Good morning, good morning, good morning, everybody. It is another Friday morning. It's eight, a little after 8 15, and we're here with another episode of the Business Unscripted Podcast. Today is episode 30. So we're 30 weeks into doing this podcast. So if you're a business owner or you're maybe even an aspiring business owner, you're in the right spot. So in this podcast, on these episodes, we talk about lessons that we've learned as business owners as well as lessons and things and experiences that we've gone over with our clients throughout the years. So hopefully you can get one or two pieces of information out of these episodes to help you along your journey, which is the ultimate goal. So you're in the right place. So go ahead, grab your favorite cup of Joe, and let's go ahead and jump into the show. So as you as you may notice, I am by myself today. Dwarne is uh off with the family. He had a uh a family birthday. So hopefully they're enjoying a bunch of fun, exciting times and cake and laughter, memories, and all the good stuff that comes with you know getting together for a birthday party. But so I when I was when I found out that I was gonna be by myself this morning, I was trying to you know figure out, hey, all right, what do we want to talk about? Obviously, we want to make it in important and impactful. And and so one of the first things you know that comes to mind, and it's crazy because you know, as an entrepreneur, we have so many things that we worry about, right? We have so many things that go on throughout the day. So if you're if you're a family entrepreneur, you're right, you're you're thinking about your family, you're thinking about your significant other, you want to make sure you know that you don't let them down, that you're not a failure for them. So that's running through our minds, right? Then if you have kids, you know, you're worrying about your kids, what are they doing? You don't want to be a failure for them. Are you setting a good example? And then you're you're worried about your clients, right? Especially if you're a good entrepreneur, you're worried about the success of your clients and the tasks that you need to help them with to make sure that they're successful, that they're set up for success, which is the ultimate reason why you own a business, or even your customers, depending on you know your type of business. You know, so you have all these things running through your mind constantly throughout the day. And what I want you to know is that that's normal. And that if you need to talk about it, always you can feel free to reach out to me because I'm in that same situation with you. I know how you feel. There's so many times that I go throughout a day and just so many different thoughts, right? Happen, you know. And a lot of times nobody really understands it, especially if they're not in our shoes, especially if they're not an entrepreneur, they're not trying to build something to support. And that's the ultimate reason you know, a lot of people get into business is you know, they want to change the trajectory of their life. You probably got into business because you wanted to change the trajectory of your life. You didn't want to, you know, just work for you know the man or the woman per se, right? And what it comes down to is that in the beginning, it is a lot harder because you're trying to grow something from nothing, and that's what makes the the outcome that much you know more worth it. And here's what I can say from traveling down many entrepreneurial journey journeys, yeah. And so a little bit about my past, right? So you guys who are watching and learning about so when I first graduated college, right? My senior year of college, I was a manager for a um franchise of a tax office, and it was her first year. And I kind of managed a lot of the thick stuff for her and did a lot of the the tax returns and the processing and the and the manager side of it. And she did wonderful. And I was like, oh wow, like this is interesting. Like it's her first year, you know, she she was prop very profitable. She had a lot of clients right off the bat. And so after a couple years of of working in the government in the state of Ohio, uh, I decided that I was gonna try and take my shot. Like I was like, I'm gonna I I have an entrepreneurial spirit, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna try and do what she did, right? I'm gonna open up a tax office just like she did. You know, I saw the the instant response, right? Everybody needs to do their taxes, and so I went along that route. And I did that for about three years. And ultimately, you know, there's a lot of things I think that I learned from that experience. I was young, and I realized that one franchise can overpromise a way under the limit. I figured that out the hard way. And there's don't get me wrong, there's a lot of good franchise situations out there that you can get into that have support that you know will will help you kind of grow and give you the tools and things that you need. But I felt like this this franchise was the man. You know, they they over definitely overpromised, they oversold, they always put the the best people in front of you, which when I'm you know you're young, you're in your 20s, you kind of figure out, you think, oh, you know, that's just gonna happen to everybody, putting in the work, you know. So I did that for about three years and realized that that wasn't the thing for me. And so I decided to get out of that and um ended up giving it back to corporate, sold back, went back into the into the you know corporate world, worked, worked in in business, and then in tax, decided that you know what, I want to try and go out on my own again and just do tax work, support work. Did that for you know about a year and a half, and then I struggled so bad at that because I didn't understand what I know now, right? I didn't know, I didn't understand the importance of networking. I didn't understand the importance of relationship building because I never had to do it up to that point. I never, I just figured, hey, you go into business, you you let it let people know you know what you do and how you support them, and people are gonna come knocking at your door, right? It's not it. Didn't understand advertising, marketing, things that we all know now, right? Because there's just so many, there's so many sources of information that you can learn from and soak it all in. And so that lasted for about a year and a half. I did get a couple clients that I still have today, which I love, and I still support them today, but then I ended up going again back into the corporate world, and that's where I kind of my experience, my knowledge, and my growth happened was going back into the corporate this pastime, probably before I went and started trying business solutions. Because I was able to lead bigger teams, I was able to be part of bigger budgets, bigger situations, bigger projects, and work directly with and make decisions at the executive level with these businesses that I was a part of. And so I learned a lot in corporate before I now went out and started, you know, trying business solutions. And the beauty of that is that it's now my third time. And I feel like now, while I'm not perfect, nobody is. I definitely feel like the trajectory of trying business solutions is better. And so the the theme of this message, this for this first part of the conversation today, is just keep pushing. You're gonna figure it out as long as you're willing to grow and you're willing to continue to expand your knowledge, expand your your role. And sometimes you got to take a step back. And I had to do that twice. You know, this is now my third essentially entrepreneurial journey where each time I learned a little bit from the