Dave: 0:21

Hey, good morning, everybody. It is another Friday morning, and it is October 10th. I cannot believe it. So if you are a business owner, you're in the right spot. You know, we're here for another episode of the Business Unscripted Podcast, where we help business owners like yourself through learning from our own experiences, things that we've helped our clients with, and talking about some new maybe experiences or advice that we've come across recently that we want to share with you all. So, Duarne, thanks for being here again. So, you know, let's grab our favorite, favorite cup of Joe or you know, a bottle of water, and let's uh jump into the show. Let's get right to it. So, Duarn, thanks for being here on a uh pretty crazy day for you, huh?

Duarne: 1:08

You can say that. Like uh interesting wake-up call to a 7.4 magnitude earthquake in the 100 kilometers away.

Dave: 1:18

Yeah. It's not something I would uh put on my uh wish list. That's for sure. Well, your your your bingo card for for your Friday morning? Like that wasn't on it.

Duarne: 1:28

It wasn't on my agenda for the day, that's I'll just say that. Especially when it was followed with uh over 200 aftershocks over the rest of the day. Wow, and like I shared with you just before, there's a uh was a 5.4 magnitude earthquake just hit about 35 minutes ago before the uh episode of this ahead.

Dave: 1:47

So it's so for those of us that that have never been through, give us like a quick kind of rundown of what it's like to actually be in an earthquake, especially that magnitude, right? And I know you're you're you're you know a good decent 90 kilometers doesn't seem like that far away from an epicenter, but give us some you know, kind of high-level like what did it feel like going through an you know an earthquake like that? I've never been through anything, so I'm sure there's a lot of viewers and and listeners here that that have not.

Duarne: 2:17

So well, it's it's an interesting question because coming from Australia, I rarely ever experienced an earthquake. Like it's very rare to get an earthquake in Australia, and I never experienced one there. One of my clients just the other day who comes over and visits regularly actually advised that they had like a 3.54 magnitude earthquake in Melbourne a couple of months ago, and it was the first, like they hadn't had one for a long, long, long time. So it was the first time for him in Australia to experience it. But because he'd experienced them here on a couple of trips, he was a little bit more aware about what it was. But imagine like everything in your stomach just drops, you get this really odd feeling in your stomach when it happens, typically, for me at least. And it's kind of like you lose your equilibrium, so everything just feels really wobbly. And I've I've been in a lot of them, I've been here for over 10 years now. So today's was a really big one, the biggest one I've been in. I've been in a couple that have been pretty heavy damage. This one was off the coast, about 30-40 kilometers off the coast, east coast of the island that I'm on, and it's the largest island, Mindanao. So it was a we're about as a crow flies, we're at 136 kilometers. So I don't know, that's probably about 85 miles, roughly, I guess. Bad to guess. And that's pretty close to the epicenter. The guys in the nearer to the epicenter, like within the 40-50 kilometers of it, they they had buildings falling down, they had buildings getting massive cracks and holes in them. It's pretty it's pretty disastrous. There's government buildings that I saw on Facebook earlier where there was actually government buildings with shattered glass everywhere because all the walls inside separating the rooms are all glass, and it was pretty crazy. Here for me, I kind of was sitting on the edge of my bed. I didn't want to stand up because standing up meant dealing with the wobbling of it all. But as I'm sitting there, I could see picture frames just swinging side to side. Like that was swinging. I got mounted TV on the I got a mounted TV on the wall in my bedroom, and it was wobbling around. And when I stood up after it, it had already pretty much broken down to almost nothing. I walked outside. I've got a Silverado truck, 2000 model. So you know how big those are, the 1500 series. And this my truck's rocking forward, back, forward, back. It's just rocking, like, and it's probably got a you know, a good two inches worth of movement on the tires rolling forward and backwards. And the guys were saying it was really intense. I saw some video footage that an hour and a half away down the road from me towards it, and there's an overpass with street lights, and the street lights were literally weighing a few feet each direction back and forth. Wow, it's just and so how long how long does it last? Like well, this one was big. This one lasted almost a minute.

Dave: 5:36

Wow.

Duarne: 5:36

The one this afternoon, though, or this evening was probably closer to about 15 seconds, so it's a much shorter one. But some of them are very, very big and very, very long. The long ones are the scary ones because they're the ones you don't know when it's gonna stop. But it doesn't stop at the earthquake. We got over 200 aftershocks, so for the rest of the day, you're feeling like oh, there's another one. Oh, there's another one, oh, there's another one, to the point where you don't know when they're actually happening, when they don't. You don't feel all of them, but you feel enough of them that you feel a little bit awkward and in you know, a little bit unsettled.

Dave: 6:19

And you and you're kind of worried, you're kind of like wondering when when's it when's the next gonna happen, you know what I mean? Like you can't just go about your normal day, right?

Duarne: 6:29

You know, so well, you can't, especially today. Like, we lost power for the whole city for about four hours. The whole city went without power for four hours while this was happening because there's some pretty severe damage in some parts and transformers that were blown, and they had to do inspections to make sure that it was safe to turn the power back on in the stations, right? So when they and all the government departments and the public and private schools had mandated orders that all the non-essential employees were to be sent home, all students were sent home. So I could definitely agree with that, you know what I mean. Like you don't want them to just everyone gets sent home, right? I mean, our office, we lost power, everyone outside, they're standing up, they're assembling on the street, they're a little bit terrified about what's happened. If the power had come back on within 15, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, then we probably would have just gone back to work and had a little bit of a oh, that was a scary moment, which we've done before. But power didn't come on for a while, so we sent everyone home. So clients were contacted. They uh in fact, some of the clients were contacting us proactively. Everything okay, what's going on? So a lot of our clients are Australian-based, so they were already very aware of what because of the media was covering it quite well. They were very quick on it. Yeah, pretty scary stuff. It's a very, very big earthquake to be stuck in the middle of, and I don't recommend it. And I'm a little bit concerned that we're gonna get to a few more of these earthquakes over the weekend.

Dave: 8:03

Just basically how long the do aftershocks typically, you know, I know we're kind of off topic of a business, right? But how long do aftershocks typically, you know, kind of hang around for?

Duarne: 8:14

Yeah, like you can be well, we had the Cebu we still was still getting aftershocks. They had a big earthquake about four or five days ago. Not as big as this one, but they had one in another part of the country here, and it was pretty severe. Localized flooding, lots of damage, lots of people lost their homes, things like that. It was pretty bad, and they were still feeling aftershocks up until yesterday. They were reporting there'd been over a thousand aftershocks, I think I saw from that particular one. And the whole Philippines is on a fault line, right? I mean, we're I think we're on two fault lines or at least one big fault line. So don't quote me on that. I'm not a geologist, but yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but I we're we're on a fault line, it's just part and parcel. And apparently, just offshore, recently they discovered off the east coast that we have the largest dormant volcano, underwater volcano in the world has been located just off the Philippines, so estimated to be 150 kilometers wide or something. Something something insane, right? I mean, something like the these sort of things, like we've got the Marinara Trench, which is one of the deepest trenches offshore here in the Philippines, right? So it's a very interesting underwater landscape.

