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.
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Business Unscripted - Triumph Business Solutions
Getting Paid On Time: The Small Business Owner's Guide to Cash Flow
What happens when clients don't pay their invoices on time? Cash flow disruptions can cripple small businesses, yet many owners hesitate to implement the very policies that could protect them. Dave and Duarne share a recent real-world example where setting clear boundaries with a late-paying client ultimately secured payment after months of delays.
The duo reveals practical strategies every business owner can implement immediately: creating clear payment agreements with specific due dates, adding reasonable interest charges for late payments, offering early payment discounts to incentivize promptness, and most importantly—being willing to suspend services when payments fall too far behind. They emphasize that these practices aren't about being difficult; they're about commanding the same respect larger companies receive while protecting your business's financial health.
Beyond cash flow tactics, the conversation evolves into a profound discussion about purpose and completion. "What would you need to do or accomplish before you die in order to feel that your life was complete?" This powerful question provides a framework not just for personal reflection, but for strategic business planning. Dave and Dwarin explore how this mindset shift helps owners distinguish between building a job versus creating a true business that serves their larger goals.
The episode concludes with valuable insights on hiring and team building, revealing how most business owners sabotage interviews by talking too much instead of listening to candidates. Their practical tip? Take a brief pause before responding in any situation—this small habit prevents defensive reactions and leads to better communication with team members, clients, and partners alike.
Ready to implement these strategies in your business? Check out the Triumph Mastermind program with daily support and weekly strategy sessions designed to help you grow and scale effectively.
Thank you, hey, hey, everybody. It's Dave Wharton here and it's another episode of Business Unscripted. It's episode 14. Crazy to believe we're already on episode 14. It seems like we just started, but I'm your host, dave Wharton, founder of Tribe of tribe business solutions, and I'm here with one of my business partners, lauren bernhagen, and we're here because we want to bring you guys live sort of conversations around topics and strategies and struggles and different things that everybody faces in business. Giving you things that maybe we've gone through ways, ways that we've overcome it, and also talking through live strategies with people and struggles that we've seen with our clients as well. So we're going to talk about the good, we're going to talk about the bad, but we're just going to be brutally honest with you. So grab your cup of joe, let's jump into the show. Duarne. Welcome buddy. How are you?
Duarne:Hey Dave, I am great Busy, busy week here, but doing well Friday evening, which means I get to wind down a little bit.
Dave:Well, you better enjoy it because this is your last Friday without a newborn in the house, right?
Duarne:Absolutely Monday morning.
Dave:Congrats to you and Paige.
Duarne:Thank you. I don't know if you guys have it in the US, but it's Father's Day here on Sunday in the Philippines so yeah, father's Day is going to be checking my wife into the hospital and Monday morning she will be scheduled to have her cesarean. So I'm waking up to a new daughter on Monday morning. All going well.
Dave:Well, congratulations to you and Paige. Happy Father's Day, of course, to you and then also any other fathers. If you're listening to this, happy Father's Day as well. On Sunday. Hopefully you guys are getting out and spending some time with the kiddos, yes, and you too.
Duarne:It's an exciting time, isn't it?
Dave:Yes, thank you. So yeah, tell Paige with the kiddos. So, yes, thank you, thank you, um. So yeah, tell page. I said hello and hopefully a couple more days left until she's ready to you know, pop and do all that fun stuff.
Duarne:so I know she's looking forward to it, because the whole uh, lack of mobility and, you know, swollen ankles and sore hands and yeah, I'm sure there's lots of other things which I'm not even thinking of right now that she's, you know, told me about um are all sorts of fun. So she was at the hospital today. She's getting a final set of labs done. Everything came back clear. She got to look at the room she's going to be staying in, so exciting times.
Dave:That's awesome and you know, it's one of those things where, like I will say this, it is amazing things what a woman's body can do in terms of growing a baby. So, like you know, us as men, like we have one job, right, uh, one job, then we're done, you know, and then the next nine months is is ultimately on the woman and we're there for support. So, uh, but more power to them and, you know, in two back-to-back, like you know, you just had your other one a year ago well, on the 24th, our daughter autumn will be one year old, so we're literally talking uh about almost an hour, almost, yeah, they actually fall within one year of each other.
Dave:Just shy of a year my me and and my brother. We were that way. So I was, he was february 16th. He was younger, on february 25th, so literally we were, you know, a nine days short of being exactly a year apart. Um, and you know, sadly, he passed away, like you know, wow, 20 some years ago now. It's crazy, we think we talked about that and uh, but my two oldest are Irish twins. They're 10 months apart. They're actual Irish trains like they're literally only 10 months apart. There was no breaks there. There was was none, no, whatsoever.
Dave:It's kind of getting over with Congrats to you and Paige. More than likely, you'll probably be taking care of Baby next week. It'll probably be me solo.
Duarne:Maybe I'll take a break from looking after Baby and come and join you. We'll see how it happens.
Dave:We'll see how you're feeling. Yeah. That's right, love it, love it, love it, all right so really excited about that.
Duarne:So that's been a big development for this week. And, like this morning I was having a conversation. Actually, a good friend of mine came over and we had a business meeting talking about some bits and pieces with his museum. When we had a business meeting talking about some bits and pieces with his museum and, um, his wife's pregnant at the moment as well and she's uh, probably about two months or so, and he was talking about the hormones and he, he's got a couple of, uh, his ex-wife he's got a couple of boys with her. Uh, they're teenagers now, so he's kind of forgotten about all these hormone things and he's sitting there having that conversation going. It's the weirdest thing. Uh, she starts crying for no reason. She starts, you know, demanding that she wants food. The other day she wanted a certain type of fish and she, when I said, look, do you really need it? Fine, fine, I'll go get it myself. Where's your rod? I'll go catch one, I guess.
Dave:The problem with that is, once I say, hey, I want this, our job is Get it. Get it Let me go get it for you, yes, and recognize that about half the time when you come back, she's not going to want it any longer. Oh, absolutely.
Duarne:Well, when I realized Paige was pregnant the last time I think it was this time we we'd actually been out with a client for dinner and he's visiting from Australia. And my wife looks at me and says, hey, so I feel like dragon fruit. Now, dragon fruit is a tough fruit to get your hands on at the best of times here. This was Sunday 11 pm. She was insisting she wanted dragon fruit. I'm like, yeah, hon, it's not really going to happen on a Sunday. We can go look for some tomorrow. Get somebody to go look for some tomorrow. Well, little did I know. She was on her cell phone contacting a rider who she gets to do errands for from time to time and had him run around for an hour and a half trying to find said dragon fruit for her.
Dave:So she sent her driver to go get it.