first, I then took a step back to grow. I feel like there's always gonna be this part, not in just in your entrepreneurial journey, but in your life journey. There's gonna be moments where you are climbing, right? You're gonna reach a peak, and you might have to take a step back, a slight down tick, but then you're gonna bounce back up, you know. Look at any sort of relevant chart about related to the stock market or to related to any sort of business growth. There is none that just goes a straight line up. None that you know, that's that's a straight line, there's no dips, or there's no peaks, there's nothing. And if you can find one, like you know, I'll give you a free service for a year. But there's definitely nothing out there that's right, that's actually there. There you're all when you dive into it, right? They're all gonna go up and down, up and down, up and down. But the the main, you know, when you add in that sort of trajectory line, and excuse me, I don't know the actual term of that, right? Like the actual you know, median line, of course, the median line's up. But when the actual you look at the actual activity that happened month to month, year to year, there's peaks and valleys all the time in any successful business. Even Apple has peaks and valleys. So if you're going to a valley in your your business right now or your life, don't think that it's the end of the world. Remember, when you bounce back out of that valley, 90% of the time it's gonna be higher than the peak you just left. And for me, that's exactly what it's been for me. Every time I've reached a peak, I've gone down into a valley, I've bounced back up, and I've been higher than the previous peak. So all you have to do is continue to push forward. If this is what you really want to do, put in the effort, right? Put in the day-to-day work, be consistent. The idea is that every single day you're just taking steps forward towards your goals. And what'll happen is your trajectory will look exactly like that. If you add, you know, that, you know, what is that, a regression line or whatever that ends up being right the median line. You know, if you zoom out, your line's gonna look like it's all the way up. But if you zoom in and you look at smaller periods of time, you'll realize that there's you know the peaks and valleys in your own life. And so just realize that if you're in a peak right now, enjoy it because there's gonna be a valley. It happens to everybody, right? There's gonna be ups and downs. But if you're in a valley, use that information. Take the opportunity that you have right now in a valley and push yourself towards that next peak. Okay, push yourself to continue to put in the effort. And sometimes you might have to take a step back. And what does that look like? Does it look like you know, maybe taking you know a part-time job? Maybe it's it's you know, taking a moment to do some door dashing, you know, to offset some income while you're growing, you know, making sure that you're you're learning, right? Whatever you can do, you know, realize that as long as you're continuing to take efforts towards your goals, towards where you, your vision of your future, you're heading down the right path. And don't let anybody, you know, kind of tell you otherwise, right? Just remember that you are your own person, you know. And if you ever want to talk through it, like I said at the beginning, if you feel like there's so many things going on in your head and nobody understands, reach out. Like, don't try to hold that shit in. Like, that's gonna be the worst thing that you could do. Okay. Uh, and surround yourself by people that understand and that actually check in, like, hey, how'd things gone? What's what's new? You know, what's been going on lately? Anything you need to get off your chest? You know, and sometimes, as much as we want it to be, the people, you know, that are that are in our direct circle, sometimes that's not gonna happen. I've been in that situation too. You know, you just have to surround yourself with the people that understand you. Surround yourself with the people that are on the same journey as you. They're the ones that are truly gonna push you forward. The people that aren't on the same journey as you, they're always gonna try to, you know, direct you towards the journey that they understand. The journey that they think you should be on. Great for them. That's not you. So continue to push forward. So that was kind of the it's just been waiting. I mean, you know, I've had a lot of conversations with people, you know, I've been in that situation right in the past. And and so it kind of led me to you know, kind of give it a little bit of background that you know, you're not gonna some people get it right the first time. Don't get me wrong. You know, some people they don't they launch their first business and it's the most successful thing since sliced bread. That's the that's the exception to the rule. That's not that's not the the norm. And so I definitely learned that that lesson the in the franchise, right? When you when you get into a franchise, they hype you up, they have all these like you know daily or weekly calls, depending on what was going on. And they always put the those exceptions on the call, right? They always put those people that are the exception to the rule, right? They don't put the average person on there because how's that going to motivate you? And don't get me wrong, I I had a lot to learn. I did not go out and market like I should. I did not go out and network like I should, you know, being in my early 20s, I was young and naive. And I also kind of, you know, was the reason for the detriment. I'm saying is I the lesson I learned from that is that you can't just assume that the exceptions are going to become your norm without work. And that was the biggest lesson I learned from that. You know, franchise lawyers have a reason, right? They have a motivation to put the exceptions in front of you because they're the ones that they keep you coming back, they're the ones that keep you, you know, wanting to be part of the system, to keep paying your royalty fees. And that's awesome. Like listen to, and I'm not saying don't listen to the exceptions because you need to repeat what they did. But don't just assume that that's the norm for everybody. You know, when you know they put those exceptions in front of you, they're there for a reason because they want to motivate you. But you also need to listen to their story, replicate what they're doing, and go out and do the work. That's the biggest lesson I learned when I was in my early 20s, looking back and just thinking that, oh, the franchise or said, you know, this is what everybody's doing. This is the numbers you're gonna get. This is all you have to do, is these minimal sort of efforts. Wow. Okay. And that's what I did. And I didn't learn in the in the moment, right? I'm just like, man, I'm not getting the results. And, you know, they overprom. They over, I guess they don't overpromise. You know, we gotta put it, they they over show, I guess, the success that's possible for everybody, with the exception. And so what I'm gonna say to you is is if you're looking at scenarios like that, right? Like so you're following a lot of successful people, you're you're listening to a lot of these um videos, you're listening to us, right? Like, it's not overnight success. You know, there's a lot of work that goes in the back end. And so ultimately for yourself, give yourself that that runway, give yourself that time to put in all that work, put in all that effort to then you know reach what you know, other people will look at you and say you were an overnight success, right? You know, oh my God, you just went from zero to nothing. How did that happen? No, I I went from