Business Unscripted - Triumph Business Solutions
Welcome to Business Unscripted, the podcast where real business conversations happen. Hosted by Dave Worden, founder of Triumph Business Solutions, this podcast dives into the raw, unfiltered realities of running and growing a business. Each episode explores the struggles, strategies, and accountability moments that shape the journey of entrepreneurs and business owners.
With a mix of solo episodes, co-host partners, and guest appearances from other business owners, Business Unscripted offers diverse perspectives and actionable insights. Whether you're navigating challenges, seeking strategies, or just looking for honest conversations about business, this podcast has something for you.
Join us weekly as we tackle the unscripted moments that define success, all while fostering accountability and connection with our listeners.
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Business Unscripted - Triumph Business Solutions
Mastering Cash Flow for Smarter Business Decisions
Cash flow management isn't just about tracking dollars—it's the oxygen that keeps your business alive. As Dave Worden and Duarne Bernhagen explore in this eye-opening conversation, most business owners are flying blind without proper cash flow projections, making decisions based on bank balances rather than comprehensive financial visibility.
Through practical examples and real client scenarios, they break down why creating a baseline cash flow projection should be your first priority. Starting with your current bank balance, mapping known inflows and outflows by week for the next 12 months provides the foundation for all strategic business decisions. Only after establishing this baseline should you model "what-if" scenarios for growth initiatives or new investments. Without this foundation, you risk overcommitting resources or running out of cash mid-project.
The hosts share powerful strategies for improving your cash position without changing your core business model. Simple adjustments like invoicing promptly, offering early payment discounts, and negotiating better payment terms with vendors can dramatically impact your cash flow. Meanwhile, evaluating how you spend your working hours reveals whether you're truly prioritizing revenue-generating activities or getting lost in administrative tasks during prime business hours.
Perhaps most compelling is their discussion of business focus—challenging the common belief that diverse revenue streams are always beneficial. Looking at giants like Amazon (books), Apple (computers), and McDonald's (standardized meals), they demonstrate how mastering one core offering creates the foundation for later expansion. This focus not only improves cash flow but clarifies marketing messages and customer expectations.
Ready to transform your business decision-making? Join our Triumph Mastermind community where we dive deeper into these strategies with daily Q&A sessions, weekly strategy calls, and ongoing support to help you implement these principles in your specific business.
Thank you very much. Hey, hey, hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode. It's episode 10 of the Business Unscripted podcast. I'm Dave Warden with Triad Business Solutions. I'm here with the image of Dward Bernhagen. We'll talk to Dward here in a second about that. But welcome to another episode where we're going to be talking, you know, kind of real conversations about business operations, strategy et cetera.
Dave:So if you're a business owner who is maybe tired of hearing, you know, the kind of same old advice. Listen up, because we're going to be kind of, you know, talking through our experiences, and I feel like you might like it around here so why don't you grab a cup of joe? Kick back, let's jump into the show. So duarn um I. I love the, the image of you today. I wish we had the video, but I know you're you're experiencing some, some internet issues, right? So, uh, at least you're here.
Duarne:Oh, it's crazy yeah, sorry guys, uh sorry dave. It's one of those days where if I told you what was going on, you just wouldn't believe it. We've got two fiber connections here, both flaky, as I've got direct connecting to the computer, my desktop computer here, which seems all sorts of wonderful issues. With one of the connections I'm running my Wi-Fi as an alternative. Karun is working perfectly fine to the Wi-Fi we're actually losing, I'm able to create a little bit.
Duarne:You're going in and out, get a hot spot on my phone and then connect my desktop to my phone yeah, well you're actually going in and out.
Dave:I don't know if you're, if you're experiencing that, but you're kind of going in and out a little bit. Yeah this was my concern. So basically, Duarte is here.
Duarne:It's just not fantastic.
Dave:Duarte is here for moral support, right, and he's going to. I think we got some good topics. We were talking pre-show and one of the first things that we wanted to kind of get into I feel a lot of people, business owners, clients of mine, you know, when I worked in corporate world right in finance and executive leadership the biggest thing that I think is the vital to everybody in business, whether you're small, large, whatever is cashflow right and monitoring cash flows. And based on the conversations that I've had the last three weeks with a lot of my clients, it's not being done to the frequency at which it should be done. And you know, dwarin, we were talking a little pre-show about how important this kind of topic is for people and ultimately it's not that hard to track, but I think a lot of people get overwhelmed by it. What would you say about that, dorn?
Duarne:Yeah, I totally agree. For me, I find it probably one of the most stressful parts of running a business. I find that, uh it's. I always get confused, mixed up with projections versus cashflow, uh, expectations. You know know, I come from the sales and marketing so I tend to point more in that direction a lot. So I like to think about the projected income coming in and work towards that and then find myself disappointed that my cash flow projection because I based it off that, may not actually be what I expected it to be because I'm not basing it off real data. I guess I'm picking the numbers out of the air of what I'd like to achieve.
Dave:Yeah. So I think this is a common misconception to combine like a cash flow kind of baseline, projecting out for the next 12 months, with a budgeted kind of increase and a change in activities. But business owners like yourself, dwarin, like me, like all of our clients are you listening right? You need to start with just known activities with your cash flow statement. So you would start with today's bank balance, today's known inflows that are coming in, known outflows that have to go out, and then you have your ending balance and you just repeat that every week.
Dave:I advise people to kind of track it every week. If you want, you can do it by month, but do that for the next 12 months. You're not putting any projected increases, you're not putting any projected changes. It's just tasting business as now, cash needs as now. What does that look like by week over the next 12 months? Because what that allows you to do is it allows you to see over time, allows you to do is it allows you to see over time where are my kind of peaks and valleys of cash flow. And what also happens is, dwarin, you were saying, is once you've had that base, then you can create a basically a copy of it and now play scenario based cash flow modeling.
Duarne:And I think that's what you were.
Dave:Yeah, that's essentially what it sounds like you were trying to do with, like your basic cashflow. You're trying to make it more of like a modeling version of it and really you've got to have that baseline done first so you can see like, hey, if everything just stays the same, how does my cashflow go over the next 12 months? And what you may find is that you may think everything's good, but in six months it drops down because you can't sustain the level of withdrawals maybe that you're making for yourself, or maybe you have so many expenses that are going out the door that you don't know about. So you start with your bank statement. Look at everything that's happening For my clients too. If I'm just starting out a first sort of version of a cash flow, I actually go backwards and I create the cash flow for like at least five to six months prior to see what are those averages that we can build into the future, and you make sure you don't miss anything that way.
Duarne:That's, yeah, that's probably a much smarter method of doing it. And you're right, I tend to look more towards the projections and well, if we do this and this and this, this would be awesome because we could achieve this, and then find myself getting a little bit lost in that. So I tend not to do the cash projections or cash flow analysis too much myself, and it's something I definitely know I should be doing, or I should at least bring someone onto my team who manages that part of it and then tells me what I can spend and what I can't spend yeah, and I would definitely challenge you, maybe, dwarin, like like you said, like you or or somebody on your team, to really put that together, that like baseline, just like hey, here's all the, here's all our clients, here's when all their due dates are for the inflows and then for your outflows.
