Stop Trying to Be Everyone's McDonald's When You Could Be Chick-fil-A

Ever wonder why some entrepreneurs seem to accomplish so much while others constantly battle overwhelm? In this candid conversation, Dave Worden and Duarne Bernhagen tackle the critical foundation that determines whether your business will succeed or struggle - time management and strategic focus.

We start by challenging you to examine where your time actually goes by conducting a week-long time study. Most entrepreneurs have never done this simple exercise, yet it consistently reveals hours of hidden productivity drains. You'll learn why scheduling client outreach during prime business hours (while pushing admin work to off-hours) can dramatically increase your results, and how technology settings can either enhance or sabotage your focus.

The discussion shifts to one of the most counterintuitive principles in business growth: narrowing your focus to expand your success. We explore why businesses that try to serve everyone end up competing solely on price, while specialists command premium rates. Through real-world examples like fast food chains and medical specialists, we demonstrate how niching down and specializing your offerings creates higher perceived value, better client outcomes, and ultimately greater profitability.

Perhaps most importantly, we address the entrepreneurial mindset of ownership versus employment. If your business completely depends on you, you haven't built a business - you've created a job. We outline how to begin building systems and processes that transform your work from an expensive job into a valuable, scalable asset.

This episode delivers actionable frameworks rather than vague advice. Whether you're struggling with daily overwhelm or looking to level up your business strategy, these foundational principles will help you work smarter rather than harder on your entrepreneurial journey.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Weekly Check-in
• 6:15 Time Management and Consistency
• 18:25 Eliminating Distractions
• 27:55 The Power of Niching Down
• 39:25 Pricing Strategy and Value Proposition
• 54:00 Building Systems for Scalability
• 1:04:10 Key Takeaways and Closing Thoughts

Transcript

Duarne: 0:00

an audience that's actually waiting, you think.

Dave: 0:32

Hey, hey, hey, welcome everybody. You're listening to the Business Unscripted Podcast. We're here again for another show where we kind of take the script, we toss it away. We're going to skip the fluff, we're going to get down to some real chat, real discussion between me and Duarn. Here I'm your host, Dave Warden. I'm a business coach for Actual CFO and a fellow entrepreneur, just like you. I'm joined here by my business partner, Duarn Bernhagen. Duarn, tell us a little about yourself, buddy.

Duarne: 0:58

Hey Dave, thanks for that intro. So Aussie entrepreneur living in the Philippines and you know I just love talking about all things business, ai, entrepreneurial and Dave's always good fun to have a band with.

Dave: 1:13

Yeah right, we always end up generally off topic, which is why we went with the unscripted kind of approach. So you know, today, again, we hope you're having a wonderful end to your week, so grab your cup of joe, let's jump into the show. Duarn, my friend, how has your week been going? Good week.

Duarne: 1:33

It's been a good week. It's been a hectic week. We're getting closer to D-Day for my wife's planned birth.

Dave: 1:44

Love it.

Duarne: 1:44

Congratulations on that. Thank you, you. So that's coming up very quickly later this month. So you know, that's uh taking a bit of attention. It's also causing me to try and get everything lined up and ready so that I can actually take those few days off and be there for her and not have to worry about it. Right, right, exactly. Like you know, of course I'll be bringing the laptop to the hospital, but it's my hope I won't have to actually use it, at least not for the purpose of work right, maybe, maybe we can share some pictures and and the baby and all that fun stuff right, absolutely, and you know the besides.

Duarne: 2:20

the internet's not that great at the hospital anyway, as I experienced last year when I went through all this around the same time. So exciting times ahead, but yeah, it's just been a busy, busy week with lots of goals getting kicked. How about yourself?

Dave: 2:37

It's been a good week, had a lot of good client interactions. Again, like you said, kind of making progress every day, and I think that's the thing that, you know, we as business owners need to focus on. Is that? Excuse me, it's small actions, you know, towards your goal every single day. You don't need to make this giant leap every day, or, you know, and if you don't, you're not a success. It's like, just keep that vision in mind and take momentum, because momentum builds.

Dave: 3:10

You know, as you're continuing to, you know, take a step today, then it becomes like a step and a half tomorrow, then two steps and three steps right, and when you look back, you look back at the progress that you've made and you're like holy cow, I can't believe it's been that much progress. I can't believe where I was. You know, even if you think about, you know, dwarner, you know even myself we think about. You know, even a year ago, the people we are now, the knowledge we have, the work we've built right, the things we've put together over just a year, you know, seemed like it was so far away 12 months ago absolutely I.

Duarne: 3:43

I mean, for me it's just about making more steps forward than you do go backwards, right? You know, in a lot of cases we're going to find situations where, yeah, you're trying to inch forward every single day. There's going to be days where you just fall backwards, that something happens and it takes you off track. But as long as you collectively get more steps forward, that's winning. That's, you know, that's winning the game and that's what we're here for. You know, we want to be here to try and help everybody listening learn how they can do that one extra thing to help them win their game.

Dave: 4:20

Absolutely, which is one of the reasons why, you know, we have started and revamping our mastermind program to provide that for people.

Dave: 4:32

But we're not going to talk about that today until later. We'll remind you of the mastermind later in the program, but if you want some ideas of what it is, look down below. But for yourself, duarte, you know for me when I think about it, and maybe you're the same way, you know it comes down to like consistency, you know, and I had a conversation earlier with one of my clients earlier this week and consistency starts with calendar management right, and time management, and so many people struggle with, you know, just this one aspect of their day and it, you know, or consistency, and it comes down to like when you ask I've asked, well, how do you manage your time? They're like well, I don't know. I just kind of like hope I get things done or I have a to-do list right and no prioritization or anything like that. So before I kind of jump into the advice I gave the clients, jordan, for yourself, what do you do to keep yourself accountable and keep yourself consistent throughout the day?

Duarne: 5:37

For me, dave. Basically what I do is this I have my calendar meetings scheduled. Anything that's in the calendar gets done. So that's my reminder, that's my Bible, of what I need to do for the day in relation to meetings and catch ups with people. If it's not in the calendar and you want to have a meeting, I will do it, but it depends on what I've got sitting on my list of priorities and then I'll go from there. And the other thing I do is I, when I wake up, I work out what is my list of things I need to get done today and I will try and tackle those, and then whatever time's left I'll spend on other tasks.

Duarne: 6:16

But sometimes I don't get to the things that I want to get done initially and they will roll over to the next day. And I've just learned to accept that. I don't get too beat up about it, because there was a time when I'd stay at my desk until I got things done. And then what's the value proposition there? I mean, is it really, if it's really really critical, start it earlier in the day and get it done? But if you've got an extra few hours before you deliver something, well, maybe getting that extra couple of hours sleep is more important.

Dave: 6:47

Well, I think, ultimately too, like so many people, they have such a large to-do list because when you're a business owner, especially as a solopreneur, there are so many different things that you're trying to get done on a regular basis, and what happens is people get that kind of analysis type of paralysis right when they're like oh my God, there's so many things to do, I don't know what to do. Here's the thing that you should focus on right, take the top three things and that's your to-do list for today. That's it right, don't try to get 15 things done every single day. Take the top three, work on those, get those done first. Then what you can do is focus on OK, what can I do, maybe towards like a bigger goal or bigger, to do that? I can take a step or two today to get that done. That's like number one.

