Business Unscripted - Triumph Business Solutions
Welcome to Business Unscripted, the podcast where real business conversations happen. Hosted by Dave Worden, founder of Triumph Business Solutions, this podcast dives into the raw, unfiltered realities of running and growing a business. Each episode explores the struggles, strategies, and accountability moments that shape the journey of entrepreneurs and business owners.
With a mix of solo episodes, co-host partners, and guest appearances from other business owners, Business Unscripted offers diverse perspectives and actionable insights. Whether you're navigating challenges, seeking strategies, or just looking for honest conversations about business, this podcast has something for you.
Join us weekly as we tackle the unscripted moments that define success, all while fostering accountability and connection with our listeners.
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Business Unscripted - Triumph Business Solutions
The Impossible-to-Fail Formula: Do the Work That Matters
Success doesn't happen by accident. As we enter the second half of the year, are you tracking the metrics that truly matter in your business?
This candid episode delivers hard truths about what separates struggling entrepreneurs from thriving business owners. The first revelation? Most people claiming to "work all the time" are only putting in 25 productive hours weekly, then wondering why they're stuck. If you're not where you want to be in your business but taking weekend trips and vacations, you've identified your problem.
I break down the essential KPIs every business owner must track, starting with conversation metrics that allow you to work backward from your client goals. Learn why understanding your true gross profit margin (not just top-line revenue) affects every calculation in your business – and how misunderstanding this number leads to devastating miscalculations in growth planning.
For those leading teams, I share insights from my recent presentation on guiding employees through change with empathy. Discover why showing vulnerability isn't weakness but a leadership strength, and how consistent expectations build trust across your organization. The five emotional stages people experience during change provide a roadmap for more effective management.
The episode culminates with perhaps the most critical yet overlooked aspect of business success: follow-up systems. Research shows prospects need 5-12 touchpoints before making decisions, yet most entrepreneurs abandon contacts after just one or two interactions. I provide practical strategies for implementing effective follow-up procedures that convert more prospects into clients.
As Alex Hormozi wisely noted, "Do the amount of work where it makes it impossible for you to fail." If you've been looking for a straightforward guide to sustainable business growth, this episode delivers the framework you need. Share what resonated most with you in the comments, and remember to grab our free cashflow projection template!
Hey, good morning everybody. Hope you are off to a well, hopefully, a great end to your week. It is Friday, august 1st. We're here for another episode of the Business Unscripted Podcast, episode 21. And today it's just me. So Dwarren is not going to be joining us today, uh, but hopefully, um, he's off having some some good end of week vibes and getting some errands done. He had to get done so he couldn't be here today.
Dave:But if you're here because you're a business owner, or maybe you're thinking about starting a business and you're looking for some practical advice, some insights on things that you're going through in your business, well, you're a business owner. Or maybe you're thinking about starting a business and you're looking for some practical advice, some insights on things that you're going through in your business. Well, you're in the right place, because here at the Business Unscripted Podcast, we're here to talk through some scenarios, give advice, talk through things that we've gone through in our own business and our operations, things that we've helped our clients work through in their business as well. So sit back, grab your cup of joe and let's jump into the show. So when I was, you know, kind of getting prepared for this morning, as I found out. It was just going to be me kind of get some thoughts and just kind of thought back at things that were happening in the week and things that were important to me and that I felt like I wanted to share with y'all. So one of the the first, I guess, focus points for for today right, it's it's august 1st, so, um, you know, beginning of the second month of the second half of the year, and so some of those things that we've talked about, you know, a couple episodes ago about kind of resetting your second half and getting ready for the second half, and one of those is like KPIs.
Dave:So, for yourself, have you set up the KPIs in your business? Have you thought about, you know, what you want to be monitoring in order to kind of measure your success and see where you're going to head towards the end of the year and trend towards the end of the year, or track towards the end of the year? A couple of things that I wrote down and, if you haven't set them up, a couple of things to just monitor for yourself, especially as you're a smaller business owner or maybe you have a sales team that you're maybe looking at. What do I, what do I track for them, and the first one right that kind of comes to mind right Is is just how many conversations are you having a week? Um, you know that that are with your target prospect, and I think that's where a lot of people meet in particular. When I first got started, it was oh, my schedule is full, I'm talking to all these people every day, but they're not my target prospects. They don't even have a problem that I could potentially be helping them solve. They're basically maybe even doing the same thing I'm doing. They're trying to fill up their schedule and maybe they'll sell me, and so, ideally, what you want to do is track the number of conversations that you're having with your target prospects and in order to identify who's who's a prospect and who's maybe just a networking sort of referral that you're looking to build your network is to begin to qualify in your, in your meeting in months, and so many people don't do this and they just kind of gather the normal information. So they gather the name, the email, the phone number and then they let them book.
Dave:Well, think about what are some qualifying questions for you as a business owner that would help you understand where that conversation's going, and I would say, limit it to maybe four or five questions that help you understand. What problems are they facing right? Is it a potential problem that you can help them solve and are they ready to solve it? Because ultimately, no matter how many times people have a problem, if they are not ready to solve that problem, you can't force them. And you may think you're forcing them, but ultimately if you force them into a decision and force them like, oh okay, this is the best offer, you have to do it now. You're never going to have their buy-in, you're never going to succeed with that client. So, as we've talked about in the past, you need to use neuroemotional persuasion, questioning, in your conversations to truly get them to persuade themselves that they have a problem and that they are ready to solve it, because ultimately, that's when they're going to be ready and that's when they're really going to see success is in that particular circumstance.