Dave:Here's payroll every two weeks. Here's overhead expenses we got to pay. Here's rent on the first of the month. Here's loan payments If you have loan payments that you got to pay out. But just get that baseline down and it's going to allow you to make better strategic decisions moving forward, because you're going to know when you have a influx or if your cash is going to continue to build.
Dave:Because, let's say, for example, I'm thinking of a client that I'm working with right now. They want to take out $2,000 every week. Well, if they were to do that when we were building out the initial projection, in nine months, they would be out of cash where they're at. So we have to make adjustments there.
Dave:Even when I'm looking at my own, you know, I'm kind of projecting it out and say, ok, well, you know, I know I have all these personal expenses because I'm a solopreneur right now. So you know, I don't necessarily have to have all these, like you know, elaborate personal versus business cash flow. I can kind of create a, you know, business outflows, personal outflows in my cashflow projection and I can see like all right, I know I'm going to, I might have to wait to pay this bill, or I can pay this bill early or now. I can invest in some marketing this month, right when cash has been built up, and it really allows you to know exactly when you can make decisions that are going to be impactful to your business that makes a lot, a lot of sense, especially like for.
Duarne:I guess when you do that too, you can actually work out when the bill payments need to be coming in for your business, so you might be able to stretch out an extra week worth of uh, you know not paying a bill if it means like they're not going to shut your connection off or something like that. So it gives you that flexibility to be able to plan for that if need be.
Dave:Right, and when you see it black and white in front of you. If you don't have anything like that in front of you, and my number one suggestion is, once you create it, you update it at least once a week, maybe every Monday for the upcoming week, but it allows you to know like, hey, if you look at your bank, maybe there's money in the bank and instead of you spending it because you think you have it free, not realizing that a bill is about to come out in three days that you have in your cashflow but you forgot about it. When you just look at your bank balance and now you make a decision to buy something Again, you make better, smarter decisions with your finances when you have an updated every week cash flow projection that you can look back on and have easy access to, and you're keeping it updated.
Duarne:No, that makes a lot more sense. And have you got like some examples of like clients you've worked with who didn't do this and then started the process, and what sort of results are they getting from it?
Dave:So, yeah, I mean the one client I'm working on right now that I was just mentioning you know it was cash flow has always been a struggle for them. They would they get money coming in every week from from different, various sources, so they feel like they can spend the money and not knowing, you know, that they're going out. And what we kind of mentioned when we earlier in the conversation about using that kind of backtracking of five to six months, because when we initially built it out, you know, the individual was saying, oh well, we have, let's say, it's like $40,000 for payroll every two weeks and that's their estimate. And so we built it out. With that, everything looks good. We built out some of their other expenses, but by going back and looking at the actual history, I found out that it's not $40,000, it's more like $46,000, $47,000 of payroll that comes out every two weeks. And when you factor that in over a 12 month period, you know an extra five to $7,000 over 26 pays is a significant amount of money. You could significantly, you know, understate a cash flow. You know, even, and for them now, now it's better decisions.
Dave:Now we're in the process of creating that sort of strategic map of what do we need to do? So one, the number one driver of their business outflows is salaries and payrolls. So we're doing an analysis of all right, are the hours that are people working? Are they being productive? Are they submitting the information that they need to in order for the business to get paid for the hours at which they're working? Otherwise, we have issues. So we're in the middle right now of creating an analysis of payroll hours versus build hours to make sure that everything matches, because the majority of their people are sort of client facing and there should be some off-sorting revenue for every hour that they work.
Dave:And none of that's been done, and so what a cash flow allows you to do is it allows you to see the areas of your business where you could potentially be making adjustments. Another way would be is if you see that you have a lot of money going out to a vendor that you're spending a lot of money with now, you could reach out to that vendor and talk about maybe renegotiating the terms or getting a longer pay period. Let's say instead of 30 days.
Dave:you negotiate a 45-day window or a 60-day window to pay the invoices and then on the inflow side you want to work the opposite. So maybe you're seeing that you're giving clients and this is another client that I work with he was waiting 30 days to send an invoice after work was completed and then gave them another 30 days to pay the bill.
Duarne:Oh wow, it's like a 60-day payment cycle.
Dave:He was giving people 60-day payment cycles but the money he had already had to pay out to his employees who worked and all the overhead costs. So he's basically fronting two months of expenses for every single job that he does. And you can see he's not doing any sort of tracking either. And so on the inflow side, it allows you to see like all right, hey, you know, like this client, a you know, is maybe paying me, you know 15 days late all the time. Well, one, you know you plan it that way, so you don't plan it on due date. You know that he typically takes 10 days, so you put in your cashflow projection at the 10 day mark after the due date.
Dave:But you can go to that client and be like hey, I noticed that you typically pay like 10 days after the invoice. Even though the invoice is dated on, let's say, the 1st, you're paying on the 10th or the 12th. Is there something going on with that? Why are you paying late and negotiate with them to pay earlier? Is it your check runs? Do you only pay like once a week? Do you only pay like once a month and that's the check run?
Dave:Should I change my due date? Should I have a better understanding and it allows you to know what's going on with your clients. But you could also put in better ways for your clients to pay you better. So if you have a lot of like, let's say, corporate clients and you're invoicing them, you can invoice terms like maybe, like you know, they have terms like you know one 10, um, you know and, and two, 10. And what those means is that you're giving them a one or a 2% discount if they pay within the first 10 days after they receive an invoice, um, and, and. Then you know. Obviously the rest is is net 30.
Dave:And that's when you invoice like on time. So like if you do a job, or let's say for you you do a website job and you give people 30 days to pay like you invoice them today, they owe you in 30 days. Well, you could add a 110 or a 210 kind of term to that. That says, but if you pay me within the first 10 days, I'll take 2% off. Or I'll take 1% off. And a lot of corporations, especially ones you know, one, one particular that I work with, like it's actually in our you know kind of policies and procedures that if we are offered that term, we are pretty much required to take it because it's savings that are available to us that we have to take. Now, some places may not have that, you know, it's okay, but by giving that, that one or two percent that adds up over time to business owners, and so if you're ever given a one or two ten and you have the cash flow to pay it like, take advantage of that.
Duarne:That's like a discount for you, that's money you get back in your pocket yeah, now I can see how that could be a totally a benefit for people. I mean, for us we do a lot of upfront payment, you know, like an initial deposit et cetera. When we start projects With staffing resources, we charge month. That is so the beginning of the month. That is basically meaning that we normally give seven day terms. So what we tend to find is that helps us with cash flow. But yeah, I can see very quickly.