Dave: 7:37

Number two that I would suggest for a lot of people is during the regular business hours, right? So let's say you're you're a B2B sort of business owner your clients, your ideal clients, are busy during the business day. Right, they're active. Right, they're in their business, they're taking phone calls, so you shouldn't be spending the majority of your day trying to do admin tasks for your business. You shouldn't be trying to create your social media at 9 am in the morning. So if you're doing your social media right now instead of outreaching potential clients, you're costing yourself opportunity, those social media things, those admin tasks, back office tasks, bookkeeping, et cetera. If you're doing all that, that should be done after hours, when your clients aren't active right, active right because you you miss opportunities by not prioritizing outreach, not prioritizing communications and conversations during the hours when your clients are most active yeah, and that's a good point.

Duarne: 8:35

I mean, if you're making excuses for not doing outreach because you're so busy doing other things, either delegate them or find alternative times to do it. Either delegate them or find alternative times to do it, because you can't go fishing when the fish are not there and you know you wouldn't go fishing in a pond where you know there was nothing. You go fishing in a river where you know there's something right, and this is where our time is the same. We need to make sure that we're spending our time wisely in the time zones that we're going to be communicating with people. I work across three different time zones typically, so I find myself having to be available for a large period of time over those time zones, but even so, I choose when I'm going to do meetings in each time zone and give me plenty of time in between to do everything else that I need to do. The other thing, too, is sometimes. I think part of time management is working out what needs to happen when it needs to happen, but how you can do it. So if you've got something that can be handled with an email, handle it with an email. If you have something that'll be quicker to handle with a phone call. Handle it with a phone call.

Duarne: 9:46

Germany times I've found emails going back and forth and back and forth. That could have been settled with a 10 minute phone call and I look at my team doing it all the time and I'll be like hey guys, book a calendar meeting, spend 10 minutes, have the conversation, get yourself sorted, move on, and it's a really big problem. I see out there where people are wasting their time, um, communicating with the wrong technique, using ai to help you write an email if you need to, so you can get it done in a fraction of the time, so you're not sitting there writing an email for half an hour 45 minutes that someone's going to take two minutes to read, right, or?

Dave: 10:24

see it at all Exactly right.

Duarne: 10:27

So I mean, just choose what you do and choose it wisely and don't be afraid to delegate. I legitimately had a call with a guy earlier this week. He's a business owner and he was talking about getting his website built with us and we're having a conversation about it and I said so how long has it been? It was almost two years since they started working on this website for me and they've just delivered it. My team internally, and I have to say I'm not really excited about it. Yeah, I get it, I totally get it. So what was the delay? He goes well, we had other work. We had paid client work coming in and we do computer repairs. Yes, my team can do it, but you know, it just didn't come out the way I expected it. And we talked about the pricing.

Duarne: 11:15

Turned out he'd spent over double the amount that he would have expected to have to pay for the website versus what we could charge to by having his team do it internally the hours and then and yeah, or he could have paid half that and had someone like us come in and do it externally for half the price and get it delivered in a fraction of the time without all the stress internally that he's had to endure and go through.

Dave: 11:39

Um, and that was just a problem that relates to a lot of things, I feel you know so many people they're like oh, I can do this internally, but it takes you two, three, four times.

Dave: 11:47

I remember having a conversation with the client I think it was two weeks ago. You know where they are interested in doing a lot of like the computer, the back office work, all of that. But even they admit like it takes them two or three times longer to do it and to get these things accomplished. Well, let's, let's think time value. You know, I get that we feel like we have to understand everything in order to do it. But in the end, if it takes you three times as long, every single time you need to do it and this is like a recurring task. Like a recurring task, you know what? What other things could you possibly be doing that can make you more money or that can give you back more opportunity than trying to just have to do something that you know you feel like you're supposed to do, when in reality, I always believe you know you should play to your strengths.

Dave: 12:38

Stop trying to, you know, learn your weaknesses and get better at your weaknesses, like that's not how you're going to grow and scale. Like that's not how you're going to be more successful Understanding where you're weak at and going and finding somebody that's a partner or you know or a software to offset that and then focus completely on your strengths. So if you're great at talking to people and meeting people, great, maximize that. That's how you're going to grow. If you're great at the numbers and problem solving, then find somebody else to go and sell for you. If you don't like the self, you know it's you. There's a lot of commission people out there that'll only work on commission thing you got to do is you got to make sure you have a good product, a good service and you have history that that person can go out and sell. You know. But stop. I think far too many people put too much emphasis on their weaknesses and they forget to play to their strengths. Stop playing you. Stop playing to your weaknesses and playing your strengths man?

Duarne: 13:32

oh, absolutely. I mean, can you imagine that in sports, if we put our best sports stars and we said we want you to focus on a team sport, we want you to pay in positions that we know you're not very good at, instead of the positions you are really good at because we want you to be a really good all-rounder player, I mean it just doesn't happen, not in professional levels. And I think when you get into business, when you start hiring people, one of the things we look at doing is we hire people based on their skill set. Now, I wouldn't go hiring somebody who and paying them top dollar if they had to learn all this stuff. Or if I had a project with a pressing timeline, I wouldn't hire somebody who couldn't do the job that I was looking to do. So why would I put that pressure on myself? The amount of times I hear like I'm going to learn how to do this, I'll code. I'll learn how to do it. I'll learn how to do the design work. I'll learn how to do it. I'll learn how to do the design work. I'll learn how to create the marketing. Yeah, look, you could learn 10%, 15% of it quickly, then offload that or delegate that to somebody else. That gives you at least the basic understanding to be able to understand if what you've handed off is getting done the way you wanted it to be done. It doesn't mean you have to do it yourself. I think there's that on.

Duarne: 14:46

You know, solopreneurs, entrepreneurs we fall into that category a lot, where we feel like we have to have complete control. We have to have complete, um control over every aspect of it. We have to know every single part of it, and it's not always the case. Sometimes it's just a case of having a team. It's having a team that you delegate to or offshore portions of what you do or you know, get other outsource it to you know, or contract it out if they can do it better.

Duarne: 15:17

Um, I think that's just how it really falls down for me. One of the things that I see constantly is a lot of people come down with that feeling that they're trying to do everything and then when you sit there and you document it out and you work out how much time they're spending on certain tasks, you go well, okay, well, how about you go and sit with Joe Blow over here? He's really good at doing that Learn how he does it and if you can catch on really quick and use his techniques and go ahead and and keep doing it. If you think it's better just to outsource to him and get him to do it for you in the future, then maybe make that decision. But at least you understand what's required from you at the time absolutely um.

Dave: 15:59

And so the other thing I kind of wanted to kind of go back a little bit more to kind of consistency and calendar management. The last thing that I've and I you know, kind of talked about this advice with a couple of my clients this week is you have to have, and you have to have an understanding of where you're, where you're losing time within your day. But the only way that you can do that is to perform the time study, and I highly suggest that people do this for a week where you document okay, here's what I'm doing, from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed. And I've said this before as business owners, you technically do not have time off. You shouldn't have time off and you shouldn't have the expectation in your mind that I'm only going to be working eight hours a day. That's not going to be successful, you're not going to grow, you're not going to be successful if your idea as a business owner is that you're only going to work nine to five. So you have to lose that, and so in order to understand where you're spending your time, you have to do a time study.