Dave: 9:37

I mean, that's just crazy. I like it. This is what right for me, you know, is because and I I've said this, and it's one of the reasons why like I'm in business in terms of like wanting to help people and in life, you know, you're never like you're never guaranteed tomorrow, right? Like you have to treat today as the most precious gift that you have, and you have to make the decisions, you know, that you can to better yourself today. So many people are put off, right? Oh, I'll just take care of that like next week, or I'll just take care of that like next month. And it's like you're not, you don't know, or you don't you have no guarantee that tomorrow or next month is actually going you know to happen for you. And I know that all too well. You know, I lost my brother early on in a car accident, you know. It it over you know, 41 years of life, you know, you come to realize that you just never know when that last occurrence of something happening is, you know what I mean? And so I hear it so many times with business owners, and it's just like, well, I'll just take care of that, you know. Like I know it's important, but I don't want to take care of it right now. You know, it's like, well, why not? Like, you know, and so that's why for me, like it's so important to start making these changes in your life, in your business immediately. You know, stop stop putting things off because an earthquake might like you you didn't go to bed last night expecting that an earthquake was gonna hit, right? In the city. No, no. And it would have been devastating, you know, and maybe you know, thank god it didn't, but maybe something would have, you know, dehabilitated you, right? Or something devastating could have happened, and then you're you're left, you know, with the rest of your life, or if you have a life, hopefully, you know, wishing that you would have implemented something or done something different. And I think this is you can't take life for granted. Life is short, and we don't know you know what we have left. You know what I mean?

Duarne: 11:48

Absolutely. And when you deal with these situations, I mean, this is character building stuff. Like, how do you deal with these situations? Like one of the things that occurred today, clients were reaching out asking how they can help, right? These are clients who we've dropped the ball. We can't help them, we can't take their calls, we can't process their orders, we can't help their clients. But it's not about that at this point. It's a humanity point that comes in and goes, Well, look, is anybody's house destroyed? Uh, is the office okay? Are you guys safe to go in there? Is it safe to work? Is there any damage? Is there any problems that we can help with? You know, we'll cover our own stuff for today. You know, you guys go and get take the weekend and just try and forget this happened, and we'll start fresh on Monday again. Right? Business continuity sometimes takes second fiddle to humanity, uh humanity and humanity reasons, right? So it's real, it was really interesting to see that, and that showed like the culture that we've developed in our business, I guess, and also the culture that we've got in our clients. So it looked it was good. We're doing outreach to our staff, they're all coming back saying, Hey, everything's really good. We're a bit shaken up, though. Um, a couple of my staff, I'm like, well, you know what? Why don't you just spend an extra little bit of time right now? Because we had a few, we've got quite a few that work from home, and just go play with your son for a bit. Go make sure he's okay. Go make play with your kids for a bit, make sure your kids are okay.

Dave: 13:24

It's one of those events, right, that occur where it kind of puts things into perspective. You know what I mean? It does. You know, there's a lot of events that that like this that'll happen in life, and it and it really puts your priorities in perspective a lot of times. And so, yeah, it's gonna happen when you know an earthquake happens, it's gonna happen when you you have a near miss of you know, a you know, car accident or something, you know, have a very bid, but there's a lot of things that possibly occur that you're like, man, I really want to, you know, kind of reevaluate or maybe take some extra moments, you know, or you know, to kind of just reset, you know what I mean?

Duarne: 14:06

Absolutely. And I think that's good. You you've got to have the you've got to have that minute after the initial shock of it to go and have a you know a chance to look at the perspective from a different angle of what you can gain from these experiences. Because yeah, I mean look, it wasn't a life and death situation for me or my family directly here, thankfully. But you know, there's other people are in very different situations. The last really big set that came through, I remember talking to a friend of mine. He was back in the US, he was over in California taking photos of his um cars, which is in business. He does he works for dealerships taking car photos and stuff and putting him online for them. His wife was living in the condo they'd just bought, and I think it was like 15 stories up, 16 stories up, when this big earthquake comes along, and she was terrified. Her and her son were stuck up there, absolutely terrified on the 16th floor while this earthquake's going on. Who's gonna run down 16 floors at that point? Right. I mean, that's your choices. You don't go in and because you can't use the elevator during an earthquake, it's just not a no-go. So you run down 16 floors, or you just hope and pray that the building stays still and then built it strong enough that it's not gonna be a problem. And thankfully, it was built strong enough, but there was chunks of render falling off the wall inside their brand new condo, so they were terrified, and they weren't selling that condo within a couple of months and moving into a house because they just didn't want to be tied up anymore because it was just horrific as an experience for them, you know.

Dave: 15:50

Thankfully, you're literally trapped at that point, you know what I mean?

Duarne: 15:54

That's it, and they made a decision not to be trapped anymore. And I guess we do that in business all the time, too, right? I mean, we we make the decision that we felt trapped in some situations that we're in, and we said we don't want to be in that situation.

Dave: 16:13

For those that don't know, sorry, Jesus. They're Pomeranians and they never shut up.

Duarne: 16:20

Ah, tiny dog singer, yeah.

Dave: 16:23

They see uh they see a tree branch moving and they they decide that they want to, you know, bark and go crazy. So um, yeah, my fiance's daughters are off of school today, so one of them must have gotten up and moved upstairs. So the dogs need to let us know what's going on so that we don't miss anything. So but you know the other thing that that really kind of brings me back to, and I was actually thinking about this the other day, is like, you know, I always think to myself, I'm 41, right? The average life is what 80, 85, 90 years. I keep thinking to myself, man, I'm I I only have like 50% of my lifestyle left, right?

Duarne: 16:58

Which is how 40 years.