Duarne:I've got a buddy of mine here. He's got a large BPO. He actually just sold it because he said the stress was getting to him and he had about 400 staff. So you can imagine the cost of 400 staff when clients might have 20 to 100 staff and they're late paying, which means that he's got to front the cash in business to cover that many staff salaries and their entire business model is designed on staffing so if they don't get paid they can't pay their employees. Um, so yeah, he he was. That was very stressful for him coming up to the christmas break because a lot of people his clients were very slow to pay him, so he was finding himself a bit stretched at that point and soon after that he actually advised me he he'd actually done a deal to sell the business and I can totally see why that sort of thing.
Duarne:Yeah, I mean, I know that stresses us out in small business all the time, absolutely.
Dave:Who's quite a ways from paying you.
Dave:And what's another thing you can do, too Absolutely is going to show you that, as well as then, you can use that to reach out to your clients maybe outstanding invoices that are out there and just reach out and just say hey, by the way, would you be interested in possibly paying this bill by the end of the day? If you do, I'll take 50 bucks off or something like that as an incentive to get them to pay. If you need to increase cash flow, that's one of the best ways to do. It is just call people who owe you money and say, hey, by the way, just reaching out, I noticed we have a couple outstanding invoices for you. If you're able to take care of those by the end of the day, I'd be willing to offer you a 4% or 5% discount. You think that's something you might want to take advantage of. On the flip side of that, when you're doing your cash flow and you're finding that you have a lot of these people who haven't paid you and you have a lot of outstanding invoices, which again goes into your AR monitoring, you have to make sure you follow up, and I think that's the number one thing, too.
Dave:That a lot of clients don't do is they don't follow up with people who owe them money.
Dave:They're more than happy to do the work, they're more than happy to invoice them, but when that follow-up needs to happen, that's where there's a lack of it, because they just don't have the time to do it and they don't have the time to ensure that.
Dave:Hey, I billed out five grand, did I get five grand of payments in. They just assume when they see money coming in that everything's going well. And actually a lot of clients may realize for example, the client that we were just talking about before, who was given the 60-day window we noticed that there was a couple of invoices that were 90, 120 days, that they didn't even know were that long because they weren't tracking it. And so when we get into the details and then you finally get a chance to call those clients and they're like oh, I never received the invoice. And so the clients that are going to reach out to you now, some clients might, but the majority of clients are not going to reach out to you and be like hey, I owe you money, can I pay you? You'll have a few that'll do that because they're respectable, but some of the other people are just going to wait for you to invoice them.
Duarne:Well, some people also. They're businesses, right, and there are multiple people in the business, multiple stakeholders, so they may not be aware of the person paying the bill, that there was even meant to be an invoice sent across.
Duarne:So you have your email send it to the wrong email address. Sometimes you've just got. If it's late, late, don't assume that they've got it. People are not going to reply and say yeah, I got your invoice, thanks for that, I'll get your payments sorted. Most people will look at it, file it and then deal with it later.
Duarne:And some people this is something I've witnessed um quite a few times in the past and I've got clients who have told me that happens.
Duarne:Then a lot too is they'll be trying to be nice and they'll say look, I'll put someone on a 30-day term although they'd prefer them be on seven or 15-day terms and they say I'll put them on 30-day terms, and then that client will wait till the very last day of that 30-day term to be able to do the invoicing. I've got MSP clients in Australia and one of the things that they did to change their cash flow was simply stop billing people at the end of the month and they started billing people at the end of each week, because what that did is in a continuous flow of cash flow coming in the jobs that had been completed throughout the month, because what they were finding is that some clients are in a 15 or a 30 day, um, you know payment period, so they might not get that payment in straight away, but at least it means their invoices are out pretty soon after the work's done.
Dave:And that's kind of what I'm just getting, that right right is is exactly right, I mean like you should be running invoices every week and not waiting like, especially if you're giving them like terms on top of that. Now, if it's due on receipt, ok, like you can possibly get away with, like, but I would still suggest that you like you were just saying with the client doing it every day, doing it every every Friday, you know, or over the weekend, like, if you're a solopreneur, you know, do it on Saturday mornings the weekend. If you're a solopreneur, do it on Saturday mornings while you're having your coffee Invoice. You shouldn't have a lot and a ton of people to invoice every week if you're doing it every week.
Duarne:No, I agree with that. Sorry, my internet's very flaky dave, sometimes I'm getting a little bit of a cut out from your side, so I'm not sure if you're leaving on a question and I'm missing it, so apologies there no, you're good.
Dave:You're good, I think, cash flow is definitely one of these and I think you mentioned in the pre-show one of those things that can really create huge amount of stress.
Duarne:I mean, like you look at, like our business, for example, like I'd mentioned to you previously, like if we had better cash flow, then I would have at least two more projects internal projects that I wanted to launch, launched and in full swing, because better cash flow means that I could actually then plan for more resources to do that. But instead we've sat them on the back burner, built them as far as we can get them with the resources we've got and said, well, once we increase our cash flow, then we will work on those projects, and I'm sure there's other people out there in the same position right now.
Dave:And so for you, and the biggest thing that you need to do, is one the baseline. We talked about it, but then how do you then utilize it to understand what could happen in terms of, like, making better decision-making in your business and that's where we kind of briefly mentioned earlier modeling.
Dave:So once you have your baseline of here's my current inflows, here's my current outflows, you see where your goals or where your peaks and your valleys are going to occur. But now you can make a copy of that and start modeling out some different scenarios. It's not going to be, that's not going to be your Bible, right. Of what you're updating every week you go back to your baseline tracking. But for your case, dorn, right. So you have your baseline, you project it out over the next 12 months. You make a copy and you're like, hey, this is going to be if we do this new project, and up front, in your outflows you may have some you know upfront costs you got to put out or up from. You know expenses you got to pay before you get inflows. And then you say, okay, well, in three months I know this is what's going to start coming in. And so now you can begin to model it out for the next 12 months as well, after you decide on a project. Because what you may find is that when you do the model, you may look like you have good cash flow in your base, but when you actually model it out and understand all these upfront costs, all these ongoing costs that you have to pay every week, plus the expected ramp up of the inflows. You may find that, in order to make it work, when in the baseline it looked like you're going to have an extra let's just say, $30,000 in cash flow positive this new project is going to have an extra let's just say, $30,000 in cashflow positive. This new project is going to suck all that up and then actually put you negative 10. And so by modeling that out over a 12 month by week, you can make that better decision. Now maybe it's worth it because as you project it out further, it's going to fully rebound. I'm not saying don't do it just because immediately it requires some extra influx of money. But if you don't have the money to put in, it allows you to decide to wait on that decision, rather than making the decision and realizing oh shit, I can't get all the way into this project because I don't have the money to fund it. And I think that's where cashflow modeling and forecasting can come into play, like in your scenarios you were mentioning. But, as our listeners as well, is when you put together that model, you can make that decision of do I have the money. If it's, maybe it requires you to not take pay for three months in order to keep positive cash, but you can't pay yourself for three months. Can you afford that? Does your personal bank? Can your personal bank afford that?
