How Small Business Owners Use AI To Win Back Time | Business Unscripted Ep. 54

You're not "behind" because you're lazy — you're behind because you're trying to run a company with one brain and 24 hours. This episode gets real about what actually changes when a small business owner treats AI like a support team, not a gimmick, and how automation can give you back time without sacrificing your voice or values.

We walk through practical ways to spot high-leverage opportunities: the manual admin tasks draining your week, the growth work you keep postponing, and the simple workflows that can be automated. There's also a concrete social media re-engagement example for businesses sitting on a big Instagram or Facebook following but not converting it, plus how "training" an AI assistant makes outreach sound like you instead of sounding robotic.

Then we shift into the mindset and numbers that keep businesses alive. If you feel stuck in survival mode, we share a weekly planning habit that brings direction back fast, along with a GPS-style "recalculating" approach to goals when you drift off track. Finally, we tackle pricing strategy, value-based pricing, ROI conversations, cash flow, and why knowing your costs and margins is non-negotiable if you want a profitable business.

Subscribe and share this with a business owner who needs more time.

Episode 54

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Transcript

Welcome And What We Talk About

Dave 0:01

Welcome to the Business Descriptive Podcast. We're here to share real life insights, practical strategies, and the added lessons that we have learned from our own estate, the technically we have been in your students. So whether you need help with operations, capabilities, financial knowledge, sales, maybe just getting your mindset right. We are here and it is the right spot for no fluff conversations and cool to work. So grab your favorite cup of Joe, let's jump into the show.