Dave: 17:00

I'm like, man, I got 40, I got 45 years left. But here's the thing to think about too. When you put that into perspective, I'm 41, but I've really only been experienced with life, right? I would say, let's just give it 21 years, right? Yeah, once I turn 21, and even then I was young, I was dumb, I was in college. So let's just figure, let's just figure 25 was when I maybe started to figure some things out. And even then I was stupid. But that's only 16 years out of my 41 that I've really been doing things towards the goals that I want to, right? Yeah. And so when you put that into perspective, I have I've only lived essentially 33% of my life that is actually productive and supposed to, you know, be be the main part of my my living, right? And and you know, create that legacy that I want to live. So when you when you start thinking of it that way, it's like, man, okay, I got a lot more time left. Like I'm only 33% of the impactful part of my life, you know. The majority of my first half of my life so far has been learning, right? Growing, obviously being, you know, a kid, not not doing anything with society. Now, when I think about it, it's like, okay, oh, of my 41 years, only about 15, 16 of those have been true productive, learning, growing type experiences. And when you start thinking of the years you have left, right, hopefully, right, because that's the other thing. Like, I hope I have 45 years, but I don't truly know. As you just kind of referenced, you know, with with you being in an earthquake. So, you know, it could I could be five years. I don't know, but I'm gonna live my life in two ways. One, I'm gonna think in my head that I have all this time that I don't need to be exactly where I want to be, like in this moment. So I'm gonna live every day to to build that future for the next 40, 50 years. Okay. But number two is I'm also gonna make the decisions that I need to make today because I also don't know that I'm gonna have tomorrow. So I'm gonna do everything I need to do to make that shift, make the updates, and be willing to make the best decisions that I have right now with the information I have available right now. And so I think that's something that I think a lot of people don't think about or don't put into perspective.

Duarne: 19:10

It's an interesting point. So, based on what you're you're saying, 33% of your life has been towards a career effectively, building up to your career so far. And if we put that in perspective, you're probably only gonna spend another, you know, maybe 15 to 20 years max finishing that career, so you can actually then enjoy a retirement. I mean, if you had to work out a full what you know, retirement age sort of thing.

Dave: 19:41

I don't want to say that it's like 25 to 30 right now. So I'm and for my age, right? Because I think yeah, if I if I wanted to rely on social security and all that kind of stuff, I think it's like up to like 65 years now, right? By the time I go to retire, it might be even be 70. But for me, like when you think about it that way, you know, I don't my goal isn't to have something that I'm done with, right? No, I want to have something that is like passive, can be you know run without me, but I still have ownership. I always want to have ownership because for me, I want to like pass it down to kids, you know, build something that is still impactful, still leaving a legacy, all of that stuff.

Duarne: 20:51

You're looking at a building a legacy, right? I totally get that. And I'm working on the same thing, and I think most of us business owners is what we're working towards, and that's the difference between having a job and having a business. We're working towards how can we sustain a lifestyle after we retire without relying on you know government benefits or handouts, etc., or pensions that are you know from corporate pensions. And for a lot of us, even if we're living on like I've got a good friend of mine, he was sharing how much his pension was. You couldn't live on that in Australia, it just wouldn't be possible. He's on a disability pension based on some injuries that he's sustained during work, and I was in shock at how he could afford to live on his pension, which is a government handout pension. So it was it's like you've got to have these extra things lined up in the event that this sort of stuff happens because don't rely on the government to give you enough money, you know. And it's like we had situations in when share prices on Wall Street dropped and superannuations basically went down the toilet in Australia overnight. That was people who were couldn't retire for another five, ten years, or they built their wealth back up because they had invested in supers, which got tanked because of that. So I think when you start looking at the full picture, we are all working towards a legacy, and that's what you know. Certainly, I think most business owners are doing, and they do have their end game in mind like your end game, keep running the business, have something to pass on, earn a passive income. Other business owners might want to sell their business, they may be building something to sell, and then just be able to sit back and live on the invest, you know, and their earnings from that. And neither one of them is a bad option, but you've got to know that now, so you know what you're working towards. So at least you've got to be able to do that.

Dave: 23:02

I'm sure we've said it on this podcast too, where it's like you have to have that if you just said you have to have that destination. You know, if you're building for something that you eventually want to sell, you you you're gonna take different actions in your business journey than if you're building something that either one you just want to be small yourself, right? And eventually when you're ready to retire, you're just gonna close shop, right? Because you're gonna save. That's a totally different set of actions than something you want to grow and sell, right? Because if you want to sell it, well, you got to make it worth somebody investing and buying. So you're gonna have to have teams, you're gonna have to have systems, you're gonna have to have processes and procedures and and all this stuff systematized. Whereas if you're just yourself and you're just like, I'm just going to, you know, basically work for myself for 20 years, I'm gonna have a job for 20 years, but I'm gonna be my own boss, you know, you don't have to worry about systems you know, in terms of documenting systems and stuff like that that you would have to if you're trying to sell. So they're two totally different business journeys, but people try to treat the idea that they want to sell it the same way as if they're gonna eventually just be themselves and give in and just close shop. And and because they don't know, because they haven't decided yet that this destination point.

Duarne: 24:20

And so that's the key they have they haven't decided the amount of times that I like I sat there and I hadn't really thought about it when I set my business up because we're so gung-ho, when we set a business up, we're not thinking about what the end game is gonna be, we're thinking about how we're gonna stay alive, how are we gonna keep this business running, or are we going to get to that next stage in our business? And selling or closing the business is so far down the line that we're just not even considering it most of the time at the start of the project, which is interesting because whenever you build something, and a software or an app or a house, you typically already know what the end game looks like. Is this going to be my forever house? Is this gonna be my am I gonna sell this house? Am I gonna live in it for a few years and then sell it? You know, all of these sort of things typically you have a plan or a strategy around. So it just seems interesting that in business we tend not to think about that. And I'm kind of curious as for I haven't really asked a lot of people this. I mean, you probably asked more people than I have in your role, but why is it when people don't haven't considered that already? What was their motivation for not think considering it that um well it's it's the I think it's it's I guess there could be a couple reasons.

Dave: 25:48

One, I think it's they just feel like they have so much time that they don't have to worry about it right now, right? It's one of those things where I don't have I uh you know I'm so buried, I'm so I'm so neck deep into into client work or the day-to-day work that I can't think of that right now.

Duarne: 26:00

And you're in the now, right?