zero to, you know, I went from zero to five to ten to fifteen, you know, maybe I jumped up to 35, and then I went to, you know, whatever it is, you know, to 100 because you put in the effort and you're being consistent and you did the work that you needed to do. And that's ultimately, you know, what you should be doing. So that's a couple of lessons I learned, you know, just from going through my journey in entrepreneurship. I truly feel like now the focus is, you know, always be willing to learn, always be willing to expand, read, you know, whether it's you know, actually reading the book, or I use Alex Hermozzi's sort of reading trick where we have the audiobook on and then you have the book in front of you. And so I turn the audiobook on 2x speed, and then I read, you know, with it. And so essentially it helps me read. Because if I were to read by myself, I, you know, sometimes I'm I'm not the fastest reader. But doing with the audiobook, that was like probably one of the bigger hacks that I got out of you know, Alex Hermozzi when he talks in his audiobooks is you know, grab the book and then grab the audio version and just listen to it on 2x speed, and you'll obviously you can go through the book that much quicker and and and still pick it up because you're still hearing all the words and then you're also repeating them in your mind. So read, educate yourself, be willing to, you know, kind of explore, test, be quick to make decisions, but then also, you know, don't be afraid to you know make adjustments, right? You know, do your analysis of you know new projects or new or new offers. Do what you feel is right, but then don't be afraid to change it. Like just because you make a decision doesn't mean you have to stick with that decision forever. You know, we make the best decisions every single day based on the information that we have to us right now, right? Every single day, you're given new information about the economy, you're given new information about yourself, you're given new information about your clients, you're getting new information about the market, right? Everything that's going on around the world, about your family, whatever it ends up being. But you can only make the best decision today with the information that you're given. And so if tomorrow or a week from now you find out new information that makes that decision, you know, irrelevant, or maybe it changes that decision a little bit, don't be afraid to do it. I've talked with many people that you know had made a decision two or three months ago, and then in the last you know month, they realized that it wasn't right, that they weren't getting results, or that something changed, you know, in their situation, but they felt that they had to stick with the decision they made three months ago. And they're just you know they're paying for it, right? And so be quick to analyze, be quick to learn, be quick to educate yourself, but then also be quick to adjust, be quick to make changes, make improvements in your life, in your business. That's gonna help you along the way. So educate, be quick to change, network. I can't tell you how important it is to network as a small business owner. And and one of the the recent conversations I had with somebody was, you know, if you think of who your ideal client profile is, think of who you want to essentially work with. Who, who, where are they, right? Where are they they they talking, where are they posting, where are they spending their time? But when I talk to a lot of people, I say, you know, who who do you want to be connected with? Right? Who are you looking to to meet and build a relationship with? What they fail to to mention, right, they always tell me who their ideal profile is, right? Who's their ideal client? But they fail to think about the the second level to that. And that second level is who's also doing business with that profile. So think of who your ideal profile is. So let's say you work with business owners, great. You say somebody asks you that question, who do you want to be connected with? And you go, oh, I'm looking for business owners, people that are struggling with X, Y, and Z, right? That's everybody. You know, that you have so many uh business owners out there. Now the problem is business owners don't necessarily trust people right away. Because everybody wants to do business with a business owner, right? Especially all your all our B2B people out there. I'm B2B, so I know it, right? Everybody wants to do a business with a business owner. So your their attention is being grabbed from everybody. So instead of looking to network with just business owners, think of who does business with business owners and start networking with those people. So think about like accountants, attorneys, you know, payroll people, you know, insurance brokers, the people that are building that already have relationships with their clients who are business owners. And look and build relationships with that second level. Because here's what happens. Now, when that second level, that you know, bookkeeper or that attorney or that business broker makes the introduction of you to their client, you're not now a cold introduction. You are a warm introduction because that business owner trusts that person who referred you. That business owner is listening to that person who they're doing business with and they trust and have a relationship with because they say, hey, I, you know, I know a guy. You know, hey, you know, John, let me introduce you to Dave. You know, he does X, Y, and Z. Right? And that's where the relationships and that's where your true success is going to happen from networking. Don't just think of, I need to network with my ideal client profile. I see this all the time. You know, I lead networking groups, right, for alignable. And when I ask the question, you know, hey, please share who you'd like to be connected with, who you'd like to be referred to. Everybody says they're ideal client. Okay, let me take that back. 90% of people say ideal client. There's about 10% of people that will say something around the lines of, well, I'm looking to get connected with, you know, X, Y, and Z, you know, as partners or you know, referrals, right? And that's where you should be looking to get your best foot forward. Is that second level? Who's doing business uh with your ideal clients? And start networking with those people, start building relationships with that level. And when they start making introductions, it's gonna be that much easier for you to as long as you have a quality product, right? You're trustworthy, you know, people can trust you. Which leads me to one other thing on this topic, and and and and I'll go to the next one. But you uh as a business owner, if especially if you're B2B or anything that you uh want to say is out there, you know, especially nowadays, like you know, the the chances of whatever we're we're putting out there, whatever we're doing is unique is like slim to nut, right? Because there's just so much information out there, there's so much value that people can get from YouTube, right? From you know, Facebook, if they're following the right people or LinkedIn, like there's just so much out there. The strategies are out there, you know, the the the tools are out there, the tips are out there, whatever. It's it's all out there. So if you're a business owner and you are trying to just tell people that you have the unique idea of this program that you put together, like that's not what you're trying to sell. Like, people are going to buy you. You are essentially what they're gonna decide to invest in and to partner with in their business, right? Because you're not you don't have any unique strategies, you know, accounting, bookkeeping, that's not unique strategies. You're if you're a