Financial Secrets To Keep You In Business ft. Ken Wentworth | Ep 135

People seem to forget if you change today, today will change your life. To keep up with the latest episodes, make sure you subscribe to the Self Belief Chief podcast Facebook group. Download your favorite ones and get ready because this will be another great episode for you. So, Ken, how have you been adapting your work and your business just during this really, really crazy time?

Yeah, it's been very interesting, actually. I would say that I've been very fortunate in that I should mention this, and I say this sort of tongue in cheek and a little bit to be funny, but also to be very serious, and my wife and kids would definitely agree, is I am strategic to a fault. And what I mean by to a fault is that I'm always thinking out two, three, five years. And to a fault is I'm thinking out ahead so much that oftentimes I will trip over the curb that's right in front of me because I'm thinking out too far in some cases. So again, it becomes to a fault. So I began with all of my clients, working with them last year in the May, June timeframe. May, June of 2019, working with them for what I deem to be an impending economic downturn. And I said, you know, I want to plan for this to occur beginning, and I want us to be prepared for July 1st of 2020. And of course, because of the economic boom that we've all benefited from over the last 10 years or so, all my clients said, oh my gosh, Ken, you're just being paranoid. Everything's great. And I said, no, it's my job. This is risk management. We need to be prepared for this. I don't know when it's going to come, but I think at the earliest it'll be July 1st of next year. I want to make sure we're positioned such to be able to withstand that. And, you know, of course, I had no idea that there was going to be a pandemic and that was going to be the trigger to this downturn. But it's funny, you fast forward to, you know, March of 2020, and all of a sudden all my clients are like, oh, my gosh, you're a genius. I said, well, don't give me all the credit, because I didn't know exactly what was going to trigger this. And it did happen a little earlier than I anticipated. But we were able to position ourselves to be in a position of strength, which I learned during my corporate career as well at JPMorgan Chase, that having that strong balance sheet and having a strong capital position allows you during Times that are a struggle for a lot of businesses that maybe aren't as prepared to be able to seize market share, to be able to. For example, I have one of my clients that I just spoke with earlier this week, he has a service business and you know, I had been preaching this to him, like, look, we got to be prepared for this, you know, not only from a cash flow perspective and making sure that we're in a position where we don't have to lay off our people and furlough people and things such as that, but that, you know, some of your competitors won't be as prepared. And unfortunately that means they may not be around. Unfortunately for them. Fortunate for us, because that gives us a huge opportunity to seize market share. And not only that. So listen to this one, David. This is absolutely crazy. So through May of this year, last year for this particular company was their record breaking year and they've been in business for 19 years. So this isn't like a startup that's just growing rapidly. Right. They've been in business 19 years. But this year, 2020 through May, we had seven weeks of almost no activity. We still had some commercial projects that we could work on, but hardly anything. But even without, with seven weeks of almost no activity through May, we are ahead of last year's pace, which was last year was a record breaking year because we have positioned ourselves and coming out of this, as we've, as things have opened up, our volume is off the charts. And why is that? Because two of our top five competitors have gone out of business and closed their doors. So now all that demand is coming to us by large part because of the reputation that the owner has built over 19 years in business. But so now it's funny. Not funny. Not funny, I guess in that. So we have all this volume. So now we're like trying to hire like crazy. Well, being a service business as well, we need to purchase resources. We need trucks on the road to be able to provide our service. Well, guess what, we've got two competitors are going out of business. So I've already negotiated with one of them. So we're going to get, we're going to buy two trucks from him at 40 cents on the dollar of what they're of the value. That owner now is jobless. He's going to come work for us and then two of his employees. So we're getting experienced people, we're saving their jobs, we're saving, creating jobs. I mean it's a huge, not only financial benefit for the owner of this company. But think about it. We're helping people who all of a sudden are jobless and we're going to help create jobs for them and keep them employed and you know, which helps their families and just has that domino effect and the intangible benefit of that and the intangible feeling that I personally get from having a part and being able to create that situation to where we're helping people like that, I mean, you can put no measure on that. It's just, it's tremendous.

And how often are you working on the business of today? And how often would you be working on the business of tomorrow?

