Is it going to give me more time back? You know, sometimes it's not going to be a direct ROI in terms of like revenue, but it will give you ROI in terms of it may free up five hours of your week, which is something that right, it is a is a money generator for you because now you can use those five hours as long as you use those five hours as revenue producing and you don't use those five hours to then you know go watch TV. Like you have like whenever you're looking at something that's gonna make you more efficient, you have to also weigh what am I gonna do with the the efficiency hours that I saved. And if you're going to use them for non-revenue producing activities, then you're not getting an ROI from that efficiency cost. But if you are gonna use them for revenue generating activities, then then it then it makes it more more worth it, right? And you have to kind of do that cost benefit analysis. And I think far too many people they don't they don't think about that. They're like, oh, well, this is$200 a month, it's not worth it. Oh, okay. Well, let's use bookkeeping as a great example. You know, a lot of people spend and they do bookkeeping themselves, and and one, they probably don't do it on a regular basis, they probably just do it when they think about it. So they're not getting monthly regular financials, monthly regular, you know, information to understand where their business is heading. Two, they're not thinking proactively, so they're always thinking reactively, you know, is the second downfall to that. And three, when they do do it because they got to catch up, they're probably spending on average somewhere around five to ten hours a month. Well, you know, for the cost of a bookkeeper, even if your bookkeeper was a thousand dollars a month, that's about a hundred dollars an hour, right? For for the benefit and the and the insights to save money, right? To you know, give you financials to make better decisions, and especially if you have a great bookkeeper or a great service, you know, around your financials that's going to you know meet with you on a regular basis, give you insights, give you guidance, etc. Well, if that frees up 10 hours, let's say 10 hours a month, and you can go out and you can take those 10 hours and you generate approximately$200 an hour, what doesn't that make it worth it? Like versus you just keeping it in house or and then it not accounting. Well, they point out they you know maybe you're overspending in the areas that you didn't even know you were overspending. Well, now they they just saved you$5,000 a year, you know, and spend it because you were able to see the insights and the guidance. So as a business owner, you have to see not just the under you know the initial cost or the initial investment, because a lot of these things are investments to your future as a business, but you also have to think about okay, what can I do if I had that time back? You know, where where can I grow my business if I if I had that freedom? Yeah. That's that's where when you start thinking that way, that's when you can actually start, that's when you can actually start scaling and growing your business when you actually start thinking in those, in those, that mindset.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:06

It's interesting. Like one of the things that I was at a meeting in person last week, and one of the people I was having a meeting with said, Hey, do you mind if I record this? And he just put on a regular voice recorder on his phone and sat the phone down and recorded the hour meeting. So he went away and transcripted that, turned that into a transcript later and said, Look, do you want me to send you a summary of the meeting? And I sure if you once you've done it, sure, no worries. So I guess it really comes down to if you're in a if you something is any cell phone, any smartphone can do that, you know, initial recording. And it probably, if you're really not sure in a meeting and that's your first point of call, you want to record something, just record an audio file, then take that audio file and use a free transcript tool. There's Android and iOS transcript tools out there, there's computer-based ones, there's web-based ones, and just start with that. And that could be a great little way to start. And if you find yourself using it a lot, then decide on whether you should be doing you're gonna get a ROI on that, you know, buying a device. But yeah, I think just start with something simple. It's almost like if you can do it without spending money initially and not costing you a huge amount of time, find the quickest way to do it and then see if you do it, if it's something that you want to make easier because you're using it a lot, then spend more time doing it. Well, you can just off to a VA and let them do all the transcribing and stuff.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:32

