Duarne: 0:20

Good morning, good morning. It's another beautiful Friday, and we're now in December. It's crazy to think that uh it's the last month of the year, but hey, we're here. So hope you are having a wonderful week and you're looking forward to a beautiful and amazing weekend. Hopefully, it's not going to be snowy like some of us up here in Cleveland, but it is what it is. So if you're a business owner and you're or you're maybe you're an aspiring business owner and you're just looking for some good educational content, lessons learned, or you know, some insights on on some things that we've helped our clients with, you're in the right place. The Business Unscripted Podcast, we're here to give you that advice, talk through some of our experiences, some of our failures as well. You know, we all have failures that's that's gonna happen. Uh you're in the right spot. Exactly. And so go ahead, let's scrub your uh grump, let's grab your favorite cup of Joe, and uh let's jump into the show this week. Duarn, sir, how are you? Well, good morning to you, Dave. It is uh certainly not a snow problem here in the Philippines, I can assure you that.

Speaker 2: 1:22

No, you never have snow over there.

Duarne: 1:25

No, we're uh entering monsoon season, I believe. Or at least it feels like that with all the rain that keeps coming in the evenings. So that was the reason why I couldn't make it last week, actually. I did tune in and watch the show, all two hours of it. My gosh. And uh yeah, it was it was rather interesting because when I went to go to my office, which is at the back of my house, there was about four inches of water between my back door and the office door. So I decided, you know what? I just don't feel like swinging to the office today.

Dave: 2:00

So that's uh that's probably a smart way to do it, you know. You don't you don't want to you don't want to you know come in wet and then you're then you're around electrical equipment and all that fun stuff, so you know you don't want electricity.

Duarne: 2:11

Well even just being under an air conditioner, which is a fairly normal thing here in the Philippines while you drench doesn't lead to very good outcomes.

Dave: 2:20

Yeah, so well I'm glad I'm glad you stay dry. But so let's it was a fun show last week for me, you know. Obviously, no passion because I just feel like you know, especially business owners that are newer or that are desperate, right? They you don't necessarily always think through all the the nuances, right, of you know your solution and you see these quick solutions that that they give you, right? Oh, well, we're gonna fund you in you know 24 hours. I get it, like it's there, but you gotta understand all the angles. And as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, you have to at least understand, and then you can make your informed decision. Like in if you still decide at that point that it's important for you to you know kind of move forward, then then it is what it is, but at least you know each angle and each piece of information to make that decision. And I don't feel like a lot of people understand, right? It's just the wording, the language they're trying to hide behind these, you know. Well, it's not interest, right?

Duarne: 3:18

You know, it's just terminology that just may make bloody sense, right? That's that was my biggest takeaway is they're hiding behind marketing terminology, and there's an interesting point you just made there, right? They're preying on the desperation and the quick turnarounds. Yes. Now, 24-hour turnarounds or same-day turnaround loans, we all know that typically translates to high interest. It happens quick because there's a high interest, or there's a cost to for the administration to set up the loan initially, which is quite high and has to be cut and has to come off the principal. One thing I also find is if you're buying a car and it's a same-day turnaround, you know, that's a bit scary in itself for some people because that's a big purchase. But where you see this a lot is in the appliance industry where people walk in and it's like they can buy a computer the same day with finance, or they can buy a TV and walk out with an 80-inch TV the same day in finance, and then they're paying this thing off interest-free for the next 12 months without reading the terms and conditions, and that sort of stuff's impulse purchasing in business. We shouldn't be making impulse purchases, we shouldn't be making impulse decisions on finance. So I appreciated your passion. I certainly felt the passion at certain times during that episode, and I was sitting there and having a good old chuckle at points, and then shaking my head when I felt like it was there was some talking in circles.

Dave: 4:52

When I'll I'll say this too, like just to kind of hit that point real quick. Like, if if I possibly offended anybody because of my passion, I you know certainly like that's not that wasn't my intention, right? The the intention is to get the point across so that business owners understand it. And and if I did, I apologize for that. But I don't think I did. I never I haven't heard from anybody that's watched it that I have offended anybody. But if there's somebody out there that was, that was not my intention. And if you're if you missed last week's, like go and go and watch it. It's it's like as Dorne said, it's about two hours long. Watch it in 2x speed. Definitely, I like for whatever reason, I sound I think I sound better in 2x speed than I do normal, but that's just personal preference. But go watch it. It's it's on, you know, we had a her name is Katie, and she's in the alternative funding space, and and you know, these BCAs, these MCAs that they they're pushing the business owners now, you know. It's a it's a it's it an exploding market because of the fact that like nobody understands it, and you know, they're it's you know, it's probably still too nuanced in order to you know put some full regulations that are that are protecting right now.

Duarne: 6:07

I was gonna say, what's the regulations around it? Because I mean, are they considered credit for or financial institutions?

Dave: 6:15

They're supposed to be, and and see this is where like I've never gone through the process right of giving one or getting one. So, and I have clients that have had them in the past before, right, that you know, they they came to me and we were able to kind of talk through some different things, but in looking through the documents, it's not like a typical loan, you know what I mean? And so, and this is where they're like, Well, see, you know, you they're they're gonna take that, they're gonna say, see, you just admitted it's not a typical loan, so it's not interest.

Speaker 2: 6:45

No, this that's just the terminology. It's terminology, right? It's like the the a tomato is not a vegetable, it's a fruit, right?

Dave: 6:56

Right, and and so you know, with the loan in in the US, right? You have to have your what we call the truth in in lending document, right? Which shows this is the your financing, this is how much it's gonna cost you, this is the total of the payments, all of that. I haven't seen it now. This is not me saying this is true across the board, this is just my experience from what I've seen from people that have gotten these types of loans. They don't give you that truth in lending document, they just give you a full small print document that just details all their legal ease, right? Wording, nowhere in there does it give you an interest rate. Nowhere in it or does it say, hey, this is your actual topic.

Duarne: 7:35

Well, to be fair, I believe at the end of the podcast when you were with Katie last week, there was a conversation about potentially getting some of her clients to provide a document for review for you on their you know, approval, of course. And she was going to look into providing that. So you could potentially find out if that is the case in uh the options that she offers, at least.

Dave: 7:59

Yes, but so yeah, and and so we'll see. You know, the idea is to is to bring her back on, right? Obviously, you know, I I think it's it's one that has garnered a lot of interest from the audience in terms of you know kind of going back and forth and learning. So I think it's gonna be important to either bring her back on or bring other people in the industry. You know, I I did invite you know her underwriter if if that's something that you know she wants to do, you know, she wants to bring her underwriter on, she's more than happy to do that to truly kind of walk through and explain you know why that specific underwriter is gonna feel like it's a red flag. There was also a gentleman that I was going back and forth with, his name's Trey, on on LinkedIn, because he had mentioned some like merchant processing, how right having the accounts isn't a isn't like a red flag, it just they just have to ask more questions, right? And and once those questions are answered by the comp the business owner of what they're doing, it's never caused them to be denied, you know, in on the merchant processing side as well, because their concern on the merchant processing side is that you know, if you have one income account and then you move everything out of it, well, what happens if somebody you know requests a refund, right? Or they're you know, you have to you know pay back something. And you know, if that's the case, typically a lot of banks will put it through, and then a business owner, if they see that, right, it goes to the operating, you know, they just transfer back out of the operating account, or you set up your operating account as your overdraft protection, right? So when the income account goes negative, it just pulls from your operating or your vault account if you have a vault account set up. So there's definitely ways to you know set it up correctly. Again, the book, right? Profit first by Mike Mikhailowitz, it's written generalistically, right? Because it's it's to the masses. So therefore, you can't get into the nitty-gritty, the specific business owner examples that you would like in a book. You have to give it that, you know, when a million people are going to be reading a book, you have to simplify the system, the workflow, etc. And so, therefore, when somebody needs that specific system set up, that's where like a profit-first professional or customizing it for yourself in a way that works, is actually how the system is fully implemented in businesses long term.