Dave: 17:00

So, for example, let's just say for Monday, you started on a Monday and you say, all right, from 7 am to 9 am, for whatever reason, you wake up, you get ready for your day, you make your coffee, you let the dogs out, whatever, and it takes you two hours to do that, you know. And then at 9 am, you finally get into work and you start work. Then from 9 to 11, you're typically working on, you know, client emails or client work, or outreach, or checking up on different things. Mark that down. And then from 11 to 12, you're doing outreach. And then from 12 to 1, you're now taking an hour lunch and plan the whole day out just as an example, just like that.

Dave: 17:39

But what you want to do is then, at the end of the week, you're going to look back and you can say, oh wow, do I really need to spend two hours every morning getting ready for the day? Do I really need to spend another two hours? When I start my day, you're just checking emails and responding to people like can I cut that down? Can I save time and do actual more outreach? Can I do more proposal generations or, you know, finding clients that could be you know me that are that's more impactful to my business. What you may find, too, is that at the end of the day.

Dave: 18:04

You know you're finding that. You know for a week you're doing housework. You know, for seven hours a week when some of that stuff could be outsourced. It's cheaper, you know. So these are where you're able to find ideas of where you're able to save time in a week and give you more opportunity to do outreach, to do the ad work that you feel like you have no time and that's the other thing, nobody has more time than anybody else, right?

Dave: 18:27

Like Dwayne, you don't have more time in your day than I do, right? We have the same 24 hours. You just may use it better, and that's where this time study is going to help you. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Duarne: 18:39

I was just trying to no of the things that, like I, I did this years ago would have been probably about 15 plus years ago. I was working for a company and I remember feeling overwhelmed and my manager come up and said look, I sat down and said I just feel overwhelmed, I've got so much happening. And he goes well, tell me what you do. And I said, okay, because here's what I want you to do for the next week. I want you to write down every task that you work on and how long it takes you. So I did this. By the end of day three, I'd identified what my problem was. My problem was simple I was spending. I was doing all different tasks at all different times of day as they were coming in and being reactive to tasks. So what I started to do is schedule off time during the day. This would be for all my return authorities, this would be for my service work, this would be for my order processing, this would be for customer communication and follow-up, this would be for processing orders again, etc. And what I found is just by doing that, I structured my day better to allow myself to feel so much less overwhelmed. The work was the same, but I was able to come out with a couple of hours of free time at the end of the day, which allowed me to do further outreach and communication with clients at the time. But what I didn't realize is just that simple thing where I was being reactive and finding myself, every time something comes in I'm like, oh, I've got to deal with it. Oh with it. Oh, I gotta deal with it.

Duarne: 20:04

I felt the overwhelm where, when this happened and I had this revelation, I was able to that's okay, I'll deal with that during that period. All right, I'll deal with that over there. Oh, I'll deal with that. Then I wouldn't get so stressed. And I think that's the key. It's about finding we always in such a world. How many times have you picked up a cell phone and found yourself distracted before you actually do what you picked it up to do with it? Like I pick up my phone?

Dave: 20:30

to do something exactly right.

Duarne: 20:32

I got to the point I turned off 80 of my notifications on apps because I got so annoyed with all of the notifications coming up and in fact I'm probably due to turn off notifications again on more apps. But I did that because I was consistently getting bombarded with crap that I didn't want to focus on or was taking me away from the focus. And then I'd sit there oh shit, what was I actually picking my phone up for? I'd start back on another task and realize that the task I was trying to complete I needed my phone for to verify or get an authentication code or something hadn't been finished. So these things are normal, these things are really relevant. But having some time schedule and setting yourself up like you can put your phone into do not disturb mode, you can put your and you can customize that too, like I've been like I've been doing that recently where you can customize the hours, where you don't even have to think about it.

Dave: 21:25

So, for example, like if you're using Apple, like that's what I have and I'm sure you can probably do it on Android, but you can actually set up so like your work hours. So like Monday through Friday, you can have it from the hours of 730 to 6 pm. It's a do not disturb.

Dave: 21:39

And you can customize who you get notifications from, what apps can send you notifications if it goes into silent mode or whatever. So like allowing and giving yourself these things that you don't have to consistently remember to do, but you set it up so it's automatic. You just become that much more. I don't even think about it now that my phone's on productivity mode or do not disturb whatever it ends up being, whatever you call it, because it just happens and it just helps.

Duarne: 22:05

And it's about learning. The technology you got, like these smart watches, are great, right, except they interrupt you all day long if you let them. So use the features on the phone of do not disturb, turn off notifications. If you've got lots of people messaging you on facebook messenger, put it on mute. If you're in a group chat with the family and they are just having a big old conversation amongst themselves and they're blowing up your notification, it's bing bing, bing, bing in the bottom notification of your screen. Just mute for a few hours until you get what you need to be done.

Duarne: 22:37

Don't feel bad about it, because what you've got to do is part of time management is getting rid of the distractions, trying to minimize the distractions so you can get on with it. If you've got a really important task and you need to, you know you got. You know your kids coming in and out of your office all day long I can relate. Then either have that conversation and tell them that you're busy for the next couple of hours and that they shouldn't come into the room, or lock the door so you can get the work done, right, I mean it's not disturbing me, whatever you want to do, but exactly right that's partly you, you and I, and and if you're listening to this yourself, you have to take some sort of responsibility and and stop just saying like, oh, it just, it is what it is like.

Dave: 23:23

I think that's like, until you take responsibility, you're not going to make, you're not going to make changes for anything. You know, once you take that responsibility, then you're able to kind of that's like your first step to you know, kind of taking that action and kind of moving forward to do so.

Duarne: 23:37

And then the last. Thing.

Dave: 23:38

I want to do, like what you've done in the time study, is that go into your calendar and block off time.

Dave: 23:49

Make yourself a calendar from Monday through Saturday because that's the hours I say you guys should be working as a business owner and block out the time that you need to and go into say your calendar app. Let's say you finalize your calendar and you only want to do exploratory calls from the hours of 11 to 2 pm every day. Maybe you can switch it around throughout the week, but then go make sure that that's only your availability for those you know exploratory calls in your calendar settings. Otherwise, people are going to continue to book on your schedule and you're like well, what's going on? I only have some exploratory calls from these hours, but I'm getting all these exploratory calls during other hours and then do some of these stuff we talked about in previous episodes about the you know the qualifying and making sure that you know who you're talking to, are actually your ideal client profiles and are ready to actually move forward with you. If you're the right solution like, stop wasting your time there too.

Duarne: 24:35

I think it's another one, sorry I think, yeah, I think it's important, I think, and you're just going to find what works for you, right? I mean, if it doesn't work for you and you can't stick to it, well, it's not going to work long term. Find what it's like a diet, find what works for you and stick with it. There's no point doing something. It's only going to work for a week and you go. Well, that's really good. Now I got my time management right and then you revert back to old ways, do something that you can maintain and work with. Like my wife, if she needs an alert to be reminded something she uses reminders, so she's forever got alarms going off on her phone which is alerting her to go do this, go do this, go do this, and it gets to the point. Sometimes, when she's really busy, I get so annoyed with her alarm because she'll leave her phone lying around I'm like hon, you left your phone in here.