Duarne:And I'm like, oh my god. So I had my um, I had my catch up with her at home and she's telling me this after our client meeting. I'm like, are you serious? I said that's mad, that's crazy. This you're not gonna find anything. She says, yeah, he found nothing. It was really disappointing. I said, hon, I think you need to go into the top drawer and take a pregnancy test. Sure enough? She's like looking like, are you serious? And then a few minutes later she comes back in and she goes hon, it's positive. I said, all right, I've already ordered another two, just to be sure, with different brands. So we had two delivery, a delivery driver to deliver two more. And sure enough, yeah, there you go. That was my first hint that she was asking and craving for some random shit that I just was like, okay, at 1130 at night, Like it's like 910.
Dave:All right. Well enough about pregnancy. This isn't a pregnancy podcast, but I am excited for you and Paige, so, but pre-show, so I think we had a great sort of pre-show conversation and it kind of stems from some of the stuff that we've been talking about recently in terms of cash flow and knowing your numbers. So, jordan, I know this week has been kind of interesting for you, so why don't you share the story? You shared? That kind of goes along with cash flow and invoicing and et cetera. So go ahead and share that.
Duarne:Yeah, absolutely. Well, it became very evident again leading up to you know, middle of the month, making sure we get some cash coming into the business, keeping that cash flow, you know, steady, that clients who don't pay their bills on time or don't pay their invoices on time are going to continue to be the bane of our existence when it comes to cash flow, and it's something that you know, I know we touched on in the last couple of weeks. But the question begs, like, what do you do when you do have clients who are falling behind on invoices, that aren't paying their invoices on time? Or you know how do you approach that. What conversations do you have to have around that? And the majority of clients that do pay their invoices on time, you know, do you reward them or do you penalize ones who don't pay on time? You know all of these things come into play and for me we're kind of, I guess, lucky in a sense where we can use the threat of suspension of services, because our services are hosting services typically, or other services which we can actually turn off if we need to, for some of our services at least. So we had a client in particular. My accounts team raised to me that they hadn't paid two weeks ago, they hadn't paid from April and May and obviously we're in June, so the June invoice, so it was now three invoices that hadn't been paid for a significant amount for the local economy here and we were a little bit, I was a little bit shocked that it hadn't been brought to my attention earlier. So of course I jumped onto it, contacted the client, said, hey, look, we need to get this sorted out. And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're trying to sort something out, we'll get it sorted. I said, well, look, I'll give you until, uh, end of friday, friday end of business. Um, then I'm have to put a suspension notice in and suspend all your services. Um, same day I got paid for april, one of the invoices outstanding, and I was like, oh great. And then I got a promise that the next invoice would be paid by friday.
Duarne:The next next week, friday, the next week comes along. Of course I've had to keep a note to contact them and say, hey, look, haven't seen the payment come through. Where's the payment? Can we just confirm it's coming through? Today, crickets, nothing. So I followed up on Monday nothing, wednesday, nothing. Today, email goes out saying look, I'm sorry guys. You've had your uh, one week grace and an extra week's grace now, so you're now two weeks over the grace period. We agreed on that. You should pay that invoice from may. We're going to be suspending your services at close of business.
Duarne:I get an instant reply within the hour apologizing for the lack of response and the payment was being cleared and will be paid later today. We get to five o'clock no payment. So I mean, this is a story we've all had. So at this point I know a lot of business owners would just basically say look, you know well that sucks, I'll chase it on Monday. I pushed it a little bit further and I've sent well. Unfortunately, you know well that sucks, I'll chase it on Monday. I pushed it a little bit further and I've sent well. Unfortunately, due to the payment not being received by close of business today, your services have already been scheduled for suspension at midnight. So if you make a payment over the weekend, we'll be able to re-enable your services on Monday morning 8 am.
Duarne:And just before this podcast tonight I get a message it's been paid. So sorry for the delay. And, sure enough, check the account. It's in the account. So the question for me. I guess begs is. What do other business owners do? What do you do when people haven't paid you and your cash flow is being affected, and you know? Do you have penalties? Do you just sit there and grin and bear it? You know? Do you beg them to pay? Do you demand they pay? You know what. Do you get on a call and have a conversation about it. What do you do?
Dave:well. So I mean, to me it brings up a few things or that you know that I think we you know kind of brought up since we talked about this morning. The first is you have to make sure that in your agreement you know you have some sort of payment expectations. And I know a lot of business owners like I don't want to do a contract, it feels like. It feels like I'm locking them into something. So great, don't do a contract. You can do like I'm locking them into something. So great, don't do a contract.
Dave:You can do an agreement that sets out expectations of hey, this is month to month, but here's what I expect of you. And with that, in the payment terms state it's due on the 1st, the 5th, whatever the 15th, and I give you a 10 day period. If it's not paid by 10 days, we're going to begin to charge interest at 1% per annum or whatever you want to put it, and or $5, whichever you know, less or greater, whatever you want to put it. But the power in that is that when people don't pay you, you can start adding this interest payment. When people don't pay you, you can start adding this interest payment. You can start adding this late payment to your invoice and it helps cover that additional costs of recovering those funds right. It covers your time for having to spend time writing emails after emails, or your staff's time Right. And it also enforce, you know, it helps force people to pay when they're late because it's like I don't want to, because it's like I don't want to pay interest, like I don't want to pay a late penalty, so I'll make sure that I'm trying to pay it on time.
Dave:Uh, the second thing that I think is important for a lot of people to pick up from from that story is that you have to be okay with taking and stopping services for your clients, and I'm going to be the first one. I was was a victim of this, right, you know, and of my own sort of mindset, and what I feel like a lot of people get into the mindset of is they're like well, it's my client already. I don't want to lose them if I stop service. I don't want them to just go elsewhere, so I'll just continue to provide services, even though they haven't paid me yet.
Dave:And what happens and I learned from this myself because I did this is that those people are now like, well, they're just going to keep giving me services for free, I'm not going to pay. So by saying, hey, in your circumstance here you said I'm going to suspend your services. That forced them to pay because they didn't want to lose the service. So for them, they see value in your service, know that. But now it's like hey, you're not going to get laid anymore because I'm going to take your services away for a service-based individual like myself.
Dave:It comes down to like hey, I know things come up, I'm just letting you know I'm going to stop, we're going to stop our meetings until invoices are caught current and what that does is it enforces that you're not going to give away things for free. Right, your time is valuable. Yeah, you have to see yourself as value and have your have that sort of trust in yourself and your business that if you were to say I'm going to stop services with you, they're going to value you enough to pay you and if they don't value enough to pay you, you can take that time elsewhere and go use it somewhere else. Um, and I think you also the third thing that you brought up too and that I wanted to you know kind of offer for people you you offered, like the benefit of people passing on time, and so if you're B2B, one thing that you can do and it helps cash flow as well is have payment terms, and a lot of people what they do is they have there's a payment term, it's 110 or 210, and then net 30.