Duarne: 10:16

So and let's be clear, like with one thing, and you mentioned on that podcast last week as well, was I'm not a financial expert by any stretch of the imagination. I'm just a businessman. And tell me, give me something marketing related, and I'll probably knock it out of the park. But my uh understanding of what the profit first system is, is it's a cash management overlay, not a replacement for traditional accounting and tax compliance. Correct. So it's a complementary option to add into what you're doing, and it just makes managing it on the front end a lot easier for most business owners who are, especially for those who are time poor, because it's really, really simplified. It's like looking at bar graphs on marketing reports that say this how this is how many people actually saw your ad, this is how many people clicked on your ad, and this is how many people actually stayed around and did something after the fact. We just want the metrics. So you want quick metrics and easy to see, then the Profit First gives you that quick overview very, very quickly on your business. And I look, I think it's like anything. If you're not involved in it and you haven't implemented it yourself, and you haven't done the you know due diligence on it, you may not understand all the different aspects of it. And there probably is some people out there who have dabbed their toes in it, calling themselves experts in the trade, yet haven't done the certification like you have, and are out there who are potentially saying, well, you just go and set up these five bank accounts and move money around to hide it. And if they're telling people to do that, then they don't understand the system. It's and that's pretty much the same with any system. It's people who are out there trying to teach you bookkeeping who don't understand bookkeeping, then they might not be getting you the benefits that you need for your tax compliance.

Dave: 12:10

And that's why it's so important to you know understand who you're working with, right? And and and vet them out, right? And and make sure that what they're telling you is is correct. And we talked about that in the episode was that there are obviously bad actors in every industry, but you can't you know fault the the sense system or the actual methodology that you say, well, then the system's bad, or the as Katie said, the tool's bad. You know, that's like saying somebody who does incorrect accounting, well, then you know, gap is bad because there's a bad actor that you know didn't do you know gap compliance right in my accounting in my books. Well, that's not the gap system, that's not the the methodology around accounting, that's the the person that you you worked with. And again, if you try to do it yourself and you misunderstand the system without fully trying to understand it, is that truly profit first area and an issue, or is it kind of your own because you didn't dive deeper? And I'm the first to admit, I've said this in previous episodes too, Dwarne. Like when I initially read the book, I went to implement it in my business when I first went full-time. And my stumbling block was I didn't take like the profit and the tax and set it aside in a separate bank, you know, for that I don't know, pressure, right? You see it there. Because what would happen then in your operating account, maybe you have this expense that you want to pay and it's something that's going to implement your business, but you don't necessarily have it in your operating right now because you you're waiting on invoices to be paid or or whatever it may be.

Speaker 2: 13:40

Yeah.

Dave: 13:40

So the the urge and the temptation when your profit in your and your tax account is sitting right there in your main bank is to just say, well, let me borrow it, right? I'll borrow it from the tax account, I'll I'll buy and I'll register for the platform. And then when I get my next payment, I'll I'll deposit it back and I'll I'll refund my tax. And then we all know what happens, right? Three weeks down a road, something else happens, and then you fumble, and then two months down a road, it's like, okay, why am I gonna? I'm just gonna keep going back. And I still did like minor right profit first, like I still had like three bank accounts and things like that, but yeah, I I kind of fell off the system, and that's because I tried to do it myself. I didn't go through the certification at this point, and most business owners fall off like that. They typically fall off if they try to do it themselves in about six months. If they I would say 90% of people there, 80 to 90 percent, just because it's human nature.

Duarne: 14:30

It's human issue, it should happen, it's human nature, and like having someone just hold you accountable and just question you can be a big difference, right? I mean, we we see it all the time when we go on weight loss journeys, we see it when we're trying to you know eat better for different you know reasons in our health. You know, sometimes you have to be held accountable by somebody, and that's just normal. Like, if we look at like a lot of businesses, like trades industries, for example, you're out there and you're relying on your tools to be able to do your job. Well, if your tools break, that's an that's an expense you probably didn't expect. So you might need to pull the money out of somewhere if you don't have a system in place, whether it's profit first or something else that works for you, you might have to go and pull it out of an account and then wait for that next couple of jobs to come through, and then you might find yourself getting short and having to pay penalties on loan repayment or tax that was due because you've just gone and messed up your entire finance.

Dave: 15:32

Well, and this is this is the part where you can get kind of customized with the system, and it's not mentioned in the book, is for like those examples that you just gave. And I have a client in this same situation, they have a lot of maintenance on trucks, you're they're junk collars, you're right. So they have bins, they have trucks at the end it's the maintenance of these things that they happen all the time. Yeah, the first thing you should be doing, if that's you, or you have anything like that, or you have equipment that you want to replace every three years, or you know, computers you need to be replaced because you have employees. What should happen is every deposit should then be have some percentage allocated towards your maintenance account. And so then when you are ready to do a repair or an unexpected repair comes up, it's there. And it's not having to struggle of like, oh god, oh god, where's my where do I pull it from? Because you've allocated all the money everywhere else. You have to be and you have to have intention when you think through these projects, and that's why customizing it is the best way, right? And working with a profit first professional or somebody, you know, I'm always gonna advocate the work for profit first professionals because we understand the system fully. We can help you customize it, we can help you not only like set up the system, but the idea is that it goes deeper in your business, right? You talk about what are your goals, your 90-day goals, your one-year goal, your three-year goal, and then you create your profit first system and your account flow based on reaching those goals in those time frames.