AI Is Not Cheating

Find Tasks To Automate

Re-Engaging Followers With AI

Triumph Intelligence Beta Walkthrough

Escape Survival Mode With Planning

Goals Need Recalculation Not Guilt

Pricing With Value And ROI

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Grab your favorite cup of Joe and let's jump into the show. Hello, everybody. Hope you guys are having a wonderful, fantastic week. Uh, it's another episode here of the Business Unscripted Podcast. And so if you're an aspiring business owner, like I said, you're in the right spot. You know, we share our struggles, we share things that we've gone through ourselves in our journey in entrepreneurship, our failures in entrepreneurship, but also things that we help our clients with right now as well. So uh if you're here, drop a big welcome, big hello, all that fun stuff down in the comments. Uh share your questions too. If there's something that you know that's come up for you, maybe that's a a concern, a question, an obstacle, feel free to drop it down below and we will answer it live on the show. So as you guys see, it's just me this week. Dwarne got pulled away to a big project, so he wasn't able to join us today. So good luck with that project, my friend. But we're here, we shift, we we make adjustments. You know, last week I think was a great conversation that Dwarne and I had related to AI and how it can either make you or break you right in your business. And so a lot of people are still fighting it, or a lot of people actually, which is a bigger surprise, I think, is a lot of people aren't even aware of what's going on right now with AI and the ability to make an impact in your business. And I guess the the one question that I have for a lot of people, you know, is why and this is to the people that I guess they're they're they're the ones that are, I guess, not buying into AI yet, or they keep saying that they don't want to do AI or that it's cheating or something like that. But I guess you're the CEO of your company and you're a small business owner, you're and you're trying to grow, you're trying to scale. Why is it that you have to do everything yourself unfairly versus and compete with bigger organizations, bigger companies that have teams of people? And it it's owned by the owner of that company. Are they doing all of it? Right? Are are they are they doing all that work? Drifting, man. I appreciate it, brother or or lady. I don't know who you are, it just says drifting. So, but I appreciate the comment. I hope you have a wonderful and amazing day. Glad you're kind of scrolling by and checking it out. But we're here, we talk business, we talk our struggles, things that we've gone through in our business, but also how we're helping clients and the things that we're doing in our business day to day. We're live every week. So for those of you that that are just finding our channel, make sure you subscribe, do all that fun stuff. We normally have our part business, one of our business partners, Warren. But if you're a business owner too, we welcome you on the show as well. But why back to the topic? Why should you, as a solopreneur, small business owner, have to compete against the bigger businesses that have teams? You know, they're owned, if they're not publicly traded, they're owned by, you know, a group of people. They're not the ones doing everything. So is it are is it cheating for them that they have a marketing team or they have a sales team that goes out and does all that for them? I don't think so. So, but when you're just starting out or you're just why is it why do you have to do everything to try to figure it all out? Why can't you use a team like AI in different ways to help you do that? To get the things done, to give you a feeling that you have way more than 24 hours in a day than you actually do. And that's ultimately, you know, a lot of the conversations I've had this past week with clients is what are you doing on a day-to-day basis that is taking up a lot of your time? Or on the flip side of that, what is things that you don't have time to do that you know you need to do, but aren't necessarily in your wheelhouse? And those are the two questions that you have to ask yourself. Right? Is there manual processes? Is there admin work that you're doing on a regular basis that can be automated, put into a workflow, some or outsourced that can free up hours of your week? And some of that isn't always AI, some of that is just having a better process. But it feels like when you're in the day-to-day and you're struggling, you're doing all that stuff, sometimes it feels like even harder to try to figure out what the process will be. And so ultimately that's where finding an outside conversation, outside partner, that's where that can help you because you can talk through those different things, right? You can walk through a scenario or a process every week, every other week, whatever it is, and figure out for yourself how you can get out of it. But you can't do that unless you take a step back and figure out how far you're in. But there are ways to do a lot of things in AI that are gonna help you feel like your business is a 10 to 20 person business, even though it may be you or one or two other people. But you have to take the moment to learn, you have to be open to understand what that process is and what those things are. I won't dive into it too much today, unless there's questions about it. But there's just so many things, and this is where you know, we I love finance, I love numbers, but I also realizing that I also love like the back end of the organizations, right? Which is why we kind of focus on the entire business owner when we're talking with them. And we look at other ways to implement strategies. You know, I just had speaking of that, I just had a conversation last night with a new client. They have about 180,000 different people between Instagram and Facebook that are following their business page, but they don't really do anything with it because they they're bogged down. They're trying to, they're in their business every day. They don't have time and they don't want, and the people that they've outsourced it to before hasn't worked, which I'm sure you, I have for sure talked to people like that, that they promise you the world, oh my