Dave:If I were to ask you right now, dwarin, like, all right, can you start a project next month? Would you be able to tell me with confidence yes or no? If I were to ask you right now, can you start a new project next month and know that you can keep positive cash flow? Did you go away? I think we lost him. Did we lose Dward? All right, we might have lost Dward, but for you, if you're listening to this right, think to yourself like if somebody came up to you and I came to you right now and I asked you a question if you needed to start a new project next month, would you feel confident enough to say yes or no? And if the answer to that is no, you wouldn't feel confident at all. That's because you don't have a cashflow and you need to go out and create one. And if you need help with that, if you have templates, comment down below. I can send you our cashflow projection template and it's very simple and you can start like doing this today, but cashflow is going to be king in your decision-making. Cash doing this today, but cashflow is going to be king in your decision-making. Cashflow is going to be king in your confidence level in your business as well, knowing what and where you need to go in the directions you need to take with your business. So with that, I'm going to take a pause here for a minute. We'll see if Dwarin comes back, but cashflow is king.
Dave:If you want any more of this, as we talked about we've been mentioning this before Dwarven and I are launching a revamped Triumph Mastermind program. It's kind of that. You know that announcement. You know to say it's the. What do you want to say? The ad part of the podcast? Right, we're founding members, our launch. It's joined down below. We'll have a link for you to kind of get in savings of up to $140 a month If you're one of the first few that get in. We're going to be doing daily Q&A calls, weekly strategy calls. Still going to have the podcast. You can actually be eligible to be live on the podcast too and talk about different topics, different scenarios.
Dave:We're going to open that up for members of the Triumph Mastermind as well, as well as WhatsApp conversations community, et cetera. So if you're looking for a place that you can come, ask your questions, feel supported and be pointed in the right direction, the Triumph Mastermind might be the place for you. We're here, we're helping you daily access, monday through Friday, with questions, with support, with pointing you in the right direction. So let's get started. Like I said down below, once the live is done, we will have the link for you to get registered and find out more information as well. As I said, if you're one of the first few, it's $59 a month. $59 a month to get five days a week, open Q&A sessions whenever you're ready, unlimited questions answered through WhatsApp. Our weekly strategy $59 a month. Normally it's going to be $199 once the founding member slots are filled. So if you want information about that, it'll be down in the comments, but, as we're waiting for Dwarin to come back in, one of the other kind of things that I was thinking about, besides cashflow and as much as it is a big topic, another thing that's been popping up lately in my conversations with clients and different kind of connections through the different networking that I do is how many people aren't prioritizing their time correctly.
Dave:And what do I mean by that? I mean that if you are not where you are at in terms of revenue income, you know cash flow coming in. You need to prioritize getting new business in your life, so you shouldn't be focusing on posting on social media. You shouldn't be focusing on, you know, scrolling, scrolling Facebook. Your number one focus, if you do not have the clientele that you want, needs to be doing outreach to your ideal client profile and going out and putting yourself in front of those people.
Dave:A conversation I just had earlier, where it was important for them to drum up new business.
Dave:But their time is being taken up by all these admin type tasks that don't need to be done by the individual to drum up business.
Dave:They can outsource some of that or they can put it off till the weekend. As a business owner, right as a CEO, president of your organization, wherever you know you want to call yourself your little, you know business or, if it relies on you, your job, you don't have any hours to yourself in terms of you know, when you're up, you should be doing something towards your business and prioritizing that task. So when you look at your task list and you feel like, well, this is just sort of admin work or this is just sort of work that maybe you shouldn't be doing, well, you could probably outsource that for way cheaper than you think and you should be prioritizing getting new clients. What are those activities in your day that you can do that's going to potentially lead you to a new client? And while people may feel like social media is the way to do it, it's it's, it's not. It's gonna be having conversations, it's gonna be, you know, getting yourself in front of networking, having those kind of one-to-ones et cetera.
Duarne:So Dwari welcome back buddy. Sorry about that.
Dave:No, you're good. I was talking about how many times I have seen where people who aren't where they're at maybe revenue-wise or income-wise, client-wise they prioritize tasks that are not important Maybe they're the admin tasks over the tasks like networking or having one-to-one conversations, and how, when you reprioritize your time to getting new clients, it's actually going to help you. And I don't know, dwarin. I mean how do you? I mean, do you talk with a lot of people where you find that they're misprioritizing their time? Maybe they're spending too much time on admin work, they're spending too much time on making the right social media posts or making the right email copy when it went and they're missing out on opportunity.
Duarne:Oh, a hundred percent. A lot of people tend to, I find, spend time on things that almost feels like procrastination, but it's a lot of the times when I have that conversation, there's a fear, there's a I don't want to get on the phone and talk to people. I don't want to go out and look for clients. It's not what I want to do. I'm comfortable doing this other task, so I'd rather just do this task instead. And that, like you know, maybe if I just update my you know social media accounts, enough people will pay attention to me and they'll reach out to me.
Dave:But you know, those conversations, like I have quite a lot of those, and it's a very, very common topic and just the amount of people doing things that are not relevant to make money today that if they spent the time making the money today, it would probably reduce a lot of their stress tomorrow. Yeah, I would agree with that. And don't get us wrong. We're not saying don't post on social media.
Dave:Not at all, but it could be something that, instead of trying to do it every single day, right, and it's taking up a lot of your time trying to be perfect, like set time aside that's specifically for that and prioritize it on, like maybe a non-business time, because think about, like, if you're prioritizing hours that are typically business hours, which where your clients are working, for social media posting when it can be scheduled on a weekend or in an evening when people aren't working.
Dave:You're missing out on all those critical hours during the week when you should be having the conversations or going to networking events or calling your prospect.
Duarne:That's a good goal, Dave.
Dave:Yeah, make sure that during the business hours, you're prioritizing that activities in which you're actually going to be putting yourself in front of those people when they're at their job, when they're actually working. Otherwise, you're missing out on every one of those crucial hours because you're doing things that could be done other times, and that's what I mean by prioritizing that activity.
Duarne:No, I totally agree and I think that's 100% accurate there. That activity no, I totally agree and I think that's 100 accurate there. And I think it's an important thing that people need to know is that, yes, you can do social media posting. Yes, you can do whatever you want. But if you've got people, for example, like we're talking about before, who haven't paid their bills and they're overdue, then maybe your time is better spent getting on a call and calling them to pay their bill, to get that cash flow up.
Duarne:Maybe it's better off calling your existing customer base and, just during that time that you're going to be working and they're going to be working, just have a conversation, see how things are, do some account management with them, discuss where everything's up. Maybe you'll find out about a new project, maybe you'll find out about new things that they want to do within their business that you might be able to assist with. But you're right, you've got to get on the call and make sure you're free during the times that those customers are free to talk to them, because there's no point getting to 10 pm at night and going oh, they're not there anymore, but I'm still working, so I'll just send them an email instead, because sometimes an email just isn't going to cut it just send them an email instead, because sometimes an email just isn't going to cut it and I feel like too.