Duarne: 17:05

Yeah, and so you add to that, right? I mean, because in business, when you find yourself in a situation where you haven't budgeted for that, what do you do? You scramble, you look for a quick solution. That's when you start looking at these short-term you know, payouts. You start looking at alternative funding methods because it just seems like the quick fix to take care of the problem. And look, you might, I think there was a description, there was something mentioned by Katie on the podcast there where she was saying some of her clients will have a guaranteed money coming in a few weeks later or a month later, and they'll get these and then they'll just quickly pay it back so they don't have too much of a problem with it. However, that worked. I'm not I'm not sure of the full details on that, but I was listening in and heard that. But that's a dangerous game to play because, like you said before, some other things might come up. If you're a say you're doing lawns and lawnscaping landscaping work, all right, you've got a ride-on lawn mower that just dies, it goes into the shop and you have to wait six weeks for a part. Is that six weeks you're not gonna get work? No, you're gonna go out and get a replacement unit, or you're gonna lease a unit to use at whatever cost that is while you wait for that part to come in, and then while that's happening, maybe you need to replace one of your uh push mowers as well. Maybe your axle breaks on your trailer, suddenly you're in, you know, you're up a paddle without a creek, you're up a creek without a paddle, right? So having that little bit of foresight to do that sort of thing. Many, many, many moons ago. I remember sitting there talking, there was a big boom in Australia where the government had subsidies for water tanks. And what happened was there was a whole pile of these small business owners who decided to start working with these cheap manufacturers who were knocking these tanks up and selling cheap tanks and cashing in because it was like a two-day installation for this water tank, and they'd make a bunch of cash, and they're really happy. So overnight entrepreneurs, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them in different regions, and they were getting their rebates. One of them I was talking to, he had a really, really rippy year, got all the way up to December, no sales in December. No one was spending money on a tank in for December for Christmas, they were going away for vacation. They didn't have they didn't want an installation done. Come January, nobody had the money that spent it all at Christmas time, even with the rebates. So he went two months, got to the third month, shut the business down, couldn't run it because he had nothing left in the reserve tank. And this sort of system gives you the ability to plan for something like that. Forecast for something like that. But still, if you're trying to do it yourself, you may not see those things. You may not see the opportunity. So working with someone like you, who's a professional in the system, but also understands other systems and accounting practices, that's I think the perfect blend. Because you're not completely biased to one system that's going to be you have to follow this. This is the Bible. This is all you can do. The customization to make it work for a business, I think, is really important.

Dave: 20:32

Well, and and here's the thing, and we talked, we kind of went back and forth. I guess we didn't talk about it, we kind of looked a little bit back and forth on it last week. And it was a thing that kind of was really the thought process was asinine to me, and I just don't understand it. But something as you mentioned, where you're gonna go maybe one or or two or three, even three months, possibly without a new sale, especially if you're in like big construction and a lot of your work has re kind of relies on disposable income.

Speaker 2: 21:03

Yep.

Dave: 21:03

And in that case, and and I brought this up last week, the idea is to have a vault account, right? Or sorry, not a vault account, a vault account for your long-term savings is a drip account. Okay. And the idea with a drip account is, for example, let's say seasonality is in your business, and 10 out of the 12 months out of the year is where you make all your money. And then you have two months where you don't make any money. So in your scenario, if you use all your money up over those 10 months, you're gonna be struggling to pay bills. You're gonna, you know, over those two months where things are slow. Now, if you developed a drip account, what you would work on with your professional, or if you want to set it up yourself, is you figure out, okay, I'm gonna, for example, let's say I make $100,000. Let's let's for simplicity purposes, let's call it $120,000 in the 10 months, right? So you average about $12,000 of income, but you need it to last you, right, 12 months. So what you would do is instead of recognizing that you got $12,000 every single month in those 10 months, you would actually only recognize $10,000. And how you get that is you look at okay, $120 divided by 12 months means I need it to be right $10,000 a month. So the extra $2,000 you fund your drip account for those 10 months. So 10 divided by or sorry, 10 times 2,000 means month 11, you're gonna have $20,000 in there. So now you can take out the 10 and fund your 11th month and with no sales. Do the same thing with your 12th month, and so that was the thing that that was kind of like you have to set that up. And the thought, the conversation we had last week, that I was just I still can't get, I still don't understand it. She is she was pushing that contractors would go out there and take a job that loses them money. You remember that? Like you like, like she was adamant that this happens, and maybe one out of two times it might happen where you might maybe uh you take a leading in you know job that that you know is gonna possibly lose you money, but it's leading to a bigger project. But to go out and just say, I'm gonna bid on this new job, no long-term effect, and I want to I'm gonna underbid so that I lose money out of my pocket. Yeah, that's that's that's crazy.

Duarne: 23:24

I can't believe it's bad business, right? I mean, it's bad business, and I know there was reasons given for that, but I mean, at the end of the day, I mean it's just bad business. You can't pour from an empty cup, you can't help anybody with an empty cup. I had a situation today where we were rushing to do a logo design for a client, got the client, and it's working, we're working through a reseller partner for this with this client, and we'd set a rate with the reseller partner to turn it around when we in the time frame. Client approved yesterday the design. Today was putting together the 60 files with all the variations and all of the color concepts and all the file types to deliver as a folder. We delivered them for about four o'clock. Two hours later, I get a message back going, Oh, can we try it with this design? And can we try and we can we change this letter in there to be to look like this instead? Right. So a redesign, change of scope. And I'm like, Yeah, we can, but it's not gonna happen until Monday, and there's gonna be an extra fee because we've already done all this work, etc. I let the reseller partner know, and I get a response coming back, whatever you want, but remember customer is always right, we'll get the money back. And I was like, no, I've got to respond to this. So I sent a response across, and my response, I'll already just a couple of portions of it, was just to clarify our position. We always cover the cost when the mistake is on our side. That's our responsibility, and we stand by that every time. But in this case, the design was approved by the client. Our team has already produced all the final assets and file formats based on the approval. The changes are now being requested a substantial rework. And if we absorb the costs for the client, initiated changes after the approval, it sets a precedent where the team's time becomes unpaid, and that's simply not sustainable for any business. And I said that, and I'm like, let's for us, we want to protect everyone involved, and that means we need to create a process that's fair and commercially sound. What she was suggesting was completely uncommercially sound to me. Like this is a small job, it's probably a hundred and fifty dollar variation on the on the scheme of things, but it's still enough that I needed to raise it to be a concern. Because what happens if I don't? My team has just done half a day's work, they're not getting paid for. I still have to pay my team, so I lose money as a company and a business. There is no way that I would do loss leader work, especially when it comes to tendered projects, because those projects you should always factor in the unknown. I've got a buddy of mine who he's a retired contracts director. He worked for a lot of big companies, BHP, Rio Tinto, a lot of these big mining firms. And he was the guy in charge of working on the checking over the contracts with all of the contractors. And the amount of times he would send the contract, and he worked for the big firm, and he would send them back and go, Did you factor in that you're gonna your guys, every time they a new guy comes to site, they have to do a half day seminar? You can see the contractor go, what? Yeah, they have to do a safety seminar before they can step site on the site. And if there's been a major incident whilst you're working on the site, they may need they may be required to do an additional couple of hours to get bought up on updated safety protocols. This is a six-month contract. You you need to factor all of this in. How many guys have you got working on this? Oh, about 50. Well, you need to factor in the fact that 50 of these guys are going to be in a training session for half a day. Have you done that? No. Did you factor in weather? No. So all of these different factors. So he basically would give them advice on how they could improve their contract, so they'd come back with something which was fair because at the end of the day, he didn't want to enforce a contract with the company, and they and the company didn't want to accept contracts with contractors that couldn't afford to deliver the results because it would cost them more to go back to tender to finish the project. So they would make sure it was a fair project and people actually got paid. Now that's not common practice in the industry. I totally get that. And he may be an exception for doing that, but at the end of the day, he was telling he would tell me about how a lot of these contractors would come in and just try to be cheap without actually quoting these jobs out properly and knowing what their real costs were. They hadn't even factored in variance on material supply, hadn't factored in cost, you know, currency fluctuations for importation of some of the materials and the delays that would be incurred. They hadn't factored in things like storage of materials because they may not be able to get the materials delivered in the time frame they expected. All of these things fall into play. Now, you imagine being a regular contractor and just trying to manage all of that alone, let alone those are almost unknowns that you have to figure out and try and make up. And just, you know, if you get it wrong, if you get it right, you're covered. If you don't get it right, you might make a little extra money. But to go in intentionally with something that's of a lower cost and just to win the deal, to pay the you know, pay your guys a salary, you've still got to pay the vendor. You've still got to pay the guy who's supplying the parts. I mean, what are you doing? Are you running, you know, 30-day terms, 60-day terms, 30-day end-of-month terms? I mean, because if you are, then that's that's that's a whole nother problem again. But cash flow as a contractor, if you're not making money on every single job, why are you doing it?