That's a great question. And it really depends usually what happens, the sort of normal, the way it typically works out is when I first start working with a business with an owner, with a new client is we really focus on making sure that what we're doing day in and day out, optimized. Like we are a well oiled machine and there almost always is opportunity. There, frankly, is why they call me in the first place, right? They need some help. Let's get that optimized. Because a lot of times, a lot of business owners, especially those that are more ambitious and you know, they want to grow, of course they want to scale. And in my experience, and I think I haven't found anyone that would disagree with this, it's really, really important in that situation to make sure that what you are scaling is already optimized. So if you have a business, let's say you have a brick and mortar business and you have one location and you want to go to, you know, your goal is eventually to have 10 locations, all of a sudden you start to scale. But so what you're replicating if it's a six on a scale one to ten, you know, as they say, you know, when you replicate something, it doesn't come out as good as the original, right? So if you're replicating a 6, all of a sudden the second version is a 5 and the third version is a 4. And so you keep going downhill.

Typically.

And again, I'm generalizing a bit here, but so my primary focus initially is really getting the business set up for success and making sure that everything. And I've got my three pillars for financial success, we start with those, we get your cash flow right. I mean, typically there's. And again, some businesses don't have cash flow issues, but usually businesses at any stage in their life, I mean, and people will get shocked when I tell them this. Amazon had cash flow issues. Now this has been about 10 years ago, but they were still a very large company 10 years ago and they ran into some cash flow issues. It wasn't because they didn't have sales and they didn't have revenue coming in like crazy. There was a variety of other things that led to that. So all businesses, there's no shame in having some cash flow challenges now and again. So making sure that we've got our cash flow game optimized, that's number one. Without cash, you don't have a business. The second thing we look at is we create a budget. So when I work with a business, you have to have a budget. And I know and I joke with this all the time, it's like the B word to an owner and frankly, to Mrs. Biz, Mrs. Biz, the word budget is like the B word. She doesn't want to hear it. But I think a lot of that has to do with people have the wrong connotation for the word budget. And a lot of times, the way I look at that, the analogy I use is the same way when I say the word diet to someone, right? Hey, I need to go on a diet. And someone goes, oh my gosh, that means I have to drink water and eat lettuce. It doesn't mean that a budget doesn't mean you can't spend money. It doesn't mean you have to penny pinch every single penny. That's not what it means at all. In fact, if you're in growth mode, it may be quite the opposite. Just like when I was an athlete, there were times when I was attempting to gain weight. So my diet is my fixed plan on whatever that goal is and it was to gain weight. So, you know, at one point during my competitive career, I was consuming 6,000 calories every single day in order to gain weight to move up a weight class. The same thing could be happening in a business where you are spending money and you are, you know, again, in growth mode where you're trying to gain market share, etc. So that is very important. Every business that I've ever worked with, and I can say this without fault, this is how powerful budget is. And this is why I absolutely, if you don't want to have a budget, I can't work with you. It is a deal breaker. That's how powerful it is. Every single business that I worked with since I've left my corporate career, the first year we have a budget is a record breaking year. Every single year time it is literally that powerful because you're monitoring it and you're knowing exactly what's working and what's not working, and you can adjust accordingly. And you don't adjust after four or five months of activity and say, oh crap, I got a problem. Let's figure this out. You know, we review it every single month against our goals, and we know exactly where at, what's working, what's not. Like I said, accentuate the positive, fix the negative. So very powerful. And then the third pillar that I use for financial success, again, cash flow budgeting. And then we look at pricing critically. Critically important if you don't have your pricing right. You know, a real quick example is let's say you have a product, product A, and it's actually priced in the way that. And you don't realize. I call it the silent business killer. You don't realize because when I talk to business owners, they go, well, of course I don't have any unprofitable products. Unfortunately, most businesses do. They just don't realize it. And so that product A, maybe it's a break even, or maybe you slightly lose a little bit of money on that product, but you have your salespeople selling that thing like crazy. Think about it. Every unit you sell of product A, you're losing money. So that's what. Oftentimes what happens when I start working with businesses is I find those products or services that are in that position because they say, I've got revenue, I've got sales, I don't understand it, I'm not making money, I have cash flow problems, something doesn't add up. And that is almost always what the culprit is, is that, like I said, what I call the silent business killer. So we fix all the pricing. And when I say fix pricing, I don't mean, oh, raise your prices by 10%. That is absolutely not what I mean. We look at if there's opportunity for that. But more importantly, it's along the lines of making sure that we have all of our costs baked into our pricing to ensure that the margins that we're looking for are what we're actually earning. I have a. So on social media, I share every week. I have a Mr. Biz tip of the week. And one of my tips, and I've used it for several years now, and I will continue to use it because it's so important, is that if you have a business and your net margin, a lot of people quote gross margin, net margin, which is your net income divided by your revenue. So basically what that means. And people go, oh, that's A lot of accounting mumbo jumbo, I get that. But if you think of it this way, your net margin is of your sales that come in the front door. What ends up in your pocket at the end of the day after all your expenses. That's essentially what it is. If your net margin is less than 10%, congratulations, you have a hobby, not a business. Unless you're in the food services industry, that's very competitive and those are typically single digit net margins. But any other business, you should have double digit net margins. If you don't, you have a hobby and you need to find someone like me or you know, that has the skill set to help you, that is not where you should be. And so I guess. Wait, so I'm sorry. So to answer your question. So we start with that and then, and then once we have those things nailed down, we begin that conversation about the more strategic view. Where do you want to be this year? Where do you want to be in three years? Where do you want to be in five years? Because I want to know, you know, I've got some clients I work with that they have an exit plan. They're in their 50s and they say, you know what, I want to be able to exit this business within five years. Okay, so what do we need to do to make sure that that happens? So, for example, I've got one business that he started the business from scratch. He started it from a one bedroom apartment. Now he does $6 million a year. He's a chimney sweep business in a moderate to warm climate, and he does $6 million a year. I mean, he's just, it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. But he is such an important part of that business that we. Part of our exit. And our five year plan for him to be able to exit is backing him out of the business. Because think about it, you know, David, if you wanted to buy that business in five years, you may look at that business and say, I can't run this business without him.