landscaper, you don't have any unique, you know, essentially landscaping tips and and tools, right? Like all that stuff's out there. That people can find it if they really want to. What they're doing is they're trying they're partnering with you as a trusted source to help them with that uh uh system, that policy, whatever it is that you do for your clients, they're trusting you. So you have to be trustworthy, essentially. You're not don't stop trying to say like you have like the most unique system or you know, hey, this is the the best systems on sliced bread, because 90% or more are probably things that are already out there for free online. People aren't coming to you to do business with you because you have the you know newest and most innovative thing and most innovative strategy. They're coming to you and you when you build that relationship because they trust you to help them with that thing because they don't understand it themselves, but they know that you do. So if you can change your messaging, instead of saying, hey, this is the the most innovative system, this is the best system, this is nobody else, nobody else has this system to you know, when you're talking with somebody, hey, I get I get it, you could go find this information on YouTube. You can go see, right, if you want to use bookkeeping as an example, you can go to YouTube and find out how to reconcile a bank statement. You can go to YouTube and find out you know where your cost of goods sold should be reported and how to make all the adjustments in QuickBooks. But do you want to do that as a business owner? Do you have the time to do that right now? No. So, hey, let me help you with that, right? Or, you know, whether you're maybe you're a business coach and you're and you're you're you're talking to them about different strategies. Do you have the time to go out and research the best marketing strategies right now? Do you have the time to go out and look at the most recent YouTubes about how to make AI agents? No. But if you had somebody, right, that says, hey, I know about AI agents. I've I've been an I've become an expert in them because I've researched them a lot. I'm gonna help you implement an AI agent in your business. It may not be the most innovative, it's probably not gonna be something different than anybody else, but I can promise you that I'm gonna help you do it. I'm gonna, it's gonna, it's gonna be impactful for your business. And that's what I, you know, the the last few like a couple weeks, I've just that that that part's been way out of mind. It's like nothing is unique 95 to 96 percent of the time. There are the small, unique people that come out with a brand new idea, a brand new system, right? Uh and more power to them. At that moment, they can go out and they can they can advertise that. But for the 95 of us and 96% of us that that don't necessarily have anything unique in terms of the strategies and the ideas, right? Uh right, where we're helping, you can help if that's you, where you can help your clients, especially if you're B2B or B2C, is uh in yourself, right? I'm gonna support you, I'm your partner. You know, we're gonna add more time back into your day. We're gonna make sure that this gets done, uh, but you don't have the time to do right now because you're a business owner, especially if you're B2B. So your focus shouldn't be on, oh, we're the best or we're the most unique or we have the best benefits. No, you should be worried about building a relationship so that that person trusts you. And the most forward thing that you could do is just be honest and say, you know what? I don't I know that you you could go to YouTube right now. In fact, I have a link if you want. If you don't, I could send that link to you right now that's gonna tell you everything that I just did. And you can go and you could probably research another 15 to 20 of the YouTube videos that are gonna give you everything that we talked about and then I'm gonna support you with. But do you have the time to then go and implement it? Do you have the time to actually then take the information you receive from that free resource and put it into work? Or to hold yourself accountable to make sure that you do it, and that's where you it can add the benefit to somebody. That's where you can then say, you know what, I'm gonna help you do this. I'm gonna support you in this, I'm gonna make sure that you do it. That's your ultimate goal. And so, you know, it's just something that's been on my mind. I've seen a lot of people say, you know, we're the most unique, we have the best new program, we have this most innovative thing. No, no, you don't. No, you don't. So just be open, just be honest, just partner with people. That that's that's that's kind of my my feedback on that. Uh so I'm gonna pause right now. So if you are a business owner and you're watching this, I'm trying to unlock my iPad here real quick, check my notes, and you want to be on a future episode. So if you want to come on, you want to talk about your business, you want to potentially you're maybe you're going through some obstacles, you want to talk through some of those in a future episode, drop down below. You know, hey, you're interested, I'll reach out to you. Uh, and we'll we'll set up a time where we record live, as you can see, this live every Friday at 8:15 a.m. We'll bring you on a show. You can talk a little bit about what you do, how you support your clients, how you support your you know, customers, and then we can even walk through uh maybe one or two things, obstacles that you're facing in your business to maybe you know provide some insights and point you in the right direction. So if that's you and you're interested, comment whether you're watching this on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, drop a comment down below and just put you know that you uh are interested in possibly joining us on a future episode, and we will reach out and get that set up. So back to the conversation. So another conversation I had earlier this week, I was meeting with a local, you know, kind of connection of mine. And I was I asked him to, you know, kind of give me a little bit about how he introduces himself, right? How he how he talks about his business to his prospects. And what I came to realize was, you know, because the the struggle that was mentioned was that people aren't necessarily understanding the offering that he has, or they don't understand how they support him. And so I was listening to how he was explaining himself, and I come to realize that you know he's explaining all these wonderful and amazing things that he did for bigger companies, but his target now is like smaller businesses. And so I I you know I said, Hey, you know, take a moment and I want you to listen to what you just said, the story you just had had mentioned to me. And put yourself in your prospect shoots. When they hear all of that, that big story that you just worked with with your you know, multinational organization, and they hear that story about how you developed. that that outcome for them. And I don't want to give away too much because I don't want, you know, the person right to to think they're talking bad. But what do you think that they hear? And he realized by like putting himself then in his prospect's shoes that oh well they probably feel like I'm overqualified or that I'm going to be way too expensive. Exactly. So by taking that moment to take yourself out and try to overqualify his story and his past and his qualifications, he was able to realize that people probably were feeling that he was going to be too expensive or that he was going to be trying to do all these extra things in their business that they didn't need. So the outcome of that was that we were able to talk through his scenario