Dave: 30:28

Yeah, and and and and the the reason given was well, then you just don't care about your employees. And and I'm I'm like, if you cared about your employees, you would make sure that you're a profitable business so that they can have a long-term job moving forward. Like if you always take jobs that lose money just so that you care for your employees, then you just you're you're given out charity, and then you should be considered a non-profit. So it was really kind of crazy to me. Yeah, habitat for humanity is one, yeah. But ultimately, you know, yeah, and and so you know, it just comes down to really understanding your your your business to set up a system properly, you know. And as we were kind of you know, recapping just from last week, I I really think it was it was a detailed conversation. It it was, I think, eye-opening for some people uh in in terms of where or how they kind of play with words to cover up what actually is occurring in their business. And again, right now, as I said, it's exploding. There's probably some regulation, but I feel like there's obviously got to be more, just like with payday loans, and and and this is a relevant sort of comparison because if if you're an individual, it's the same concept, you know. You you need money now, you're not gonna get paid for another week, so you go to these payday loan places and they charge you these ridiculous you know interest rates, and it's just astronomical, and people get caught up in a loop. And I'm trying to remember exactly where, and I'll have to find this don't exactly quote me here, but it was an article that I had seen that said for payday loans, typically an individual who gets into a payday loan takes anywhere from four to eight, recurring in order for them to you know, before they are able to actually get out of that and break that pattern. Or, and and I'm sure the default rate is crazy as well on some of these loans. BCAs, MCAs are the same way, they're payday loans for businesses. Now, with payday loans for individuals, a lot of states now have cracked down on the actual interest rate that can be charged. You know, it can't be a three-350% APR anymore. Like a lot of states max it out at like 30%. And these businesses they don't operate in those states anymore, or they've significantly reduced their number of locations in these states because they're not profitable. When you see something explode so quickly, it's because it is so profitable for them to continue to grow. So take a minute, take a step back as a business owner and be like, why is it so profitable for these people to do this?

Duarne: 33:25

And why are banks and proper financial institutions doing so much due diligence before they allow you to take out the loan? Why do they care if you can actually pay it back in the time frame they're saying? Why are they making sure that you understand what your interest rates are? Because due diligence.

Dave: 33:45

What it what it comes down to, right, is that they're claiming that well, we have to charge these typical rates because a lot of people will default. Well, yeah, but then don't fund them the don't don't give them the money, right? Or or figure out like a way to make it like actually, you know, feasible.

Duarne: 34:02

And wasn't that part of the housing crisis, the jingle mail that was coming back to banks, you know, with the last financial crisis in the US?

Dave: 34:12

In 2008, it was yeah, they were expending they were expending all these crazy mortgage loans. Then nobody could nobody could afford they they weren't they weren't verifying income, they weren't doing any of that. Now, I'll give them that. They at least verified that you have income coming into your bank account.

Duarne: 34:27

Yeah, you know. I mean, so I mean, but but what but are we looking at a potential breakdown for small business owners in the grand scheme of things that could be something similar to that where lots of small businesses are going to start failing and collapsing because they can't afford to pay these back. Because it doesn't, it you know, they've all the profits they were making, all the projections they were making for growth didn't happen. Especially if they're getting them just to like if they're getting these loans just to survive, and they're in survival mode as opposed to growth mode. I totally get it. If you're gonna be getting one of these loans and your purpose is to win a new contract that's worth 300% margin, and you need to buy some new equipment to do it, and you're gonna be paying it back, and you know, that 300% margin is reduced down to 200% by the time you pay back everything. I mean, that's still good money, right? That's still good ROI. But the we're not talking about that. For a lot of the people who are getting these loans, they don't have that situation. I mean, you they because those are people that I just described, we're better off going into a normal financial institution. You talk about a situation there. Philippines has a situation right now where those advanced payday loan systems, they're all on cell phone, they're all apps. And I had I had an employee one time who had about six of these loans out on different apps, and he'd listed us as an employer. So our reception was getting all these phone calls about where is he? Does he work for you anymore? And he hadn't been working for us for a few months by that point, and we're like, Well, no, he doesn't. We don't have a fording address, we don't know where he is. We've only got the phone number that you've got, and you've just told us what it is, so that's his number that we've got on file, too. You know, please go chase him yourself. They're cracking down on those things here, is what my understanding is as well, because it's becoming horrific. The regulations are just not there, and I think what you'll see is you'll see companies and businesses like these really spike really quickly while the regulations loose, while there's holes and gaps in the processes from the regulatory portion. And like you said, they're making big money.

Dave: 36:47

So here's so you brought like you we brought up an example, right? Where you said, let's say you have something that's a 300% ROI, but you need to buy equipment, or maybe you have this good opportunity, right? Some a new customer, a new client. You can totally ask that client, give them you know a discount to prepay a little bit of it, or give them some added value. Don't discount, but give them an added value to prepay to cover your investment. You want to invest in them, they want to invest in you, everybody wins. You don't have to go out and get a you know 25, 200, whatever, you know, factored loan to pay for the equipment. Simply just go to the client, have the conversation. Hey, I want to do this with you, I think this is gonna be great for both sides. Here's what I need. We're gonna need 25% of the agreement for the first six months up front, and here's what we're gonna add in top of value for you, right? We're gonna give you priority access to our support team. We're you know, it's free. We typically charge for that, but we'll throw it in for free. Uh additionally, you know, maybe you give you know some added service maybe one time you know over the period. It truly is customizable, and that's the beauty of being the business owner is that you have the opportunity to think differently. Think outside the box. I've actually had this conversation with multiple clients, you know what I mean? And the idea is that I've gotten the pushback of well, that's I don't I've never heard that done in my industry. Well, good. Like be different, think outside the box. You you if you want to be status quo, you're just gonna be mediocre. But if if your goal is to truly grow something and build something that is strong and it meets your dreams and and the goals for your life, then sometimes you have to do things a little bit outside the box in order to get you know, kind of move forward and and get ahead.

Duarne: 39:19

Yeah. And look, and that's it, right? I mean, it gets done in the we get we get it at thrown down our throats all the time in the online software industry, the SaaS industry. Sign up for 12 months, get a discount, get two months free, get 30% off. Sign up for web hosting for your website for your business website. You pay per month, you're gonna be paying more. If you pay for a year, you get it cheaper. SSS certificates for your website, same thing. Buy five years in advance, pay for two years. I mean, a lot of this stuff is very, very normal to do so. And it's just not done in different industries. And when you start looking at it, like you and I had a conversation about something like this about two weeks ago, I think it was, where we were talking about, you know, there's different things where think about what is a value proposition for the person you're going to be providing this to. Because something that's a value proposition for them might not cost you anything. It may be just something you can put in place, which doesn't cost you anything, but it has a massive value proposition for them. Like one thing we spoke about was doing some advertising on some equipment which might be getting put on site, which would advertise the benefit of advertising benefit to both parties involved in it. Now, that's thinking outside the box. That is very, very little outlay to do, but the value proposition is very high.