Without him. Yeah, yeah.

So you have. So part of that strategy is not just a financial thing, it's a. We have to make him less and less part of the business over those five years. So when we go to make that transition, someone says, oh, okay, you have a general manager who's in place, who's been running the business essentially on his own with very little oversight for this amount of time, etc. Etc. So there's a whole bunch of different things to consider. But so that strategic view though is very, very important because you need to make sure that all of these short term decisions you're making, the daily, the monthly, the quarterly decisions you're making are congruent with that plan you have for say, five years out sometimes. And I know it sounds crazy, but there are times when you could make a short term decision that makes all the sense in the world in the next three to six months, but it does not match up with where you want to be in five years.

I get it. Yeah. And like you said before, in terms of 10% being a career, a job or a hobby is the amount of businesses that, where it's. That the exit plan just hasn't been even considered, thought about, worked out. And you know, part of my long term strategy is whilst I'm. Whilst I love what I do, whilst I sort of can sort of say, you know, almost in inverted commas, you know, I never want to retire, I love what I do. You need to have the idea of what an exit plan looks like and just to take it back because, you know, some people might know that intellectually, but are they actually working towards that? You know, when people are starting out, a lot of people listening will be thinking, oh my God, exit plan, I haven't even got it working yet. Like, how can I even get to exit plan? I'd love to know your point of view, ken, that first 12 months and I'll have my, you know, perspective on that, but you'll have a lot more experience than I do. That first 12 months. What should be the focus? And that can sound like a really easy question where people think, oh, of course it's this, of course it's this. You spoke about budget and cash flow, but what is the, what people, what should people be focusing purely on in the first 12 months?

You mean like from startup to Correct.

Correct, yeah.