and look at simplified options and begin to simplify how he words and gives stories to prospects. How to message himself in a way that small business owners can resonate and then we also settled and we were able to kind of you know talk through some some introductory sort of statements when meeting with new people to explain what he does. And in that one conversation the gentleman walked away with so much information. It was great. So from that conversation what I want you to do and what you want the lesson you can learn from this as for yourself and I talked I think I talked about it like last week or maybe the week before one you need to practice you need to practice not only your introductions not only your purpose statement but you need to practice your exploratory conversations your consultations go through and actually practice how you're going to go through a conversation with a prospect. Because if you don't one you're going to stumble through it right because you're going to be like oh what am I supposed to do here? How are you doing? And then you let them start controlling the conversation. Practice how you want to run a consultation whether it's a 15 minute consultation, a 30 minute consultation, a demo, whatever it is, if you're not practicing that until you have the flow in memory that you could do it with your eyes closed, you haven't practiced enough. And I'm going to raise my hand here because it's something that I still need to be doing. I still have started doing this on repetition every single day for at least 15 20 minutes a day running through a script running through an exploratory call how I want to you know kind of run that practicing the purpose statement to start off you know your meetings develop that started it and practiced it. And so from him he never actually took his stuff out to actually like practice right it just was the stuff that flow flew out of his tongue because he wanted to give everybody the big in-depth right history and experience that he has with all these bigger organizations when he worked for organizations instead of being on his own. And once he was able to take that step back and he was able to put himself right into the prospect's shoes and listen back to the stories and then think hey what would they hear when they hear this part of my experience he was never going to be able to change it. He was always just going to come say the same stories and not realize that people are are already feeling that he's going to be out of his price range or that he's not going to be able to support what they do. And so for you the biggest thing that you can do is practice your script practice your intro practice you know that that elevator two to three sentence introduction and then listen back to it. Put yourself in your prospect shoes my prospect based on what I'm telling me what I'm saying will they get the point that I'm trying to make so record your practice sessions listen back to your practice sessions and then put yourself in your prospect's shoes will they understand the point of what you're trying to make will they understand that you're related to them you know we talked about it a little bit ago you necessarily don't have something truly unique in terms of like a strategy. You may be better at implementing great talk about that but you also need to build that trust build that relationship build that relatability with them and you're going to do that by simplifying your intro to talk directly to pain points and struggles and stressors that you see with your clients that they may be having themselves and keep it at that all your experience all that that stuff can come up later. You know once they decided to either maybe it's a deeper dive or maybe it's a you know hey they're already working with you and they they you know wanted to get a little bit more in knowledge about who you are then you can give your in-depth experience your in-depth knowledge don't do it in an exploratory call because you're going to turn so many people away and they're going to make their judgments about what your cost is or if your your service is going to be too much or you're going to try pushing things on them that they didn't ask for so that was one lesson from a conversation I had this week. So practice but then put yourself in your prospect shoes. Another thing that I you know had a conversation about and and I multiple people this week that I had conversations with is they're still focusing on hourly project services. Instead of thinking of the value offer the value programs that they could be delivering to their clients. And so the idea here is you want to think of how can I develop maybe it's a lower cost continued support that continues to bring value, right? Bring that support piece to your client but also helps you understand that you have now recurring revenue coming into your business. If you're a project based business owner you know the stressor that comes with not having constant every month revenue right the monthly recurring revenue. And so if you don't have programs to provide monthly recurring revenue in your business, that's your first misstep right so start thinking how can I provide continued support you know after a project you know so maybe you give a project and then it includes 12 months of monthly recurring support after or quarterly support. A lot of people that I've talked to they don't even think about that. They haven't even thought about you know how do I how do I develop programs instead of hourly rates or they're on call and then they just you know I'll charge by the hour when they call me well that's not great. Like you should you like you you you need to also have some benefit that you can give them give them a you know a monthly support piece or unlimited calls or you know access to your cell phone or they can call you anytime for unlimited 15 minute calls something that you can provide every month that they feel like they're getting value that they feel that peace of mind right that they have somebody on their team to be supportive that's the idea is that you're giving somebody peace of mind you're giving them that support my my longest client has told me time and time again I sleep better knowing that I can call you at any time and ask questions. And he essentially invests in that peace of mind for himself with our services it's not set recurring time. You know he calls me anytime he wants he gets a letter in the mail he shoots me a picture hey man I just got this what does this mean and we we solve it for him right we we we handle everything every month that needs to be done but when he needs me calls me and that peace of mind that somebody is there to answer his questions at any time that to him is worth that investment that he makes every year. And so think of your own services your own support how can you provide that same level of peace of mind to your target client on a recurring basis not just on a project basis or an hourly basis. Because if if you're if you still think of yourself as an hourly you know and you want to charge people as an hourly you're underselling yourself you know you're really underselling yourself. And then finally what I what I wanted to do is you know we talk about profit first a lot on this podcast. I'm a profit first certified you know firm and and so what I wanted to do is kind of go over and and review a few scenarios on our tool that we have on our website. So if you're interested in kind of running your own numbers you can go to triumph business solutions dot pro and then on the main website you know right in the middle it says you know get your free business snapshot right your business ability snapshot. Or you can if you're interested you can go to triumph business solutions dot pro backslash triumph hyphen assessment