Dave: 25:27

Again, there's an alert it works for her right, so so it works for her.

Duarne: 25:32

Everyone finds whatever works for them. I've got friends who will use notepad and pen to keep you know in an old school journal, to keep themselves tracked, you know. I've got other people who I work with who say, look, if it's not in the calendar, I don't know about it. So even his wife has to put events for both of them that in school events and personal events and dates in the calendar. So he knows about it, so he knows he's he can't do anything at that time. Um, it just goes in the calendar and it doesn't exist. And I think it's what works for you.

Duarne: 26:05

Nothing, there's no foolproof way of making this work. But the first step is, like you said, work out where your time is being spent. Then you can start to identify how to do that better, how to manage that time better, and maybe you can find things. You can reduce your time on things you don't enjoy doing and increase it on things you do want to. You, you know, spend more time doing that you do enjoy doing, or you want to spend more time doing, and I think like that, what I, what I heard from you.

Dave: 26:34

There, too is is the the theme of accountability, where you know you have to hold yourself accountable or have some sort of system to hold yourself accountable, and if accountability is what you're looking for ultimately. Ultimately, we said that this is one of the reasons why we're also revamping our Triumph Mastermind program. So if you're interested in holding yourself accountable, getting daily support, having open Q&A sessions every day that's what Dwarin and I are doing with the new Mastermind. So if you're interested, we're going to include a link after the video. We'll include a link down below to the mastermind. We're opening it up. We're going to be starting here in a couple of weeks where we're going to help you answer questions, give you that accountability you're looking for. So if you're wanting to have a team around you that is your support system to help push you forward, to make sure that you're moving forward every single day, this might be the right solution for you. So take a look at that.

Duarne: 27:26

Check it out, dwarin and I are really excited about it.

Dave: 27:29

I think it's going to be awesome and amazing. So we have some founding member offers and benefits available to you guys, so go ahead and take a look at that.

Dave: 27:37

But which leads me into kind of the next thing that I want to talk to. I think a lot of people we mentioned earlier about trying to do everything, and what that also relates to is they try to service everybody and they're trying to. I've had this conversation with people it's like hey, describe your ideal client and you're like well, anybody with a breath and ultimately Dorn. I know you feel the same way. You know you're not doing yourself any favors by describing your ideal client that way. Um no, you know like you.

Duarne: 28:17

I was watching shark tank the other day I was having some lunch and it's an old rerun. It's about these guys who have these uh coolers that they're selling. It's like a little travel pack of you can put three cans or three bottles of in there and chill them. And they're asked the question like who's your competitors? And one of the guys jumped up and said ice, like water, frozen water, ice that's his competitor.

Dave: 28:43

Interesting.

Duarne: 28:44

And it's like, yeah, okay, I'm out. I'm out because you don't know who your competitors are, you don't have a niche. And when you tell me anyone who's using ice is going to convert and use this because it's better, well, you haven't done your market research. That's not the truth. That's not real. You really need to readdress what you're doing. And they hadn't niched down on who their clients really were. They had an assumption but they hadn't niched. And what was discussed, there was.

Duarne: 29:22

And then I started listening and I was hearing this on all these other pitches. There was. And then I started listening and I was hearing this on all these other pictures if there's no niche, or the ones who would say, yeah, we can, anyone, anyone can use this say well, okay, but is that your client? Is anyone your client? Because how are you going to market to everyone? Because everyone needs a slightly different marketing technique. Uh, everyone, you know, has a slightly different use case.

Duarne: 29:45

So it's a very interesting topic when you start getting into the niche conversation with people and they start talking about yes, we can solve everything, we can solve all your problems, anyone can use this, we've got our prop, we've got our product. Be savvy, right and honestly, it is not for everyone. It is very capable as a piece of software for sales and marketing, but there is quite a lot of uh set up learning required to make it work really effectively. And I think the problem is is everybody goes out there, signs up for something and says, yeah, anyone can use this, and then when they realize that it it does, it can't be used by everyone, they come away feeling disappointed. Or if you're selling a product and you're going out trying to sell it to everyone, you're just shotgunning it. You're just trying to put it out there and just hope something works.

Dave: 30:41

When it comes to put it this way, right, if you say you're trying to service everybody, now you're also competing against every other person out there that says I service with everybody, so what do you leave the prospect to determine who's better Price? So all you're going to do is start. When you say you service everybody, you're a dime a dozen. Then, for example, if you're a bookkeeper and say I'll do anybody's books, well, then you're just a dime a dozen bookkeeper. But if you specialize in home services right, and you help people manage home service business owners better they're bookkeeping better with their financial statements and your analysis and you become a home service bookkeeper, you now become a niche in yourself. You're specialized, you can charge a premium and you can sell it that way because you offer more experience and support than Jane down the road, who just does bookkeeping for everybody. She's not going to know ins and outs of, let's say, for example, we're talking about home services right and ways where you could save money or other. You know expense reductions that you could do. You know that unless it's a general expense reduction because she services everybody. But if you can niche down, you can. For example, alex Ramozy said it and I don't remember the exact example, but this is the concept and it's the same concept across the board.

Dave: 32:07

Let's say you sell a course that's on how to talk how to sell. Well, if you just label it how to sell, how much can you sell that for? Maybe free, maybe $9 or $10, because it's general. But if you can narrow that down a little bit more, instead of how to sell, you could say how to sell B2B. Well, now you can, since it's niche, instead of selling it for 10, maybe you can sell that for ninety seven dollars because it's niche. But now you can go even further how to sell B2B lawn equipment. B2b lawn equipment Okay, now we're talking a little bit further. Niche now. Now, instead of maybe $97, you can sell that for maybe $497 or $997 because it's so niched. You can go even one step further. You can show how to sell B2B lawn equipment to farmers. Now, instead of just $9.97, you could probably sell that for like $19.97 or $29.97. So you could see how you could take a concept video that would typically you would charge $9.99 or $10 for and essentially take the same knowledge and niche it down and get 100, 200 times ROI on it for the same essential information, but you've niched it down a little bit and become so specific.

Dave: 33:35

Same thing in your business. If you're having all these sort of kickbacks and feedback on your price, it's because you're not specialized, you're not niched. It's because you're not specialized, you're not niche. You're being compared to somebody who also is across the board, which is probably why they're coming to you and say I feel like you're too expensive. But if you market yourself and you become that expert in that small little arena, now you're the expert in that arena. So now when you say I'm going to charge you $1,000 for five hours of my time, it becomes worth it, whereas when you're trying to sell yourself against everybody else who's across the board, maybe charging $20 and you're not niched, well, you can't compete, and so that's why, if you want to charge more, niche down.