That is a critic. As you well know, that is a critical phase in every single business. And frankly, that's why you see all the statistics about businesses that don't make it a year, they don't make it three, they don't make a five. The very first thing, and that's why it's the first of my three pillars is cash flow. Again, if you don't have cash, you don't have a business. So cash flow is critical. So again, making sure. And I know that sounds very obvious, but there are a lot of different levers you can pull to ensure you optimize the cash flow that you do have. Really looking to bootstrap, don't, you know, really try to be very diligent about your expenses during those first 12 months, which of course is going to help your cash flow, your pricing. Again, you have to make sure you can't just say, well, I think it's about, I think I can charge $49 for this. You really need to do the math, especially upfront because again, think about starting that business. Excuse me. And that scenario I ran through where you start a business and you make widgets and you make this really cool widget and you do a great job of marketing and branding it and all of a sudden it's like viral and it's a massively popular thing and you're selling them by the gas, but it's unprofitable. Well, you've done all, everything perfectly except for one piece. And so now, odd as it may seem, you have this really popular product and you go out of business. Right. It just seems completely counterintuitive to almost anyone that would think about it. Right? So that is absolutely very, very, very, very important to make sure that you're doing that. And then, I mean I tell people, especially during those first 12 months is, you know, take as little. Frankly, what I tell people when they're starting out is expect you need to have enough capital to have, expect no salary during this, especially during the first 12 months. Unless or until the business gets to a certain threshold and set that threshold from day one, I will not take a salary until I get to here. And then everything that you make goes back into the business. Figure out the marketing, figure out the advertising, what's giving you the highest roi, double down on that, stop the ones that don't work, et cetera, et cetera, and, and just keep, keep that, the wheels turning on that machine until you get to that point. But those, those are the absolutely critical things to ensure you survive those first 12 months.

And what are the differences between say a product based business and a service based business in terms of, are there any differences in those first 12, 24 months in terms of how those businesses should, you know, still in terms of the cash flow and budget, but at the beginning, five, 10 years, 15 years, what are the differences, if there are any, between those types of business in terms of a focus and in terms of actually how to make those things successful?

Yeah, I think honestly, especially in the early stages, almost, and this is going to sound a little generic, but almost every business, the same fundamentals apply, whether the type of business or not. For the most part, the same, those same basic blocking and tackling fundamentals are critically important as the business continues through its life cycle and gets through those early stages, that's when you start to see separation. That's when you can not disregard those fundamentals. But the fundamentals become different depending on the type of business you have, as you said, whether it's a product based business or a service based business, then they start to become a little bit different. But in the early stages, again, it comes down to you really got to nail those basics. And once you have those basics in place and the things are working as they should and you're starting to get the volume you need, et cetera, et cetera, then you start to sort of branch out a little bit.

How good were you at following all of this advice when you first started, when you made that transition?

So why you got to ask me that, David? You got to put me on the spot and make me look bad? No, I got to be honest with you. There have been too many times, I will admit that I have. It has taken me too long and I had to step back and say, oh my gosh, this is what I tell all my clients. And look what I'm doing. I'm not following my own advice. And it wasn't because I don't believe in it. I know that it works. It's just that I got blinded and I'm so busy working with everyone else and sort of my business becomes secondary to everyone else's. And it's like I come along and literally I start to. So I'll take time. And what I found that I've had to do is I'll take time and block my calendar. Same strategic, strategic time, specifically with my business, nothing else. I don't take phone calls, I don't look at emails. I don't do anything. Essentially it's like a vacation day or days sometimes. And then when I've done that, and again the first, and it happens less now, fortunately, because I've, you know, realized it. But I remember the first few times I did that, I'm like, oh my gosh, what in the heck am I doing? And I thought if my clients knew that I had done that, they would rake me over the coals. They're like, ken, we know that. Why are you doing, you've told us that. Why are you doing it that way? So, yeah, sometimes it's, you know, you got to practice what you preach. And again, I know that it works. I just get, you know, tied up and everything else. And sometimes I don't even. Hadn't even thought it myself. So I'm much, much, much Much better at it now because I really check myself and I take more of those checkpoints now as well to make sure that I get too far down a path that's not, it's not enriching.

And you know, the great thing about people such as yourself and why obviously you have the success that you do is it's very hard, you know, anyone listening as well. It's very hard to see the picture when you're in the frame. And that's why we need people. You know, there are things fundamental, you know, something that I had continually been told, eventually took it on board after too many years of not doing it, finally thought, you know, just getting that piece of advice is just as human being, we tend to be very good if we just get one thing to focus on and do we tend to be pretty good at doing that. And then when we add in three, four, five things and we start to call it overwhelm or whatever words we might want to use where we don't quite know where to start and taking time out, like you said, to, to look at the higher level strategic approach to it, to be able to pull something, that one thing out, that's, this is where it's got to start. So this is the thing I've got to do now is exactly why people such as you, as I said, have the success is because, you know, it's, there's no nobility in doing it alone. There isn't. And you can't see your blind spots. And thank God I've had good people to work with along the way. But even time and again, you know, that idea of focusing on one thing, I just did it again recently where, where I just saw this shift in my business and I thought after, why have I just introduced this new thing here? I haven't nailed this yet. Nailed this, then I can use that. So I'm totally on the same page as you and who are the people, so who are the people, you know, in your career that you sort of look to and thought, you know what, actually this, this person was a really important influence on me. And this person helps correct me in this way and can see my blind spots from time to time. Who are the people in your life that did that?