Dave: 26:02

And the second part to that is they're probably you know, I would make the I would make the the assumption, and I could be proven wrong here, but I would make the assumption that a lot of them are trying to still work nine to five, right? They're they're not in the first stages of their business, right? As they're first getting started, they're not working 50, 60, 70 hours a week, right? Like they should be in order to really build something. People want something to occur out of nothing. They they don't want to do the work, but they want the success. And so it when I have a lot of conversations where people are like, oh, that's that's great. I need that, I just don't want to do it right now. I'm too busy, right? And a lot of times it comes down to you know, when I get a little bit deeper into the conversations, well, well, what does busy look like for you? Well, I'm handing client work, and then and then I, you know, we got a lot of stuff going on, you know, and and at home or in my personal life. And it's like, okay, well, how many hours do you feel like you're spending with the business? And typically it's around that 40 hours a week, right? And I'm like, and and are you where you want to be? Like, are you at where you want in terms of revenue, client account, all that? 90% of the time the answer is no. And it's like, well, why are you only working 40 hours? Right? Well, what do you mean by working 40 hours? I gotta have a life, I still have to, you know, you know, have that balance. And I'm like, well, then have a job. If that's what you really want, like if you want balance, a job is gonna give you that balance. But if you want to grow a business, you want to actually, you know, kind of have something that's meaningful long term, you have to be willing to sacrifice a couple years of your life where you're not gonna have balance. And that's a hard thing to explain to people that aren't in that journey, that there's not balance, there's a struggle, right? You look, I'm doing this because I'm setting this up for the next 10, 15, 20, 30 years. I'm gonna need these three or four years where I'm gonna be, you know, just where I need to be, you know, as a minimum because I'm trying to do a lot, or sometimes my attention, while maybe we're sitting down and watching TV, is gonna be, you know, uncoding or answering emails or setting up you know ideas and getting things on the head to put the processes on paper. You know, so if if that's you, if you're a business, if you're just getting started or thinking about getting started, and to yourself, you're one, you're like, Oh, I'm gonna work 40 hours you know a week, you need to change, you need to lose that mindset right now if you're trying to build, right? If you're not building stage, you don't work 40 hours a week, you need to work 50, 60, 70 hours a week, and and until you're where you need to be, right? Until you're out of the way.

Duarne: 28:36

The only way around that is to be so well funded at the beginning of your project that you can hire the staff to fill the gap. It's either you have somebody doing because somebody's got to do the work, whether it's you or a staff member, and most of the time what we tend to find ourselves doing is hiring the staff, allocating work to them, and still doing more work for ourselves, because then we see the opportunity to grow in other areas or improve on other areas. And the reality is you are gonna put a lot of work in. And if I've had the conversation with people saying, Well, why did you decide to do this? Well, you know, I was working and I used to have to drive an hour and a half to work every day and then an hour and a half home, and I wanted to get that time back, and it's like, well, that extra three hours you now get to spend in your own business and doing what you need to do. And if you work out and the average business owner, if they were getting paid on an hourly rate, they'd be it'd be a very, very low hourly rate. I had a conversation just this week with a client, and he was talking about bringing on a virtual assistant to help with tech support in his business. And I said, Okay, that's a great idea. I said, Yeah, and he goes, I'm seeing others doing it and they're doing really well. I said, Yeah, we've helped a lot of people with this. And he said, Well, I'm probably about five to ten customers away from being able to push the button and go. And I said, Okay, what's the average size customer? Five to ten user businesses. Cool. What's your average cost per user that you charge? And he shared it with me, and I'm like, Oh, that's a bit low. And he goes, Yeah, it's lower than the it's lower than the industry average, but because of where I live, that's what I have to charge. Okay, I said, so what's your profit on that? And he shared that it was about 65 67 percent profit per user. So I should I worked it out with him and I said, Look, so if you were to charge just an extra 20 bucks a month per person, you could probably pick it up to about a 90 to 100% margin on your product. And he's like, Yeah, but it's really hard to sell someone that. And I said, Okay, well, what if you went back to your original customers and you explained to them what they're gonna get and add some more value in because I'm sure you're doing more stuff than you originally scoped out for them originally, and then ask them if they'd be willing to spend a little bit more money for that scope, right? And while you're at it, add additional products into your mix, sell a few more products that don't cost you a lot, like a collaboration with some stuff that we were doing on websites and the like. And he was like, Oh, and I shared what sort of margins he could be making if he was doing just like on a couple of those things with us, and he was like, Oh, I'd probably have to bring on like three or four customers if that was the case. And I went, You need to that was an important and what what I saw there was there was a few things. He wasn't he was sending leads off to partners that weren't giving him anything back, so he couldn't upsell, so he didn't have a good partner for collaboration for growth on other products that he could work with and trust. Secondly, he'd set a goal for somebody to help him in his day-to-day because he shared that he hadn't gone on a vacation in 20 years, so he'd been working in the business, and he saw the value in having someone help him stop that sort of problem from occurring, and he wants to do something about it, but he feels stuck in the pricing that he's got right now and doesn't feel he can lift his price. And by lifting his price across the board, even by $10 to $15 per user, I think he could quite easily cover the cost of putting on someone to help him without bringing on more customers, and in and that would give him the extra that he needs to do what he you know, get where he wants to be. But it's a limitation of there somewhere. And look, I didn't dig into it enough because it's not my conversation that I was planning to have with him at that point, but he he may have he may have already tried to get the price up and they've all rejected it.

Dave: 33:07

Well, but but here's the thing here's the thing if you're thinking about price. There's two things that I heard during that conversation, right? The first is that he defaulted to no, he defaulted to already thinking that his clients weren't willing to pay a little bit more money. That's the pro that's the first problem, right? He's making the decision for his clients, not letting his clients make the decision to him. And I hear this so often when it comes to business owners, right? They're like, oh, well, why would anybody want to pay me that? Well, you first, if that mindset needs to be gone, you need to lose that limiting belief. One, if you feel that that's your price, that's your price because you're worth it, you're providing the value. The second thing is that when you do go to increase price, highlight the additional value that you're given, right? So for an example, if you have a client that's been paying you, let's just say you're you're you're they're paying you four or five hundred dollars a month, let's say five hundred dollars a month for math, right? And you want to up your prices because you're not your margins aren't where they need to be, right? And you need to up your your average overall. You know that by them paying you $500 a month, that they've seen a that you know, let's just say for an example purposes, they've seen an increase in revenue of five to six thousand dollars a month. So they have a 10 or more ROI, 10x, the investment they're making with you. And you can just let them out, you know, have the conversation, especially if you're personal with them. So that's the first thing. How is that mode of increase gonna happen? So if you have a lot of one-on-one conversations, it should be getting together for a meeting. You know, hey, hey Darren, I I wanted to I wanted to get us together. I wanted to talk about you know our pricing structure moving forward. We we're recently, we're you know, we're kind of going through some some pricing changes. However, in the package that you're in, you know, starting effective, let's just say December 1st, that package is gonna be $9.97 a month right now. However, what we're doing is we're also you know, we're adding in you know, XYZ additional value for you that's gonna help you. And then looking at your results, I've noticed that while you've been paying about your $497 or your $500 a month price, you've actually reported results of five or six thousand dollars more a month. So, and you can you know kind of open it up of you know, what do you have any do you have any questions about that? Or you know, just wanted you know, wanted to give you, you know, have a conversation about it, you know, let you know what what we're doing for you to make sure because we really we we value you as a client, right? As a customer, yeah. You know, feel free to you know shoot me any questions that you may have, right?