Dave:So monitor the number of conversations you're having with your prospects and then from that, how many meetings are you then setting up right from those conversations, to then either get into a deeper exploratory call a deep dive, maybe get into an explanation of what your possible solutions are. So that's the second kind of KPI to monitor. So you want to have conversations, intro conversations, whether it's through DM or outreach or networking groups, wherever it is. That's the first metric. Second one is from that, how many of them people are you converting into number of meetings and kind of deep dives, individually, one-on-one, and then from there, what's your conversion rate to a closed client? And ultimately, when you get into that middle sort of hey, this is our solution and you know that they're qualified and they're ready, you should have about a 20 to 50% your close rate, depending on your type of business, investment factors, all of that, but monitoring that, because you're going to be able to then backtrack into any sort of number.
Dave:So if you, for example, let's say you want to add maybe you're a high ticket person and you want to add five clients by the end of September, okay, and you're at a, let's say, 20% close rate when somebody gets into a conversation with you, 20% of the time they decide to sign up for your service. So you want to get five right, which means that's 20% of what, which means the number of meetings that you have to have. So in this case you have 20%. Five signed clients is 20% of 25 conversations, right. So you have to have 25 one-on-one conversations between now, august 1st, and the end of September in order to sign those five clients for you. But that's not where you stop, because what you also need to recognize is how many outreaches, how many initial conversations did you have to have to get those 25 conversations with your ideal prospect, people that were ready to potentially solve their problem now, and a lot of times, that percentage from cold to that first call, that's the lower percentage. So, for example, let's say that's something like 10%. Well, in order to get 25 calls, that means 25 is 10% of what 25 is 10% of 250 people between now and September that you have to have a conversation with in order to get them to schedule a meeting with you, and sometimes a lot of people. That may even be 5%. So that may be 500 people that you have to have a conversation, whether it's on social media, through a DM, through a phone conversation, calling up your warm network, getting a referral to that warm. You know that kind of cold first interaction. And if that's the case, based on your current actions, can you have those 500 touch points between now and the end of September, if that was your goal right To reach five. If not, you have to change something right. And so you're able to then calculate what do I need to be doing in order to get the number of clients that I have? But you have to have that data, you have to be tracking that KPI, those KPIs, in order for you to understand and where you're going to be going in your business. So that's the first kind of set of KPIs is obviously like conversion conversations, outreach, a couple other ones right.
Dave:When it comes to, like, your financials, you definitely want to know what your gross profit margin is, what your net profit margin is, and so if you don't know what either of those are, so your gross profit margin is when you take your top line revenue. So whatever comes into your business, whether it's your top line, so your gross revenue and you subtract out any expenses that are directly related to providing that service, to providing that product, whatever it may be. So, for example, if you provide a service to people and you have employees that are directly related, so when you provide a service, it increases that cost and they correlate together then it's a cost of doing business right, it's a cost of goods sold. So what you do is you take your top line minus your directly related expenses and whatever's left, that's your gross profit. And so what you want to understand is what is that percentage?
Dave:So, for example, let's say you do $10,000 of top line revenue and, because you are a service that requires a lot of employees, your cost of goods sold is $6,000. So you have gross profit right, 10,000 minus 6,000. You have gross profit of $4,000, which means 40% of your revenue is gross profit. And so where this number impacts your business is in many ways, because if you're looking to, you know a lot of people just look at oh, I want to be a million dollar company and I want to take home X amount of dollars. Well, you have to understand that anytime you increase a dollar in your revenue, you're only going to get 40 cents of that dollar to pay for other operating costs or to go to your bottom line. And this is where, when we talk about knowing your cost of acquisition, what does that person bring in in terms of lifetime value?
Dave:You want to know your gross profit because you don't want to know top line. Top line's inflated because you have costs that are related to providing that service directly. So your top line's inflated. You need to know what's your gross profit and also you need to make sure that in your financial statement. So if you're doing your own accounting and maybe you're in QuickBooks and you're doing your own accounting and you just kind of take the classifications of expenses as is well, your gross profit may be understated because typically wages, payroll taxes are all under just typical operating expenses. They don't group them as cost of goods sold. So you have to know to move that around. And if you're not moving that around and somebody like myself comes in and says, hey, what's your gross profit margin, and you see that you bring in 10,000 and you see that, well, I only had $1,000 of product costs, so my gross profit is $9,000. So you're thinking 90%. So all your calculations in the future are going to be off because you're using the wrong number, right? You're using 90% when you add your salaries and everything related directly to that service and that product. Now it's only four, as we talked about. So that directly affects any other calculation that you do in the future.
Dave:So, for example, if you're calculating lifetime value, which is things that we've talked about in the past on this show, right, you want to know your customer lifetime value. And you don't do gross customer lifetime value, right, you do net gross profit, lifetime value, right? Net gross revenue, lifetime value. And here's the difference. So, for example, how you calculate lifetime values, you take the average purchase times, the frequency times, the length, right? So let's say you're a monthly retainer type service Maybe you're a coach or maybe you're a marketer or anything like that or maybe you have a product and a service that is a monthly retailer. So let's say that's $1,000 a month, but as part of that it costs you $400 a month to provide it. So you're only grossing $600.