Dave:Like you know, you mentioned um well what did you mention?
Dave:I just lost it. I just had. I just had an old man moment. Um, maybe don't come back to me, but you know, I agree, like when you, when you, when you spend too much time of your day and listen, I've been there. I found myself caught up in like these things, like hey, I'm going to like post my social media, I'm going to get it today, but it turns into that I should actually have been having conversations with people. I should actually been sending people direct messages or giving them a call.
Dave:Oh, this is what I was going to go with you know, your.
Dave:your number one source of potential new clients, potential new leads, is your warm network. They know you, they trust you, right, they're past clients of yours. There's somebody who's had contacts before you should be reaching out to your warm network at least every three to four months, and if you're not doing that, you're missing out on the opportunity. I've said it before, I'm going to say it again your warm network is where your business is going to grow. If you're not running ads right and you're not doing, you know, any sort of like social media content, your warm network is where things are going to come in.
Dave:So, you reach out to them, just inform them of what's going on offer to help. And this is where this is the funny thing, that that I was in this mindset too. But when I have conversations with people, I'm just like, well, how busy are you right now? And they're like I don't know, I got capacity. I want to add like another 10 clients. But when you make the suggestion of, okay, well, why don't you offer, call some of your ideal clients and just say, hey, I want to give back. Can I do a free project for you? Is there anything that you could potentially use some support on that I might be able to help you and a lot of people are like, why would I do?
Dave:that I'm not going to do that. I'm worth something. Okay, prove it to them, especially if they're not somebody who knows you, like they're a cold ideal client of yours. Let's say they're on your top 25 clients you want to work with, offer to do something for them and prove that you're worth it. They have no idea who you are, so invest in yourself that maybe 10 to 12 hours of doing some work in a project for them that shows your value and then say hey, by the way, is there anything else like this? Like, I'd love to kind of like let's form a partnership or let's form a contract. Here's what it would look like.
Dave:If you know, this is what I would typically do, because once you prove that you're going to give them some result and as long as that result is worth way more than you're asking them to, you know kind of. You know pay you. It's going to be a no brainer for that company. But so many people push back and you're like I don't. I don't want to do that. I don't want to give away anything for free.
Duarne:Well, even if they don't want to give away something for free, an option you can do customers have a conversation, talk about if they've got any other projects that they could utilize your services for, or if they could do some referral. You know, just ask for referrals. It's not a people getting this, really you know icky feeling about asking for referrals. It's not a bad thing to ask for referrals and you know what. They may not have a referral, but the fact you've asked that you're probably going to be top of mind for at least the next few days. So they do talk to someone and there is a possibility of something. They may reach back out to you. Hey, you were talking about this the other day. Might have an opportunity for you.
Duarne:And you know, if they don't have any recommendations or referrals, ask them if they can give you a testimonial, send them a LinkedIn link and say hey, look, do you mind if I send you a LinkedIn link and just give you a testimonial and have it so that we can, you know, start a conversation. And you know you can. You know you can have that conversation with them and talk, get some you know, really good feedback from them that others are going to see and you're going to be able to use. There's always something you can do to reach out and talk to people within your network, just to start that conversation again if you need to. And you'd be surprised how many times people move like if you haven't spoke to someone in six months, they could be in a very different position than they were when you spoke to them last. People change jobs, people get new roles. People have different projects come up. People have people come and go in their businesses. They get new clients.
Dave:Well, just like you listening right, your situation now is probably different than it was three to four months ago. More likely than not.
Duarne:So that's the same thing with your network.
Dave:So just because you had a conversation with somebody, let's say, three months ago, four months ago, and maybe their situation then wasn't proper, reaching out to them again, their situation may be completely different. And by you saying I'm not going to reach out to them they already told me no you might miss out on an opportunity. It's not necessarily like everybody calls it a numbers game, but in the end I guess it kind of is. You know, if you're doing zero, you're going to get zero in return. But by going out there and having and reaching out to, let's say, 30 people in your network a day, you know over time you're going to get maybe one person out of, let's say, 50 to 60. That's going to have a conversation with you.
Dave:Ok, great, now tell me about your situation. Before you have like a one to one, before you actually really invest. Like, hey, tell me about your current situation. I know we chatted about this before, but is this something you're still possibly looking at? Is this something you've overcome? Is something new? Come up and once it's something in their situation that you could potentially help them solve, like now you say, hey, let's get on a call. Like let's dive a little bit deeper, you know. Let's have a conversation about it, let's see if we're you know, we might have a solution for you.
Duarne:Yeah, and you'd be surprised. I mean, if you're really stuck, if you're really stuck and you don't have these people you can go and talk to as well, go to a couple of networking events, get in there and just meet people, talk to them, tell you know, find out what they do, tell them what you do and look you might get lucky and you might get a couple of referrals. Maybe get referred to somebody and have another conversation with them and it may not turn to an opportunity, but it may become.
Dave:They know someone else who does want something about what you want right and and ultimately it's it's come from service first and don't come with it with like a sense of I don't know what, like entitlement, like just because you have a conversation with somebody doesn't mean like you're entitled for them to do business with you or that you know that they need to do business with you. If you come at a conversation, at just like that as a conversation, and you're listening to what they're telling you about their situation and you potentially could help them right, make suggestions. Hey, could I suggest something that might be a possibility for you? You know we offered this service and it helped people that I've worked with before overcome this issue. Is it something that you might want to learn a little bit more about? Leave it up to them. Let them control the conversation.
Dave:They in the end as we've talked about this before with Jeremy Miner and his NAPQ teaching for sales. It keeps the sales resistance down, which is ultimately what you're wanting to do. You don't want them to feel defensive, you just want to have it as a conversation. So by asking and using those types of words like might or could be or possibly, they don't feel like you're shoving it down their throat.
Dave:And if you came to somebody and they said, well, yeah, you know I need my books are crazy and I don't really know where my numbers are, well, here's what I'll do. I'll come in and I'm going to clean up your books. I'm going to, I'm going to clean up your books, I'm going to get you everything caught up. I'm going to send you a financial statement every week and it's $10,000. Like, you want to do it. Like, let's sign up. Like, no, nobody, nobody, whoa, whoa, whoa, take a minute back. Like, take a step back, buddy. But if you come in right and you say, well, that could be frustrating clients that I've worked with have felt that same frustration. Would it make sense for you if I kind of outlined a plan or a program that I've worked with similar individuals in your space and help them overcome that? Would that make sense? Again, you're letting them control and drive the conversation.
Duarne:Yeah, exactly, and I think this is the biggest thing, right? I mean, most people tend to get, like we said, caught up in the the weeds of just doing something so they can feel like they've done something for the day. But just that little action of just keeping a notepad next to you I think we talked about this last week and tracking what you're doing during the day can be a huge difference on what sort of results you can achieve. And you may find that when you look at that, you go, oh wow, I'm really wasting a lot of time on all these things that don't really matter. Or I have people in my team who could be doing that for me. Why am I doing that myself? But you know, look, you've got to find your reason as to why this is the case. Is it because you're procrastinating? Is it because you're not comfortable? Is it coming from a place of fear? Is it just you're not aware?