Duarne: 35:41

And on a flip side to that too, you've also got the pain of moving. What is the pain of moving and finding another provider? In a lot of cases, like in his situation, the pain to move is probably going to be greater, it's probably gonna end up costing them more in the long run. It's gonna have outages, it's gonna cause all sorts of little dramas. So a lot of clients will just go, you know, I'll just pay it because it's easier just to maintain the status quo with what we've got. And I see the value proposition that you've just demonstrated as well. So yeah, I think that's really sound advice there.

Dave: 36:23

And I and I think too, you know, let's let's say, you know, for you, right? You you came back to me and you're like, well, you know, I I don't know, I can't I can't make that, right? I can't afford that increase as of December. Well, then you work with them, right? And you say, Well, porn, I get it. Like I know it's coming out of the, you know, it might seem like it's coming out of the blue, right? You know, it's uh about you know two months ahead. I mean, how how about this one? Why don't I, you know, instead of jumping you right from 497 all the way up to 997, why don't we just do right about a hundred dollar increase every month for the next six months or next five months? And that'll get you, and so that way it steps up every month until you're you're at what the new pricing would be, let's say around May of next year. How how does that sound? Yeah. Well, now you're you're working with them, you're showing that you could you you don't you don't necessarily expect the entire jump. I mean, most people would, especially when you highlight that you they've seen a five or six thousand dollar increase that month over month, like it would make sense. But you just work with you know, work out a stepped plan, you know, and even if you're going from you know 1,500 to 3,000, like you can still have an you know a stepped plan for them, maybe over the next 12 months. Hey, here's what we're gonna do. Just wanted to let you know that the plan you're in, the new pricing for that is gonna be like you know, $24.97. I know you're at $14.97, but you know, we don't expect you to kind of go from you know A to B right right away. So here's what we're gonna do for you. We're actually gonna step you up over you know $250 every quarter for the next quarter. So then by the end of next year, you'll be where you need to be in terms of the program prices.

Duarne: 38:34

And then what's interesting, like I like that. I mean, what's interesting in this particular scenario, I went back and I was talking to two other stepping to have a conversation where two other business owners who have the same business model in two different locations to the original business owner shared with me their pricing structure, and the lowest to highest pricing is about 35 to 80 percent higher than what this guy's charging. So we're talking here, they were saying that their lowest possible price is 35 higher than what he's charging. So we're talking about like that profit that he was registering at 57 could very quickly become over 100 profit margins and put him into some very good areas in the group on the bank statements and the cash flow just by making an adjustment on the pricing with the existing customer base. But even when I was discussing it, it it seemed that there was blinkers on in place of even new customers coming on board, would it be would be offered the same pricing structure that the existing customers are on board because he felt that he tried going up on the price before and it didn't work, so he was gonna lose the business. So I I my my concern is I think there needs to be something change to help.

Dave: 40:01

So I uh and the I mean the number one thing is is you have to, and I get it, right? Because you're like, why would anybody want like why we it's that negative human side of our brain, right? We always want to think to the negative of what potentially is going to be coming down the road, and so what you take that out, like get rid of that belief, like you know, set the price, and what you could do is is go out and talk to prospective customers, go out and talk to past clients, go out and talk to your current clients, and just say, you know, we're reviewing a couple changes. We'd we'd we'd appreciate your feedback, right? And you know, have a couple options for them and just do it as an anonymous sort of you know, survey. You know, if we you know, here's here's a couple new features and you know, potential new pricing structure of what we're looking for. Give give us your feedback. You you know, we trust that you've been here since the beginning, we want to value your opinion. Give it give us your thoughts. And what that you'll make you will see, not makes it you will see, is that people are willing to give you their feedback and they're gonna give you their honest feedback, especially if they like what you're doing. No, and so that's why you choose the ones that have been there for so long that you know continue to get results from you. So I totally and obviously pricing's a big one for a lot of people, so totally get it.

Duarne: 41:20

So, I mean, look, yeah, I think when you when it comes down to it, moving forward, I think uh like everybody needs to do these re-evaluations as to why they're in business, right? He, in his instance, he wants to get a vacation, so he has to make some tough decisions in his business now to work out what that means. Ironically, I was talking to another client, and he was sharing that one of his good friends in the same industry as him was trying to work, had planned to give his business to his son. Well, his son doesn't want it, so he, even though he's been working with him in the business, his son's like, I don't want the business, I don't need it. He's got other things going on, so he's now in a position. Well, I've built up this business, I've got clients that are so happy that are happy with what I do and everything. What do I do with this business? So now he's looking at potentially having to sell it, and he doesn't know how to position it for sale because he never ran the right systems. So every everything is all on him. So whoever takes it on has to see the potential, has to be willing to put the systems in place or have the systems in place just to move his clients into their systems and then hope the migration goes reasonable because it hasn't he never made the decision at the time to sell the business. It was always going to be something he just passed down. So he felt that he could train his son on all of that, which is a scary thought too because automation systems, SOPs, we've talked about this so much. These are all very, very important things, and they all come into place again a lot more when we start talking about if your end game is selling or if your end game is to you know merge with somebody else or something to that effect. Or have so even have someone take over. They need to understand how you run it, how do you do it? So you don't become the you know what you're doing.

Dave: 43:19

It has to get out of your head, has to get out of your head in order to be sellable. You know, if that's your goal, like somebody's not gonna buy you, right? Because you're you want to leave, you want to take a vacation or you want to. So if you if your ultimate end goal is to sell, you have to make sure that you have proper documented processes, systems, you know, everything's in place so that it's not up here, you know, it's actually done on paper and ready for people. So yeah, so pricing's one, you know, destination is another one. Obviously, mindset is a is a big thing for people too. And to kind of go back to what you had mentioned, the whole focus of your client, right? He's thinking I have to have a VA to get things done. Right, I have to have somebody else to do something for me. And while ultimately, as you if you are growing, yes. But here's the thing we I mean, we've been talking about this week. And so I think I think a lot of business owners truly know what's at their fingertips, you know what I mean, in terms of helping them automate, get things done, do things, you know, that you never thought you could even imagine to do as a business owner. You thought that you'd have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars. And why it's impactful for me, right, is we've talked about profit first. And so many people, when you're having that conversation with them of how do I, how do I go through and drop my operating expenses? What do I need to do? And a lot of the stuff that we talk about is well, we're gonna review, we're probably gonna cut a lot of waste, we're probably gonna cut a lot of overspending and and renegotiate contracts. But the other thing is we want you to be innovative. We want you to think outside the box. How can you do something that still gives you the results, still gives you the support, but doesn't cost you as much? And now I don't know, you know, that there's so many things that just came out, right? Chat GPT AI is advancing so quickly in what's happening that if you're not paying attention to it, you're costing yourself money because you're overspending on some things that you probably can easily now either replicate for yourself, or there's gonna be a lot of cost-effective solutions that are gonna be coming out as well that can really help you be more efficient, be more effective, be more innovative in where you're spending your money or or what you need to spend your money on. You know, so like for an example now, like you know, ChatGPT has brought out what they call codecs. It's been around for a while, right? But they just re-kind of vampires. And I've been diving into this like the last week, and it's crazy, just for me, no experience in coding, right? No experience in repositories or database management or you know, uh building of the actual platform, right? Like from scratch was able to do a lot of uh pretty robust things just by talking to the chat and having it code, right? And so there's so many opportunities that you can take. And then just earlier this week, they not only updated Codex, but then they dropped out the the AI, you know, bot creator, where now instead of having yeah, the agent kit. So now you can easily build out, you know, your own AI just for internal use. You don't even have to try to sell it. Just think of what you could be building for yourself, you know. Like a great example is it could just be a a chat bot on your website, right? Or on your social media accounts that that's attached, that you have it, you know, trained, that's on your specific, you know, business, your questions, your services. It can either be hooked up to your calendar, you know, and so you train it on questions, on FAQs, and it can actually think through, right, and actually see, you know, the actual logic behind it. Is this a QA? Is this a you know issue, right? You know, a problem solving or a tech issue, or something like that, yeah, understanding intent behind it. And so, and all this is a lot of it is like drag and drop, and they make it so easy for you to build now that you as a business owner should not have any excuse why you are not being more efficient unless you just literally don't want to learn about it. And that's I can understand if you're a business owner, you're already working 50, 60, 70 hours a week, you may not have time.