Dave:And what that is is that first number that one or that two is a percentage, and what it says is that, hey, we're going to give you a one or a 2% discount if you pay in the first 10 days that I send you this invoice. Otherwise it's due in full in 30 days. So it helps give them a benefit if they want to pay early. They can save one or 2%, or you know they're going to pay the full amount in 30 days. Either way, it helps you, you know, get money quicker. If you're looking to increase some cash flow, and that's something that you could also do, like if you need to raise cash, if you have a lot of invoices outstanding, you know, just send an email. I talked to a client about this. Hey, you got to raise cash, you have a lot of invoices that are outstanding. Just say hey, I noticed you had $5,000 outstanding invoices right now. Just wanted to offer, if you're able to take care of that by the end of, let's say, the end of the day today, I would be willing to take 2% off those invoices for you. Let me know if we want, we can organize a payment and it helps you kind of raise some capital that way. If you need to raise some cash, maybe for an investment or a purchase or something like that and you're low on cash right now. So those are kind of the three things.
Dave:For me that kind of came up from the story is like one make sure you have an agreement that sets payment terms, expectation of when things are due, penalties and interest if there's late payments, and then also like that term of if you miss and you're 30 days behind, we reserve the right to cancel services. As well as having the, we also require a 30-day notice if you are going to cancel services, a 30-day notice if you are going to cancel services. Otherwise you're going to have a penalty of X for not meeting that or you're going to have to pay in the 30 days for whatever the date of notice that you give us Great things. Those are agreements. They're not contracts. It's just an agreement that sets the expectations. You can also in there, put in your expectations that the client should have of you, which means what are you going to do for your client? Put that in the agreement as well, so it's two-sided. Everybody has an understanding. It's just going to help alleviate things down the road. So you don't need to have a contract where you're locking people in to stay 12 months, but you can have an agreement that sets these things up and sets the expectations right.
Dave:The second thing don't be afraid to cancel service. Don't be afraid to stop or suspend service, like you did in your scenario, um, or at least have like like you were going to follow up with it. It was a threat, right, not a threat, but it was like hey, just a notice. Hey, by the way, you're getting suspended, but if they didn't pay by right now, you would have suspended their service at the end.
Duarne:you have to follow through, otherwise they just will continue to keep doing it until such time. And and here's the thing, let's take a moment to think about this when was the last time your bank, when you got a credit card due or a loan due, didn't charge you additional interest or penalties, excepted the fact that you were late on payments? And you know, it is not a worry, we're going to give you more time, no penalties at all, or even a telco. The last time your cell phone company or your home internet company, what didn't shut your service off for non-payment after an extended period of time? They gave you the notice, they gave you the warning, and if you don't pay it on time, there's typically penalties related to that.
Duarne:So we do it in utilities all the time. We expect it and accept that big companies do this to us, but for some reason we shy away from it for small business, when the big companies don't need our money as much as the small businesses do. Because small business owners are the ones that are needing that cash flow to keep flowing everything through, to keep those services going. They're the ones that are needing that cash flow to keep flowing everything through, to keep those services going. They're the ones juggling to make sure that everyone gets taken care of and, at the same time, the lights stay on. So I think we need to be compassionate towards business owners as well, that we do owe money to that. We need to make sure we pay their invoices on time, that we help with their cashflow, and if we help with their cashflow, then hopefully that's going to help. They're going to people are going to do that with your cashflow. Whether you're a business to business or a business to consumer model, it's still relevant either way.
Dave:Well, yeah, and so you just have to start. You have to see yourself as kind of that bigger business and operate in some ways that they do. Now it's not saying that you can't forgive a late fee or something for a good client that says, hey, by the way, like I apologize, like my AP clerk was out. You know, the invoice got lost in the shuffle. You can forgive it if you want, but also it's there because it's for those people that like to always pay you late.
Dave:Well, if you're always going to pay me late like you're always going to pay an interest penalty, like I'm not going to continue to do that you know, and so you take that strategy. You take that sort of mindset from these bigger businesses and you begin to apply it to yourself in a small business.
Duarne:But reversing that. Like you said as well, you can change the mindset If you don't feel comfortable with the word penalties. Offer a discount for early payments. I mean, that's a. That's an easy appeal as well. Like, if you pay on or before the due date of the invoice, then you're, we're going to give you a five percent discount, two percent discount, three percent discount, whatever that might look like. It doesn't really matter, but make sure you factor that in um, because that that's sometimes that's an easier sell if you're a little timid about trying to charge penalties or you're trying to put penalties into contracts, but if you go putting in saying, hey look, if you pay early, I'm going to give you a two percent discount on your invoice yeah, but the problem, the problem with that is is, if you don't have, if you don't have it built into the wording that you're going to continue to charge penalties and interest for non-payment, somebody's just going to say, okay, well, I'll just stop, I just won't pay, right, like I don't care about your you should definitely add that in.
Dave:Yeah, let's say your invoice is $1,000 and you're going to give on playing late if you don't have a penalty in there.
Dave:They're just going to take that thousand and let it ride for two months, three months, until they feel like they want to pay it. But if you say, look, I'm going to charge you 10% interest per annum, which means you take the 10% divided by 12 every month that they're late, so it's like a little under one percent, so you're gonna add ten dollars. That's just round up and just say you're gonna add ten dollars minimum every month. Um, you know that that thousand dollars becomes a thousand fifty, a thousand sixty, pretty quick. You know what I mean? Um, so it's one of those things where you have to have to have some sort of late.
Dave:You're gonna protect yourself you could call it like late late, that you could call it a late payment charge, like you don't even have to care like yeah, late, you know, or something you could come up with something.
Duarne:I think I think I think that's definitely the case and you need to have something. So like I challenge everybody who's listening to go check your agreements that you've got with your customers and see what protection you put in there and what uh penalties you put in there for late payments. Penalties you put in there for late payments because I know for the longest time I didn't have those penalties written into my contracts.
Dave:I do as I was the same way as I go. You know, I think it's one of those things where it's something that we've learned, that we're sharing, because and we we're now teaching we teach our clients, we remind our clients about this, because it's something that is small but can have a great impact into your overall operations as a business.
Duarne:Oh, it can. I mean, we're talking about cash flow and how critical that is for small business, right? And then when you start talking about one of the critical components of cash flow is money coming back into the business In order flow, is money coming back into the business? In order to get money coming back into the business, you need to make sure that people are paying those invoices on time. And I think the other thing is is, if you have someone who's consistently paying their invoice really quickly, give them a call and thank them occasionally. Or when you talk to them, thank them hey, look, I noticed you pay your invoice really quickly. Really appreciate that. That's really helpful for us as a small business and they're going to appreciate that the fact that you acknowledge that for them, that's really really helpful.
Duarne:And if you do get an invoice, one other thing which I think you really need to focus on too is, if you're emailing an invoice out to somebody, you can't just assume they've gotten it. If you get to the point where it's due date, feel free to follow them up. Hey, I just want to check. You got that invoice, okay, and if, because they might go, we didn't get it, oh, you get on a call and they do a screen share and there it is sitting in their spam folder, or you know whatever that might, or you mistype the email.