god, you have so many people on your Instagram, I can turn that into billions of dollars, right? And then there's but but it's$25,000. And I don't guarantee anything, but I can do it, I promise. And they've had some of these struggles and they had some of these failures from some of these consultants that they brought in. And here's just one example of this, and then I'll go on to another topic. But you can create yourself an AI with co-work, and we've talked about co-work before that can go to your following, go to people who are engaged with you, and just re-engage them. That's the power of it. Even if you don't have time, right? Like the idea that, well, I can't do that because it's not me. What do you mean it's not you? If you train it, if you don't train it, you just say go do this, yeah, that's not you. But the whole goal is that you're supposed to train it to be you. You say, these are the things that I want you to talk about. This is how I want you to approach the conversation, which is exactly how you would do it in your business. That's how it becomes you. And what's the difference of you paying Joe to go out and do that for you versus you training your AI to do it for you? What who do you think is gonna be trainable? Joe or Jane or John versus you telling an AI to do exactly what you want it to do and then retrain it. Ultimately, I think it's gonna be the AI, right? And again, I I'm not trying to downplay the need for people in the process, but about 80% of what everybody does can can be outsourced, can be these little processes. And so creating that skill in Claude Cowork, right? By creating that skill, that's the most important piece. Because that's what makes it repeatable. But in this example, being able to implement that process of going out and just re-engaging the people that are following their business page through an automation that sends the message that you want it to send to re-engage. Have they purchased from you before? If they haven't purchased from you before, maybe there's a different kind of tier and you teach them that. Like you just re-engage. Hey, by the way, I noticed you're following our page. Did you ever happen to try out our product? No? Oh, we'd love to send you a free sample. Is it something you'd be open to? Great. There's a link. That's all you're doing with your AI. You're not pushing at overly pushy. That's not how you want to approach it, anyways. Nobody would ever approach it that way. So you don't want to train your AI to be over overly pushy. So why would you? Right? And just that simple change can potentially even, and I was having this conversation, even if they got like 1%, right, of the 180,000 people, that's 1,800 people. So if 1800 people said yes to a simple conversation to offer free samples, which will probably cost the company anywhere from$10 to$15 per person, which by the way, is a lot cheaper than what they are paying, which is like$50 to$60 per person in acquisition right now. So which one's cheaper? And if there's$1,800 people, even if only half of those people become paying customers, that's 900 bucks, that's 900 clients. And an average lifetime value of you know five to six hundred dollars per new client. Do the math. And all it takes is maybe a couple hours to set up your system and then just let it run. You see how like now this person who doesn't have the time to do any of this doesn't have to pay$25,000 to an outside consultant. And this is the this is the program and stuff that we're kind of starting to develop with Triumph Business Solutions on top of everything else that we do because of that. Because you need to understand it's not going away. AI is not gonna go away in your business. AI is something that is going to be around in your business. And if you don't embrace it, you're gonna get left behind. And you can do it. It's very simple. And so that's why we actually, and I'll talk about something that we've been working on too. So we're in beta testing right now, and I'll throw the link up here. So if you're interested, I got 10 10 seats for beta, and you may have seen some of our posts, but I have 10 seats open for this new platform that we just are in beta testing. It's called our Triumph Intelligence platform. And so it's got 15, and we're we're adding tools every day, but it's got right now, it's got about 15 or 16 tools that are in there that are designed to help you and your business grow. And it's not just generic tools, right? How I built it was I understand that every single business owner, every single person is individual. Your current cash flow is different than the same person who may be in the same business right next to you. And so how we built this platform is it's you're gonna start by doing an interview to learn about you. And then that's stored in your system. So now it's automatically gonna go back, and any other tool that you run is going to go back to the information into your profile and run your tools based on your situation, your business, your answers, and what you're looking for to do right now. And so the idea with the platform is that we want to give you the tools to run your business without you having to always try to create a new custom GPT to help you or to go to another chat bot to help you. The idea is so in here we have you know a cash flow assessment, we have a cash flow divisor. So you're able to, you know, has ask questions about your cash flow, ask questions about what do you do to improve your receivables? What do you do to improve your AP? All of that stuff is in there. There's an SOP writer, which we talk about all the time. If you are bringing on staff or you're bringing on VAs and you don't have an SOP for that process, this is gonna help you write that. And it's not gonna be a long, drawn-out, you know, kind of SOP writing. It's literally gonna ask you some questions and then it's gonna help you write it. We have an a proposal builder. So if you're new and you're just starting out and you're like, Dave, I really don't, I don't know how to write a proposal. Well, this is actually gonna help you. Okay. And then from there, once you get the proposal, now it's gonna be an agreement writer. So it's gonna give you a draft agreement that you can take to you know, attorney and have it read and make sure that it's