Dave:So let's see the two different calculations. So if you were to just calculate your lifetime value at the top line, let's say they purchase on average for you know, um, once a month. So 12 times times three years, right? So if you take the top line revenue, right, that's a thousand dollars times 12, right, would be $12,000 a year times three years. So your customer, you would think that that customer has a lifetime value of $36,000. When, in reality, right, what they actually bring into your organization, right? So you remember there's cost of goods sold to 400. So you're going to. So they only make you $600 a month. And so then you take the 600 times 12, right, which is $7,200. And then you multiply that by three years, which is how long they stay with you, it's 21,600, which is a difference right Of about $14,400.
Dave:When you're doing your calculation and the reason why this is important, because then you compare it to acquisition and remember we want to have an acquisition cost of at least three times three to one ratio, lifetime value, three to one to CAC. So let's say, on average it costs you a lot of money to bring in this client, and maybe it costs you, let's say, 10,000 or 9,000 or $8,000 per new client in marketing and branding, and all of that to bring in a new client that has a 30,000 and you think it's $36,000. So you're like, hey, I'm over the three to one, I'm great, I'm perfect, but in reality you're actually more like two to one, which means you're under that ratio, which means you're overspending on your acquisition costs, spending on your acquisition costs. So, hopefully I know that's very deep for a Friday morning, but that's kind of how understanding your actual gross profit margin can impact not only just your general knowledge of your finances but can impact all the other areas of your business and your understanding of your business numbers and your calculations and your other ratios to know if you're doing things properly or not.
Dave:So if you want to look at your specific business, take a look at your financial statement. Open your latest financial statement from you know, maybe you're closing July right now. Up under cost of goods sold in your financial statement are all the expenses directly related to providing your service under that line of cost of goods sold. If not, you probably need to make some adjustments. And if you don't have a bookkeeper, you don't know how to do it. You could reach out down below There'll be an email address down below or send me a message. Wherever you're watching this, whether it's on Facebook or you're watching it on YouTube drop a comment.
Dave:Hey, I want to know more about my finances. I want to know more about my finances. I want to know more about my numbers. I want to get educated on my business and on my numbers. That's what we're here for, right, um, and we'll definitely help you with that. We can definitely kind of have that conversation with you to help you understand where your numbers are, where your kpis are.
Dave:Um, and then net profit. So net profit is important to understand as well, um, and remember, these aren't like set it, forget it, like these are kind of fluctuating numbers depending how things are going with your business. And I've actually had conversations with people where they're like, yeah, my net profit, I don't know, it's been about 15%, but the last time they checked it was like three years ago. So when we get into their finances we look and they're more like 5% right now, and the reason why they still think it's 15 is because they're still grossing the same number, but their revenue's gone up, right, everything else has gone up and they haven't reviewed it. And this is why having an understanding of this, at least every quarter if you're a small business, you know understanding it's every quarter I suggest monthly, right, you should be getting a monthly financial statement with these percentages on it, with a summary you know from, from your accountant or your bookkeeper, whoever's doing it on a monthly basis for you. You should have this information at your fingertips.
Dave:And what is nice about understanding gross profit? And if you are profitable, so your net profit is above zero, any increase in your revenue is going to increase your bottom line, your net profit, by the gross profit number, because you're not, you don't have, you don't have any more overhead costs. You don't have any more, you know directly related costs because you have more revenue. All that's captured up in the cost of goods sold. So it's really easy to understand. Like if you yourself say you wanted to increase your take-home pay by $50,000, okay, and you had a gross profit percentage of 50%. Well, in order to increase your bottom line by $50,000 because you're already profitable you would have to see an increase in gross revenue by $100,000. An increase in gross revenue by $100,000. Because, let's just say, your gross profit margin is 50%. So 100,000 times 50% is 50,000. All your other operating expenses are already being paid for across the board. So then that 50,000 goes directly to your bottom line. And this is why it's easy to understand these numbers, to then know where you're heading, know where you want to be, and then you can plan backwards from understanding where these numbers are historically in your business. Trending them on a monthly basis is another good way to kind of track them as well.
Dave:Another good kind of metric too for small business owners is track your like what I call productivity or productive hours, because this is where you're really going to understand, like, where are you doing things in your business. That are one of two things One, looking to grow your business, so you're doing outreach, you're having conversations, right. Or two, you're working in client work, so you're maybe doing the work to deliver a product to somebody. Maybe you're up the work to deliver a product to somebody. Maybe you're up, maybe, if you're a software or platform, you're you're spending time updating and you know getting the system, you know proper and you know those are what I call productive hours, and how many productive hours are you putting in a week? And if it's under, if it's under 40, um, and you're not where you want to be, if it's under 40 and you're not where you want to be, then you have a problem and you need to adjust that.
Dave:So, every week, being able to kind of track your productive hours, there's plenty of free tools that you can use to track your time. There's platforms like ClickUp. Clickup you can have a free account or you can be a pay to upgrade it, but you can track your time by products or by systems and by clients, et cetera. However you want to build it. I use ClickUp on a regular basis. I use it with my VA. We track our time in there. Clickup is a great way to track your time, to track your productive hours. Understand how much time are you putting in a week that are helping you. Either one build your business, so you're having conversations, you're doing outreach, or two, you're serving your clients.