Dave:Make sure that, um you can, in some of your invoicing systems too. Just make sure you set up the automatic reminders for people uh, yeah you know.
Dave:You know you send out the invoice and typically I'd say, send out the invoice about two weeks ahead of time before the due date. Sometimes you can even go earlier if you want, um, but send it out two weeks and then you send like a. You know, have your automatic reminders go out five days before the due date. You know, 24 hours before the due date, and then you can even have one that goes out like two days after. Hey, we noticed that your invoice was paid. Like you know, it was due two days ago. You know what I mean.
Duarne:If you already paid this, just disregard this message.
Dave:Well, and some of those, like some, the automatic systems will not send it if it's recognized that it's paid, because it's part of the payment system, if you're saying, just in case they're paying with a check in the mail or something like that. You know some old school, yeah, okay, yeah, if you're, but I mean those automated systems are great.
Duarne:I mean you know your quickbooks, your zero, all those other systems out there. They're all integrated into your bank accounts, your stripe accounts, your paypal accounts, your bank accounts, your Stripe accounts, your PayPal accounts, your Memo accounts All that stuff is connected now, right. So it's really, really convenient to do that. But one of my clients back in Australia he's got an accounts person and he trains them on what he calls bulldog mode, and if he was listening, he'd know exactly what I'm talking about Bulldog mode if he was listening. As you know exactly what I'm talking about bulldog mode. It's where he gets his account person to go into bulldog mode and they get a little bit hey, you haven't paid your bill yet and they go on a chasing uh, what's going on, just want to know when that's going to happen. So anyone who's late on payments, he gets on the. He gets someone on the phone to call them and just confirm payment and take notes as to when they expect to receive the payment and then how they're going to receive the payment. So he gets on a call and one of the things that he made sure was that, hey, I just want to talk, okay, so when will that be getting paid? Cool, and how will you be paying that? Will that be by bank transfer or credit card, etc? It's like oh, it's credit card, oh, how about I send you after this? I'll send you a link to our credit card payment. Um, you know to make a credit card payment and so he's, he trains them up on a technique so he can get stuff paid quickly. Because if he he agrees that cash flow is key and he's been doing that for a long time he is a prime example of when cash flow isn't and these agreements are not in place, they can really damage your business.
Duarne:And one story he shared with me is very early on. He had a business 20 years ago which went into administration because he had one client who put in a massive order with him and they paid it. Then they put in another massive order, but then they went into administration and he didn't know that they'd gone into administration. So, okay, so that's where administration is a voluntary administration, where they go into they're in a bankruptcy.
Duarne:I should say, yeah, they declared bankruptcy, and administration in australia means that somebody's they've actually um put an administrator in government, mandated administrator who will come in and work out who gets paid, what? So if they're in bankruptcy, they'll work out any money coming back in all right, you'll get 20 cents on the dollar, you'll get 30 cents on the dollar, you get 10 cents on the dollar. So he just happened to be unlucky that time around and it was something like you know, tens of thousands of dollars for a you know he's small business back then, worth of physical product that he'd had to pay for which he never got paid for and he had to declare bankruptcy because, you know the fee was just huge and it was too damaging for his business at the time. So that forced him to make better decisions around cashflow getting paid for goods before ordering the goods to deliver, getting paid up front. So he put processes in place to protect his cashflow and to make sure that he was protected.
Dave:I think that's the biggest thing that we're talking about. Right is you as as an individual, as a business owner, have to pay attention to your cash flow. You have to put the processes, the monitoring, the checks and balances in place. So, if you're listening to this, your goal, your your sort of assignment for the week from this podcast right Is to go take a look at your agreements. Do you have penalties and interest in there? Do you have, like this late fee payment, whatever you want to call it? Is it built in there? If it is great, are you using it Right? Are you actually, then, when people aren't paying, you implementing that?
Dave:Yeah, are you? Are you stopping service with people who are maybe two or three months behind? If you don't have, you know, and they and they haven't caught up and there's no plan for catch up, like that's your assignment to go and take a look at that. So with that, like you know, dwarin, great, great example. I think it was a great kind of conversation topic to talk cash flow. I think we're going to continue to talk ways to implement and kind of you know, impact your cashflow and if you have any questions on this or anything into the future, like, drop them down below. You can send us a message, whether it's on Facebook, linkedin, youtube, wherever you're watching this. Like, drop a question. If you have a business and you're like man, how do I, how do I word it, how do I implement, how do I hold myself accountable? Whatever it is, drop it down below, duarn, and I will answer that for you.
Duarne:Sorry to cut you there. It's like we were talking about right. You've got to have the systems in place, the processes in place, to be able to action. What we've talked about here with the cash flows to talk to action, the late payments and the invoices to make sure you have a process to chase up and follow it all comes down to just being prepared and having those systems in place.
Dave:Correct, correct. So, and with that, so we'll bring the advertising part of the podcast to you. So if you're interested and you want to and you have no idea how to set up a system, you have no idea how to implement this or create a cashflow projection or anything like that in your business, and you want to start getting yourself out of the business and start developing those processes to bring people in to help you and actually grow and scale your business, dorn and I are revamping our Triumph Mastermind program, so it's with daily support. We're also going to have a weekly strategy coaching mentoring session with you all, as well as access to the community, other business owners for networking, founder member pricing, lifetime savings discounts of like 75% off if you're one of the first people to get in. So we're going live here soon.
Dave:We look forward to having you in there. We feel like it's going to be massive value, with so much that if you don't feel like you've gotten massive value after the first 30 days, we'll refund your first 30 days and you can cancel at any time. Dwarin and I are going to make ourselves available to you to answer questions, to help you set up these systems, whatever you need in your business. That's what the Triumph Mastermind is for, so we hope to see you in there. So that ends the 30, 45 second sort of advertisement portion of this podcast.
Duarne:All right, so I'm just excited about it.
Dave:Yeah, I'm just excited about it.
Duarne:So the other day about it.
Dave:Yeah, I'm just excited about it, help us, help you. So the other day, so yesterday, I was actually on a walk and I was listening to it's a book, the Way of Superior man, and it was something interesting to kind of popped up and it was a question that is asked in there and it really kind of made me think for a minute, like you know, wait a minute, like I've never even like, I guess, like stopped to really think of this and I guess I wanted to pose the question to you, listening, and also like to you, dwarin, for conversation here. But the question was what would you need to do or accomplish before you die in order to feel that your life was complete and then it followed up with, and are you taking steps today towards that?
Duarne:That's a really interesting question, isn't it?
Dave:Right, like you know, and like you know, we're going through the motions every day, like we're going through the well, yeah, making money. Like I want to be successful, I want to, you know you know reach, you know this peak, or I want to have this income level, but ultimately, when you stop to think about it, you're just like man, like what is it that? I myself and here's the thing like there's no right wrong answer here, because, dwarin, you're going to feel differently than me. You, listening is going to feel different than Dwarin and I.