it's good for you and your in your state and everything, but it's gonna give you that first draft, which a lot of people spend a lot of money on, having people like an attorney write it up for them. Well, here, this you're now you're gonna get a first draft. It's gonna take all the terms, everything from your proposal, and it's actually then going to give you that information that you can then take to your attorney, right? There's a outreach, an email writer. There's a what's the other? I mean, we got so many tools in there, I can't even think of all of them right now. Uh, but the idea is that we want you to have a place that you can log in, see your progress, because that's the other goal, right? We have you can set your goals in there. You could reach out to me directly. So we have an Ask Triumph, you get uh five questions every single month that you can ask directly to us and actually get a human answer to, so you can you know attach a PL or you can attach any any sort of obstacle that you're going through right now. All of that is in the platform so that you have the ability to get the support that you need, and you don't have to feel like right you're you know you're on your own. And that's the ultimate goal. And we're always adding more, and even more so that we're probably gonna be adding more of these kind of skill generation support in there as well if you are a co-work user. So now's the time to get in. Uh, we have 10 seats open, and the goal right for you is that you jump in during this beta test, but I'm gonna continue to support you afterwards. So there's two levels right now. We have our foundation level and we have our builder level. The foundation level is$200, and it gets you, I think, about eight of the tools and about 75 runs right now in terms of credits. But our found our builder level, it's$375 per month normally. And that gets you all the tools that are available right now, plus there's gonna be a group call with that. So you're able to actually ask questions, implement the AI, all of that. What we're doing for our beta testers is if you sign up as one of the 10 seats, we will give you the builder level for the foundation level price. So you're actually gonna save about$175 per month, and then you get to lock in that price for another six months afterwards, uh, once we go live. The beta test is about is planned to be three months. So essentially it's just$600 up front. You if the beta test goes longer, you still get access to the entire beta program. And the ultimate goal here is that we want to get your feedback, we want you to share your feedback, what's working, what's not working. That's why we're willing to give you the discount and lock in that discount for a longer period after we go live. Plus the group call every single month. Uh, and we may actually have more of those depending on how things are going. But if you want one of those seats, again, I'm gonna drop up, go here and I want to make sure that it's actually right for everybody. So you can't just go here and sign up. You have to go here and actually apply. So go to this link, apply for the beta access into the Triumph Intelligence platform. I'll review it. And if you are one that is selected, we will send you an email and let you know. But the ultimate goal here is that we want to give you tools that every day you're able to log in and figure out something in your business that you need to work on. The biggest thing that I hear from a lot of people, social content. So we have a social planner where you're able to, and this isn't like a planner, like go out and schedule your stuff. The planner is what do you want to accomplish over the next 30 to 60 days? And it's gonna help you generate the plan, the actual calendar of what you need to be doing. And then you can take that calendar into our actual social content generator and create those posts in your voice. Create the posts that need that you then just take and put out. And if you follow, you'll then be able to understand, okay, here's my posts. Now I'm gonna go to co-work, I'm gonna co-work schedule it for me so that I don't have to like remember to do it. I can put it on a task, I can put it on a calendar and a schedule. That's the beauty of it. It's in your, it's still in your voice, it's still what you want to say, but now you can automate some of that. And it takes, again, gives you hours back in your week, which is ultimately what it's about. How can you do more with the time, limited time, because it's the only limited resource really that you have besides money that you can't, right? You can't get more of. You can get more money, but you can't get more time. Right? And so go in there. This is something I've been working on. I'm proud of it. Let me know your feedback. So I'm gonna pop it up one more time. I'm gonna pop up the link one more time. We have 10 seats available. Okay. 10 seats. Once they're gone, they're gone for the beta test. And then afterwards, we'll probably be live in about three months. And I'm even gonna go, there's gonna be one more level when we go live, but right now I don't want to, I'm not gonna announce that. But for now, for the beta test, you get all the tools, which is like 15, 16 right now. And every day I have new ideas. I'm like, oh, that would be a great tool. And I and I add it, I build it, I add it, I make sure it works, and it's in the system. You're gonna get access to every one of those tools that get that go live. So there may be 16 now, but who knows? By the time we go live, it may be 30. Who? I don't know. Share your feedback with me. Let me know what tool that you want. And if I if I think it fits, we'll add it in. But for the beta, as I said, you get the entire foundation level package plus the builder package for the price of the foundation. So instead of$375, you're actually going to pay$200 per month, and it's$600 for the beta. And with that, you lock that in for the entire 90-day minimum of the beta test, and then you lock that in for another six months after we go live. So if you're interested in it, go to that link. It's also down below, I think in the comments. If you don't know, or drop it down if you if you don't see the link. But with that, what I want to say next, I think, is is something that I think a lot of people I've had a