Dave: 40:52

Well, and yeah, the idea here, too, right, is when you think of these things, is what is something that is very low cost to me but has a high value? So in this case, the advertising on the equipment already had to be created. So now all you're doing is just adding a small Additional piece to the design that really at large scale is going to cost zero or very little to add that additional sort of piece, whether it's a logo, phone number, et cetera, name of the of the partner. You know, so it's very low cost to you, but for them, right, as their business, it's very high value because now they're getting all this other outreach, all this other reach of their name and their phone number that literally they don't have to pay for either, but it's a high value to them because you know, if they were to do it themselves, it may cost a few thousand dollars, depending on what it is, you know.

Duarne: 41:43

Well, they they couldn't, well, let's look at it, they couldn't do themselves because they don't have the same reach. They don't they can't put it on. It's not like going and sponsoring a sports team in that scenario we spoke about, where you can go and put your sponsorship and get your name on a jersey, and then everyone runs around with that jersey, right? Or you get your name on the field. It just doesn't work like that. So, and that's where this like that particular scenario we spoke about was such a key play, which is really nice. And there's a there's an example of that scenario with taxis. Now, I don't know if they do it there, but here in the Philippines, they sell advertising on taxis. So they'll have these little light boxes on top advertising different products. When I I'd never I thought that was pretty outrageous when I saw it here until I went to Indonesia. Indonesia, domestic flights, half the uh domestic flights there, the budget-friendly ones, they sell advertising space inside and outside the airplane. You hop on, and you know the luggage on the top. There is coffee advertisements all the way along on this one air flight that I was on. I was like, whoa, talk about tacky, and then you look at the the headrest, the headrest has another advertisement on it. They were selling advertising on domestic flights to keep the cost down for the consumer. And I thought, what an incredibly brilliant concept. Now, at the time, I thought total tacky, but you know, we're talking about decent airbuses, the cis they flew, they landed, didn't have any maintenance problems. I went back and checked to see if there was any issues with the actual crashes or anything with that particular airline. They have a pretty clean history, so it was an it was a genuine marketing campaign that they put in place, and then I started to see this more often when you start looking at other transport vehicles, buses, trucks, they sell the space because they're billboards that are getting around and getting people coming in and doing activity. So I think it's you learn from what other industries are doing in different parts of the world, different parts of the country, and then you see if it's a value add in your area, but definitely look at value add propositions that may not stand out to everybody else, because if it was really obvious, everyone would be doing it, right? And then you wouldn't be able to offer it as a value proposition. But I think you're right. I think you can you don't have to go out and try and fund everything yourself. If you've got a if you've got a an alternative to offer value, even if it's like labor, for example, or maybe you're a coach and you're offering you have a course that you normally charge, you know, $500 for, they sign up for a you know for an extended period or put a deposit down, give them a cop copy of the course for no charge. If it's something that has a very little cost to you other than the initial creation of the course, you may be able to do that, which has a low dollar value, but it can help you today, and the customer sees massive value on it. Right, right. So I do like that suggestion. And this is like for me, this just brings me back to that point you made earlier. Doing it yourself, you're not gonna know, you're not gonna be able to brainstorm these ideas, you're not gonna be able to hear what's worked for other people. Working with a professional, you actually get the benefit, the added benefit of hearing concepts, ideas, things that are a little outside the box. And what what do they say, Dave? If it doesn't feel uncomfortable when it's first suggested to you, it's probably not the it's probably too easy, it's probably not gonna work.

Dave: 45:36

It should feel a little uncomfortable if it's something new is is always gonna feel uncomfortable, and they always say too that you you know your goals, right? Your your next level of success, it's always on the other side of uncomfortableness, outside of your comfort zone. And the idea is that you just have to realize that when you're doing something like this, for example, talking to a contract that's different or or creating a new idea that's different than your industry standards, is that you're not doing it to be greedy, you're doing it to be an assistant or a help to the business that wants to do business with you. They've already done business with you. You're just asking, hey, can we come up here? You know, this is part of the agreement. In order for us to do this, we need that. That's why a lot of service contractors they take deposits because what that does is it covers their cost of the first materials to get started. And then essentially they get the next deposit, you know, milestone to cover the next round of materials and salary. And what happens is that the last payment you typically give a contractor, or you know, that's typically where all the you know the the profit is then you know kind of caught up with from the from the business on a project. You know, same thing, you know. If you need to invest, you you're you're giving them the benefit. If you add something on, you know, some value prop as you as you you know we talked about, it's a win-win for everybody. Help them help you, and then in return, you help them back. It's a it's a it's a good cycle.

Duarne: 47:10

Exactly. I mean, I always I was always taught that a good deal in life is one where both parties walk away feel like they won. And if you can come up with an arrangement that's good for you and good for them, you're both winning. But if you're walking away and you're stressed, hey, you're gonna actually fulfill your portion of it, it's probably not the right deal for you. You haven't negotiated a good enough deal for yourself. You probably haven't put yourself added enough value into you know what you're doing. And the other good thing about doing a value proposition offer is it means you don't have to undercut your service with the cost. Yeah, you don't have to run to the which is the easiest thing, dropping your pants and you know, getting that price down really quickly. And you see it, you see it too many times where people say, Oh, you know what, you're shopping around, I'll I'll just go and you know, I'll drop the price by 20%. Will that get the deal done? So we you don't want to find yourself in those positions either. So finding ways that you can actually be creative, add extra value. One way we do it from the web design maintenance point of view is we'll include like a bonus handout where we'll create a handout that you can then use for an email marketing campaign or send to your clients when they want to know more about your business. And we'll throw that in on a website. We're already doing the design concept, the branding, content creation. So it's not a huge amount of work to add on, but it has a massive value proposition for the client. The other one we do is we add an extra hour or two to the maintenance agreement. A maintenance agreement for a website which might have two to four hours initially, we'll make it five hours or six hours. And then we'll encourage the client that they can actually use those hours. Send through some work that you want to get done on the website, articles you want to add to the website, new photos for your gallery, whatever that might look like, new staff we can add them on, and you're not gonna have to pay for those ad hoc. You can get those as part of a package. Now, these are really simple value ads that we're offering, but they work and people really appreciate them. And you every business can do it. I mean, you've had mobile, like I've worked with mobile car details before, and one of the simplest things is adding deodorizer at the end, right? You know, where it's it's a very low cost, but it leaves a lasting impression. Or tire shine will give you a free tire shine where they'll put a tire shine on the tires and get them gleaming, and then everyone looks at the car and goes, Oh, you just had your car done. It's it gets the reaction, it gets people talking about the work that was just done. Every industry has its thing. You are a business owner, you're gonna have you're gonna know what that thing is, and you're gonna know what gives the biggest impact for the lowest cost to you, and that's gonna be your biggest value proposition you can put forward.