whichever is easier for you. So what I wanted to do is go through a couple scenarios here on the the assessment and and kind of show you you know some typical scenarios that we see as as we're working with clients. So this is our tool and at the top you can just you know kind of enter your name and the first thing that you're going to right here is for the period. So whether it's a full year numbers that you're entering or maybe it's a partial year because you're you're entering let's say this current year and you just reconciled through September. So if you do and you select partial year what you'll do is you'll come over here and how many months does these numbers cover and so if it's nine right so it's September we're going to enter nine. And then under the number entry so here's what here's how and we've talked about this in the past about profit first your top line revenue number is your gross revenue right but that's not where we're looking at you could be a million dollar company you know but if you have six hundred thousand dollars of materials that go along with that you're really only $4000 that could be used for other things to grow your business to pay yourself et cetera so for example in nine months let's say a company you know a typically maybe small organization has $125,000 of top line revenue. Now next what we want you to think of we talked about calculation of real revenue on this podcast is materials are direct materials that you have to pay for to make your revenue so whether this is a direct subscription so every time you sign a new client it costs you know $100 extra a month right or maybe it's a service or a product that you're providing and so that product has you know 30% gross you know material charges. You know whatever those material charges are you're gonna enter in here. So in this case I'm gonna do a service based business so they don't have any materials. Subcontractors and this is subcontractorslash employees and these are people that again in order for you to get paid they have to provide work. If it's something that is like a back office assistant that's good that happens whether or not you make money or not that's part of operating expenses. Subcontractor dollars are things that have direct impact on your revenue and so this is a service-based business and maybe they have contractor costs that when a client does a service it increases that cost right so they they have extra hours with let's say a subcontractor so in in our case here they spend $25,000 so far in the year to pay their subcontractors so as you'll see here it automatically calculates your real revenue so in this organization their real revenue through nine months is $100,000. Now we want to talk about the core for profit first accounts so first is your profit savings. So these are any reserves that you have built up in your business for profit plus any celebratory distributions that you've taken for yourself out of the business this year or in the period that you're entering. And when I mean celebratory I mean you didn't take money out of the business and then paid a utility bill or paid a mortgage bill. This is something that's truly not part of your everyday lifestyle. So for an example if you took you know $1,000 as a profit distribution in a quarter and you you went and you took a weekend trip away with your spouse that would be considered a profit distribution. But if you took a you know $500 out and it was used to pay your car note, no, that that's part of owner's pay owner's comp. So when you enter your profit it's any reserve savings that are in the business right plus any actual celebratory distributions that you've taken from the business for yourself. So in this case let's say this owner has you know $5000 of profit activity so far through the first nine months. Now owner's comp owner's comp is one those distributions that we've taken that support our lifestyle okay plus any wages that we've paid ourselves plus any other paid expenses in the business that benefit the lifestyle of the owner so for example if the business pays your cell phone bill add in your cell phone in owner's comp. If the business pays your car note right add in the car note payment in owner's comp. Anything that benefits you as a business owner goes into owner's comp. So for example let's say this owner has paid themselves you know $25,000 so far through the first nine months next is taxes. So as you'll notice too these first three buckets are things that are benefiting you as the business owner right profit you're saving for the future of the business plus you're also taking some celebratory funds to celebrate the work that you're putting in your business your benefit owner's count that's pretty self-explanatory. Taxes this is money that the business pays for your taxes on your behalf so if you have if you if for whatever reason you have a you know C Corp or you know some sort of wherever you're you're watching this and your business has to pay taxes itself it's not just that but then the business should be paying for your own personal taxes that you have to pay. Now in the United States most often small business owners are set up as an LLC a partnership or an S Corp where most of that stuff flows through to their personal return. So this tax reserve this tax bucket is used to pay your estimated payments and used to pay any balance that's due at the end of the year. So in this case let's say that the business has paid another $500 of taxes on behalf of the owner do not include here if you pay taxes as an estimated payment but it came out of your personal funds taxes is only either the savings balance you have in your account or the year to date estimate payments that you've paid from the business not from your personal okay and then operating expenses this is going to be pretty much everything else that comes out of your PL, right? So if you're looking at your PL to grab these numbers, you'll take right your total expenses minus what you included up in owner's comp and we got to take a zero off here. And this is going to be everything else. So let's say you had total expenses on your PL of let's say you know $100,000 and you paid yourself $25 to your benefit. So this is going to say that you have $75,000 right that you've spent out now what you may notice is that you've spent $75,000 expenses you paid yourself $25,000 you had $5,000 of you know kind of profit savings and profit you know distributions and you paid $5,000 from the business but you only had $100,000 real revenue. So what does that show you? Well here so put in your numbers and then you're gonna get instant assessment. And so in this case right her owner impact she's critical or he's critical and spending is way critical because he's 70 150% over target. And owner's impact the three the three owners account they're 50% below where they should be and so what you'll see down here is this is our calculation that we run pretty quickly for you. So we annualize the totals to represent a 12 month so we take the number you know above and then we annualize that. So we're projecting that for a year this this particular business is going to have 1660 dollars of top line revenue we are estimating that their materials in our case subcontractors is $33,333 and which leaves our real revenue to be $33,033. Currently our profit account right is 5% which awesome right on target right that's where it should be it should be 5% based on this real revenue number our owner's comp number is only at 25% when really he should be closer or he should be closer to 50% so they're missing about $33,000 of owners pay from themselves. Now on the tax side they're only at 5% on track to pay 5% when really we should be saving 15% which is more like 20 grand. So again we're off by $13,333 now our expenses our other