Dave:And if it's under 40 and you're not where you want to be in your business, you should not be taking vacations, you should not be going on weekend trips with your family unless you don't want to be successful. I'm just saying it's got to be said. If you are not where you want to be in your business and you are not putting in 40, 50 hours of productive hours in your business a week, you have nothing to blame but yourself for why you're not where you're at and where you want to be in your business. It's that easy. If you put in the hours and if you put in the work and you put in things that matter, you will start seeing the outcome sooner rather than later, especially if you want to grow between now and maybe the end of the year.
Dave:Well, you have to dedicate. You have to look yourself in the mirror. You have to dedicate the 40 to 50 to 60 hours a week that you need to put into your business in order to get where you want to be by the end of the year, right? Business is not easy. Business isn't just a hey, I'm in business. Now people are going to come running to your door. You have to think about it. It's like a job interview, but it's a job interview for your life, right? And you do it over and over and over again, because every new client, you have to prove your expertise to them, but they also have to have a problem that they're ready to solve.
Dave:At the moment they're having that conversation with you, and so you're a salesperson, you're a fixer, and we've talked about the three mindsets from Michael Gerber's E-Myth book that you have to put yourself in as a business owner. You're the technician, you're the manager, you're the entrepreneur, you're the visionary and you got to spend time in all three of them. And you can't do that if you're only 25 hours in the business and the other time you're checked out, you're on vacation, you know you're you're, you're taking time off to to take care of family. You know things that are going on. You have to be willing as a business owner, if you get into this and you want to be successful with this, you have to be willing to tell people.
Dave:No. You have to be willing to say, because people are going to say hey, your schedule is flexible, right, you work for yourself, so could you just adjust your schedule and help me do this? No, my livelihood depends on the hours that I put into this. I don't get a guaranteed paycheck at the end of the week Just because I was there for two weeks. I don't get my same pay every two weeks. My pay depends on how much work you're putting into your business every week, and if you're not putting in 40, 50, 60 hours of productive time, that's the exact reason why you're not where you want to be, and that's the start. That's not to say that down the road you can't have the 25 hour weeks, but that's where you've reached your, where you want to be.
Dave:If you're not where you want to be, you have to put in all that work now. You have to do it now in order to get that time back. And if the people around you and the family around you and they don't understand that, they don't understand what you're building and trying to build for them, then you're probably not going to be able to get there Right, because they should, unless they're willing to love you through it, they're never going to put. You're never going to feel comfortable doing it because you're always going to feel like you're struggling to go back and forth against them and that's a difficult thing to work through Definitely. But you have to believe in yourself. You have to be willing to put in the work, you have to be willing to say no. You're the business owner who's going to get through it and eventually give people around you what you want to give them and where you want to be in your life, where you see yourself as as a success. And the thing with that is nobody else is in your head Ultimately like your. Your. Your mind, your vision is yours alone. You know nobody else. Nobody else is going to see that. Nobody else is going to be able to understand that because it's you in your head.
Dave:So those were kind of the KPIs. You know, especially if you're starting, you know which August 1st, right? So we're just starting to kind of the KPIs. You know, especially if you're starting, you know which August 1st, right? So we're just starting to kind of the second month of the second half. Make sure you have those set up. Which ones are you tracking. Maybe you're tracking other KPIs, but now is a good time to kind of monitor them, kind of update the trending, see where you're at compared to where you wanted to be on your KPIs. Are you meeting your KPI goals and, if not, what do you have to do to adjust it?
Dave:The other thing that I wanted to you know kind of mention briefly as we kind of start the second half of the year, is your cashflow career, your cashflow projection. We've talked about this before. Cashflow is the lifeblood of your business and if you don't understand when you're going to be low and when you're going to be high, or happens when you need to have a significant outflow because you need to invest in another project, how is that going to impact your business moving forward? If you're not able to update that easily, it's goingformed right, informed the business decisions for yourself and the future of the business. So you have to be able to understand where you're going. What's the projection out for the next 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, whatever it may be, however far in the future you want to look. You need to one, create it and then two, you have to update it and I suggest updating it every week. I suggest tracking it by week, because things are going to happen, things are going to change and you need to be on top of it. You can't just again. It's not one of these set it and forget it type of projections. Oh, I project that I'm going to be great in the next 12 months.
Dave:Three weeks down the road, a significant client drops off, or or you had an expense, you had a notice from a vendor where your expenses for this product are going to go up 50%. What happens? What does that mean for your business? Because what it allows you to do is one be proactive. You may see, in three months I'm going to start getting low on cash.
Dave:You can start working on solving that problem today, whether it's I need to make more sales, I need to put more hours into the business to have more sales conversations, I need to get out and maybe do more networking. I need to possibly reach out to my current clients and see if there's additional opportunities to upsell or ask for referrals. But if you don't have a projection and you don't see that coming, what's going to happen is, three months down the road, you're going to be low in cash and you're going to be like, oh shit. What do I do? And then you're going to be looking for short-term options. Which are these short-term cash loans that are ridiculous amount of money, right, because that's what they're for. They're? Hey, you need it, we'll give it to you, but it's going to, you know, cost you 35% interest over the next three months and you're going to pay us back every day for whatever those stupid terms are. And sometimes you have to do it because you have to get through it. But in the end, if you were just on being able to understand what the future looked like, you would have been able to kind of take the steps that you needed in order to make that problem go away, instead of costing yourself a bunch of money.