Dave: 50:54

Yep, and it's the biggest thing you can think, and and so to kind of close this thought process off, right? Is don't automatically just assume that you have to take some sort of loan or that you absolutely need to, you know, go to the next biggest thing because you need it in 24 hours. Again, there's typical, there's sometimes situations where it makes sense, you know. If there's a big enough ROI, etc. Like I get it. Like there's some, just like in every situation, there's there's some. But just you're clear, you just you know, step back for a moment and just think like why are these places, why are these things so you know available from everywhere? It's because they're so profitable. And the idea, you know, for that is why how are they being profitable? Because they're taking money out of your your business, they're taking money out of your future cash flow. Yeah, and and the idea is like, oh well, any loan is gonna do you're right, any loan is gonna do that, but when they do it at a two, three, four hundred percent APR, you know, and they can they disguise it as what they call cost of funds, yeah, cost of funds is interest. Like, yeah, you know what I mean? And just because it doesn't the other thing doesn't compound, yeah, that's worse, which means if somebody pays it off, like you're still paying this ridiculous amount of money when you pay it off in like 60 days or 90 days, you know, and so it makes it even worse when you do that because you're charging them you know your money no matter what, you're saying I I I'm gonna take your money no matter what.

Duarne: 52:22

That's right, it's a fixed interest rate with a fixed value interest value.

Dave: 52:27

Well, not even fixed interest rate, it's a fixed interest interesting. It's a fixed interest value, right? Right, right. Yeah, because as soon as so let's you know, if you fix the interest cost and you pay it back sooner, you actually end up paying a larger interest rate APR, right? Yeah, because then it's like, okay, well, you know, you paid this back in three months. What would this, you know, what's that you know, extrapolated out over a 12-month period, which is what APR is. And I know, and I when I was listening back to it, I know what she was trying to say. She's like, oh no, it's it's actually when you extrapolate it out, it becomes a lower interest rate. And that's not how interest rate works. Right. Interest rates aren't, okay, well, I you paid me 30% in three months, so therefore, when you take that 30% and then divide it out over 12%, well, then you're only paying like 8% interest, you know, over 12 months. But then that's not how interest, that's how APR is calculated. Uh basically your time of repayment and how much interest you paid over that time.

Duarne: 53:22

Well, it's the same as like when you look at one of the things I always look at when I do loans for commercial purposes, whether it's for personal use, etc., is is there a penalty for paying out early? Some loans have early payout penalties. They don't want you paying out early. Right. And when you work it out, it can be as much as the loan, the interest you're paying on the loan anyway. So you might as well pay it out on the time frame and keep the cash flow up.

Dave: 53:49

We mentioned that in in the in this episode too, where it's it's we don't advise to like read your documents and find out like, is there an early penalty on this? And if it is, like, what is that penalty? Does it you know, especially if you plan on paying it off early, you know, does that make sense? Or do you look for something else that doesn't have an early pay? You know, it typically a bank loan, uh, you know, a business loan isn't going to have that you know requirement, or it's not gonna be a large you know, sum that if there is an early payment penalty, that there's you know a large sum. So it's just do your due diligence in the business for me.

Duarne: 54:21

Yeah, and and look, it could even be worth like this, like you talk about alternative solutions. You could talk to your bank about just getting a line of credit. You know, there's different ways of dealing with this, especially if you can, you know, a lot of small banks will let you sit down and talk to them and work this out. You know, you might work out that a credit card for those some of those purchases, depending on the value, could be suitable as an alternative, and you can manage that a lot easier for yourself. There's so many different ways of dealing with this. And don't rush in and take the first offer because there was a flashy ad on Facebook that you saw in a moment of desperation. And if you get yourself an someone who's an advocate for you and your business, someone like you know, Dave is with his customers and you saw how passionate he was, he's gonna give you the advice, whether it's good, bad, or indifferent. He's not there to be your friend about it. He's there to give you the truth to make sure you make a more informed decision. Those are the sort of people you want in your corner. You don't want a bunch of yes people giving you vague answers and just saying, yeah, great work, pat on the back, you're doing great. Because you're gonna be out of business in 12 months, you're gonna be out of business in six months because you just you want someone who's there who's gonna coach you and help you and make better decisions in business. So you're there three, four, five, ten years, you get to the position where you can sell your business and walk away with it, you know, and get a little bit of money in the bank. So, yeah, definitely read the fine print, don't jump into things. If people are pro if if these any form of money loan or lending is offering you quick turnaround, it's because they don't want you to look into the details. It's not for your benefit, it's so that you it's for their benefit so you don't look too deeply.

Dave: 56:12

Right. Well, and I think like using that information, and I think the one last thing that I kind of based on the conversation we're going to bring up on today's episode is we're obviously in December, last month of the year, heading into 2026. Now is the time to kind of focus your attention on where you want to go. What where is your vision? Where are you heading? And it is so easy to be pulled in many different directions as a business owner, especially as a small business owner. You feel like you have to be doing everything and anything that comes up to try to grow. And so use this month to truly narrow your focus, narrow your your vision for 2026, and then really only pick one or two things. That's it. You know, we were talking a little bit about this pre-show, Dwarden, that a lot of people, and myself included, I've gotten caught up in this. Is it's you you get this next shiny, you know, the shiny object syndrome, you know, and something new comes out, you get caught up in it. And then it's like, okay, and now you're you're off track. And that's why it's so important to have your vision, have your goals set up of what your actual intention is for the month. Like for you know, for me, my intention this month is you know, I'm focusing on client acquisition heading into 2026, and I'm I'm setting up right our processes in our system so to bring on like you know, support staff and actual like in-depth support staff that is gonna free up more of my time. And so those are my two goals for December, and essentially anything else, I'm not really paying any attention to, so that these two things can happen for the month. And if you don't have those and you don't set those intentions, not even at the beginning of a month, but you know, beginning of a year for sure, and you use those as your guiding light. Sure, you can stray off a little bit, but you don't want to get too far away from your main path, otherwise, you're never gonna reach the goals that you set for yourself.

Duarne: 58:04

Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, and we look at this in part of the pre-show we're talking about was different software technologies and how it's so hard to keep up with them. It's the same premise that we talk about there. You don't have to be an expert in everything, just pick a couple, stick with them. Yeah, you may not be the expert, but that's okay. Same goes when you're hiring team members, you don't need to hire a team member that can do everything. Hire people who are good at doing one thing really well that you need done, and just hire a team of people that can do different aspects of what you need. Because they're probably gonna do better than the person who can try and do everything. Because you can have specialists doing individual tasks that are really and that's a team that helps you grow. That's something that's scalable. And for me, if I was to look at where I'm at, I'm working on creating better SOPs that reduce the questions that I get asked because I've come to the realization, and it's pretty obvious for most people, but I just came to the realization that if you have people asking questions when they have an SOP, then you haven't finished building the SOP properly.

unknown: 59:18

Right.

Duarne: 59:18

And I want to reduce the questions and have SOPs that don't require questions that can be followed, that can be transferred to other people, and teams can grow with them. So that's my plan. I want to build that out because and I want to build up a small team around me in my core team to have people around them that have support for our core team. We want to build up a support team, an administration team around them to support them so that we can all scale and grow next year, that we can continue to grow and scale without the dependency on ourselves being the bottlenecks.