spending is over and we're overspent by 10% and the reason for that can happen because maybe you're paying principal payments to on loans right that obviously are not going to hit your PL. So maybe you're paying you know money out the door that's going for old card notes or you're paying money out the door that's going towards old loans that's you know from prior years. That's gonna mean your cash is going to be overspent from what your real revenue is. And we need to get that down to 30% so in this case this particular scenario even 100 she's they're over by 45%. So how do we impact that? Well one, right, we need to start you know capping our owners transfers and we need to freeze and go through our operating expenses and start doing an expense review. What is mandatory? What is in that we're spending that is directly related to us bringing in a client or servicing a client okay that's the first thing that we need to do. And here right here is the next 90 days how can you make and start making some quick changes and slight changes to get you where you need to be so in this case our profit we don't have to adjust we're already there in our owner's comp we're gonna take that up 2% in our tax we're gonna take that up 2% and then we're gonna drop our operating expenses to 14. So we're only going to take 61% and what you'll notice is that we're not expecting your business to go from where you are currently you know 75% down to 30 overnight we're making small incremental changes that allows you to get where you need to be but this 14% drop is because we just want your cash flow to be net neutral. You shouldn't be overspending right because what happens when you overspend and you have more cash going out the door than you have coming in well either one you're reducing your reserves that you've had in your business previously or two in order for you to survive you have to take some sort of loan whether it's your owner reinvesting into the into the business or you know it's taking a loan from you know a family member on the personal side to fund the business whatever it is it's something that you're gonna have to pay back in the future when you have negative cash flow. And we don't want that. And so what I want to do now is I want to go through the same scenario but a scenario where there's no right there's no profit. And so what would you do like let's say you're you know let's just use a 12 month period okay and let's say it's a $450 business $50,000 of materials and you know they're $50,000 subcontractors so we have $350,000 of real revenue our owner's count let's just call the owner's count $75,000 taxes maybe they paid $15,000 or we'll just make it even further $25,000. But when they've gone through all their expenses they've looked at their PL they also then analyzed the additional cash that's going out to pay for additional liabilities they realized that they spent $3000 of operating you know of operating cash that's gone out the window which would mean that they're losing money right so in this case we're gonna put you know we're gonna actually have a negative profit we're gonna put zero for profit right because they don't have any profit they're they're negative and so again if we look here you know their owner stability is a little bit better because they're a little bit closer but then they're spending they're 114% over and so you could quickly see right profit they should be at 10% based on the size of $350,000 in real revenue. The owner's comp should be at 35 they're at 21 tax again should be 15 and they're at 86% for operating because they're overspending they're losing money. And so essentially we need to get that down to 40%. And so what you'll notice you know when you when you run through this is then again you get the first quick adjustments right you you you can see exactly where your numbers are compared to the targets. And again you don't have to get there right away make small incremental adjustments every quarter typically every you know on a six to twelve quarter plan you can get from where you currently are to where you should be in your target. So if you're interested again go to trial business solutions dot pro on the homepage if you click right here where it says claim your free business stability snapshot it will open up the trio business stability snapshot here you can enter your information grab your cash basis PL either for a full year you know rolling 12 months or partial year if you want to run partial year for 2025 you could just you know enter here partial year and then tell me the number of months and then enter your numbers and you'll be able to see exactly where you've been where you should be for your business and what I'll tell you too is that these percentages over here the targets are based on your real revenue but they're based on over 200 3000 businesses that have implemented this profit first system across the world we've been able to compile these successful businesses typical percentage allocation numbers and present it as our targets for you. Now these are baselines your business right can be a little bit different. The beauty is that no matter what, this system can be customized for you right you can take it you can set up an extra account for you know maybe it's an extra savings account or maybe you want to have a vault account that's you know for your specific rainy day to build up that three to six months of business tax reserves in your business. Whatever it is it can be customized and it be can be created for you in your business. But the number one outcome of doing this whether you're doing it alone or you work with a profit first professional like myself the biggest benefit for you as an owner is that now you're managing your cash when it comes in you're being proactive which I say all the time you need to be proactive you're now being proactive with your cash flow you are being innovative you're able to you know think differently right if you don't have the money in the operating account but you need to get something done how do you get it done yourself how do you create something that's more cost effective the biggest example of this and I say I've said this you know before we talked about the Savannah bananas but they are like the case study of the success of Profit First if you listen to Jesse Cole the owner of the Savannah bananas they were literally living right in their you know clubhouse on a on a mattress and they're mentioned in the Profit First book okay and they were literally I think it was like 1.5 or 1.8 million dollars in debt in debt they're about to lose everything they're about to lose the team they implemented profit first and they're able to really understand where my money goes where should it be spent right the profit distributions were working to pay down debt using the debt snowball effect right they were able to you know limit their operating expense money and they were able to think more innovatively the one example you know they were they were facing they needed to you know they were growing they were they needed to figure out how are they going to do ticketing and they were evaluating a hundred thousand dollar ticketing software where most people would have been like I need this I need to figure out how I'm gonna spend $100,000 to get it but because they had the profit first system implemented in their business they said no it doesn't fit the checklist that we created for ourselves. And so they went out and they bought banana shaped tickets for $6,000. So they saved themselves right $94,000 by being able to understand and have a system for their money and not let their business manage their money right because what you think you may need in your business. So whether you're doing it yourself or you're again you're working with profit first