Duarne: 48:28

But there's gonna be a lot of things new is daunting sometimes. Absolutely, I get it.

Dave: 48:33

Like there is gonna be a lot of things I think that pop up from this. I think we've been talking about it that are gonna still help you, that's gonna be efficient and effective for you.

Duarne: 48:42

Yeah, because I mean, look, there's a lot of people out there who struggle with just the idea of using Chat GPT to write email requests and help with some documentation. One of the uh things your pets are going crazy again. One of the things that I love about this sort of setup is using it for internal training purposes. So if you've got a certain leadership program that you put your team through and you've got all the documentation and all of that sort of information still available for that course, you can build a chatbot specifically around that and then incorporate internal things like handbooks, your company handbooks into it, your company you know mission and values, and then give that to your leadership team as a tool to help them understand how to deal with situations and scenarios within the business based on the training that you've provided, based on your internal documentation, et cetera, as well. And you can put the guardrails in place. So, you know, there's lots of really great tools you can do, and up until this point, you could build custom GPTs, but an agent has the extra value capability of being able to do a little bit more thinking for itself, like using a computer for itself, sort of thing. What and it does be on the internet, exactly. It's like an extra set of an extra assistant sitting there. So I while I don't think it's gonna replace a full-pled person in your office doing something necessarily, it's a really great tool to add onto the kit to help streamline a lot of work and projects. And it well, but think about this.

Dave: 50:32

So this isn't limitations, is this isn't like an agent mode, but this isn't agent mode that's in the chat, right? Where you you go and then you give it a thing and then it goes. This is something that like you have it kicked off. So for example, let's say you're in Go Hello, right? You can every time you know somebody submits an email to you, you could essentially have it kick off your this one bot, right, that reads the email, drafts a reply, and puts it in your in your your drafts for you then to go and review, right? Or let's say every time you have a meeting on your calendar and one of your your your things is following up, right? Or checking back in with them in a week. Well, you could create a bot that literally says, okay, at the end of every time something's booked on my calendar, book me a follow-up task, right, for a week and then and then ping me on that day, and then ping me the next day to say if I did it or not. You can literally the opportunities around it are really endless when you think about what you want.

Duarne: 51:34

Let's say you're a company that has a team of dispatch drivers that are going around doing work around picking up trash or you know, towing trailers or something, right? In your area, you could train it up that the agent knows what the checks the calendar to see what your appointments are, when they are meant to be there, estimate the time to travel, then go and check traffic alerts and weather alerts to supply the driver with information or the dispatch with information that could be like avoid this highway or this motorway because there's a crash there, or avoid this intersection because there's a crash, turn, you know, go in this direction instead. And you might just find that one little thing could be really, really helpful. Or go one step further where you notify the driver, tell them that information, but then also message the client directly who's on the calendar information and send that out an email or an alert saying, Hey, just letting you know there's been a crash over here which is causing a delay. We just want to let you know we're going to be about 15 minutes late. You could build out an agent that does all of that for you.

Dave: 52:41

And if you think about it, like Amazon has that stuff where they, you know, they have the tracker of the car and that kind of stuff. But like this is even a next step further that could essentially be happening. Now, that's a specific use case, but it's a possibility, you know what I mean? But take something even simpler about your business, right? You know, maybe it's just calendar management. Maybe it's sometimes, you know, you get you get a calendar ping or somebody tells you something, you know, and and you quickly pull out an app on your phone and just plug it in and boom, it puts it on your calendar, right? And it reminds you and it sets everything up and it you know has a ping on your, you know. There's so many possibilities that could happen. Dave, you just give me an idea. I had a client just for the normal person, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's oh well.

Duarne: 53:25

I just had a client this week tell me that they had a drama, they've got two business, two businesses with two different calendars, and I know what this is like personally, and a personal calendar. And whenever they put a booking in, yes, they can use conflict to check for bookings if they were using a system like Calendarly, but when they're taking bookings themselves and they're using third-party apps like a ticketing system to make the bookings, it doesn't check for conflicts. So this would be a really great opportunity to create an agent that actually physically checks all of those first, then suggests available times for a booking based on multiple calendars.

Dave: 54:07

Yep. Yeah, you put in drop it on your website, you create a mobile version of the app, and then you you can pull it out when somebody's with you instead of you having to check three different calendars, then you know the app actually goes, Oh, this this is these are your available times, right? Yeah, and and boom, you you don't even have to worry about it. And then it books, and then it'll take that, and then it goes back once you book it, then it goes back and blocks that slot time slot on all your other calendars. So if that one calendar is tied to your website, it's still showed as block, right?

Duarne: 54:39

You know, if you're that's it, and then t and and then add a little function if you want where it can send you an email in the morning with a full summary of all your meetings and where you need to be during the day. So you know exactly where you need to be and what you need to do. And if you want to have blocked out time, then you can just tell it. You want to have blocked out time or put it in one of the calendars and it'll know that. So you've got the situation, it is completely limitless. It really comes down to what do you think and want to do and how do you want to do it. When I was playing with it, I was looking at some functionality, it's got a very clever function where it can actually integrate with APIs on other systems, so you can have it integrating between different systems, especially if you integrate it into Zapia or Make or Pably or any of those sort of middleware platforms that already know how to do web hooks and links between platforms. And you can go in and check all these different things, check for weather, check for this, check for that. In fact, there was one video which I watched, and I think you shared this to me there, where he actually had it, he trained the one agent to be multiple agents, and one of the steps was one of the agents would go and work out if there was an API for a piece of software, then build that API, then tell the second agent to use that system, that API to get the result. So there's some really advanced stuff you can do, but they make it look so easy and relatable, and it's only gonna get better as time goes by. And I was genuinely shocked at how accessible it feels. And it is a drop and drag interface. So this is the first iteration of it, right? We're gonna see more possibilities coming out. It's gonna get to the point where you're probably gonna be able to describe what you want, and then it'll build it for you in the future.