Dave:So, as you kind of jump into the, you know, as we continue down the path of the second half of 2025, here, I would highly suggest that you create a cashflow projection. If you don't have one, or you don't know how to create one, drop down below. You know, just drop a comment or drop a word of projection. I will help you out. We have a template from Triumph that we will give you. You can fill it out yourself or we can even have a conversation. It's a system that we do, that we help people on a weekly basis. We'll implement it, We'll update it for you, but you need to have that in your business and if you don't have it in your business and you're not reviewing it, you're not able to make informed business decisions for yourself. Okay, so get a cashflow projection created. That's the second part. Is I talk about kind of looking forward towards the second half as we kind of continue here into August?
Dave:Another thing that you know, as I was kind of preparing for today's session or today's conversation and episode, I gave a presentation earlier this week and I think it's important for people to hear, whether it's you know, you're a business owner and you have employees and you're looking to lead, or maybe you're just you're in a management position now, um, what the presentation was for for a local college here was, um, leading with heart and and how is a manager or a business owner you can help people through change and and lead them with you know your heart and you know your empathy, right, and the main kind of things that we went over and I'll kind of briefly talk about. I won't get into the full presentation. I will have it on our YouTube channel here shortly, so I just got to get it edited, but I'll I'll have the full presentation. It's about 50 minutes or so on our YouTube channel, so if you want to watch the whole thing eventually I'll link it here into this episode down below.
Dave:But the first part of the presentation was about understanding that people go through kind of a range of emotions when they go through a change or when they experience a sort of loss and this can be right which is in personal life, like whether it's a grief, whether it's a loss of a marriage, whether it's a loss of a relationship, you know whether it's a loss of a friend, but it's the same thing in in business, with employees. So when they're maybe experiencing a change, right, they still going to go through the same sort of stages of of change. And the five that I focused on was, you know, denial, right. So you may hear people say, well, this is never going to happen. You know we talk about change, you know forever, and it just never happens. You know that's the denial stage. Then you have anger, right. So when the basically the change comes closer and closer, maybe events are getting scheduled on the calendar or you know the trainings are there and you know now there's a date set or payments are being made. This is when, like kind of the anger right, the resentment starts to show up and typically it's addressed towards you and I as the business owner or the manager. But you just have to understand that, the business owner or the manager, but you just have to understand that and that's part of the leading with change is understand that these emotions are part of our employees ourselves, kind of natural reaction to the unknown. It's kind of that, you know, that stress response that we go through. So, understand that they're going to go through anger, they're going to go through resentment. Sit them down, you know, and especially if it's, you know, maybe one or two employees, meet with them one-on-one, you know, just talk through what's causing the anger, why, why, why do you feel in this way? And this is how you can, you know, kind of lead them through this.
Dave:Um, the third stage is is kind of bargaining. So this is where, like, they're trying to bring comfort pieces from maybe an old process or an old piece of the system. They're trying to bring that into the new because it's something that they're comfortable with. They feel safe with that aspect, whether it's trying to keep a manual process. When things are going to full automated, it's just something that they're comfortable with. So they're trying to bargain with you to be able to keep it, so that they get some sort of sense of comfortability After that. So now let's say the change is in place.
Dave:This is sadness, depression, and what I mean by this, especially in an employee setting, is they're feeling kind of like a loss of themselves. Maybe they're sad because they feel like they're behind, they feel like they're not picking things up quickly. Maybe they feel like maybe they lost their role with the organization because now a lot of their stuff is being automated. So they just feel overwhelmed and that they're not good enough yet. So this is where they may start feeling sad.
Dave:I've gone through a change. I've had some employees come in on verge of tears, right, because they feel like they're not picking it up quickly. Um, and how you can lead through that you know briefly, without kind of getting into the presentation is is empathize with them, you know, and show them like, for example, I myself I'm having some trouble too with the system, right, or it's taken me a little bit longer to do things that were easier, you know, in our old process, but me. Once we get on the other side of this, once we actually get comfortable with the system, things are going to be easier, things are going to be quicker and you're going to pick it up just like everybody else. But can I do anything for you to kind of help you get there? Find out what can you do, what other support can you provide to them? These are ways to help them through that sadness, depression stage.
Dave:And then, finally, the last part is acceptance. So this is when you've kind of gone through all the stages, the further and further away you get from the implementation date of a change you get to the acceptance date of a change. You get to the acceptance date. And that's when, now, right, people are working through the change, it's now normal and it just becomes the way that everybody does it now. And so eventually everybody gets to that acceptance stage. And the question is, how quickly, as a leader, can you help them kind of go through each stage so that you can get them to the acceptance stage? And that's when everybody's happy, everything's going well.
Dave:So that's the first part of the presentation is about really understanding the emotions that go into changing from your employees, et cetera. The second one is, then, leading through change, right? So? So ways for you to actually like show empathy and so many people and I've actually worked with some managers like this that feel like having empathy for your employees is a weakness, when in fact it's actually a sign of strength and it helps you build your trustworthiness, your approachability with your employees, with your staff, etc. With your employees, with your staff, et cetera. So definitely make sure that you're practicing empathy and ways that you can do this and the ways that you can kind of lead with your heart. Briefly, is you can actively listen, and that means like, don't listen to respond, like listen to actually understand.
Dave:Two show vulnerability and authenticity, like what I just talked about in a previous example. Right, Be vulnerable. So many managers feel like they have to be perfect, they can't show weakness or they can't show that things are maybe possibly sometimes difficult for them too. Well, when you can be vulnerable, you now become more human, right? Your employees see you as human and they understand that you can be trusted because you also are facing issues that you're working through and you're comfortable with them to share that with them. So be vulnerable, be authentic.