professional you become proactive in your money management. So take one step right go out and you know open your profit account today at your bank and when you open up a new account a couple things to keep in mind ask for you know no minimum balance and ask for no fees okay two biggest things to worry about when you're setting up new accounts for profit first no balance no fees if you have a bank that wants to charge you a minimum balance or they want to charge you a minimum fee think about finding another bank and if you're interested I'm not adding no relation to this but you know relay it's an online bank they're profit first certified they allow you to set up up to 20 different accounts manage your allocations and everything through there if you'd like as well great bank highly suggest it but go and set one account just your profit account and every time you have money in your bank whether you know and you get deposits in your main account at the end of a week whether it's on Fridays or maybe you know on the 10th or the 25th of the month whatever you decide is the best for your business take one 2% and transfer it to your profit account and don't touch it. That's how you can get started with profit first. Put profit first in your business not last right you know this adage right here you know the the accounting adage is sales minus expenses equals your profit. So profit happens last profit isn't the priority then in your business if that's how you're treating your profit. But when you make it sales minus your profit is your expenses now you take control. Now you ensure that your business is profitable from day one. Okay profit can be used in many different ways savings it could be used to pay down debt it could be used to you know celebrate but ultimately you have to get started by putting it aside so open up your profit account go to your bank set up your profit account and for me I'd suggest doing it weekly every Friday take whatever cash came in for the week and take one or two percent and put it in your profit account and watch that grow over the quarter. Now if you're one who's tempted to you know borrow from borrow from your profit account then what you need to do is at the end of every month have a bank at another or sorry an account at another bank and move the money into that account and then that bank requires you to come in to take the money out so that you're not tempted to borrow from your profit account especially if you're doing it alone. And the reason I say that is my experience right when I first went to implement profit first a couple years ago I didn't have an accountability profit first professional. And so I just left the profit in my main account so I logged in and I would see the balance. And I actually so and for me I had a I I came up you know I had an expense to come up I'm like oh well I can't pay right now but I got the money in the profit account let me pay it and I'll just pay back my profit account. And then it never happened and then what happens is then since you know you never paid it back and you see you saw your profit go down well this is this system doesn't work. And then I stopped doing it because again for me it took about that typical six to nine months and I fell off because I didn't do it the right way or I didn't have somebody there to hold me accountable and to talk with me every month to literally go over my allocations and my balances and my plans for Business. And so I fell off by the wayside. So that's your first step. If you're interested in this, set up your profit account, right? Allocate one to two percent every single week of the money that came into your business and let it grow over a quarter. And the idea now is now you're building that habit. And then once you start doing profit, now you can start doing your owner's comp, your tax. So if you don't have tax money set aside in your business, like we're coming up at the end of the year. So if you don't have a tax reserve set up in your business to pay your taxes, what are you gonna do when it comes tax time? Is it is it gonna come out of your personal money? Are you gonna have to fund it from a loan? Are you gonna put it on a credit card? And you don't want to do that. Your business should work for you. So by managing and setting these things aside ahead of time, you don't have to worry about taxes anymore. I met somebody at a networking event earlier earlier this week that implemented Profit First in her business. She's very successful. And she said how much of a game changer it was by actually implementing this in her business. Because when tax comes up, we talked about the tax time. She said, I don't worry about it. I know it's there. I don't have to wonder if my tax dollars are saved in that account. And the beauty of the tax reserve is if your taxes come in a lot less than what you've reserved, is now it's an extra profit distribution, or maybe it's an extra pay down on some debt. Or maybe it goes to fund your reserve account, your vault account. But the beauty here is that now you're being proactive. You're being you're managing your money in your business. And if you're not doing that yet and you don't know how to do it, reach out. I will walk you through it. Go to the website, try at business solutions.pro. And just like we just went through, right? Go here and enter your numbers. Take your cash basis PL, whether it's for the rolling prior 12 months or it's the year-to-date numbers, and fill in your numbers and see where you are compared to where you should be. And then if you want a plan on how to do that, reach out and I can give you and what we can walk through options on how to get to that target for you and your business. But with that in mind, I appreciate everybody who's watching. If you made it this far, please help us reach our goal of impacting a thousand businesses by the end of 2028. And one of the ways that we can do that is through this podcast. So if you heard something in the podcast and something that means something to you and that you're going to take away and implement in your business, please give this video our channel first a subscribe, whether you're watching this on LinkedIn, Facebook, or YouTube. Subscribe, get notified. We go live every single week. And then share this to your network. Help me get the podcast out. We also on Apple, we're also on some of the other networks. If you're listening to the audio version, we appreciate you there as well. But help us get the word out, especially if you found something in today's episode that was meaningful and impactful for you. But until then, we love you. If you're interested in your business owner on becoming a guest on the podcast, comment down below wherever you're watching this. And I'll reach out to you and we'll get you scheduled. We can you know talk about some valuable information that you help your business clients with and your or your customers. And then we'll even potentially walk through maybe one or two situations that you're going through right now in your business. And we'll walk through those live and we'll be able to help you and point you in the right direction, hopefully. But if that's you and you're interested, drop down below. We'll get you scheduled. Other than otherwise, I hope you guys have a wonderful and amazing weekend. I hope you guys, you know, get to make a lot of memories over the weekend. You know, I can't believe it's you know only a couple months away from Christmas and the end of the year. It's crazy how how fast that flies by. But keep down, practice, mix perfect. You know, practice your pitches, practice your elevator pitches, practice your exploratory calls, your consultations, okay, and and put yourself in a mind of your prospect and then network. I love you all. I'll see you guys in the next one.