Yeah, I mean, I was very fortunate. Again, I worked for 20 plus years, you know, at Fortune 15 company JPMorgan Chase and was able to rise to the top 3% of the company. And actually, oddly enough, I was when I left, I was up for promotion to be in the top 1% of people. But I had been. I was starting to feel a little bit stifled by some of the red tape and the bureaucracy that you find in a company that large. But I was very fortunate being in a company that size and having some of the success that I was able to have is, you know, having some really good mentors and people that guide me along the way and help me see those blind spots. And I think I developed a little bit of an odd, maybe ability to realize those people, the more senior people that I dealt with on a regular basis and what they were good at in regards to what they can help me with most. So I know that on, like, personnel, leadership type things, this particular person is really good at those. And so when I have those types of issues, I'm going to go to him or her on strategic thinking. Man, oh, man. Because there's so many bright minds at that company. I mean, it's just absolutely amazing. And so having access to all those different resources, I think has been tremendous. And then since I've left my career, my corporate career, you know, I found someone initially that does what I do that's a fractional CFO. He's based in. He's four or five states away from me here in the US and he had been in business for like 20 years. And so I reached out to him on LinkedIn and I said, hey, I'm starting this business. Can you help me avoid some bumps in the road that I'm inevitably going to hit that maybe you hit in your career? And so, you know, I've kept in contact with him and we have a lot of laughs. We talk probably about once a quarter now. And honestly, most of the time now when we talk, it's sharing war stories. Like, oh, my gosh, I had a client who did X, Y and Z. And he was like, oh, you gotta be kidding me.

You know.

But no, I think it's very, very important. And those people, you mentioned this earlier, David, is those people that think that they don't need Coach or they don't need a mentor or they can do it on their own. A couple things I would say to that is, number one, tell me someone who is, at least by society is deemed to be quote, unquote, successful, that did it on their own. You alluded to that earlier.

Yeah.

Tell me. Anyone, right? Name me one person, right? And I can almost assure you you're not gonna find anyone. Not one person. There's a couple of people that I'll bring up as an examples that people would consider successful. Now, not as much now as he's aged. But you know, Tiger woods in the golf world, right, when he was in his prime, he, I mean, he absolutely dominated the game. Right. If anyone's not familiar, look up some of. I mean, it was absolutely.

I watched his documentary the other day and the coaches he had involved, absolutely just amazing.

Yeah, that's what I was, that's where I was going with it. Is even someone like that who's massively successful, he had a gazillion coaches, someone like Michael Jordan in basketball. Right. Suppose, you know, everyone, a lot of people say the greatest basketball player of all time. Do you know how many coaches he had? Right. Even those people like that, the Oprah Winfrey's of the world, the Jeff Bezos of the world, Warren Buffett, for crying out. I mean, all these people that are at least deemed by society to have been successful did not do it on their own. I mean, no one did it on their own. Howard Schultz that started Starbucks, they did not do this on their own. So you got to have check your ego at the door. Find yourself a good coach and humble yourself a little bit and at least have a discussion with them. And maybe you may have to have a discussion with a few of them because maybe that particular coach isn't as good at the things you need, you know, particularly your blind spots, your weak spots. But I'll tell you, you find the coach that hits your blind spots, it is going to absolutely accelerate your corporate career, your business life. Absolutely. I mean, I'm telling you, talk to some people who have had coaches and had successful relationships because again, sometimes you may end up hiring the coach. Again, that may be not as good in the blind spots, but if you find that, oh my gosh, it is so powerful, it's unbelievable.