Dave: 59:56

I love that. I mean, it's a good point. When when people are asking questions, even though you feel like you trained them, you probably didn't give them the right steps in order to complete the goal for your outcome. And I know there's some some some services out there, you know, the one I see all the time, I think it's what's Scribe, I think is one that helps. So and it you you you basically do it one time and then it documents the entire process for you instead of you having to rethink. So if you walk through and actually do it, it'll follow you and create it into a PDF as well as with the video. So it's it's it's one of those things, you know. So to close out the episode, is is truly for yourself hone in on the one or two max three things that you want to accomplish this month that's going to set you up for success going into 2026, right? And then part of that would be setting up your long-term vision for the year next year and ensuring that those two things align. And then constantly revisiting those of okay, where were you at? Where was I at? Where do I want to be? Where am I? Am I too far off the path? Do I need to recenter? Do I need to refocus? Do I need to kind of go back and maybe cancel some of these extra things that I signed up for that are great, but I'm not using them anymore. I had a conversation with my fiance. We were kind of, you know, kind of reviewing like subscriptions and things like that. We were kind of and she made a comment. She's like, I wonder how much money you just spend on worthless subscriptions or thing or subscriptions every month. I'm gonna guess it's two to three hundred bucks. And I'm like, actually, no, because I have a process for myself for about every quarter, I go in and I pull a vendor list from my specific subscription account and and look at okay, who what am I paying for right now? And then do I use it? Do I not use it? You know, I just canceled one the other day that was a hundred dollars a month. That was Like a note taker, it also did some like outreach that I wasn't seeing any results from. And it was supposed to be like on your website and be able to pull people that that land on your website. And it was given that there's like no context, nothing going on with that. So I said it's not worth a hundred dollars. And and so my decision for me was like, let's cancel this and find alternatives. And you know, recently I've been using a note-taker called granola, which I feel is actually more in-depth and better. And and I can it it's not only on your phone, but or sorry, on your computer, but it's also on your your iPhone, right? And you can do phone calls from it too, where it can't you know takes notes from your phone calls as well as in-person meetings too on your phone for a minimal fee, you know. Right now I'm on a free account, you know. If you really want to, you know, do that, it just keeps, I think, for granola, you only get like 14 days of meeting history uh on a free account, but the paid count is like $14 a month. Like it's crazy, it's it's very cheap. So the idea that for there, you know, for yourselves too, is also like make sure you're reviewing, like, where are you spending your money? Where are my monthly outflows going? And to bring it off for Scripture.

Duarne: 1:02:58

Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, absolutely. Use if you sign up for one of the special annual deals, especially for Black Friday deals where they pop up with a really incredible deal, yeah, make sure you set a calendar reminder 11 months from now, putting a note in that you've purchased this and you need to review that purchase. Because most of those special deals will go to full price billing in 12 months. So the other way to do that, I've done that.

Dave: 1:03:30

Is is I've actually just canceled it right away. Like if it's something that I'm really like unsure of, right? How much I'm gonna get out of, and I you can cancel it and stays active until the next until you know the billing cycle is over. And so at least then you know you're not gonna get recharged unless you want to be, and then you can kind of go in and reactivate it. But it's something to alleviate even, you know, so somebody you can just cancel, turn off recurring billing, and so that way when it comes due, if you're using it all the time and it's something you get in, you're like, Oh crap, I gotta redo it, you know, you can log back in at that point.

Duarne: 1:04:01

Another thing you can do too good thing with online American banking is you can create virtual debit cards. So don't use your main debit card for online purchases, create a debit card and use it for a quarter, and then that's what you sign up with for the quarter, so that you can then go and block the card if you need to, and then it'll alert you that the billing stopped working for some subscriptions, then you can make the decision whether it's something you want to continue using or just cancel. That's another way around it as well. So try not to use your primary card because otherwise you might get hit with some software charges you weren't aware of, then you have to go through your card vendor to try and get a refund or deal with the supplier and say, hey, look, I didn't know, didn't want that to renew. And then you're waiting and you're putting extra effort and time in.

Dave: 1:04:51

It really depends. Like a lot of times on those, how quickly do you respond to it? Like, if you note it and do you go back the same day and say and reach out. Typically, what I've found, if if I'm within like one or two days of the rebuilding time, I've gotten, I've been able to get a refund. But when you go like, yeah, when you go like you know, 10, 15, you know, 30 days late, they're not going to refund you through that month. You used it, even even though you know in their in their aspect, you know, you did. And so that's yeah, that's why it's so important to have a regular review process of your financial statements, bringing it first circle, full circle, why profit first is so important, because it gives you the insights into just not just your cash flow, but it truly gives you your insights into your pricing, your spending, you know, your vendor management, right? Your content, your offer. Like that's the I that's the benefit of working with somebody when you're trying to implement it, but it also gives you those insights if you're just doing it yourself as well. You know, if your operating account is tight, but you figured out your appropriate percentage, well, you're probably losing money or something's being spent out of there that you didn't know. So you can you get in there and you review it, and you say, okay, well, these are all oh, wait, there's a bill that's $150 a month. What is that? Oh, I don't use that anymore. Now you can cancel it. But it allows you to have better insights, better oversight over your business finances and become just a better informed business owner to make better business decisions.

Duarne: 1:06:13

Knowledge is power. Yeah, knowledge is a powerful thing, especially in business. Analytics and all of that sort of wonderful information you can get helps you make better informed decisions. And I like my closing note, I want to note that I think one thing that more business owners should try and do this, you know, over this period, the Christmas, New Year's period, as you start to lock in and hone in what you are actually going to focus on. I want you to remember that no is not a bad word in business. Saying no can actually be a very good thing. If you are going to see something that you think might be a good opportunity to get involved with, or maybe you're thinking, look, you know what? I'm gonna go and create a whole new product range. Say no initially, and then go and do deeper research and figure out if something you should be focused on. See if it's just something shiny, you know, something shiny that you're gonna focus on now. You know, it's like I've heard these people say, I think it's normally like, you know, those mothers who jump online and say, hey, I'm gonna save, I'm gonna save all those mothers out there a whole bunch of money. And one of the things that they say, I see it on YouTube and stuff like that, on those little shorts. Go if you're gonna buy something and you think it's an impulse purchase, put it in your cart, then go and check your cart in a month. If you still want to buy it, buy it. If you're like looking at why is that in my cart and you're gonna delete it, or you just save yourself from buying something you're probably never gonna use. Right. And this is business. Sometimes we get knee-jerk reactions because we think this is gonna be a good idea, or there's a great opportunity because this is on sale, I'm gonna grab it. It's just a whole if you're gonna do that, it's a whole nother thing you have to do. Implement, productize, learn, get your staff trained up on, market. It may not be the right thing. So sometimes saying no is a very good thing.