conversation with a lot of people on this, right? Lately. And they feel like they're in survival mode. But here's like the one the one reason why that is every person that I have that conversation with about 90%, so I guess not every they don't have a strategy. They're just going in every day trying to just get stuff done. They don't ever have that meeting with themselves. And I think we've talked about this a couple times, where you have to make sure that you take time away to just like brainstorm and and literally like put together like your week strategy. So like at the start of every week, you should have like an hour to plan your week. Like, what's important this week that I need to get done? Or what's important this quarter that I need to get done. Those are the things that are gonna help you, and this is personal too. It doesn't necessarily just have to be business. But those are the things that are gonna help you not feel like you're just in survival mode. Survival mode means you're you approach every day without a plan. You're coming in, you're you're just putting your head down, you're like, I don't know what I need to accomplish today, and I'm just going to get it, I'm just gonna, you know, start doing stuff. That that's survival mode because you're just trying to survive the day. But if you actually have a plan, you know what you're working towards, then you're gonna be able to get out of that survival mode because you're not just coming in and doing everything day in and day out. You actually know what you're striving for. So if you feel like you're in survival mode, I be willing to bet that you probably don't have a written-down plan in your business or your life that is going to give you that direction that you need. And you know, I say it all the time about the the future, right? And I compare not having a direction to like trying to go on vacation without knowing the destination. And it's the same thing with your day to day. You don't know what you're supposed to get done today if you don't know the direction you're supposed to head. And I saw something the other day, or it was man, I I wish I could remember the he's an influencer. He gives a he tells great stories. I suck at telling stories, I know that. But he gave this analogy the other day where he and he talked about how Apple, right? Or Google, whatever map system you use, if what could you imagine that if you took a wrong turn or you decided that you were gonna turn right and it was telling you to go straight, could you imagine if it just responded, hey, we quit then. We're done. We're not, we're not gonna, we're not gonna try to get you to your destination. Could you imagine if like that's how it actually responded to you when you when you turned right and it wanted you to go straight? That would be crazy, right? But imagine that like it what does it do? It just says recalculating. And then it's the same thing with your goals. You know, it could so you have your destination, but just because you took a turn to the you know to the right when maybe you should have kept going straight, doesn't mean that you can't reach your goals. And this is so true. And it's my analogy, right when it talks about the trip tick in the calendar and being able to map out where you're going. You know, you may take a right turn, but that doesn't mean that you can't still get to your goal. You just have to recalculate. You just have to readjust. And so it was just another reminder that it's so important to be able to be flexible, to be able to understand where maybe you took a wrong step and where you started going down the wrong direction. But being able to then recalculate, forgive yourself, acknowledge the mistake, learn from that mistake, but then recalculate and get yourself back on the right track. Like it's it's just that nice reminder to have. And and I say that from like experience, because there's plenty of times where myself, I had like a goal, and earlier on in life when I was younger, 20, 30, early 30s, not in my 30s anymore. You know, I would I was that way. I would beat myself up if something went the wrong way. Nobody probably knew it, but I would beat myself up and it would delay, and sometimes I would I gave up on Dream. Just because I I just beat myself up. And it's and I try to instill that in my kids now. You know, it's like don't don't let yourself be a failure. And the only time you can let yourself be a failure is if you if you give up. So learn from what happened and correct it. And that's the ultimate thing that you can do, whether it's in life or business, whatever. So that one kind of hit home, especially when it comes to like the destination and everything that I talked about. But and then the other one that I wanted to kind of chat about today, but before I let you guys go, because I know you guys don't want you like to listen to my voice for an hour and a half, like Darren and I can go on for. But I just want you to focus on your pricing. I've had this conversation with so many people lately that they're afraid of a price increase. They are afraid of asking for more money from their client. And what this comes down to is you're focusing on the wrong thing. You're already putting your client and making them feel like, and not making them feel, but in your mind, right, you are saying that that person can't afford to pay me more by saying, I don't want to increase my price. You're assuming that that person cannot pay you more for the services that you're providing them. Now, if it's an established relationship and you know the outcome that you've been able to provide for them, I can guarantee you that that outcome is like probably at least 10 to 15 times what they're currently paying you. Otherwise, then you're otherwise your pricing should be right where it's probably at. But if you're in a situation where you're providing so much value to your clients and you know that they've been able to increase their revenue, go out and do more, you've freed up time, you've done all of this extra work for them that it's given them results that they didn't have before, but you're still afraid to ask for a price increase, it's because you don't believe in your value. Not them. They know your value. They're not going to come to you and say, you know what, hey, can