Dave:whatever that might be, yeah so I, I would feel I would, I would confidently be able to say that I think it comes from a lot of places of uncomfortability for a lot of people, but they always say, right, your greatest success, your greatest reward comes on the other side of being uncomfortable, comes on the side of put, taking yourself outside of your comfort zone, and that's where you're going to kind of reach your goals. That's where you're going to kind of, you know um, reach that next level for yourself and your life if that's what you want.
Duarne:Yeah, I mean you listen to anyone who talks about you know gym, uh, growth and you know doing better in the gym. They're always talking about just that one extra rep, that one extra set. It makes the difference. When you think you're ready to give up, just try and do one more rep and that's where the magic is going to happen in that extra work you do.
Duarne:But in saying that, I mean you can also find yourself sitting there at a desk 16 hours a day and achieving nothing that you want to achieve because you're working on the wrong things. So this could be an exercise to help you realize that you are working on the wrong things and that you need to re-evaluate what you're working on and see if that's actually helping you. I I mean, if you're sitting there writing yourself 10 blog posts and then writing yourself 10 articles in a day and that's going to be the next 10 days worth of work going out and you're getting people reading them, commenting them and communicating with you and getting your word out, then that's fine. But if you are finding yourself doing all that work and getting no visibility from that at all after being doing it for a few months, then you might need to find yourself re-evaluating why you're spending so much time doing that, and I think that's and one thing I think that I want to point out.
Dave:There is like is the prioritization of your tasks right?
Duarne:During the day.
Dave:The number one priority for your day should be the outreach to conversations. The secondary priority like after business hours or on the weekends, when people aren't necessarily, you know, necessarily there for you to talk to that's when you should be doing what you're talking about Right, like doing doing the blog writing, doing doing the article creation, doing the social media posting, because there's ways for you to multiply your efforts and schedule it out Over the weekend and then you don't have to think about it during the week.
Dave:You know, like you know, we've talked about the LinkedIn article system, right, and the newsletter on LinkedIn. We're not posting it at the exact time when it gets posted. You and I are scheduling our things out at the beginning of a week and then we don't think about it anymore, like we get the work done in non-essential hours and then it gets scheduled and then during the essential hours when people are going to see it, it gets posted for us while we're doing other things that are actually priorities. And that's where I think the number one thing like if I'm thinking about this kind of segment that I want you to take away from is prioritizing during the main part of your day the things that matter, that are going to grow your business, and it's not making sure that your books are right or your policies are written correctly Like your number one focus priority if you are not where you want to be in your business should be on client outreach new client generation and conversations with your ideal client profile in order to grow your business.
Dave:During the business hours.
Duarne:Yeah, and I think that's that's key and like that I mean. The other thing is I mean, if you are doing something and it isn't getting you the results you want and you've given it a good chance, try something else, pivot, do something that might get you a better result. I mean, if you sit down at your desk every day and your whole plan is I want to get another client, then maybe you have to decide the work you're doing is it going to get you another client or is the work you're doing not going to get you another client? Is the work you're doing just something that makes you feel good about the? You know feeling like you've done something while sitting at your desk, but is it actually getting the results? You're doing just something that makes you feel good about the? You know feeling like you've done something while sitting at your desk, but is it actually getting the results you're trying to achieve?
Duarne:So, and if you're not sure, have a chat with somebody, talk to somebody in your network, talk to a consultant, a coach or just a friend who in business, and just ask, like you know, do you think this has helped me get where I want to be?
Duarne:If you're really, really not sure who to talk to. Then go to ChatGPT and ask ChatGPT, tell it you want it to be your business therapist, you want it to act as a business consultant and you want to ask it some questions and see if it can give you some, evaluate your actions and tell you if that's actually going to help you hit your goal or, you know, give you some suggestions on how you may hit that goal. Is it going to be 100 foolproof by doing that? No, but that's where you can take the time to guide it and spend a little bit of time on that project. But we all need to reset, sometimes re-evaluate where we're going, check the clarity of our goals and if we're actually in heading in the right direction to achieve those goals. And so many times we just get caught up focusing on the wrong things.
Dave:Well, and I think I think you're right I mean I, but I also here's the other two things that kind of just came across my mind.
Dave:Yeah, first is I also think some people like, when there's too many things on their plate, it is okay to kind of wipe everything clean and start from anew and kind of like just boom, Like maybe what you've come up with.
Dave:If you come up with like 17 different programs, you come up with like 10 different campaigns that you're doing and you have different services that you're trying to focus on and you're trying to service everybody, but get rid of all that. Like, scrap it, like what's the number one or two things that like you feel the most powerful that you could create for your clients, and then just go with that and then just message that for the next six months, like stop trying to do everything. Like pick one or two things that are really in your wheelhouse and only go with those, cancel all these other campaigns, cancel all these other, and then niche that down, pick only two or three areas that you want to work with that you have experience in, and if you can do that for six months, I guarantee that you will reach where you want to go six months.
Duarne:I guarantee that you will. You know kind of reach where you want to go. You're not. It's about getting your focus right, isn't it? And that's that's a big key point here.
Dave:I mean, a lot of people tend to get misfocused and, and you know, I've been kind of going, I've been kind of thinking through this too, like just for myself. Like you know I, I have multiple services, but right now it's like you know, it's kind of stretched across the board in different places. And I, you know I have multiple services, but right now it's like you know, it's kind of stretched across the board in different places. And I, you know I, when I say that about wiping things clean, I'm thinking about it for myself. Like you know where do I go for my business and you know things are, things are going well in different areas, but it's like I feel like myself, you know, right now is stretched a little thin in terms of, like, when I talk to somebody, how am I messaging it?
Dave:And so I, and I feel like your kind of message kind of revitalizes thought is, you know, sometimes it's okay to get rid of some things out of your business, right, if it's, if it's, if it's taking attention away from you know multiple things right that are going to be more successful. So it's okay to eliminate two or three services, especially if they're services that maybe are breakeven, and this is again where getting your financial statements ready and getting your financial statements in order can help you identify which services or which products or programs are profitable, which ones are.
Dave:kind, of time sucks and getting rid of those things to focus on the main area, Um, and, and that one or two main services, because then once you grow those one or two main services and now you're, you're successful, you're where you're at, you have teams under you, right People can run it without you. Now you can focus on maybe providing some additional complimentary services. Um, and I, and I feel like it's okay to get rid of some things like that. So really evaluate your services and your business.
Duarne:I think so, and I think the other thing to keep in mind is just because you're offering one service today, it doesn't mean you can't offer a different service in a year from now. It also doesn't mean that if a service isn't aligned with what direction you're heading in, you can't drop that service. You can change services, you can remove services, you can outsource the services to somebody else, find ways to move forward in a direction that works for everybody involved. But so many people get stuck in this rut where. I've always done it this way. We've always offered this service, even though that service doesn't make any sense anymore. Everybody knows us for that. We need to keep offering it.