Duarne: 34:17

Well, it's funny, you should say it. I remember that one of the most interesting stories of niching down that I heard of was I think it was frank kern was talking about how he wrote a book about dogs and it was about dog behavior etc. And he released this book and he made a bunch of money on it. He was marketing it and he made a bunch of money on it. He then went and created a breed, a new cover about the a breed, and he launched it and sold the same book. But it was all about an individual breed, like a dash hound, a german shepherd, um, these, whatever. So there's like 20, 30 different variations of the same book, but he sold it into the niches of the groups of people interested in those particular dogs because they wanted to buy books about their dogs, not about dualist um, and I think there's a lot to that. I mean, how many times would you go and buy a book on sales if you're in it sales teaching you how to sell farm machinery? Probably not, because there's not a lot of relevance between the two, or at least on the outset. But it could be the same premise, it could be the same frameworks, it could be the same messaging, could be the same techniques, but because it's niched down and sold to a specific person in a specific industry, a, you become the authority, you have more value add, you actually become a more valuable service, like you mentioned, and you can charge a little bit more or at least appear to have less competition because you appear to be the expert in the field of that.

Duarne: 35:56

Um, and a great example of that is doctors. Look at medical practice, specialists and how much you pay a specialist who specializes in a very particular field. Um, you wouldn't go to you know a heart surgeon and ask them to, you know, fix a fractured foot. It just wouldn't. Yeah, it's just not necessary. They wouldn't do it right, it's just not something they're interested. You wouldn't go to a brain surgeon and ask him to you know identify why you're having breathing problems.

Duarne: 36:29

It's just this. You got to be smart with how you actually, you know, come up with your niches, and we're not saying niche down too far. But you can certainly niche down to a point where you are a specialist in a particular field and you know, we've all witnessed it, we've all had it in business where we come out going oh look, I can do all of this. But then it comes down to that time management we talked about as well. How much time can you honestly give to doing all of these different things, and how much better service could you offer if you're able to deliver, on just a niche, some amount of products and services?

Dave: 37:07

And how would that? I mean exactly?

Duarne: 37:09

and what I think a lot of people and I've been.

Dave: 37:12

I've had this thought early on too. It's well, if I niche down, I'm limiting my people, right, or I'm limiting my, my outreach, but great, because when you, when you target your messaging or you target your copy and you target your services, you just become that more of an expert. You know and people pay for you know expertise. You know if you're a general service, as you said, like who's going to want to buy, you know a general sales book, which is, if you're trying to sell a general sales book, it's probably just going to levels, strategy, high level tips. You know it's not gonna be narrowed down. You know every book probably has that. Nowadays you can get that probably easily off of the internet or off of chat, gpt. But when you buy a book that's specified, now people are going to pay a little bit more for it. You can charge 40 bucks for the book. 50 bucks for the book and more people are going to buy it that are in that arena. Yes, you're going to have a smaller number of people that you have to service, but there will no small number of people are going to be willing to pay an increased price, which is more. I would say it offsets the reduction, you know, exponentially. You know, just because you, you reduce your, your client size by 90%, for example. You know you're able to charge maybe five, six, seven, eight times. And those people who are willing to pay more cause less headaches.

Dave: 38:33

And that's another thing I think a lot of people don't realize is they try to get the cheap clients are the ones that are going to take they're going to be a time suck. The ones that pay you and always try to negotiate you down on your price or the investment. They're the ones that are going to take up a lot of your time. They're the ones that are going to, you know, ask you eight million questions or, you know, complain when one thing doesn't look right and say, see, I want my money back. Right, those are the ones that really suck.

Dave: 39:01

But the people that are spending two, three, four or five thousand dollars a month with you or on a project, as long as you provide them the outcome that you stated, they're not going to complain, they're not going to micromanage. They're too busy doing other things that make them money to try and micromanage. And I'm not saying go and sell high ticket and then give them shit product. No, that's not what we're saying. We're saying go find the people that are willing to invest, that understand the value that you bring, because they're not going to, you know, try nickel and dime you, because they understand the value that you're bringing to their life think about it like this think of your favorite restaurant.

Duarne: 39:34

All right, then think about your next top five favorite restaurants. What do their menus look like? Are their menus like 20, 30, 50 items, or are they a select group of items and they are really, really good at them, you know? Think of a food truck no.

Dave: 39:53

No, don't mean to interrupt you in terms of the food truck no go ahead.

Dave: 39:57

In the United States the two craziest lines in fast food are Chick-fil-a and canes. They're, you know, during lunchtime and dinner time. They're always wrapped around the building right, and they're always backed up. And what do they serve? They sell one thing, and that's chicken canes, chicken fingers, that's it, and maybe a chicken finger sandwich so they put it on a bun, but that's it. They don't offer anything else. Like you were just saying same thing with Chick-fil-A, it's chicken, it's chicken nuggets, that's it. They're not selling burgers and I love Arby's but just as a contrast, I can always know that I'm never going to have a long line at Arby's. But why is that? Because their menu is like ridiculous. Now they're offering burgers and it used to be roast beef. You know, when I worked there, when I was a teenager, they used to be basically just roast beef and some sliced turkey. Now they have everything on the menu. They have burgers, gyros, like all this stuff, and one step further.

Duarne: 41:00

You think of buffets. How many times are you going to a buffet only and walk going oh, that was amazing, the quality of that food was incredible. Or they've got one dish in there that's actually decent and the rest are okay, and you find yourself-.

Dave: 41:17

The only thing where I would say that doesn't apply is Las Vegas.

Duarne: 41:23

Of course I've been to Las Vegas. It's a world in itself. The food is great. Is Las Vegas? Of course I've been to Las Vegas.

Dave: 41:26

It's a world in itself. Right, the food is great 90% of the time. The food is great at big hotel buffets, but your mom and pop buffet at your local city in the plaza yeah, you're right, go into your mall.

Duarne: 41:38

Get yourself a Chinese buffet in the local mall, those sort of places look, they're about catering to the people who want to mass pile their plates, and this is this is why people look at you sometimes as a business too. If you come to them with this huge menu of everything you can do, they're just going to look at you and go what? I'm confused. I don't know, do you really specialize in this? And I had a meeting um, probably about shoot, maybe a month and a half ago, and one of the questions that was asked was what are you really really good at? What is your specialty? If you had to say that what you're really good at, what would you say? And I actually reversed the script and said well, you know what. You know what we're really not good at and I laid it out on the table weren't good at and they were like okay, so everything else we've talked about, that's what I want to do, the thing you've just mentioned. I've got someone else who can do that, so don't stress all right, let's do business, but I mean it really comes down to.

Duarne: 42:42

It's like my brother's in interior design. Right, he's got a whole business based around home staging and I remember years ago hearing this one statement about interior design is whenever you think the room is perfect, go in and pick one item and take it out of the room because you probably got too much in there. And I think it's the same with our suite of products. All right, I hate seeing quotes where it comes through with the main item and then 15 accessories that I can optionally add. How many times you try to do it like a buy a computer from dell or something, and by the time you finish you're like, oh, or try and buy a domain from go daddy or any of those other, and then you're like would you like? Then you're like would you like this, would you like this, would you like this? And by the end you're like I just want to buy the freaking domain Vistaprint. That's another one where they'll sit there and try and upsell you 15 times during the process.

Dave: 43:35

And I get it Like upselling is a good product, but I think you're saying you're doing it too much Like upsell is by the way upselling. When you think of upselling is you want to have it one targeted, but two. It actually complements or gives a higher quantity or quality of what you're selling. You don't want to just say hey, here's all these 17 different things, like you're saying. As an upsell, vista print, I want to buy business cards.