Dave: 56:33

Oh, I could totally see that happen. Like with codecs, like oh, yeah. Oh, you're just gonna be able to talk to it and say, Yep, hey, I want you to build me out an AI agent that connects A, B, and C programs. Here's the triggers that I want it to have, and it's gonna you know, kind of design it all for you, and then you just run through a jacket, and then boom, you're done. Yeah, the idea is that you could train it. Like, that's the other thing. Like you know, each one of the steps could be trained, right? You can drop in your own code or you know, you your your own, not code, but you can drop in your own, you know, like company information sheets, your company website, you know, and it'll train itself. But then you or if you just have connected to your Google Drive, if everything's there and you connect it to your Google Drive folder, and now it's got everything you don't have to worry about. Anytime it's uploaded, you know, updated or anything, your chatbot's updated. You know, there's just so many opportunities. It kind of goes back to what we were saying, right? So many people that are trying to or feel like they're limited in their expenses, so they're trying to reduce their expenses, but they feel like they need to do more. You have no, you really have no excuse right now. If you're if you're trying to reduce your expenses, learn something. Create something. Because there are so many opportunities for you right now. Saying the word I can't or I I I I don't know, it it should not be in your vocabulary as a business owner if you want to be successful. And sometimes that's the hard truth. Like, people are gonna think that's so that's why are you gonna say that, Dave? Like, that's so hard abrupt. But sometimes from our perspective, that's how we have to talk to some people sometimes, because they they just need to hear that, they just need to hear that they're in the wrong mindset and then they can bounce back.

Duarne: 58:18

It's funny that like one of the things like they people when people say they don't have time to learn something, I totally get it. Sometimes learning something actually helps you reduce the amount of time doing something. So for me, if I have a the the AI course I put together recently for our foundation, one of the things that I covered in there is we've got nine foundational frameworks on using AI. Then we talk about combining those systems and using them in combination, those frameworks to solve to create a combination framework. And then we finalize it with if it's a repeatable task that you do on a regular basis or you're gonna be doing more than once, consider building it as a custom GPT. Now I can see what's gonna happen is it's gonna be another part of course where we go talking about when is it the time to remove turn something from a custom GPT into a custom agent to go out and do that job for you. Because a custom agent doesn't need manual kickoff, it doesn't need it's an automated system, it's a lot more styled and designed to re you know, to be a much more friendly solution that you can run in your business alongside you.

Dave: 59:40

Well, I think a I think a custom GPT is gonna be something like if you don't you know you don't you don't have a defined outcome of what you're gonna be talking to that GPT with, right? And then agent, like you don't want to just make an agent that potentially can do like have an unlimited sort of outcomes. You you want your agents, at least what I've been seeing, is that your agents should have specific uses, specific outcomes that you're looking to create. A custom GPT is more like, hey, I want to, you know, I want to talk about this. Maybe, maybe you're brainstorming about you know business ideas, or maybe you're brainstorming about like you know what you should be doing next, you know, in in terms of sales or design products or anything like that. Like maybe that's not a custom GPT's job, or or sorry, a custom agent job. That's more of a custom GPT because now it's trained on you. You know, you can you can tell it to act like different sort of you know, people in your advisor roles, and and that's what I would say there. But the other thing is is even instead of custom GPTs, I feel like a lot of people are overlooking projects in Chat GPT. You know, uh I I flacked on this and until recently, where you know, so if you do a lot of you know like client work, you should essentially have a project by client. So then whenever you kind of create a information sheet about a client or you know, project scope or anything, like that can be in the files of that project, along with maybe any decisions that are making or any timelines or you know, deadlines, all that kind of stuff could be dropped into files. And then you can create custom instructions for just that project. So then anytime you want to have a chat about that client, you go back to that project and not just in you know, custom GPT or you know, any GPT for that matter.

Duarne: 1:01:24

Well, that helps with hallucination issues that you might see where it picks up information related to other customers' information or your internal information as well. It's a great way to say, you know, so segregate that a little bit. I would I want to see better folder structures within and like a documentary like we have in like Google Docs and Google Drive, where we can create a document and put it into a subfolder in the light. And I think we're gonna Get there, it's where all these tools are becoming there's so much inside of these tools, and like we're talking about a $20 a month tool for most people to be able to access what we're talking about. When you you know, you can spend the $200 and get like all these advanced uh unlimited functionalities, etc., if you want to, but where else could you spend $20 a month and have a tool that can basically do as much as a you know junior employee could do for you, a junior staff member could do, and then train them up. Like if you've got inventory stock take, for example, and you've got to submit all these numbers and everything, and that's a very, very time-consuming role. That's a great opportunity to use an agent or use a custom GPT to do that for you, and have it go through and pick up anomalies and then do spot checking yourself to make sure it's okay. There's so many great little things you can do with it, and again, it just comes down to the limitation of what you are working on and not knowing potentially if it can be done. If you're not sure if it can be done, is ask the system, I want to do this. Is this possible? Can you tell me how to do it? And it'll probably tell you how to do it, it'll give you a step-by-step guide on what you can do to do it, and that's the beauty of these systems. They're not designed to hinder you or prevent you from do getting in, you know, to doing things. They want to do things, they want to help you. They're very helpful platforms. Right. So just learn how to interact and communicate. It was a conversation you and I had earlier this week, Dave, where I said I'd heard that the next generation of developer is not going to be the one who knows how to code best, it's gonna be the people who know how to communicate best. Because communicating what you want will get you the outcome you desire. Right. And if you've got suggestive improvements in place where it can suggest things you don't know, then that's even better. It doesn't mean we're gonna see developers just turning up overnight, being able to build stuff, and that it is you know, mark you know, worthy of getting a Microsoft badge or something and being sold on the shelf, but we are gonna start to see a lot of micro apps, a lot of micro systems, a lot of micro SaaS platforms. There is gonna be a lot of little micro systems popping up, and it's gonna be a very indie industry because you know that's what we're starting to see now with this vibe coding and the like, right? Yeah.