Dave:The third part when you talk about leading with heart and this is, I think some people have some trouble with this one and this is where it's like consistency and fairness. Be consistent and fair. So one set your expectations. I've worked with managers as well that had expectations for me as an employee but never told me, but then they reprimanded me for that those expectations I never knew I was trying to meet.
Dave:And so you as a a leader, you as a manager or business owner, if you have specific expectations for your staff, for your employees, make sure that you take the time to clearly state what your expectations are and then be fair when you actually implement your reprimands or implement the actual monitoring of those standards across all employees. And what I mean by this is you may have one employee on your team who is a rockstar, who's blowing everybody else out of the water. They have the greatest productivity scores, they have the greatest customer response rates, maybe their sales are through the roof, but they're always late. And you have a clear expectation that you've told the team from day one that you want everybody to be on time to team meetings, to events, et cetera, but this one person, this one person can't seem to get into their head, so they're always late. They're always five, 10 minutes late, and the team sees that and they see that you, as their leader, are not being consistent to reprimand them only because they're your best employee. So what you need to do is you need to one, understand that there's a difference between performance and listening to your expectations. It gives you that respect, not only from the person who's the high performer, because they're going to see yeah, you know what I need to do better, I need to listen to what my expectations are. But two, you're going to earn the respect of the rest of your team because you're going to be applying your expectations fairly across the board.
Dave:And then the fourth piece of this is being a servant leader. Right Is prioritizing your team, your employees. You're prioritizing their growth and really understanding that your role is not just to especially if you're a business owner or a manager your role is not just to sit in an office and direct and point directions. Your role is to support and truly develop the people that are underneath you. Find out what's important to them, find out where they want to grow, find out are you giving them the support and the feedback in the proper way?
Dave:And one way to do this here is have one-on-ones with all of your team members. I suggest doing this at least every other week and doing it in ways where it know it's not an hour meeting, but it can be 15, 20 minutes, and what you do is you get out of the office. You don't even have to do it in your office, like go for a walk, have lunch with them, whatever it may be right, but have one-on-ones and focus on them. So identify where do they want to grow, what do they need for support and what are their strengths and how can you serve them better as a leader. Because as a leader, that is your goal. You are only as strong, you're only as powerful. Your team is only as productive as team members on your team. And if you see them as just people who you're going to manage and you're just going to crack the whip, you're not going to be as efficient and productive as you could be if you just actually took some time to learn about them and actually serve them as a leader. So that's, that's kind of the overview of the leading with heart Right, be empathetic, be servant. You're there for your employees, just like your employees are there for you.
Dave:And then the final layer. You know, the final kind of overview of the teaching or the presentation was about how do you empower your team right? You don't want people that only feel like, in order to make a decision, you have to tell them yes or no. That is not empowerment. You're never going to be able to be efficient, right? You're never going to be able to take time off because no decisions are ever going to be made. Everything is going to have to come back through you, and so all your policies, all your procedures they should not end with you. There should be some kind of hierarchy that you allow them to make decisions up to a certain point. You allow them to make decisions up to a certain point, depending on your business, depending on how things are set up. This is going to be different by policy, by office, by department, but give them some time to make decisions, give them delegation and give them autonomy.
Dave:Other ways to empower your team is when you are going to go through a change, instead of just implementing it, make sure you involve right. So if you have, let's say, 10 employees, maybe you have two people who are employee representatives that work with you as, and maybe you have a manager as a management team as you're talking about decisions, these two employee representatives who are responsible for meeting with you, talking through any possible changes that are going on in your business and then taking that back to the rest of the employees to get the feedback. So involve people early on in the change process. One thing I've learned, especially going through implementations of accounting systems, et cetera, is make sure you include everybody from every possible department that's going to have an impact on that change. So bring people in early, get them involved, get their feedback. It's going to help everything in the long run.
Dave:Open communication Always be transparent. Don't try to hide a possible decision, because the only thing that's going to happen is when you do make that decision and you make it known. You're going to have so much negative feedback. So what I suggest is always encourage, especially as a small business owner be transparent with your team. Hey guys, I'm thinking about doing this. What's your initial thoughts on it? You guys are the one that's going to be impacted. Maybe it's a health insurance change, or maybe it's a payroll change, or maybe you're trying to implement some sort of budget program, or maybe you're trying to implement a bonus program for them, find out what their feedback is and you don't have to listen to it, right. It doesn't mean that you have to basically use their suggestions, but them just being there right and being part of the communication and the process. They're going to feel heard. And, as long as there's a real legitimate reason why you didn't listen to their feedback and you gave them that reason because you were open and transparent, more often than not it's actually going to be positive for your culture, positive for your morale, because you're still making changes that are going to benefit everybody in the long run.
Dave:And then the one thing that I think a lot of people forget about is recognition and celebration of things that happen about is recognition and celebration of things that happen. So going through it, as I just mentioned, kind of like the implementations, I think one of the things that was important for me was making sure that I celebrate and recognize everybody's kind of part in that and doing it publicly or some people enjoy it being private, you know, so just giving them kind of the pat on the back in a private, you know, kind of one-on-one session. But the other people, you know, do it in in in your public group meetings or do it in inside the you know the office. Hey, john, really appreciate you giving that report. You know it really means a lot to me, right? Maybe it was a day early or something.