Duarne:And look, there's a lot of companies out there who pivoted and changed directions and became something bigger, better and more amazing.
Duarne:And the ones who didn't unfortunately those guys well, they just fell by the roadside and you know that's what happened with places like blockbuster.
Duarne:And you know all those other big guys who decided that they didn't want to change or they couldn't change or they didn't envision the change. So, as a small business owner, that's one of our big advantages we can adjust and pivot and change easily, quickly, and we don't have to have big board meetings all the time to discuss what the changes are going to be, then get you know everyone to vote on it unanimously and then put plans together on how we're going to do it over the next 12 months. Those things are still important and great to do, so you get a good vision and a goal set and, like you said before, work out your cash flow to make sure it's possible to do. But having a good cash flow, I guess, would actually also be a good indication to show you if what you're doing is working or if parts of what you're doing is working really well. So maybe double down on that part that's working really well and just drop the rest Right.
Dave:Or at least take the focus off it. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, it's like it's easy to evaluate. And now it's like you know, we're getting towards like that first half of the year is done, and so it now becomes like a good time to start planning for the second half of the year. And in order to do that, you really have to evaluate your services, you really have to evaluate what you're doing. And then the flip side of that is is, as we kind of briefly talked about before.
Dave:You know. The second thing I thought of when you were going before that I want to come back to is you know, I think a lot of people switch too quickly off of, like you know, their, their idea or their program. That's like in their wheelhouse and they try to add something else because it sounds better or it sounds different, and I've been a victim of this early on, right, and ultimately go all in with one or two main things and really put the focus on just that.
Dave:Don't try to rechange it, don't try to reevaluate it. Give something six months Right To really see, like, what's going on, because that's when, like when you give it your attention for six months, I feel like that's a good sort of timeframe, especially if you're giving it a hundred percent attention. You know where. That's your messaging, that's your focus, that's that's the message that you're delivering in your conversations and your exploratory sessions and your you know your networking sessions, all of that. If you give it six months and then you see that it's still not working, it's still not picking up, then maybe you need to possibly make like a big sort of overhaul switch and I'm not saying here like don't make small tweaks, but tweaks are good.
Dave:Pull out changes quickly are bad.
Duarne:Tweaks along the way are great, but when we talk about big changes, we're talking about complete pivots and change in directions. So I mean, I totally get that Like, for example, like we were talking about doing linkedin newsletters a few episodes ago and I just took a quick gander I've been doing daily newsletters and I've had mixed feedback from people, some people saying you're spamming me, others are not, not concerned. Like I'm getting lots know they're consistently liking the post, so I'm reaching them and giving information that they like and I've got 53 editions out so far since I started and I've done a daily post since I started, so I'm pretty proud of that. Now I know that when we spoke recently, you dropped yours down to a couple of days a week because you had time constraints on monday monday, friday my releases yeah.
Duarne:So I mean we're talking about you've had, you haven't pivoted, you haven't changed what you're doing, but you've just tweaked it. You've changed to suit what your work, your working uh, environment, what you're capable of doing, so, rather than just completely. And here's what I'm here's what I'm finding.
Dave:Like we're talking results here, right is that? My? My views have actually gone up from actually going twice a week yeah you know, like, for example, I'm just looking like the last seven days, like it's up, you know, 74 in terms of the article views from the prior seven days and that's when I kind of went to that two-day shift. Uh was about, was about seven or 14 days ago. If I go to I'm just showing 14 days here I know you guys can't see it I'm up about 10% over a 14-day window.
Dave:So it's one of those things where, like you said, fit it to your needs, but don't do it quickly, Don't do a full-on shift, and I guess I'm talking like business-wise, right, Like service-wise, Like you know. Yeah.
Duarne:Unless you feel like it's needed, just because you know you didn't sell one for three months.
Duarne:If you can still deliver it and it's good for your business, then keep it in there. But, you know, use that as motivation to potentially put a little bit of time into marketing or understanding why you didn't sell one for three months. If it's something that required a partnership or it required an individual staff member who's no longer with you to deliver on that, then sure, then maybe that's something you might need to decide whether you continue offering or not. But if it's something you're doing yourself as a solopreneur, if it's profitable and you've got the time and the capability to do it, um, you know, definitely you can keep doing it. But yeah, just if it's not a money-making task. I guess take the time to just re-evaluate how much time you're spending trying to do that task, to determine whether it's actually worth spending that much time doing it. And would you actually get different results if you backed off on that? So like you backed off on five posts a week and you're still getting great results. In fact, you're getting better results.
Duarne:So something like that is motivation for others to say well, you know what Maybe I can achieve two times a week, or one time a week posting or doing. And you're right, it's just about being consistent. If you're consistently posting every week rather than every single day, you're still consistently posting every week. You're still consistently getting on the phone and calling everyone every Monday. All those clients you've got, you get on the phone. You call your existing clients every Monday just to have that conversation. You get on the phone every Friday and you chase for that money coming in. You know whatever that might be. Just be consistent in your actions and just don't be too rash to stop doing something just because you think it may not work yeah, and so for me it was.
Dave:It's kind of one of those things where, you know, I think I've given things enough time now, as I kind of went to that, back to the first thought, and now my next kind of like two months, is going to be kind of evaluating. Okay, where do I want to go, like what's really, what's really next and, and you know, are everything, is everything profitable? Is it taking too much attention away from me? You know, where do I feel like I need to kind of be the best, because, you know, if you're not constantly evaluating what you're doing, you're just kind of hoping and praying, but by taking action, by taking review and making adjustments and kind of simplifying things, especially if you're not where you want to be.
Dave:I think what so many people listen to and you hear it all the time, whether it's on videos and oh, you should have multiple streams of income, you should have like 10 different streams of income. So what people feel like when they just get started out is that they have to have these different sort of opportunities within their business in order for it to work, not realizing that all these people that are talking about they started with one thing. Once that one thing took off and grew and they were able to kind of manage it. Then they started adding things two and three. Then, once those things grew, they started growing things four and five, but they started with one and I think that kind of applies to like everything that applies to, like social media.
Dave:I think what so many people try to do is they try to maximize every platform right from the beginning. Instead of just becoming like number one on, you know, let's say, facebook, or becoming number one on LinkedIn, they try to do all of them at the same time and they become, you know, all of nothing instead of all of something and what happens is they people start to expect you to turn up on all these platforms all the time and then, when you suddenly just drop off because you don't have the time to do it, they forget about you.
Duarne:But if you're consistently, even if it's only you're on one platform, you're doing really, really well and you're maintaining that, then that's perfect. I mean, that's all you really need to be doing. People, consistent, people who show consistency, even like I was watching shark tank this morning um, you know a little five minute excerpt and one of the things was there was a guy on there talking about his product, which was a disposable camera. Now, they didn't go too much into the camera, though it was more focused on the investors' reactions, but it was an Australian version, and they were talking about well, what's your second product? What's your third product?