Dave:But the question is to yourself like what do you need to have, happen or you know to do, or to accomplish in order for you to say that your life was complete by the time you die? And then, with that, having the accountability every day to say, yes, what I did today was helping me accomplish that path. And so, for myself, right, it was like well, I think it was for me, and something that is definitely a work in progress. Right, I just kind of began to think about this history. But, you know, one of those things is like having the, that goal of impacting a thousand businesses right by the end of 2028. I think it's a start, but I think, ultimately it's just like helping and having a positive impact on the world. You know, and having the tangible results to show for it that I was making a positive impact would, for me, let me know that my life was complete.
Dave:On top of that, family right, hopefully, my kids have instilled values and things that I've wanted to learn, to teach them, and they've learned from it, and now they're teaching their great you know. And having grandkids and family and all of that I feel like that would make my life complete. I don't need to have a yacht, I don't need to have, you know, a million dollar, multimillion dollar homes Like yeah, would that be nice, great Sure. A million dollar, multi-million dollar homes. Like yeah, would that be nice, great sure. But I don't think that's what my life means to have to be complete.
Duarne:So do I mean? What about you?
Dave:I mean, obviously it's the first time, like I didn't even pose the question in pre-show because I wanted to kind of get your like live reaction to it. But for yourself, like what? Like initial reactions? Obviously maybe you know, post some put some thinking for you this week but and obviously it may change on monday when you have a baby, another baby, but uh, what's your initial sort of reactions?
Duarne:well, I think it's pretty clear. I've got to make sure that my bunker is set up for the zombie apocalypse to start with and that my family's going to be safe in that bunker with enough food to last at least two lifetimes so we can survive a couple of generations. No, just kidding, um, look for me it's about. I want to make sure that my children whether it's, you know, a year from now, 10 years from now, 50 years from now have the tools they need to do better in this world than I did quicker. I want to give them the. I want to give them the tools so they can learn how to do better in this world than I did quicker. I want to give them the. I want to give them the tools so they can learn how to do things quicker and achieve more quicker than what I was able to. You know, I'm 40 plus now and if they could do it at 30 plus, what I'm able to do at 40 plus, and I mean I think that's incredible accomplishment. Like just giving them the tools and the skill set to be able to do that sooner. But also to be humble and give back, I think is really important, and for me we're working currently on a way to give back through some ventures that I'm working on with some of my team and that's really important to me.
Duarne:So, you know, I think part of my mission before I was to pass on, and you know I'd like to leave that legacy or something good that can be, you know whether, because, look, our name's going to disappear at some point yeah, it's just the reality. We're not all famous people are going to have a name on a plaque on a building and shit. That's just not going to case. But but our kids, they're our legacy, the foundations, the businesses look, they can come and they can go, but if I can instill some great values and teach them how to earn for themselves, how to be be comfortable, how to do business while giving back and adding value to the world, I think I would have accomplished what I want to accomplish, um, especially, just, you know, if we can do it all in good health. I mean, I think wealth wealth is really important when it comes to, uh, having a being able to do more, because, with money but health is more important than wealth to me.
Duarne:But I mean in saying that I mean countries like where you are and I am. You need money to be able to buy healthcare, so it's not like back home in Australia where healthcare is free. So for me here I want to make sure my family is set up to be able to survive in the event of a large scale health problem within the family, that they're financially comfortable and that they've got the means and the ability to provide for themselves in the future as well, and not rely just on what I was able to do and well round about what you're saying wealth is definitely subjective, right um you know, because my my idea of wealth is different than your idea of wealth, is different from you listening's idea of wealth, and some people may lump health, as you know, being wealthy.
Dave:Right, if you're healthy, then you have your sign of being wealthy, or whatever it may be for some people. So you know it is an interesting question, but here's why I posed it right, and I wanted to kind of get your initial thought. But, like it's also, you can apply this to your business. Like you could take this question instead of just saying, like you yourself, but applying it to your business, like what would I want my business to do or what do I want my business to accomplish in order for me to say that it's complete and my journey with this business is complete? Is it you grow to exit right, because you want to sell it? Is it you grow because you want it to be? You know, to give you residual checks while you're doing other things right and you're off on the beach and spending time with your family, but the business is, you know, sending you basically dividend and profit checks every month.
Dave:Like, ultimately, like to think that, and I think this is where a lot of people miss when they go to and they start a business. They're just like I'm just going to start a business because they're sick of working for somebody else. They have a skill right. They're like I'm great at doing bookkeeping, for example, so I'm going to leave my bookkeeping account and I'm going to start doing this for myself. But what they don't think about is they don't think about this. They don't think about, like, what do I have to do here in order for me to feel like it's complete or that it's grown?
Dave:And they don't have that end goal in sight. They don't know what they're working towards. So what they do is they just end up continuing to build a job, right. They just continue to feel like they're busy and it's not actually a business, right? And that's where I feel like this question, why I thought it was really important, because it's not only something to think about for your life as a as a human being, but it can also apply to your business. So if you think about it and obviously you're not going to have an answer right away but like just take a moment and just sit with it, you know like, just just give it some thought. Like whether it's like put on some relaxing music and turn off the lights and close your eyes and just really sit with that question like what do you need to do or complete within your business in order for you to feel like it's been a success?
Duarne:you know, it's actually interesting. I've been having this conversation because we're looking at a couple of transitions here at the moment into other things, and part of the transitioning period is talking about existing businesses that we have, and we made the tough decision, you know, earlier this year to shut one down, decided that it just wasn't going to be part of the long term and the other business, which is our primary source of income, that business is continuing to, uh, do well, it's doing okay, we're surviving on it. We have a strategy and a plan that it'll actually be there to support, um, our new ventures that we're working on. But at the same time, we want to use it as a way to empower some certain individuals that work for us and give them the ability to basically build that up and take some ownership within it. And again, we can still earn from it residual and still be involved in portions of it, but nowhere near as much as we are right now and allowing us to focus on other things like. One example is our non-profit that we've just set up, where we'll be doing an education, give back and livelihood program for local filipinos, and that's really important to us, that's really exciting for us.
Duarne:So I see that and you know, and another opportunity which looks like we've, uh might have, you know, some great news coming up on. You know it's going to be a very, uh, incredible opportunity around the environment, um, for us, you know, and some sustainability and environmental good. So that's going to help us with some legacy for the future, I guess, as well. So that sort of thing makes me feel very content and very fulfilled. But you're right, when I first set up my business, I didn't think about what the exit was. I was talking about I need to get some money coming in, I need to make some money, I need to get some money in the door. And then I made some money and I'm like I need to make more money. And it's only at some point down the track where you have that realization like, well, why am I doing this? Why am I getting out of bed and doing this? And it's no different.