Dave:And then another piece that I began to implement here was, you know kind of personal emails or texts, depending on you know kind of the environment that you're in. You know sending an email, just you know kind of thanking them for their work or thanking them for something that they that they did recently. That recognition can do so much, especially for people that are driven by the appreciation of words, appreciation of, you know, support. Some people are driven by monetary, which is where, like, if you need to, you know, develop like a bonus program you could, but a lot of times, just showing that appreciation, showing that recognition of the work that they're coming to your business to do every day, can go so far Right. And so that was kind of the three main areas of the presentation that I kind of wanted to go over.
Dave:And if you want to watch the full presentation and getting into more examples and more in-depth again, I'll link it to the bottom of this video when it gets posted on the YouTube channel, but it will be posted on our YouTube channel here shortly, but I feel like it's something that a lot of people may know, may hear, but may know that they should be, you know, kind of leading with this, but, um, they forget to do it. And it's funny because at the end of the presentation on on tuesday, a lady had had, uh, you commented that her old, her husband's old employer did none of those things, like none of the stuff we are just talking about, right, like being transparent or, you know, involving people early or leading with the heart and showing empathy, that, like, none of those things were being met as at his old employer. But now he's at a place that does these things and you can see how important they are. Right, he left because of it. Uh, and if you look at your business and maybe you've had some turnover issues, think back to what we just talked about.
Dave:Have you been implementing any of the stuff that we just talked about? If not, your turnover is probably a result of this. If you are, maybe there's some underlying other issues that you can look into. But by knowing what you're doing in your business, you're then able to understand what may be the cause of things that are happening in your business, right? One and then two where do you need to look in order to improve it? A couple other things you know. Just want to quickly kind of touch, touch on and then I'll kind of wrap up so you guys don't have to just hear my voice all day today.
Dave:But if you are in Ohio, just an FYI, if you are in Ohio from August 1st to August 14th is the Ohio sales tax holiday. So why this is important, so one of two things why this is important. So why this is important, so one of two things why this is important. If you are a buyer, right? So if you're going out anywhere, starting today through the 14th, and you're buying qualifying items like clothing and there's some other things that you can look into and I'm not going to go into too big of a detail here and the item itself is under $500. So you can have a purchase that's over 500, as long as the items that are part of that purchase, each individually, are under $500 that qualify, you should not be charged sales tax. So, starting today, check your receipts when you go to a store and if they're charging you sales tax, you should not be charging sales tax. You should not be charging sales tax. Right, you should not be charging sales tax. You can either, if it's smaller business, you know, ask, you know, have them adjust it. Now on the business side, right, you should make sure that you set up your systems appropriately for the next 14 days to not collect sales tax, to change your system so that everything is exempt from sales tax and to make sure on the 14th, you know, at the, and then make sure on the 14th, you know, at the end of the day, on the 14th, you change it back so that you begin to collect it properly on the 15th and again.
Dave:So this is the two-week kind of sales tax holiday. It's not limited to, like you know, sometimes they do it for just like school. But you know, this is the two-week holiday. Here it's anything that qualifies two-week holiday. Here it's anything that qualifies Mostly. It's like clothing and supplies, et cetera, things that aren't qualified, or like automobiles, vehicles, alcoholic beverages, things like that. But if it's something that is qualified, make sure that you get it kind of set up in your business, in your system, right, if you're a business owner, and then if you're a buyer, make sure you check your receipts because you don't want to be overcharged. You don't want to be paying too much tax Now at the end of the year, if you do find, keep a receipt. If somebody did charge you sales tax and you shouldn't have, you could, I believe, on your state return possibly don't hold me to this but possibly be able to request that back. So work with your tax professional to possibly get that back in the state of Ohio. But August 1st, august 14th, if you are in Ohio, no sales tax.
Dave:And then the final thing I kind of wrote down today was and I'll leave you with this as you head into the rest of the year if there's one thing that you should be focusing on, it should be focusing on follow-ups. So after cash flow, after understanding your KPIs, like those are things that should always be done. Like you should understand your cash flow, you should be understanding your financials. But if you're wondering, like, what should I be focusing on in terms of my activities, that's going to be follow up. Your success as a business owner is going to be fully reliant on how well you have set up your follow up process, and the reason is and I've said this before, you may have heard this before it takes anywhere from five to 12 touch points with a potential client in order for them to make a final decision on whether to move forward with your business service or not. To make a final decision on whether to move forward with your business service or not.
Dave:So if you are like the majority of business owners and you stop outreach, you stop communicating with the client after the first or second appointment, you're missing many opportunities. So take a look at your follow-up procedures, your processes, and are you ensuring that they're seeing your information, seeing your value of your education, at least five to 12 times? And if you're not, then you need to do better, you need to do more. So make sure that you focus on your follow-ups. Implement a CRM or an email kind of follow-up system that's going to help you automate some of that. Go back into your DMs and make sure that you're going and you're looking at any time that you can touch base with somebody that's in your DMs that you had a conversation about. Typically, you want to touch base, maybe with somebody every three or four months because situations are going to change.
Dave:Think about your own business situation If you look back at four months. Is it the same? No, probably not. Things have changed? Maybe a client? You added a couple of clients, your money inflows changed. So maybe if somebody had reached out to you three months ago you talked about potentially doing a service, but you didn't have the cash inflow and now it's four months later and now you do. Well, that person probably missed out on the opportunity to close you because they haven't reached out to you, they haven't followed up. Same thing with you and your business. Every business owner that you want to talk to is just like you as a business owner in your own business.