Dave: 1:04:23

Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's gonna be it's gonna be interesting to see what happens over the next, you know, I would say two to three years around this area. But I also I you know the another thing that I was kind of you know thinking about or you know, watched a couple of people you know talking about too is that we're almost at you know, like the early 2000s, like the dot-com bubble, right, where you had all these kind of companies popping up, getting huge evaluations because nobody truly understood the internet at that point. And and so then there was this big bubble in terms of like you know, these public companies that were internet companies that kind of went by the wayside. And and I think right now if you want to, if you're looking to, you know, what do you do to kind of prepare yourself for that or you know, kind of shield yourself for that. And and I was chat, you know, you and I were chatting about it earlier this week, and I think it really comes down to finding ways that are going to give people convenience because those are the types of services and and apps and programs that people that that aren't gonna like lose interest. People always are looking for convenience and support. So that's the first thing. Like, you know, don't just make some like AI thing that that comes up that that doesn't make any sense, right? That you know, maybe feel like it's a fad. And the other thing I would say is if you're gonna develop something that's going to give back real value, like if you're looking for business owners, you know, what is truly gonna give them value to give better insights, better reporting, better decision making, those types of things I don't think are going to, you know, fall prey or fall victim to you know, some any sort of bubble that might happen, right? I I think you know, the people that that or the the companies that may fall victim to any sort of bubble would be, you know, ones that like we were just talking about, right? They're they're kind of fad related. They're not like, and I can't think of any examples off my head right now, but they're the ones that that aren't giving value, right? They're not giving convenience, they're just kind of there because they, you know, like like all these chatbots, you know, like all these chatbots. I think I don't know if that's ultimately going to be, you know, something that is gonna be around, you know what I mean? Because there's so many of them. And you know, they're yeah.

Duarne: 1:06:43

And so I think you're right. I think if I had to give any advice to anyone who's thinking about making an app using this, is make an app that you want to use to make your life easier first. Because if it's something that you're gonna use to make your life easier, there's a good chance it's something someone else is gonna use as well to make their life easier. And this is where you should really niche down on what you're actually building. Don't make build something that's for everybody that's gonna solve the world's problems initially. Start with something really niche down and small that solves an initial problem that you're trying to resolve and just do it better than anyone else out there is doing it. And you might be surprised, you know. Like you might be a car detailer trying to organize an inventory system that works perfectly for a car detailer that they can use on a cell phone to keep track of when they need to order new materials by just keeping track of what they've used on each job site, et cetera, and then have that information used for billing and purposes and as well as ordering purposes, et cetera. Like it could be something like that that's very niched down, but there might be thousands of other business owners who go, oh look, I'd love to love something like that, and you might be able to productize it. And that's when you can jump onto you know groups uh and tell people, I've got this great product, I'm doing this great thing. If anyone's interested, I'm happy to show you. But start by just solving your own problem and then see how it makes you feel and how much time it saves you, and you might just find yourself surprised that you've made a product that someone else might be interested in.

Dave: 1:08:25

Well, and plus, and plus, plus you're gonna be interested in a lot more. You know, if you're trying to make up something that you think people are interested in it, you're not gonna use yourself, you're you're you're not gonna understand one, what you're building, right? And two, you're not gonna be as invested in it. But if you're actually building something for you first that's gonna give you benefit, now you're invested into the actual success of it. And you can always have that sort of as we were talking about earlier, that kind of destination, knowing that you're going to be potentially reselling this, you can get to build some of that stuff into it from the start, but ultimately it's got to be something that's gonna add value to you and your industry. And if you can do that, then you know the probability of your success is greater than not you're you know, greater than than not, right? And so think of convenience, think of support, think of ways they're gonna add value. That's that's the the the side of the equation that I would say is gonna be most important for people. So I love it, but yeah, so I love it. We had a great conversation, I mean, great conversation today, all the way from earthquake, you know, you know, understanding that you know, you you don't have necessarily all the time that you think you have, like you should start making and be willing to make the decisions to improve your business, improve yourself today. And there's so many opportunities to do that in sort of an efficient, effective way, as we were just talking about, like with AI and coding and different things like that, but you know, all the way down to you know, just moving yourself forward, ultimately having that destination in mind for yourself. So, Doran, for you, what's the one thing that you would want from today's conversation that you'd want the listener to sort of take away and you know begin to focus on this week?

Duarne: 1:10:01

I guess for me is work out what that incremental change you're gonna make is and start working towards it. And don't shy away from technology that's there, it's here, and just embrace it. And if you're not sure what to do with it, try asking it. What do I do? There's these new AIA systems are so capable, and you may surprise yourself. I know every time I chat to somebody about it and I share something I'm doing with it, most people tend to be like, oh, I didn't know I could do that. So it's very, very useful. My wife uses it all the time to ask questions instead of going to Google, and she's like much happier getting the answers and quicker answers through that process. But yeah, for me, if you're a business owner, start planning what you want to do with your business and start making steps towards it. If you're planning to sell, if you're planning to give it to your kids, if you're planning to just stop running it one day when you've had enough. I mean, just make the plan now so you can start building it the way you need to and planning for that future.

Dave: 1:11:14

Yeah, I'd say the the thing for me is obviously be willing to fail. Because nobody no nobody that has ever been successful, and I'm not even there, right? Or you're not even there, where we want to be. We haven't reached where we're at, the pinnacle without failing. You know, every successful person has failed. So do not be afraid to fail. In fact, lose that word, like lose the word failure out of your vocabulary, out of your mindset. Because you only fail if you stop moving forward. That's it. And so if you stumble or if you run into an obstacle, that's that's all it is. It's an obstacle. You'll learn your way around it, you'll you'll you'll educate, you'll fix, you'll improve, and then you you're now better off than you were before. So don't don't don't be afraid to stumble. How about that? I'm not even gonna say fail because I want to get that you know word out. So don't be afraid to start to stumble. Yeah, it's gonna it's gonna happen. Yeah, people stumble all the time. And and and the second thing I was gonna say is don't always just assume that tomorrow is gonna be given to you and then you can make an improvement, even though you know that you know you need to make a change today. Like whether it's cash management or whether it's you know a new process or a new system or a new new new you know opportunity, you know, don't just push it off for tomorrow just because you feel like you're you have it guaranteed, because tomorrow's are never guaranteed. And if you truly want to build something and you want to be successful, you need to take all the opportunities immediately to have some new things. So with that, we love you all. Thank you for watching. If you have any questions, feel free to always drop them down below. Make sure you do all that fun algorithm stuff. You know, like, subscribe, comment, you know, share it with your network if you found even one or two pieces of information from today's conversation that are going to be impactful with you. Help us get the word out, right? Help us share and grow the podcast. So share it with your network, and we appreciate that. We love you all. And until then, Dwarne, thanks for being here again and for everybody watching. We love you and have a wonderful and amazing day. And we'll see you, we'll see you in the next one. Thank you, thanks, right.