And and this is where I'll kind of mention profit first, you know, where when you're practicing profit first and you're limiting your operating expense account to you know the specific percentage that you want based on your business, you become innovative like that. Because what you may find is that maybe you don't have that$100 a month to invest in software and subscriptions. So you you become or you don't just take the first option that looks like it might be right. Maybe you do a little bit more research, and instead of spending$100, you spend$20. And it's something that's still right, it's still gonna solve your needs, it's still gonna help give you some efficiencies, etc. So by instead of having everything in one bucket in one bank account where it's like, oh, there's money in the bank account, I can I can spend$100 right now on this AI subscription. You are limited because maybe you, you know, you only have so much money in your operating expense. And depending on obviously if you're bigger business, bigger investment, all that kind of stuff, we're just you know using$100 as you know, an example situation. But if you have everything at one, it's like you know, one one plate, right? One bucket. And if the example I use a lot is let's say you you're hosting a party, you're a great host, right? So you let all of your all of your attendees to your party go through the buffet line first. And if you had one turkey plate, one you know, platter of turkey, and you had all these hosts, you know, you you basically over invited people to your party, which are your vendors, your suppliers, your employees, etc., right, and they go through the buffet line, and then you as a host, which is your owner's pay, your profit, and then your tax guy, because he's gonna come no matter what. And you guys walk through the buffet line, and all there's left is bones, right? Or scraps. Well, that's that's that's not what you want. Is that's not why you're running a business, that's not why you're spending 50, 60, 70 hours a week, right? And there's there's three ways to fix that problem. Either you buy a big turkey the next time and continue to you know invite all the same people, but in business, a bigger turkey is more revenue, more clients, more you know, long-term value, which you've haven't been able to do so far. The second option of that is you buy the same size turkey, which means you stay the same, but now you have to limit the number of vendors that you have, but even still you let all them come first and you're still worried about yourself last. And that's that's still putting yourself last. Now, yeah, the profit first way, right, is is now instead of once the turkey is brought into the house and cooked, you split it up into the proper buckets so that your you as the owner pay, you get your portion, right? Your profit gets their portion of turkey. The tax guy, well, he's gonna get his, so he's he's he's full. And then whatever's left, now you say, okay, vendors, but you know, employees, this is what I have left that's available for you all. This is what I'm gonna spend. Once it's up, I'm gonna I need to be innovative or I need to be more efficient because I can't pay you. And obviously, we don't expect you to go from you know, your vendors and everything taking all your money down to a small plate. You you do that over time, but it you begin to think differently when you actually when all the dollars in your business have a purpose instead of everything just you know being one bucket.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:04

And that's where you, Dave, teach the framework on how to do that and get from steps where you are now to that level. It's like when you go to the buffet and you've got you see the guys piling everything onto their plate, and you're like, well, that's not great. And then you go to another buffet where they've got servers who are serving one portion size for you. And at the end of the buffet, everyone gets a chance to go back again rather than running out of an individual item. I love that analogy you've just used there with the with the turkey. I think that's great. And I think you're right. You know the profit first, the more I hear about it, it just sounds really, really sensible, and it's something that everyone should be getting involved in.