Yeah. And just, I mean, some of the people that I've had the fortune of working with, where I can easily say they've saved me 10 years and it's just that pure. Right. The idea of that. And yes, you know, it's. It's one of those things where you're right in the sense that you might have to go through a few. And people have to have the faith that even if the first few that they talk with, it's not. Doesn't quite align with them, you know, perfectly. Then, you know, the whole point of coaching, I see a lot of people or, you know, come across a lot of people who, you know, they say that, oh, maybe they say they're a life coach or whatever and they go and, you know, you ask them okay, so, but what is it that you do? And then there's just this pause but, well, I help people feel better about. The whole point of coaching is you're looking. It's a difference between sort of a, you know, if you, if you, if you need heart surgery, a GP and a specialist, right? You want to go with a specialist, you want to go with a person who's got that skill set. And I think with coaching is just one of those brilliant industries where you don't have to, you know, check your ego at the door to say, I don't do everything but just hone your skills and say, you know what, I'm going to really use my experience, but also hone in on the specifics and find a way to simplify this for other people and say that this is the thing I do. And it is, you know, very obvious point, but you find that niche for yourself, then that's how, you know, that's how you can find great results. And for, you know, for people who want to get into the space, you know, either coaching, consulting space or anything along those lines is, it's nice when you make money, it's nice when you do this. Just the simple fact that you see when you've made a difference to someone, and so we've spoken about what the wonderful impact is when you find that right expert in your life who can just save you years, save you pain, do all of that stuff. But also on the flip side of it is if you're someone who wants to be that person, to be able to do that for someone else is such an incredible feeling. And I don't know when maybe Ken, the first time that you had a result in your business where you thought, wow, that is something. I've really hit the mark there. And, you know, it might have been the first person you ever worked with. It might have been, you know, 10 businesses down the road. I don't know. So is there a story or occasion where you thought that is the sort of impact I wanted to make?

Absolutely. So I've got several examples. But the first time that that happened and there's a, there's again, I've got a gazillion stories about financial results, but this one particular really, as they say, hit me in the feels. So I had a client, I had a client who had a remodeling, construction, remodeling company and he was, let me paint the picture a little bit. He was an old school construction guy, good old boy, you know, drops F bombs left and right like Just not. Doesn't have a lot of decorum, which is fine, which is fine. But I'm just trying to paint the picture of what this guy's like. So we had just talked on the phone. We typically meet twice a month. And we had just talked recently and all of a sudden he called me in the middle of the afternoon and he said, hey, do you have time to talk this afternoon? And I said, yeah, I can talk right now. He said, no, I need to meet you in person. Which was kind of odd. And so I said, yeah, sure, let me see what my calendar is, et cetera. And so we meet at a Panera Bread. He was in between job sites and I was traveling in between meetings as well. And so I said, okay, this is a good central location. We meet and we're at this, you know, little table, a two top table in a Panera Bread. And again, this is a big old burly guy, right? And we, I, he's already there when I get there. I come in and sit down. I said, you know, what's going on, Scott? He said, he leans across the table, gets uncomfortably close to me, says, I want to kiss you right now. And I said, scott, you don't pay me enough. That is not contracts. That's not gonna happen. And he started laughing. He leans back in his chair and he kind of lean, you know, leans way back on his chair. And he's like, I wanted to meet you in person to tell you that you have not only saved my business, you saved my marriage.

Wow.