Dave: 1:08:16

I I definitely agree with you there, you know. It's something I've fallen into. You know, I say victim because I don't have a victim mindset, but it's something that I fall you know, I found myself doing very often instead of like, oh, that's cool. Like, I need to do that. I know I need to do that for my business. Let me let me try this. And and I think ultimately you just it's your vision. You know, sometimes for myself, you just have to re-center your vision, right? And we've talked about this on other episodes as well, where it's you know, your services as well have to be aligned, you know. The the Alex Ramosy, the tree, the tree analogy, you know, you gotta have a good strong trunk before you start building out your branches, otherwise, your tree is just gonna topple over. Same thing with your vision. You have a good strong vision that you do two or three things every single month that build that vision. And then once you build it and you've kind of reached the initial goal of where you want to be in terms of your business-wise revenue, employees, clients, whatever your your KPI is with your business, now you can start thinking of all right, how do I become right even bigger than I am now? And it's each level does require a little bit different thought process, but that one, that zero to a million, it's just all about focus, it's all about consistency, it's all about building your recurring revenue. And and the number is always in my mind $83,333 a month. That's the monthly recurring that you need to do if you want to build a million-dollar gross revenue business. But hone your focus in. And to me, I would say my takeaway for today's episode for you guys is one, you know, we definitely appreciate you. I think going into the new year, I'm definitely excited to kind of continue doing these episodes. I think they're more impactful. You know, I love having that we've been having some of these, you know, business owners on as well, people who you know are in different industries that can give those different insights and education, and we can have good conversations. So, what I'm gonna say here is if you are a business owner and I know you, and maybe you're in a network and you want to possibly come on to a future episode, there's a link in the comments. Please schedule a time, schedule one of the upcoming sessions that you want to join. Let me know what you want to talk about. If I don't know you, I'll reach out. We'll kind of have a quick conversation ahead of time. You know, if I'm not familiar with your business and what you do. But if I do know you, you can totally get in. And then we want you on the show. We want to build 2026. I think is going to be a good year for the show. You know, our goal with Triumph Business Solutions is to impact a thousand business owners by the end of 2028. We're there. We're like we're we're we're trending in that direction, you know what I mean? And so today the biggest takeaway is take this month and put yourself in a position to be the best version of yourself heading into 2026 and throughout 2026. And that's gonna be that means literally taking the time to yourself to set yourself up for success. Define your position, define your vision, and define the next steps that you need to do over the next 30, 60, 90, 365 days by putting it down on paper, by writing it out and building that plan. You then have a document or a chat GPT, custom GPT, whatever you want. That at any time when you want to do a self-check, you want to look back internally and say, Where am I? You have something to refer back to. But if you don't take the time to create that, and you want to do a self-check, you have nothing to bounce off. You don't know how far away you are from your your goal, you don't know how far away you are from your your vision or your tasks that need to be done.

Duarne: 1:11:55

So taking one thing I love that. I think one thing, if you if here's a little tip uh I've done in the past. If you've got your vision, you've got goals set at certain times, go and create calendar reminders at the beginning of the year for yourself that remind you of what you're expecting to have reached at that point. So you get an alert pop up on your calendar and be like, oh yeah, yeah, you're right. Did I hit that? And it's a little reality check moment for you.

Dave: 1:12:24

Well, here's the other thing that you could do too that again makes it a lot easier is if you're building this vision out, you try again, you use ChatGPT and it helps you kind of build out those milestones that you want to have for yourself. You can then actually have ChatGPT create the calendar reminders for you and then import it into your Microsoft or your Google calendar instead of you having to go out and do it all the time. And then it will create it. I did I did it with my fiance's OBGYN appointments. She sent me a screen, she sent me a screenshot of them. I dropped it in ChatPT. It said, Hey, create me the appointments to put on my calendar for all these. It then created it, sent me the file. Boom. I uploaded it and I was done.

Duarne: 1:13:01

And so Dave was never late for an appointment again.

Dave: 1:13:05

No, no more double bookings. Never, no, no more double bookings, no more anything. So with that, I you know, we're we're first week of December, which December's gonna fly by. We have Christmas, we have New Year's, like before we know it, it's gonna be 2026. I can't believe it's December already. I you know, yeah, Warren, we started, you know, the beginning of the year, we were you know doing another podcast with the the what was it? No, what was the name of the show? Remember, oh yeah, shoot the shit. But you know, we we went separate directions, and we're here with this, and the business isn't completely different. You know, your business, I know, you know, is completely different if you look back 11 months, and it's just crazy to think how quickly it flies.

Speaker 2: 1:13:46

Oh, it does. You know, so it is crazy.

Duarne: 1:13:49

You can't like for me, like we've got two kids under two, two little girls under two. So, you know, you're gonna know what that's all about next year.

Dave: 1:13:58

And five teenagers and a baby. It's gonna be pretty crazy.

Duarne: 1:14:03

Like suddenly, since you put a baby in the equation, everything starts to fly so much quicker, everything starts to blur. Yep. So it's just it's a very crazy, crazy year. For me, it's been a year of learning, it's been a year of growing, it's been a year of developing clarity in direction and communication. So I'm really excited for next year. I think it's I think it's really promising. And look, I love what you're saying. Like, don't wait until January to start your planning for next year. Just start now. You don't need to wait for a time on the calendar, just start now.

Dave: 1:14:40

Get it ready. And that's and that's the and that's the biggest thing. Like, that's why. And I'll close with this. It's not a new year's resolution that you're trying to do. You know, that's why a lot of those fails, because you you're like, oh, I'm just gonna wait till January 1st and then I'll get started. And then you you don't change your habits, you don't change the way you think in your business. You have to do it now. Like today is the only day you can control. So if every day you stay, you stay consistent, you stay head forward on your mission, right? And your your journey, it's going to come true. It's just inevitable. Yeah, you know, and when you start getting distracted or you start thinking, oh, it'll just happen, I'll do, I'll do that tomorrow. That's when you start getting off track. That's how that's what I want to, that's what I'm gonna leave you guys with. So we appreciate you being here. We love you all. So if you're a business owner and you feel like other people in your network might get one or two tidbits out of today's episode that you enjoyed, or maybe even some other tidbits, please do all that fun algorithmy stuff, right? Like, comment, uh, make sure you're subscribed, but also share. Help us reach other people in your network. I feel like we are on a growth trajectory here. We're on a mission trajectory to help people be more successful in their business, whether it's through educating them on different aspects of funding opportunities or strategy or marketing or anything like that, you know, which I think Darwin, we should definitely have another episode here soon, you know, on your perspectives, like different marketing and different areas that you're seeing people grow. Um, you know, I know you work and you would your perspective is great because you work not only in US focus, but Australian focus, right? And and you also work locally in the Philippines. So it's you have all these different pieces of information that you can provide advice. And if you're listening, you're like, why would I want to know what people are doing in Australia? Because if it's different than here and you stand out from the crowd, that's what matters, that's how things are gonna get you seen.

Duarne: 1:16:35

So trends you can and you'll and you it's really interesting you should say that it's it'd be great to talk about that because trends that work in different locations, very, very different, even across the US. Trends that work in different industries, they work in different techniques. And like we talked about earlier, if you're not feeling a little uncomfortable in your with your marketing, you're probably not pushing enough boundaries yet. Because it's gonna feel really uncomfortable initially when you start doing it, but when you start doing it, you'll start seeing big success. And it just takes small incrementals. So I'd love to have that conversation sometime soon. And I'd love to keep having conversations with new people that come onto the podcast too. So if you're one of my uh contacts on LinkedIn, for example, or you know me, jump in, shoot me a message, and I'll put you in touch with Dave so we can get you on the podcast as well.

Dave: 1:17:33

Absolutely. I look forward to it. Dwarne, thanks for joining me again, brother. And for those of you watching, I hope you have a wonderful and amazing weekend. Stay safe, and we'll see you. We'll see you in the next one. Take care, everyone. Thanks, Dave.

unknown: 1:17:44

Bye.