Dave:See the thing you said there right is when you first got in business, there's money, money, money, money. But when you answered the question on was it wasn't. It had nothing to do with money. A little bit had to do with money because it was like health care, setting people up for the future, but like ultimately it was, it was health right, it was a little bit of freedom. Really, what your goal is is freedom when you're doing an analysis on your business you just mentioned it how do I get myself that freedom that I initially need, that I need in order to feel like a success, to make more and more money? It's how do I now get more people in? So you taking your money and investing in the people to continue to make more money for the business gives you that freedom that you're looking for.
Dave:You know, and I've been having this conversation with a client of mine as well, like for over and over for years now because he, you know, the topic keeps coming up about how it's always on him and he's trying to get over the fact of, like he needs to get himself out of the business, and so we're continuing to work towards that and so it's one of freedom is important to him because he's realized he's gone through a lot of like life changes and things like that, and he realizes that it's just on him to if he doesn't go out and do the work, he doesn't get paid, and so it's like, okay, well, how do you take what you do on a regular basis and multiply that, right? How do you take what you do and turn it into some sort of system that you can also give to other people? Right? And these are the ways that you can, as a business owner, start thinking of how you can multiply yourself into and provide more freedom for yourself.
Dave:Um, if that's something that's important to you, which for you, jordan heard like that's what, that's what it is well, it's interesting, right?
Duarne:I mean because, like I've had this conversation with um, a good friend of mine, just a few weeks ago and a few months before that, and he was telling me that he'd built an entire team up to basically hand off and handle the business for him, uh, which allowed him to go off and do what he wanted to do, which was build up a community and a podcast, um, and, you know, provide this great information and, you know, earn from that portion and he's got a. He's got, like this great YouTube plaque there already. So he's already been doing this, you know, to get himself to this point. Well, his team let him down. His team let him down pretty bad over the last, you know, six months and he's had lots of customers coming back in and he's in professional services. So he's had a lot of customers coming in saying you know, we're not getting the responses we expect, we're going to take our business elsewhere or, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not able to refer you anymore because it's my reputation's on the line here and I can't do that. So he realized that he, um, he wasn't ready for that. Even though he was ready mentally and he wanted to do it, he hadn't set his business up to be able to do it.
Duarne:So he was sitting there with me one day when I was one of the guys who said look, I'm going to struggle to refer business to you at this point because I know that then my friends that I'm referring and colleagues that I'm referring are not getting looked after in the way that I get looked after, which I expect, and he was like, yep, I, that falls on me.
Duarne:I totally appreciate it, I understand, and the conversation fell down to there was a lack of systems. There was a lack of training, communication and systems internally. So once he understood where the where that was missing, he's now got a plan on how we can actually tackle and get to that so we can get back to doing what he wants to do and getting back to not feeling like he's obliged to turn up and work in his main primary business, um, but help get every level, everyone up to where they need to be so he can go out and do what he wants to do and build that podcast and build that you know portion of the business with the community, which will drive more business into his main business anyway. So it's benefits for everybody. And you know he empowered some of the individuals within his business as partners to be able to get the earning potential to be able to make that.
Dave:You, you know, do that work, but it doesn't always work out that way, because best intentions, well, they're not always you know Well, but it does come down to also like when you're first starting to do that, you're first starting to take the reins away. It now becomes you also then become more of like a manager, like you have to oversee. And I think where sometimes people get into the trap is they're like oh, I brought this person on, I give them an assignment, they're going to do it, they're going to do it perfectly. But you have to train right. So you have to give yourself some time for training and to give yourself some time for oversight, and you have to give yourself some time for correction. And if you don't build those things in or you don't build a solid process around that for yourself and you just want to say, oh, I brought somebody in, I'm gonna go do something else now and let them be, you're not.
Dave:You're not setting them up for success and you're not setting yourself up in the business up for success.
Duarne:So you're right. I mean you're setting people up for failure. I mean we've talked about this before, where it doesn't matter what level you bring people in on, you have to train them. You have to have processes in place, you have to have systems in place. You have to train these new people in your processes and systems. And it's not a case of just like, hey, I want to do this, I've hired someone, they can handle it, let's just walk away. I mean, I've tried that before um. I tried hiring project managers thinking they're going to solve my project management problems and they didn't, because they didn't think the way I did. They didn't understand how I thought and it just didn't end up working out um. We've had operations managers we've hired in the past. It didn't work out um for out for the same sort of purpose. I hired them because they have a skill set, but they weren't able to deliver on that.
Dave:Let me ask I guess let's ask this question right so you brought people in and I think this is something that a lot of people they're hesitant on hiring for that exact reason. They're like well, I hire people based on their history and their skill set, et cetera, but then they fail. So why do you feel like in those circumstances they felt, was it not enough training? Was it not enough follow-up? Was it not enough sort of like understanding of the business? Maybe the systems weren't set?
Dave:up right, where do you feel like in your scenario? Where was the breakdown?
Duarne:yeah, where is the breakdown for me? I think it was a combination of things. It was one they didn't. They came in too confident and didn't ask enough questions. So the assumptions were made because no questions are being asked that they knew what they were doing and not wanting to be a micromanager in the situation, because one of my pet hates is micromanaging and I didn't want to be that guy who was standing over the shoulder checking everything they were doing. But what I realize is it's just about being over-communicating.
Duarne:Over-communicating is not a bad thing early on in the piece. If you over-communicate just to make sure that everybody understands what they're doing and how they're going, you can always reign it back in the future once you see they're actually heading in the directions you need them to be heading. It was also there wasn't enough oversight from my side where I was making assumptions that things were going to be done. I wasn't feeling like I should be checking them and again I felt that fell into a micromanager style role. Reality was it's not. It's about just checking on your investment. Putting people into business roles is about an investment you're investing in those people to take time away from your work and do that work for you. Um other other parts of it were like like I may have misjudged their personalities, they weren't the right fit for the business or, you know, they didn't share the same visions, they weren't able to think the same way I do, and back then that was important to me. Reality, do you feel?
Dave:like that is one of the things that like do you feel like that's something that comes down to like maybe the interview side of things as well, to like make sure that you maybe improved your interview questions or that somebody listening can learn.
Dave:It's like well, how did you make that mistake right? How did you not realize that they were the wrong personality, or how did you not realize that they didn't share the same vision, you know, when you hired them and went through the interview process? How are you going to make that improvement? I guess moving forward for yourself well for me.
Duarne:I realized what it was when I had, uh, when I sat there and observed a few things, and one of the things I observed was I saw it with other people interviewing people and I realized, holy shit, I do the same thing. Have you ever found yourself talking more than the person you're interviewing during an interview?
Dave:uh, I initially yeah, but recently no Like one of those things where as I got like more and more experience, right, you know?
Dave:um, definitely not like. And even and it's funny is when I was initially like, when I thought of like, when I was interviewing for a couple of jobs, like before I went full time with my position, the jobs I got were because I asked more questions than I did, were because I asked more questions than I talked, because people remember, you right, if they're talking more because they're like, wow, that person was really nice, I was really talking to them and they have this feeling. And so you know, yeah for sure, like recently, no, like, I don't. Isn't that weird, right? I ask questions and I shut up.