I pay you more? Like you're giving me a lot. Can I pay you more? Nobody wants, nobody's ever going to do that. But you have to focus on the value and you have to believe in your value before anybody else's. And that was the thing that I told my client who, you know, I think a couple episodes ago, I told you how they were able to kind of lock in about a 25-30% price increase, was because he needed to believe in the value and why the price needed to be what it was, even though he was afraid that he was going to get turned out. Because once you believe in the value and you know the reasoning behind why you're asking for that price, you now have the confidence to go in that meeting and hold firm at the price that you need for the service that you're providing. Because if you're unconfident, the first time that they give you an objection, you're gonna break. You're gonna be like, yeah, you're probably right. I don't want to do that. More right, how are you? Welcome to the show. We're here to talk business, we're here to talk real life, strategy, all that. We go live every single Friday morning. So if you are a aspiring business owner, established business owner, we're here. So feel free to share your questions down below. If that's you, if you're here and you are a business owner and you want to ask a question, drop a question when it comes to the questions, man. But welcome, welcome. But what the pricing conversation comes down to you first. You have to believe in your price before anybody else will. And so many people that I've talked to, when they're worried about it, it's because they don't believe in their value. And so what it comes, the first step that we look at, and this is your first step today, is to really look at the services you're providing for your clients and what are they getting as an outcome from what you're doing for them. Right. And sometimes maybe it's not monetary, sometimes it may just be time. But time, right, has a value to that business owner. You just have to understand what it is. So if you're giving them back five, six hours a week, you have to have a conversation to understand what's their time worth. And sometimes, and I had this conversation with a client yesterday on the phone, sometimes it's priceless. You can't really add. And here's why. Because if you're allowing or you're giving them something that they know that they should be doing to grow their business, they know it's something that has to be done, yet they are unable to do it in the current moment because they don't have the time to do it. You can't really add value to that, right? You can't put a price tag on that. Because what you're gonna do for them in that moment is you're actually gonna add hours to their day. You see how how do you get more than 24 hours out of a day? It's because you're now adding hours by giving them something that they know they need to be doing, but they can't do right now because they don't have the time to do it. So in that particular moment, you can't really put a price tag on that, can you? It's really hard. But if they but if you're taking time off of their day, now you can add a price tag to that. Because you basically say, well, what what would you be doing if you weren't doing that? What would you be spending your time on? And sometimes for some people, it's gonna be, well, I'd be out doing more sales conversations, or I'd be out, you know, kind of generating more business. And what is, you know, in in that five hours that you would free up per week, how much new business do you feel like that would be able to generate for you? And then you let the you let them answer. Because they're gonna be able to say, well, in five hours, I could probably sign one new client a week. Okay, and roughly, right, each each new client that comes into your business, what's that worth? What's the what's the lifetime value of each new client in your business? And for them, hopefully they know that value. If they don't know that value, then they need to figure it out because it's a great KPI that they need to monitor. But let's say they say the lifetime value of a new client is five to six thousand dollars, which isn't crazy when you think of if it's a monthly or a yearly purchase, that's probably average. And most times people stay longer than a year. But for example, let's just say 5,000. Okay. So in a typical month, if you were to able to free up that five to six hours per week, you'd be able to add four new clients at$5,000 gross lifetime value. Gross profit lifetime value, right? Yeah, yeah. So if my math's correct, and maybe I'm not good at math, that sounds about like$20,000, about$20,000 of gross profit lifetime value every single month added. Is that correct? Yeah, you're right. All right. And she and see now this is where you begin to understand. Well, if you're only charging them$1,000 every month to do that, to free up that five that five hours, are you undercharging or are you overcharging? See, some people may think$1,000 is way too much. But really, because the client said they're going to be able to add$20,000 of gross profit every single month by having those five to six hours back. So typically, people are the good ratio is anywhere between eight to ten times, if not more, of an ROI on an investment that they're making. So in this case, you could pay B in charge two, you know, anywhere from$18 to$2,000, and it'd still be super profitable for them to invest in your service, in your product, in your support to free up that time. But if you went in there and you just gave them a price of$2,000 and you didn't help them understand the actual value of that time because you use their numbers, it's not like you came in and shoved numbers down their throat. It's their number. Now they begin to see the actual value because you believed in your value first. And that's what you have to understand. You have to believe in your value first before you can ever expect anybody else to believe in your value. Because if you don't believe your more your value is worth more than$300 for a service because you think that what you're doing is you know too easy, or maybe there's other people that do it in the industry. And, you know, who cares? You know your strength, you know the value that you're going to bring to your clients.