Duarne:I don't invest in businesses that don't have a second or a third product lined up, even if you're not ready to deliver it. Have you considered what they're going to be? Do you know what they're going to be? And that's pretty much us in business, right? I mean, we get in the business and say, hey, we want to achieve this, but we don't have to go out. We can create a milestone. Milestone one start the business, offer this one service. Milestone two by this point in time, I'd like to be offering this secondary service. Milestone three by this point in time, I'd like to be offering this type of service. Set yourself achievable goals that you can actually target and hit, and it's certain there's many, many businesses that started out selling one product. Ford was selling one product, one car. You could get it in black, black or white.
Dave:I wouldn't even say like a, a large number. I would say like all yeah, I don't, I don't you know, it may like a core business, right like your core offering. Like you know, most of them started with like one thing. Like they. Like, for example, like a landscaper isn't going to come out and say, all right, we're, we're landscaping, plowing, mulching, hardscape, everything like they. They come out with one thing in mind Maybe it's land maintenance, or maybe it is the hardscape it's two out of one right.
Dave:Yeah, I would say close to 90 or more. I would be safe to kind of you know I'm a betting man I would say the odds are in the favor that 90% or more of successful businesses started with a main, one or two products. They didn't try to come out with like 10 different services at once.
Duarne:Isn't that a brilliant point? I mean because, like we're so used to department stores, the Walmarts, the Best Buy. Look at Amazon, amazon, amazon started with books.
Dave:That's it. Amazon was books, exactly Online ordering of books. That was Amazon One thing, one focus. They made it great, they got rich right and then they started adding all these different areas. Like people are like, well, look at amazon. Like, yeah, look at amazon, go back into history. Amazon started with one thing books.
Dave:And they exactly rate at it and then once they were great at that, they they took that system and that process and then dived it into other areas of business and now they're the biggest company you know one of the biggest companies in the freaking world because of books.
Duarne:Well, you know what Apple did? The same thing, right? Apple pretty much only did computers. Then they started introducing other products. The iPod was a huge revolution when they introduced it. No one else had done anything like that at that point. You know on the size and scale that they did. Then they step into phones and now they offer all these different products and services, but at the same time they started with the one. They got really good successful with that. In fact, they almost died as a business and then came back with a new product, but it was the same core product.
Duarne:But I mean, this is the reality McDonald's. Mcdonald's was all based on a single meal where you didn't make variations to the meal. You got the same meal every time because it was a system, a process. It was something they could deliver and be proud and consistent on, and that's fine. How many times have you walked into a restaurant and pulled out the menu and it's like 10 pages long. It's got so many choices. Pretty much you sit there for 5-10 minutes just trying to figure out what you're going to eat. Right, those restaurants tend not to last long.
Dave:Because think about all the problems and think about that's what you're trying to do with your clients, right? It's like your client looks at your service list and they're like I don't know what you can help me with. Even though you have probably something everywhere that you can potentially help them. They're just so desperate for something and they're just like I don't know what to choose Exactly.
Duarne:I mean, people get overwhelmed. I used to see this when people would walk in to buy a television on the floor back when I worked retail, and they would come in They'd look at 50 TVs on the floor and go, holy shit, which one do I buy? And it was up to us to guide them in the right direction. But this is where, like you know, you're not a walmart, you're not a best buy, so don't act like one.
Duarne:Those guys need hundreds and hundreds of vendors and they need hundreds of stuff. If you're a solopreneur, you could could get there.
Duarne:You could get there, but just start with what you can handle for now. If you're really good at doing one thing, just offer that one thing. If you get a client who says, hey, I really like it If you could do this other thing and you can do it, then maybe that's an opportunity. Talk to a couple of other clients, see if there's other clients who want that same thing thing, and if there is, then offer that service as well. So I think, when it comes down to it, I got to jump because I got an actual meeting.
Dave:I got to get to and I know these are hard conversations all the time and if you made it this far, we love you. We hope you kind of subscribe to the YouTube channel. Make sure you like the video Share with anybody that you think would benefit from the podcast.
Dave:We're happy you're here Again. We're here every week. If you have questions, drop them down below and we'll make sure to answer them live on a future session or we'll get you an answer right away in the comments. But you know, I think ultimately you know, the takeaway here is you know, for me it would be do your cashflow projection. If you don't have a cashflow projection and you know modeling process within your business. Like talk to somebody about it.
Dave:If you don't have anybody to talk to about it, drop a comment below. I'm more than happy to have a conversation with you. Like I said, I can send you our template that we provide to our clients for cashflow projections. But just do that, because it's going to help you have better decision-making, better confidence in the business as well in terms of your financials and where you're going.
Duarne:But Dwyer for you.
Dave:What would you say is the takeaway that you would want somebody to kind of walk away from today's episode with?
Duarne:I would say just take a minute to actually consider what you're doing each day in your business. Work out. Is it something that, a you need to be doing, b is there someone else in the business that can do it? And c is there something else I should be doing that I'm actually not doing? Because I'm doing this and that thing that I'm not doing. Is that going to drive the business forward or is it going to make us more money or is it going to put the company in a better position, heading towards those goals that we've set for ourselves in your business?
Duarne:And one would assume that you've got goals for your business and you've already decided what those are going to be and you've written them down somewhere, or you've got them in your head somewhere, or whatever that might be. But just focus on that and what you may do is surprise yourself. And that's the one thing I like about that cash flow. I mean when you explained how the cash flow works. Having your actual, real cash flow allows you to really sit back and see your you know your pnl. Like what are you really making, what's your real profit, what's your real you know monthly expenditure, your weekly expenditure and, I think, breaking it down to a weekly was a really clever idea, because for a lot of us small business owners, we are week to week, you know, in some cases especially during the startup periods, you know and that startup period can last two, three years. So the sooner you get a better process in place and a way to track and grow, the sooner you actually get where you want to be Absolutely.
Dave:Well, Dwarg, thanks again for joining me, even if it is your audio version of yourself and your picture. But at least you're always smiling in that one. That's good. At least I know you look.
Duarne:But I hope everybody has a great week.
Dave:We look forward to seeing you again next week, next Friday, as I mentioned earlier. If you're interested in joining the Mastermind, we'll have a link down below in the description for you to be one of the founding members Again, as low as $59 a month off of the $199. So a savings of $140.
Dave:Lifetime that's not a temporary discount that you'll get by being a founding member. That's up to that for life. So we look forward to seeing you in the Mastermind, with weekly strategies, our daily conversations like this, answering your questions, getting you the strategy, pointing you in the right direction.
Duarne:So we look forward to seeing you there.
Dave:Hope you have a wonderful and amazing week, warren. Thank you again for joining me, brother, and we'll see you in the next one.
Duarne:Thanks for having me, Dave. See everybody, Bye everybody.