Duarne:Yeah, isn't that strange, right? And here's the thing, right, like how many people are listening? Have been in that situation where you feel like you have to explain everything to the person you're interviewing because and then you find yourself in a role where you're not the one interviewing them, they're into you, feel like you're educating them on why they should come work for you, and that's not how it should be. I mean, you should be asking them questions, understanding more about them.
Duarne:So what I found was a lot of the things that I thought I was getting in that interview was just, basically, them agreeing to what I was saying, or yes and no's, or adding stories to what I was talking about. And it was only when I sat back and watched interviews with other people which ironically, it was when we were hiring for virtual assistants for people and I would listen to the interview process from the clients from abroad who were actually interviewing the Filipino staff that we'd set up, and I was listening to the recordings, or I was listening in on a call Passively and I'd be like, oh, they're not really letting the person talk. How are they going to test their comprehension? How are they going to test whether they're you know they were sitting there and if there was a struggle with an answer, they would simply rephrase the question and then say is that what you meant?
Dave:and then break it down into a yes, and they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right, that's exactly what yeah so you walk away as an after interviewing, going oh shit, that guy's amazing.
Duarne:He just totally got my vision. He got everything I was dealing with. The reality was he had no fucking clue. He just agreed with what you said and because he didn't show the interest level that you're expecting, you adjusted your you know questions to be more statements or short answer questions that you could just get, yes, knows back on. But and this is something you don't realize and that's kind of like you need we talk about having business coaches and consultants and accountability buddies and stuff like that. Right, and mentors. This is one thing that a mentor and a coach and a consultant, a mentor whoever can see, they can look in and watch what you're doing and go.
Duarne:You're asking the wrong questions. You're never going to get the right answer if you ask the wrong question all the time. But the other thing you're doing is you're talking too much in that interview. You're not the one who needs to be selling the job, you're not the one who has to sit there. And how many times I've sat there in an interview and said all right, so this is me and this is what the business is all about. Do you have any questions and I'm like and at the end of it you're like well, no, I should be asking you about more, about what you do. What can you bring to the business, what do you understand about the business? Because that encourages them to ask questions which then I can just answer, response and respond to.
Dave:So I've learned that over time, just like you did and I think a red, a red flag for me is if you at the end you open up a question like you say, hey, all right, go. You know, I know we talked about, about you and your experience, what questions you have about me and my business, um, or me about, or the job, right, and if somebody says well, not.
Dave:No, no, nothing. Well, one, I know you didn't prepare right, because, no matter what job, there should be some sort of question that you have about the business, about the culture, about the people, about the setup, about anything. And if they come to you and say, no, I I don't have any, because, one, they're not prepared.
Dave:Two, they're not thinking outside the box or they're not, they're not bought in to the, to the potential opportunity of joining your business, and so ultimately that like if, if you're listening to this and you and you're looking for people, and at the end of the if you ask that question hey, what questions do you have for me? And somebody goes, I don't have any, immediately scratch them off.
Duarne:They're not going to be the person that you're looking for because they should have written three to five questions that they want to cover off for each of these interviews. They go into um like I'm doing the. I'm doing the virtual assistant course, um module creation right now for our foundation, and I found myself doing the communication, like I wrote this a few months ago and I'm going through building out the communication video voiceovers right now and I'm listening to these and I'm like so right, yeah, that's so right. I was on fire that day. I knew what I was talking about. Yeah, thanks, but no, seriously, I was talking about and you know, thanks, but no, seriously, I'm listening to it going yeah, no, this is so right, though.
Duarne:Like over-communicating during the early stages of you know those relationships is very important Because it shows that you give a fuck on the call, right, it shows that you actually care about the outcome. And the same goes with interviews. You need to be asking things like you know, when would I expect to see a contract for this? Or, because you know, is the salary negotiable for this? Do you have any allowances available for this? Or you know, if I was to take this on, what would the start date look like for me? Here's a couple. If you are interviewing right if you're interviewing for position.
Dave:A couple of my go-to's is like what does success look like right for me in the first 90 days? Like that is a number one question that I would. If you're interviewing for a job, you know, uh, you should ask right, because then you're getting that individual who's hiring you to explain to you what they want from you in the first 90 days.
Duarne:Um, you know or you know hey what do you do if they don't? Know if they don't have a good answer to that, like if you're going in for a job and they don't have a good answer for that, like, what would your out? What would you see?
Dave:I would, I would. I would immediately like cross it out, because they're not. Yeah, they're not, they're not, they're not prepared either.
Duarne:So yeah, you're also going on an interview.
Dave:It's a two-way interview exactly exactly now, granted, depending on who you're with, right.
Dave:So, like you know, if it's a first exploratory call, right, maybe with the hr person, like that's not where you want to ask that question. If you you know, it's maybe like the second interview where you're talking with the hiring manager or the department manager where, like they would be the people overseeing you and determining your success, if they're not prepared for that answer, you don't want to go into that place either. Just like you know, as the employer interviewing a potential employee, you know you could say here's what you know tell me a little bit about the qualities that you can bring to me, knowing in mind what you need from them. And if they don't list off the qualities, don't say are you A, b and C, because what are they going to say? They're going to say yes, right, listen to their answer.
Dave:And if they don't say the qualities that you're looking for, then cross them off, like there's, like there's hundreds of thousands of people that are potentially looking for jobs. Like you don't need this one, so you don't need to make them fit your mold. Take your mold and have them fit it themselves. And if they don't cross, them off.
Duarne:Well, you know, one of the things we've done, dave and you know this because you've got some team members through us that work with you and one of the things that we do is we actually introduced, probably about a year and a half ago, video interviewing at the beginning of the process, because what we're finding is we're getting HR drain where so many individuals wouldn't turn up to interviews there was problems with, you know, they'd be late to interviews. They, you know, wouldn't be very, they just weren't well prepared All of these little quirks and dramas, and we found our HR managers wasting so much time on interviews and scheduled interviews that never happened. So I said, you know what? I'm going to invest in this little bit of software, grab this piece of software, and we've been running it for about a year and a half now and it's been amazing. So we'll put an ad out, we'll get people coming through and the first thing we do is go and take a look at this job description and, you know, answer these five questions for us and we come up with those questions based on the conversations, with what the client wants, and then we record those and we go back and we watch those. We have our team members go back and watch and shortlist people based on their video answers.
Duarne:Now, granted, it is not easy to record a good video all the time when you're talking to a camera and answering a question, but what we've noted is there's generally three types of people the ones who are completely unprepared, and we give them three takes on every. The system allows for three takes. They'll come in completely unprepared or they'll go off on a tangent because they don't know what the question actually is. The ones who are overprepared and have gone into GPT or written up a script and are reading the script Cause they've taken the time to get it right. And the ones who just look into the corner and they go you know what this is my answer and just start telling you what, what the reality is, and they'll tell you what that answer is. And you know what we found is the majority of the time they'll tell you what that answer is and you know what we found is the majority of the time the clients like to close on the ones who just know what they're talking about, that they feel prepared, even though it's kind of on the whim, where they're not just making something up that doesn't make any sense they actually show some value by knowing what they're talking about, but they're not going and creating a whole script to talk about. It's believable, it's actionable.