SPEAKER_02 34:11

That's where you begin with your price increase or your pricing in general.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

And you have to know your costs. Because so many people want to price something, but they don't understand all the costs that go into it. And then they realize, oh yeah, I'm only having a gross profit of 30%. Yet they want to have a 20% net profit business. Well, if your gross profit's only 30 and you want to have a net profit of 20, you only have 10% left to run the actual operations back end overhead of your organization. It's not gonna happen. It's gonna be really hard unless you're like, you know, multi-million dollar business and you have very little overhead. So this is why it's so important. Like people push numbers off to the end, but numbers and pricing and understanding all of that needs to be front and center. But I get it, I get it. Not many people are taught it in school, not many people have a knack for it. They're they're you you're great, you are great at doing what you love, what got you into your business.

SPEAKER_02 35:28

You're great at that. It's why you felt comfortable getting into business. But you don't know what you don't know, right?

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Man, I know that. The first couple times, if I think back to that, the first couple times when I went into business, I definitely did not know what I did not know. I thought I did. I thought I was a young buck, I was gonna go into business, I was gonna be successful first time. But there are so many things I didn't know. You're probably feeling that right now. If this is your first, even your second, you know, you're always learning in business. So there's probably things that you're just like, I didn't know I had a network, I didn't know about pricing, I didn't know about overhead and all these costs that I had to calculate into my number in order to understand what I should be charging.

SPEAKER_02 36:25

And that's okay.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

But now you do. So now you don't have an excuse to not understand your numbers, to not go out and find the value in your price. But if you have questions about your value, drop it down below. We can chat about your pricing, about your value, about your service, what you should be charging, what you are charging, and maybe how you're underpriced. Because the number one way that we can tell if you're underpriced, right, is if you don't have enough cash in your bank. Because if you're doing what you need to do as a business owner and you're limiting your expenses and you're you're limiting your overhead, and you still struggle to have cash in the bank, and your your owner's pay is not what you think it should be, that one of the number one issues is probably your pricing. So if you want to talk through it, drop it down below.

SPEAKER_02 37:21

Let's have a chat. Because without the proper price, you're struggling.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

You're doing all this work for what? Less than minimum wage sometimes because you're working 60, 70, 80 hours a week?

SPEAKER_02 37:41

Because you feel like you're supposed to be doing that as a business owner? Why?

SPEAKER_01 37:50

You got into business for a reason, and I want you to think back to this. Why did you get into business?

SPEAKER_02 37:59

What was that vision that you had for yourself when you first started?

SPEAKER_01 38:11

And can you still see that? Do you still think that that's attainable for you? Sit with that for a minute. Is the vision that you set for yourself when you first went out, is it still attainable? In your mind, can you still see it? Because if you can't, why'd you lose it? What caused you to lose that vision and that goal when you initially went into your business? And once you identify that, you now can you now can get back to that. You can get back to that vision. You can get back to that goal. It's not out of reach as we talked about earlier. You just have to reroute. You have to have that. You have to be able to reroute. So it's it's vital. It's really vital to to be able to have that adjustment. And it's it's something learned, right? I I definitely didn't have it initially for sure.

SPEAKER_02 40:06

It'll take some time for you. If you're not used to it, it'll take some time.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

But you can get there. I promise. I promise you can get there. So, so with pricing, be willing to know your value and trust your value. If you don't believe in yourself, nobody else is gonna. And so think as well, like when was the last time you actually did a price increase? When's the last time you actually adjusted your pricing? Because if it's been two, three years before you adjust your price and you're and you're charging the same thing, you're doing the same amount of work for less money. Less buying power. The money may be the same, but the buying power is definitely reduced. Because you have inflation year over year, right? So a$10,000 profit three, four years ago is not the same as the$10,000 profit today. It's less. You have less buying power with that. So in order for you to stay competitive, you always have to be increasing your price. Your costs are going up. And if you don't increase your price to your clients because your costs are going up to provide the same service or adjust the service, then you're basically saying, I'm willing to do the same work for less money. Even though you're charging the same, but you're doing it for less because your buying power is less. And so many people forget that. So many people are like, oh shit, you're right. I know I'm right. Because of the fact that I work in these numbers all the time. And this is why I'm trying to help and educate the people that we have conversations with. You have to think of these things. I know it's not comfortable to put your numbers first. I know it's not comfortable to try to look at your KPIs and your metrics around your business, but it is so vital to your success. It's the number one, it's the number one reason that we can look at any business, any business that's failed, and we can probably analyze that business and realize that it came down to pricing and cash flow. And what influences cash flow? Pricing and overspending. And what influences overspending is that your prices continue to go up. You add these things that you feel like you need to service the client, but yet you don't price yourself accordingly because of all the expenses that go into servicing your client. And I just I I don't I don't understand sometimes that that mindset of the struggle. Like why, and I I actually said this to a it's like, why are you willing as a business owner? Why are you willing to struggle and stress yourself out just to make a client happy who is wanting you to do something more or to do the same amount of work for less money? Why are you willing to struggle and stress yourself out for that?