Duarne: 44:11

Hey, do you want to go buy this dinner, china, that you can put your name?

Dave: 44:13

on like no, you know, or like a domain. Hey, you want to buy?

Duarne: 44:14

a flag that you can put in your front yard. Yeah, I mean, how many times are you going into mcdonald's and it's like, would you like fries with that? If you're buying, like an ice cream going or a sundae, you want fries with that. No, I don't want fries with my ice cream. That's the offer.

Dave: 44:26

So when you think of like and I think that's a good point Like when you think of the opportunities for you to upsell in your business, don't just you know, for example, like, don't say all right, you're bookkeeping, and then try to upsell them to you know, marketing support, even if you have partners that do that, they're probably not looking in the same realm right now.

Dave: 44:48

Create that relationship with them and if you want to upsell, offer something that is significant and complimentary directly. So if you're selling bookkeeping, instead of when they sign on for, let's say, they sign on for quarterly, maybe you say, hey, by the way, if we upgrade this to monthly, I'll give you the first month free, but it only adds like 20% to the cost, where people might think it might be three times the cost, but it's maybe it's only 20, 25% more. Or you upsell the ability like, let's say, in your basic package you don't have a financial review session with them every month, but you could upsell them to that because it's complimentary, it's more value, right? It helps you provide the main service and the main outcome to them in an easier fashion for yourself. That's what your upsells should be directly. Once you create that relationship, that's when you can start having the conversations around other things that could potentially be given to them as support when you built that relationship. Don't try to do it all at once.

Duarne: 45:48

Yeah and look, you'll thank yourself for it as well, because you've got a whole lot less skews to worry about, a lot less services and products to deal with and you can really just focus on going out and signing up customers for the one type of service. It also it reduces the overwhelm when you talk to somebody and it adds the other thing you got. You can be really cautious. When you're having a first conversation with people. You're saying, yeah, I can do this and I can do this and I can do this. They're going to ask themselves, well, how good are you really doing each of these things? And then it's even if you're really really good at doing the first thing that you were told them you could do. You may actually completely lose that potential opportunity because they think you're a jack of all trades and a master of nothing. Right, and sometimes offer less, build the trust, then add more because you will come across as a more value proposition and you've already built up that no like trust factor by that point as well. Right, and I think that's the problem is a lot of people they fail.

Duarne: 46:52

They get so desperate to get a sale that they want to make sure that no one else has a chance of winning the sale by telling them that we could solve all these other problems at the same time and we're all guilty of it at times where sometimes we just got to sit back and go. You know what? You only had this problem. Let's just solve this one problem and I'm gonna stop there. I'm gonna hint that I can help you with other things if you need it. But let's not focus on any of that today. Let's just solve your problem you have today and let's focus on that and with that, a lot of people their mind right, can only focus on maybe one or two problems and fixes.

Dave: 47:31

So yes, long term they need solutions to everything, but they're really only focused on one or two things right now. Great, help them solve that. Give them the quick win, give them the outcome that they're desired, and then you can begin to extend the relationship with them after that. Absolutely, it's like you overwhelm them too much. You're right, blaze over.

Duarne: 47:51

Last time you bought a television. You go into a store. They sit there, you sign up and you agree to buy that television door. They sit there, they, you sign up and you agree to buy that television. They rarely will try and sell you the television with a warranty and a blu-ray player and a gaming console and a box of blu-rays to take home with you. Back when the blu-rays were a thing right, like they would make sure they sell you on the tv. Then they would ask you other follow-up questions like oh, would you like to add a warranty to that, because they've already got a commit from you.

Duarne: 48:22

At that point you can then talk about other products and services you can offer to assist with that original product.

Duarne: 48:28

But try not to overwhelm initially and I think that's a really big thing and when you're niching down you really want to focus on that type of client, whatever the product that you're going to be offering to that type of client, and just try and focus on that for a bit and you might find just by having the mindset focused on that one type of client and that one type of product, you may sell a lot more of it or you may be known as the expert in that field and before you know it you've got all these sales coming in on that product and that service. I've got one client I've been working with for over a decade marketing professional out of Australia and she has a niche of law firms because she just does and she never went in saying I want to be a specialist on law firms but she just happens to get really good referrals from law firms and together we've collaborated probably on over 20 30 different law firm websites um together and offered marketing services throughout.

Dave: 49:36

So it's just, it's an incredible thing once you become an expert in a particular niche, you can actually set up a very successful business around that particular niche without having to go outside your niche right and the beauty, too, is like also like, once you start advertising to, let's say, a particular niche, people from similar niches will start still outreaching you and then you can make the decision if it's something where you want to help them or not. But they're going to know and you're going to. They've outreached you because you're niched they're also going to you know.

Dave: 50:10

Understand that you have you know kind of like a higher, you know monthly investment or whatever but, that's the beauty, like you know, for example, like people that, like BMW, they probably still look at Mercedes, right? Or they still look at, you know, audi, the other Audis and all these other, right, you know? And they get intrigued by, like, wait a minute, why is this person only specializing in this industry? You know, I'm similar to that. Let me, let me see if they could do the same thing, like with me, and you as the owner, you as the expert, can then decide yes, I think I can, or no, I'm just going to stay within my realm, you know, but maybe give them and point them in the right direction. I mean, ultimately, that's what it comes down to.

Duarne: 50:47

It comes down to you taking control of your business, not you trying to be at the control of every one of your clients yeah, and I think, and I think just go back to that restaurant thing again you can be an expert in one type of dish. You can have one type of food that you offer, with variations, and still be really, really successful. And I think that's the common misunderstanding. Everyone's going no, no, no, especially entrepreneurs. We're always got all 100 ideas we're coming up with. We're always thinking let's add this, let's add this, let's add this. Sometimes you need a little person on your shoulder saying stop, what you're doing is working, grow that. You don't need to add more products, you don't need to add more service, you don't need to add more staff to be able to do deliver those products and services. Just focus on what you're doing and do it really well.

Dave: 51:40

I, I 100 believe in that. And you know, I feel like I mean I got we've talked about this before like I got caught up in that, like, oh, I'm gonna do all these different things. And then it's like no, no, let's, let's kind of bring it, let's rate it back in and really begin to kind of focus. And when I was early I was like, oh yeah, I'll do all this stuff for everybody, but really, you know, it wasn't doing me any favors, and now the messaging is more targeted, you know, and everything.

Duarne: 52:05

Well, the other thing is what you typically find is when you're not niched down, you charge more when you're niched down because that's your focus and people respect you for it. If you start putting in other services that you're not niched down onto, you're probably going to undersell them. You're probably going to offer them at a lower price than what they're actually valued at, because you don't fully understand the value of what you're offering, because you're not niched on it, and that can actually drive down your total. You know return. You know cost and revenue sorry profit on your. You know sales as well. So if you're making good profit on your initial product but then you realize you've added three other products on top of it which are not your specialty and you might have to end up outsourcing or spending double the time to deliver than your main product, was it really a good idea to add them on at a fraction of the profit?

Dave: 52:58

Right.

Duarne: 52:58

Well, and see where that comes out to. Is that?