SPEAKER_02: 1:12:44

And and it's it's it's a lot of it comes down to accountability, right? And a lot of people are gonna get started on it. I I mentioned this before, I got started on it, but I didn't have any accountability, and then I kind of went by the wayside because the minute you start borrowing from one plate to pay another plate, then then you're like, oh, well, this doesn't matter anyways. I'm just gonna go back to just having one plate. And then you overspend and you kind of you know go down that same path again. So it's all about having the accountability, having the plan. And the idea is that it's much more than just having different bank accounts. The idea is how are you gonna get from where you are today to where the targets are for the people most successful businesses that have gone through the system? And if you want to do it alone, great, you could do it alone, but most people fall off around that six to nine month mark because again, they come into a situation, they borrow from their profit or their tax account, and then they never pay it back. And then they're like, oh crap, well, I'm just gonna go back to having everything one account again, and then I they start feeling burnt out, and then they're starting to get underpaid, and it's a whole spiral. And so the idea is how can you become more efficient, more management, right? Have man more management of money in your business is is the ultimate goal of the profit first system. And yeah, if you haven't heard about it, you haven't you'll prop comment down the word below profit. And what I'll do is I'll send you the first two chapters of the book. If you haven't read the book, profit first. I'll send you the first two chapters. You can read it, get an understanding of the system and and what it means and and how we kind of focus on everything, and we'll definitely get that into your hands so you can kind of have a conversation about it. But Darren, so as we wrap up here, because I gotta jump to another meeting, my friend. Uh, another great great episode. I love having these conversations. I think we had some good good points about cold calling, changing your mindset around cold calling and that you're just prospecting, you're not trying to essentially make a sale, then practice. Practice makes perfect. You know, think of yourself as the best in the world. Like, in order to be the best, you have to practice. There's you know, Kobe Bryant was still the best person in the league, but yet he was still the first person in the gym every day, and he was the last one out. Like, if you want to be the best, you have to start acting like the best. You can't sit on the couch watching TV when you could be practicing. And so practice makes perfect. So, practicing your cold calling, practicing your exploratory calling, you know, anything you want to do that you want to have control, you know, you need to practice. Part of that as well was setting up that purpose statement at the beginning of every every session, you know, saying, Hey, we're here. We wanted to talk about X, Y, and Z. Here's what we're gonna do A, B, C, right? And now you give that short agenda at the end. What's the next steps? Done. Then we talked into employees. I think you know, you Darren, you went through a great sort of current employee situation that you were working through and the morale and you know, making sure everybody was on the same page. So another great session, man. But for you, what was what's the uh one thing that you hope somebody takes away from today's session?

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:42

I love that cold calling part we're talking about. And I love the fact that you made the offer with my uh little push, of course, and suggestion that if they put GPT into the chat, you're gonna send them a copy or a link of that uh training tool that you've created for yourself to help with that coaching and training you on those cold calls just to get better and practice better. I just love the fact that when we talk, it's very spontaneous. We come up with some great techniques, we come up with some great information we can share. And when we've got tools, like we share them. One of the things that we just I was just checking off to the side here is I knew I had a tool that did audio to text transcribing already. And 11 Labs does this already, it's one of the tools. Now, you can use the free version or I do a five dollar a month version, and one of the features is speech to text. We can just upload an audio and it'll produce that for you. So if you are wondering or looking for something, there's an option right there. Yeah, Dave, I just love the chats with what we talk about. It was great to be able to get some perspective on my situation as well around the staffing. So thanks for that.

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:58

Yeah, no, absolutely. And and so I would say for me, right, it's it's always around just having the conversation about things that we've gone through so that you, the listener, can one learn from our kind of situations, but then two, maybe not make the same mistakes or you know, at least take a leap ahead and learn. And I think that's the biggest aspect of it. So again, I'll I'll leave you with all with this. So if you've made it this far, we love you. Thank you so much. If there is a piece of advice or tips that you got from today's episode that you're gonna use or implement, please make sure to like, subscribe, and share this wherever you're watching it, whether it's on YouTube, LinkedIn, or Facebook, share this to your network. Uh, we're on a uh a goal to you know have an impact on a thousand business owners by the end of 2028. So I hope you can kind of help us reach that. Um, and then if you are a business owner and you're interested, comment down below that you're interested in joining us in a future episode starting in the middle of October. We're gonna start having some business owners join us to talk about an educational piece that they do for their clients that's outside of the realm that Dwarren and I do, and definitely even also maybe go over a couple obstacles you know in your business. So if you're something you want to talk through, we'll definitely do that on the show as well. So we look forward to seeing some of the future episodes. Again, I can't believe we're we're we're we're kind of honing in on one year as we kind of continue to push forward. But Dwarren, thank you again for being here, brother. I hope you have a wonderful and amazing rest of your week and your weekend. And for you watching, we love you too. Hope you have a wonderful rest of your week as well. And we'll see you all. Uh we'll see you all in the next one.

SPEAKER_00: 1:18:35

Take care, everyone. Thanks, guys.