SPEAKER_02 43:21

Yeah. What you're thinking right now is like, oh shit.

SPEAKER_01 43:26

Yeah, you're right. It is. It's you have to take a step back and think why am I willing to sacrifice for somebody else who's not willing to sacrifice for me? They're asking everything of me, yet they're not willing to invest. Once you have that moment of clarity, it's gonna help you have that faith in your numbers, that trust in your numbers. So ask so that this is kind of the two things that you need to be looking at, right? One, you need to to figure out do you truly believe in your pricing? Do you truly believe in your value that you bring to your clients?

SPEAKER_02 44:16

And then two, right?

Wrap Up And Beta Invite

SPEAKER_01 44:20

Is you know, ask yourself that question. Ask yourself, why am I willing to go through stress and struggle to potentially like bend and and bend over backwards to service a client who isn't willing to do the same for you? And so people say, well, that damn, that's just business. No, it's not. No, it's not.

SPEAKER_02 44:42

You're not the race to the bottom. Why, why, why are you trying to be a race to the bottom?

SPEAKER_01 44:52

That's not the point. The point in business is to provide value, provide outcomes, provide support, but still make a profit. Why everybody who works The job has profit. They get paid. They get to go. So why are you, as a business owner, expected not to have that? You have to make a profit. Otherwise, you're not going to be around. But you also have to make enough profit so that you can be around. And you have to increase your pricing in order to keep the same profit so that you can continue being around. It's a never-ending cycle. So, but with that, I know you guys don't like you know, listen to my voice all the time. But uh Duarno will hopefully be back uh next week. We'll have a much more engaging conversation. What if you have questions anytime, drop them down below after the show, during the show? You know, I I think we're gonna do a little bit more like open QA sessions as well, sometimes, like during the week. Because there are a lot of things that I'm sure you guys are going through in your business and sometimes in life, because those do overlap. I understand that. You know, you're you're not like some machine where, and I say I used to say this to my employees all the time. I don't expect you to like leave your personal life at the door. I understand there's gonna be stressors at home, there's gonna be things going on outside these doors that is going to come into and leak into your day-to-day. Just be open, just have a conversation. You know, maybe you need to be flexible and you need to leave for a day or something. Maybe you need to go for a walk, take an extra 15-minute break today. As long as you're getting your stuff done and you're getting your work done, that's what matters. So don't think like you have to be this robot. But with that, remember, I'm gonna drop up, I'm gonna put the link up one more time. So again, we have 10 spots available for the beta for the Triumph Intelligence platform. As I said, it's got about 15 tools right now. We're adding more all the time, but 15 tools that are gonna help you run your business. And these aren't just generic tools that are just gonna pop out these generics. You're gonna tell it exactly your business, what you're doing, and it's going to generate these things specific to you and your business. It's a one-stop place for you to actually have the access, right? And the ability to these different tools to free up some of your time. As I was talking about earlier, you need to free up your time with group calls, with conversations, questions, feedback, the ability to get the support that you need for 375 is the builder. But if you get into the beta, you actually get that for 200, which is our foundation price, and you it's a three month. So you get that savings for 175 for the beta, and then you get to lock in that savings for the next six months. So if you're interested, go down, use that link, and submit your application for the beta program, and we'll go there. But with that, go ahead. We appreciate you being here. We appreciate you kind of showing up every week or watching the replays. And if you have questions or if there's any thoughts or you know, you want to get on a show. We, if you're a business owner, you want to get on the show, there's a link down below as well. Feel free to join us in a future episode. And I hope you have a wonderful week and have a good one. I'll see you. See you in the next one. Bye, y'all.