Dave: 53:00

a lot of people. They don't understand that, right, they don't under. They just think they see dollar signs and they see an extra $500 a month. But what they don't realize is that they don't realize that by selling that ad ad, it's going to add an extra four hours a month to their requirement, right? So now that brings down that money per hour down significantly. You know as well as they're not measuring the outcomes that they're providing. And in the long term they may realize that by adding that extra $500 a month to the package, the likelihood of success for them providing that actual first outcome, let's say, for example, it gets reduced by 30% where they have to do 30% more work until they get to that outcome.

Dave: 53:43

And is it worth it, right? Whereas if you were to just focus on your initial sort of service and have 100% likelihood of success in the timeline that you promise, right? You get better, better testimonials, better referrals and it's just more often. Stop looking for dollar signs and I know it's easier said than done when you're maybe struggling for cash flow and you're like that extra $500 could mean a lot to me. But take the extra time to find another let's say it's a $1,000 client Instead of going from 1,001 client to go to 1,500 and require all this extra time for you and all this extra like potentially reduction in outcome, whereas if you just spent maybe an extra week or two to find another one thousand dollar client, you've made more money and your likelihood of success is greater than just one client at 1500.

Dave: 54:32

So don't look for just dollar signs. I had this conversation with a client a few months ago where they were just always focused on the gross revenue number, not the net revenue number, and what ended up happening was when we actually went in and figured out what was the cost of providing the service for the money that they were getting, they were losing money. So essentially they're thinking, hey, I'm making $5,000 a month from this client, but it was a cleaning service business and ultimately they were paying out like $5,200 a month in salaries and benefits.

Dave: 55:05

So it's like they're like where's my money going, it's well because every month you're spending $200 just to keep that client and by not understanding your numbers, you don't know that or you can't plan. I had another client where they just didn't know the gross profit. They just see the dollar per hour that they get and they don't add in the salaries or they're like oh, I'm only paying X amount in a salary, but there's indirect costs related to that. You know it's not just an hourly rate. You have salary, you have taxes, you have Social Security, you have Medicare, you have unemploymentare, you have unemployment, you have workers count and all these things play into it, like your, your projection, and so you may think you're getting 30 bucks an hour per se you know just by being there and you're only paying 15 an hour. So you figure hey, I'm getting 15 an hour. Why is my bank account not matched 15 an hour every week by number of employees I have?

Dave: 55:53

well, it's because you're actually making like five you know, so you're making all these decisions based on thinking that you're going to get 15 an hour, when in reality, you're actually making like five.

Duarne: 55:58

You know, so you're making all these decisions based on thinking that you're going to get 15 an hour, when in reality, you're going to make it five it's 67 less yeah, and this is a great and that's a great example, because I mean, if you look at it, you look at these products that are sitting on the shelves and like I I see this all the time where you've got a product and you look at it and you go, I want to know how much it costs to make that. And that's one component of it being on a shelf. The other component is the marketing, the placement cost, the restocking cost, the shipping cost.

Duarne: 56:36

You've got the warranty, staffing in the back end to take the order, place the order, pack the order, send the order. All of these things come into play when you're an entrepreneur and you're especially solopreneur. It's so easy to get caught up in the fact that your time is not of any value, and what you will tend to do is you'll say well, I can do this job for $500 a month. And what you will tend to do is you'll say, well, I can do this job for $500 a month. And then you look at it and you go well, I'm spending 25 hours to do this job, so what are you really getting paid? And you'll divide it by the 25 hours and you go oh okay, that's my rate. But what you tend to forget is there's all these other costs that are associated taxes. One of the common ones is payment gateways. People don't take into consideration how much you actually have to pay to a payment gateway to get paid you know three, four percent right now sometimes you can get it for less.

Dave: 57:29

But you know, if your margin on, if you build your product where your margin is, let's say, six percent, and you're like where's my money? Well, half of that is going to the gateway yep.

Duarne: 57:42

And that's when people don't see that, people don't realize, people don't factor. And that's where, like you know, especially when it comes to a service-based product, you know, yes, you've got to build a portfolio, yes, you've got to get customers on to get started and get the references and recommendations, but at some point you need to start charging. If there's everyone else in your industry is charging $150 to $180 an hour for the same service that you're going out and saying I'm going to offer $75 an hour, ask yourself, why are they charging that much? It's not because they can't charge $75 an hour, because they probably could, but if they did it, maybe they're not going to be in business in 12 months. So ask the question and do the research and work it out.

Duarne: 58:23

There's no need to undercut that far. Maybe go in and offer it at $140 an hour, but work out what your real hard costs are. And the other thing you should definitely look at doing is work out if I was to hire someone to do this job, job, how much would that cost me, as opposed to me doing the job, because you might be able to do the job for ten dollars an hour and feel comfortable with that, but you're not going to be able to hire anyone for ten dollars now to do that job. So when it comes time for hiring people, they're not going to be. And if they're working on those customers that you've signed up on legacy pricing, that's not going to be. And if they're working on those customers that you've signed up on legacy pricing, that's not going to be any benefit.

Dave: 59:01

Yeah, you're basically going to be losing money. Yeah, for sure, exactly.

Duarne: 59:04

You're going to go on all the. Why am I not doubling the amount of you know I'm bringing all these new business customers on.

Dave: 59:11

So, yeah, I think this is a good conversation for, like another episode where where it's like planning your business appropriately for growth. And maybe this is what we're going to do. Actually, that maybe this is what we'll talk about, you know, next week is really like how do you set up and plan now, like even as a solopreneur, for your future growth? And I think this is ultimately what begins to get you in that mindset, to begin thinking that way, so that you're not setting yourself up for failure.

Duarne: 59:39

so I think this is a good kind of topic we can, we can talk about I like that, yeah, because I mean, like we all, we've all done and we've all take, we all taken deals. We know we shouldn't have done because either desperation or just trying to get a win on the board or you know, we just felt like that was someone we wanted to help or we needed to do the job and do the deal for. But at the end of the day, it's business, we're not charities, and you need to make sure that whatever you do is sustainable and allows you to grow. If your entire business and I've heard this on Shark Tank, I reference it again but if your whole business is related around one person, that's you, and you've got no way, no processes in place to keep things operational without you, well, you're never going to take a holiday, you get it by a bus. Your business is gone.

Duarne: 1:00:32

I mean, chances are that you haven't set up the processes for scalability because it's just you. The amount of business owners I've met who will tell me that they don't have a succession plan, they don't have a delegation plan, they don't have any like. They want to bring people on, but they dread the idea of it because they just look at how much work it's going to be to create all their standard operating procedures to be able to hand off work to them and train them up to do the work Well, and all of that comes down to this, and we've said it before If it all relies on you, you own a job, you don't own a business, right?

Dave: 1:01:15

Businesses can be sold, businesses are going to grow. But if everything relies on you and you're not willing to delegate, you're not willing to put everything on paper Right, you're not willing to develop processes. You don't own a business. You own a job because what's going to happen? Let's say you want to retire. You're not going to be able to sell it because it relies on you. So you're not growing an asset, you're basically just keeping a job for yourself. And is that what you want? If your goal is to sell something in the future, to grow a business, to sell it, to get out, to exit it, then you have to be setting yourself up now with developing processes, putting things on paper right, getting people in that can do the job without you and take yourself out of the equation as much as possible. That's what people are going to buy. They're not going to buy you, right, because you're wanting to retire, you know. So there's nothing to sell if everything relies on you.