Dave:So make sure you're outreaching, you have a proper follow-up system and if it's manual, find ways to do it automated. Because, again we talked about, you only have a limited number of hours in a day, but you should be spending, as we talked about earlier, 40 to 60 hours a week productive if you were not where you want to be in your business. So if you aren't with the number of clients, you aren't have the revenue per month that you want to be and you're out taking family vacations. Well, are you doing the work? I can guarantee. If you're not doing the work, your follow-ups probably aren't where they need to be. So find ways to automate, find ways to help you follow up as well, because it's going to be important.
Dave:So anything for the second half of this year that we just talked about know your financials, know your KPIs and monitor and trend those on a regular basis. Know your cash flow and project it out and update it regularly and then know your follow-up system. Those are the three main things. If you can do those three things, you will be unstoppable. And if you give it your all I'm not saying do these three things but do it 10 hours a week no.
Dave:If you want to be a huge success and you want to reach your goals, give it the 40, the 50, the 60 hours a week. No. If you want to be a huge success and you want to reach your goals, give it the 40, the 50, the 60 hours a week. Give it six months. If you do that for six months and then you're still not where you're at, then something else probably has to change. Or maybe your product or your service. It's not tested, it's not vetted. People don't want it.
Dave:But if you're doing something that's vetted, you're doing something that there is a need for and you're giving it that much effort, it's kind of impossible for you not to be a success. And I'm going to paraphrase here, but I heard this from Alex Ramosi the other day and it's like do the amount of work where it makes it impossible for you to fail and I know it's probably not the exact quote, but that's the part that really kind of sticks out to me right Is do the work on yourself in your business. Do it so much that it is impossible for you to fail. And if that's not what you're doing right now, or if you don't know if you ever can do that and you need the support, you need people to keep pushing you forward, like that's what we're here for Make sure you follow up. You get people in your circle who are going to help do that. Make sure you're listening to the people that are going to help do that and motivate you.
Dave:So, whether it's this podcast or whether it's, you know, following Alex Hermosi's YouTube channel or Gary Vee's YouTube channel, whatever it is but surround yourself. If you look at your feed and if your feed isn't filled up with people like this, or your reels and your YouTube shorts is not filled with people that are there to motivate you, that are there to kind of push you forward, then you're looking at the wrong things, and that's probably why you're not motivated enough. So if you're, if you find yourself doom scrolling and all you see is you know videos of people falling off a porch or you know cat videos, well, you're spending too much time doing doing the wrong things. You know cause, the algorithm is there to keep you there. So if you find that you're seeing a lot of this motivational stuff, well, one, great, because you're great, because that's what you're actually spending your time looking at. But two, hopefully they're the right message to get you off the platform, to get you back into working on your business, and so that's what you want. And so how you can fix that quickly.
Dave:And then I'll let you guys go Hit the buttons. A lot of these platforms. Let you say, no, I want more of this content, or yes, I want more of this content. Typically it's up in like the three buttons. You know three little dots, or maybe there's a more that you can select. You can select hide or you can select. You know, I like this. Show me more like this. Cause, again, they want to keep you there, so they're giving you those things in order to tell them how to keep you there, and so if you tell them on the motivational stuff around me, you know kind of things that are going to push you forward, that you want to see more of that, that's what you're going to see, and then the more you see it, hopefully it's going to actually put you on a platform less, because it's going to make you want to do things in your business more. So that's what I'm going to leave you with.
Dave:I know we talked about a lot. Right, we talked about you know your KPIs. You should be monitoring. We talked about kind of leading with change. Especially if you have employees, how do you lead with your heart? How do you understand if you're making changes in your business? How do you lead them through that appropriately? And then we talked about the follow-up the sales tax holiday if you're in Ohio, but then also your follow-up. So I hope you found something, one or two things in today's episode that are going to be impactful in your business as well as, if you like, something that I said today.
Dave:Please do me a favor, as Dwarin and I are trying to grow this podcast. We're trying to make and increase the awareness to people, business owners that are around. Do me a favor hit the share button, share it with your network, share it on LinkedIn. We're live on LinkedIn, facebook and YouTube. So, wherever you're watching this, please do me a favor, share this video with your network and then in the post, don't just hit share and then do it In the post.
Dave:What I want you to do is put in what is the one or two things that you heard that we talked about today that are impactful to you, so that way, when somebody picks it up and they see your post, they're going to know what to listen for, right? So we've talked about a lot, but put that one or two things and I appreciate that and then comment down below, just let me know what one or two things that you heard that you're gonna, you know, kind of begin to implement. Put the comment down below for me. I'd appreciate that. It's gonna help me with us, with all the algorithm, fun stuff, um, and then, if again, if you want the cash flow projection template, comment down below that and make sure you get a copy of it, because I want you guys to have it.
Dave:I want you know it's a free template. Take it, you know, use it, do whatever you need to share if you need to, but I appreciate you guys being here. I appreciate you kind of watching all the way now to the end. If you need anything, have questions, drop them down below. We'll make sure to answer them in a future episode and, as always, we love you. We look forward to seeing you guys in the next episode and until then, I hope you guys have a wonderful and fantastic rest of your week and we'll see you in the next one.