Duarne:So I think a little bit of preparation goes a long way for an interview and it doesn't matter if you're getting a video interview or if you're doing a person-to-person interview or an online interview. You should be prepared, but I know it's a little bit of a tangent from the question we started with. But that what I? I reckon the whole interview process and hiring the right people. It was just me talking too much or our team talking too much and I found myself in positions where I really wanted to hire somebody for a role and because it was a really important role for us, and I found myself sitting there for like way too long talking and my, my wife, who's my hr manager, would look at me and go why did you sit there talking that long on that call there?
Duarne:was no need for that you know and like, yeah, you're right, okay not doing that and it's what I mean.
Dave:Everything's a learning process, right?
Dave:Like you know, even when you're doing something the first time, you're not going to be perfect, and I think this I mean this applies to a lot of aspects of life but you, instead of trying to be perfect the first time, just do it right, just just get out there and try it and then, and then make a small improvement the next time and the next time and the next time.
Dave:Before you know it, months, years down the road, you're going to be better. You know, I'm sure, and and I'm willing to bet a lot of money, right, lebron james or michael jordan or tom brady or whatever, missed a lot of their first pass attempts, their shot attempts, whatever. It is right, but they they probably missed, and what they did is they perfected it, they improved every single time time, year over year over year over year over year. As Wayne Gretzky says, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. So you're missing by not starting, because you're trying to be perfect. And so the second part of that is being open to feedback, being open for where you need to improve. I think a lot of people don't want feedback.
Duarne:They they, you know, or they take it and and they they get defensive with feedback. They feed, they treat feedback as criticism. Right, and if it's delivered as criticism, I get it, but a lot of people it's constructive criticism is the feedback and you know, some people see it as unwarranted advice, but at the end of the day, if people actually give stuff and actually want to give you feedback on something, then take a minute to listen because they obviously care enough to do that. They don't have to do that.
Dave:Our default as humans is depends defense mechanisms. Right, it's like our survival internal instincts, and it does take a lot of uh work on yourself and on your mind to to get yourself into that sort of openness to feedback, and you know you can even think about it like your relationships.
Dave:Like you, you may be getting feedback from your significant other and the default is to get defensive, right, yeah, and I'm not saying way, still working on it now right where sometimes I'll get defensive if I'm hearing feedback from my fiancee, but ultimately it's that moment of recognition, right, where you can stop yourself and then recognize and then begin to shift. Um, and it does take time. Same thing in your business. Same thing if you're an employee, if you're listening to this and you're an employee, like stop. Like, if your manager comes to you and says, hey, you know what. What I need from you here, you know, is abc. Don't say, well, you told me xyz. Like you say, okay, you know what, I'll work on it, I'll get better at that like you know, maybe no, okay, I get it, maybe I didn't.
Duarne:Uh, I misinterpreted the direction, or you know, take responsibility for what you're dealing with. And the other thing that I think is take a moment to take a deep breath before responding. That one or two seconds you take that deep breath, it'll re-oxygenate your body. It'll give you a second to go. You know what. I'm not going to put my foot in my mouth right now and say something dumb, especially with your significant other.
Dave:Um, which we've all done before yeah, I think we've all done foots about plenty of times. Oh yeah, I definitely have done that A lot of times and I can't remember.
Dave:I think the point there that I like that you said right is that taking that two or three seconds, that pause and actually what you'll notice is a lot of successful people do that in anything that they do. Like Elon Musk does it. Like when he asks a question, he'll pause for like three or four seconds to just let the question marinate for a minute and then he'll right give his answer. And I think you as a, as a employer, you as a business owner, can do that at any time, like whether you're talking to a prospect, you're answering a question like take a moment, ponder it and then give the answer, right, um, definitely, I think you can totally, do that totally and like as if you feel, if you're not comfortable with that, that pause.
Duarne:Then another way you can do it is like an old trick I used to do when I was in, you know, school, with spelling bees. I would say the question back, read the question back, and so just to clarify, you're asking me this and that gives you a moment to respond. You can use that for clarity. But that second or two that you take just to take a deep breath and focus can be a huge benefit in lots and lots of different things. It stops you reacting and it stops that emotional reaction that we all get and we all want to be attacking, and I think it's built into our psyche. But at the end of the day, I mean, it's just a small, small tip but it can make a big, big difference. How many times have you taken that deep breath and then say, yeah, I'm not going to say that? How many times have you taken that deep breath and go and then say yeah, I'm not going to say that. Or you know how many times you said something and go. Oh shit, I should have just not said that.
Dave:I've been attaking two or three seconds to think about my response before you said it exactly. I'm definitely a victim. Not a victim, I'm definitely a culprit. I've done that plenty of times.
Duarne:I think everybody listening can pretty much say that it's happened to them at least once. A victim of, not not a victim, I'm definitely a culprit, like I've done it many times. I think everybody listening can pretty much say that it's happened to them at least once in their life, if not a lot more. Um, it's just the natural thing. So I mean, like we're here to give advice, we're here to give suggestions, we're here to give tell you about things that work for us, things that we've we've covered a ton right, we've covered you.
Dave:We went from cash flow, invoicing, agreements, contracts, late fees to you know, kind of getting in that deep sort of mindset. Now to interviewing. So if you, made it this far, we love you.
Dave:Thank you so much for kind of making it again to another and through another episode of Business, unscripted. Dorn and I love doing these kind of conversations and, as always, we try to keep it around an hour it Dornan and I love doing these kinds of conversations and, as always, we try to keep it around an hour. As you can tell, pretty much we go over maybe like five or 10 minutes because Dornan and I like to just talk. But if you made it this far, we love you, thank you. We hope you found at least one or two things that you can take from this podcast and begin to implement in your business today over and over. And if you have questions about that, remember down below we're going to have a link to learn more about the Triumph Mastermind program with daily support, q&a strategy every week, and have access to people that can help you in your business grow and scale.
Dave:So, and don't forget, we have founding member access benefits as well down below in there, so take advantage of those. Be one of the first people to sign up, duarn. Thank you again for joining me, brother. Good luck with everything on Monday and over the weekend. Let Paige know we are excited to bring a new baby into the world. So it's always great when two people are in love that they can bring a baby into the world and kind of hopefully share that joy and that love with somebody. So awesome and I can't wait to see her.
Duarne:All right. Well, thank you again.
Dave:And, if you're watching this, we can't wait to see you in the next episode. And until then, have a wonderful week and we'll see you in the next one.
Duarne:Take care everyone. Thank you, bye-bye, see you, dave.