Duarne: 1:02:02

Absolutely, and I think it's that old premise of why did you start the business? Was it because you don't want to work for somebody else? Or was it to reduce your stress? Was it to get more time back? Whatever it might be, just ask yourself am I heading in the direction that's working towards that goal that I set myself at the beginning? Because sometimes working for somebody else is the best choice. Sometimes having a business might not work, and it's okay to say that, but you can give it a red hot crack and you can get in there and try all these things.

Duarne: 1:02:42

But today I love the time management conversation. I think that was really important. I think, whether you're an employee or you're actually on your own business, it's an important thing you should do because it can actually help you in both instances. When it comes down to it, um, niching down is extremely important, whether you're an employee or, again, and you're trying to go out and get customers, or you're a business owner and you're trying to niche down on what services and who your customers are. Both are both very important. Um, and just the going back to last week's conversation around cash flow, which kind of ties into what we're talking about now is knowing your numbers. Know what your numbers are so you actually know what you can do in business and what you can't do in business.

Dave: 1:03:29

Yeah I would say for this, because we're kind of wrapping up. You mentioned it like calendar.

Dave: 1:03:34

I also think the biggest thing that anybody if you take anything away from today's episode, it should be the fact that you need to do a time study. If you have never done a time study in your business and on yourself, do a time study of where your time is going. Where are you potentially losing opportunities within your day, and do it for a week. You don't have to do this forever. The idea is that you do it for a week which is a typical week for yourself, so don't do it if you have a lot of doctor's appointments or you're scheduled on vacation. That's not going to help. You Do it on a typical work week and do it from sunup to when you go to bed. So when you wake up to when you go to bed, document every part of your day for seven days. Then, when you're done, go back and analyze it, Say okay where are my?

Dave: 1:04:15

opportunities for improvement? Where are my opportunities to reduce some leaks in my calendar? And then, how do you then build that into a recurring template for your day that you can set up Monday through Saturday? I understand people sometimes need to reset Great. Take Sunday to do that. But as a business owner, you should be at least planning and doing something for your business six days a week, especially if you aren't where you want to be.

Dave: 1:04:40

If you are not where you want to be in your business and you're spending time watching a movie, or you're spending time going for drives and taking vacations, your priorities are wrong. Your attention is in the wrong space. If you're not where you need to be, you need to spend every waking moment looking and finding ideal clients to have a conversation with and to potentially offer a solution for them and an outcome for them if they have a problem. But I don't want to hear excuses from people and I hear this all the time like, hey, where are you going? Well, I'm going to go spend the weekend away for family. Okay, great. But then when they come back, they complain that they don't have enough clients, or they complain that their cashflow isn't where they need to be or the revenue is not where they want it to be and their profit's not where they want it to be. It's like look at your priorities, look where you're spending your time. Where you're spending your time is going to be a direct reflection of how successful your business is.

Dave: 1:05:37

Spend the time now so you get the free time later, exactly, invest now in yourself, invest that time. Give up maybe a year or two of vacations and invest it in yourself, right and you'll be able to take more vacations, because then you've delegated to your staff.

Dave: 1:05:52

Right, you have a business that's built around you and that's when you're spending more time away from your business. It's still successful because you have that built right. When I say your time is a reflection of where you are is when you're the only one in the business. Right, when you have a successful business, your time is not necessarily the success of the business because you can go out and invest your time elsewhere. Right, Maybe it's another business venture, Maybe it's more time with the family, Like those are the goals once you develop that successful business. But if you're still struggling to develop your successful business and then trying to get all the benefits of having a successful business, like more time, your flexibility, all that kind of stuff, that's where I mean. That's what I mean when I say your priorities aren't in line and you don't have a successful business your priorities

Duarne: 1:06:40

aren't in line and you're going to have a successful business.

Dave: 1:06:43

Yeah, not yet, Exactly Not yet. But if you, if you realign your time with your vision and you invest in the business to build that successful business, then that time right, that freedom that you want or whatever it is that you're looking for, then that will come.

Dave: 1:06:55

But if you're trying, yeah and so envision it and I wholeheartedly believe in using your mind to manifest right. It's the power of attraction. See yourself in that scenario, see yourself with the flexibilities, feel yourself right, going on these vacations and the memories you're making with your family. But don't try to do those things right now until you've had that successful business growth. And once you get that successful business growth, boom. Now you're going to be able to experience those things that you've already been visualizing for yourself. But you can't have one before the other.

Duarne: 1:07:28

Unfortunately, that is very true, be prepared for the work, absolutely, absolutely.

Dave: 1:07:38

And, trust me, like we're in the midst of it, like right now I'm not as successful as I want to be, my business isn't where I want it to be. So I'm doing these things, I'm kind of realigning my vision, and I do this on a regular basis.

Duarne: 1:07:49

But where are the tools? We're doing the work.

Dave: 1:07:53

Exactly Do the work? Be willing to give up a little bit of short-term pleasure for long-term?

Duarne: 1:08:02

pleasure and success. So if you made, it this far.

Dave: 1:08:03

We appreciate you, dornan, and I always love having these conversations. We love talking to you. Drop a comment down below what part of today's episode meant the most to you. Drop us a comment, give us your feedback. We're here every week. This is episode 13 already, which means we've been here for about 13 weeks, which is pretty crazy. It's about a third of the year. I love it. Warren, glad to be here with you. Sorry, not a third, a quarter. I'm an accountant, I know what I'm doing Quarter of the year already. But yeah, we love you. We thank you for being here. We hope something from today stuck with you that you're able to take with you again.

Dave: 1:08:37

You don't have to do everything right. Learn from us, learn from others, take pieces and parts, as Dwarin said earlier, what means something to you that you're able to replicate? That's what you want to take from the episode. Don't try to do everything, because you won't stick to it, but pick one thing and take that and put it into practice. That's all you got to do. One thing is, as I said earlier in the episode, one thing every day is going to build your momentum. Small steps every single day towards your goals, towards your success is all you need to do, and by the end you're going to look back and be like man. I'm glad I didn't try to make big leaps. I'm glad I just take one step every single day, because if I look around and I turn around, because if I look around and I turn around, I'm miles ahead of where I was, and that's all you have to do.

Duarne: 1:09:19

So, dwarf, thanks for joining me again. Thank you for the invite again, dave, always fun.

Dave: 1:09:25

I love these conversations. Look forward to it and Dwarf, have a wonderful weekend. I look forward to seeing that beautiful baby. Do you guys know the sex yet, or is it a surprise?

Duarne: 1:09:36

It's a little girl, so it kind of works out well. We get, you know, another little girl back to back. So all the clothes and toys we get to use them again. Reuse. There you go.

Dave: 1:09:46

Well, congrats, paige. If you're listening I hope you're I'm sure you're ready to pop. So I wish you guys success with the new baby. Love seeing it. Maybe we might see you, depending on timing. We may or may not see Dwarin next week. Dwarin's not here. He's going to be in the hospital. We love you all. Thanks for joining us, dwarin. Have a wonderful weekend. We'll talk to you next week. You too, buddy. Take care. See you everybody. Bye everyone.