And he's got three boys, three young boys. And he said, I didn't tell you this when I hired you, but he had been in business for about two years and he was losing money hand over fist. And what he did was what a lot of people do, especially in that situation is, I mean, this guy's a hard worker man. And so he's working, you know, Monday through Friday, 10 hour days. That's not working. So then he starts working 12 hour days, and that's not working. So now he starts working four hours on Saturday, in addition to Monday through Friday, 12 hours. And then he starts working 14 hour days Monday through Friday, and you know, four or five, six hours on Saturday. And all of a sudden he's working, you know, six days a week for 12, 14 hours. And then all sudden, I'm just gonna do invoicing on Sunday mornings. Long story short, so he's got three young kids. His wife also works. So imagine his wife's frustration. She's managing the household. He Said, I got to a point where I just went, I got up at 6:00 in the morning, I was gone before I got to bed. I got home at night. His kids are relatively young, so they're in bed or in the process of going to bed. He barely saw his kids at all. He would eat, take a shower, go to bed, wake up and be gone before they got up in the morning and rinse and repeat, right? And imagine his wife who's getting frustrated that she's managing this household with three young children and she's got a full time job and she's making sure they get to daycare and back and forth and the doctor's appointments and all that. And so it was having a massive strain on their marriage. So they were going to marriage counseling and all this stuff. And again, I was all, I didn't know all that going in. But he said, you know, now I work Monday through Friday, 10 hours a day, which is fine, and I don't work weekends at all, Nothing. And now I make tons of money. He said, literally. My wife said, we left marriage counseling one evening. We were driving back to our house and my wife said, this business thing does not work for you. You're not good at it. You need to stop and get a job, get a real job, make some money for this family and make sure you're here for your family. And he said, I was just taken aback. And again, David, this guy's personality, like, I cannot imagine this guy working for another person ever. And as a matter of fact, he had told me all the war stories on all the times he had been fired. I mean, he was just, he is not a work for someone else kind of guy. But. And so he said, you know, now I've cut my work hours back, I get to see my kids. I don't miss ball games. I don't. I'm able to take them. You know, I've got flexibility in my schedule now. He said, my wife and I, we don't no longer go to marriage counseling. You know, I'm making lots of money, which is helping as well. And I said, I was absolutely floored. I mean, you know, I see the financial impacts and I know, you know, you kind of know the impacts that that has. A lot of times small businesses have family impacts to them. And you know, when you help that and you see when they're hiring people, when you help create jobs and things, and that's very rewarding. I love that. Like the story I mentioned earlier, but this one, I mean, imagine had this taken the turn, continue to take the turn that it had, maybe he and his wife end up getting divorced and now he's got three young kids and they're divorced and they don't get to see their dad. And I mean, I just can't imagine, you know, the negative impact that would have continued to have for, you know, far reaching into the future. So I left and I'll tell you, David, I could have, like, flapped my wings and flown home. I didn't even need my automobile. Like, I was. I felt I was on cloud nine. I was so overwhelmed with joy to be able to have that type of impact that I never would have imagined. I got home And I told Mrs. Biz, my wife, that story. And she's a nurse. And so she's a very caring, feeling person. And she doesn't know this person, never met him, has no idea who they are, you know, the family or the owner. And she literally started to cry because she was so touched by it as well. I mean, so things like that, the impact, I mean, that. And that literally was. That was fairly early on after I left my corporate career. And that was just the 27th reinforcement that this is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing right now.

When you get that feeling of this is what I'm supposed to do, and it just. Everything in you just seems to align. That is a great feeling, an awesome story, and you've touched on a few time, few times that you found that thing which you knew you're supposed to do. Having come from this corporate background with JP Morgan, I was saying to you beforehand, I was really curious to know what that was like, especially if I'm right in saying that you were working there around the time of the financial crisis. I don't know if I'm right in saying that, but in terms of the aftermath and dealing with adversity, like any kind of small business would go through, athletes who are listening to this podcast, everyone goes through adversity. It's just to get a bit of an understanding of know what that was like, what you learned from the experience. And then how did you make that transition? Away from that? How soon did you make that transition?

Yeah, so I was able to. I completed my master's degree in 2006. So we're going back a ways here, but. And in order for me not so JP Morgan Chase paid for the majority of that. In order for me not to have to pay it back, I had to stay for two years. And so I've always been. I'VE always wanted to have my own business. I've always been very entrepreneurial and I always wanted to take that plunge. And so I gave myself that time. I'm like, okay, I have two years, I'll stay here for two more years and I'm going to leave in 2008 and I'm going to move on. And I got two years to figure it out. Well, of course, the financial Crisis hits in 2008, 2009, so I was very fortunate in that I was tapped on the shoulder to do fill in a lot of these crisis situations that were occurring. So I got to do, I had really cool experience and got to do a lot of really cool stuff and make some really meaningful contributions to the company. So that, you know, that was 2008 when I was planning on leaving. And then nine, 10, and then we through the crisis bought a couple of different large entities. And so I was part of the, you know, helping transition them into the larger organization, et cetera. And so long story short with that is that I had set that two year deadline for myself, 2008, and I did not leave until 2015, so I was about seven years late. But, you know, it continues. I was able to do a lot of really cool stuff. And really the again, as I mentioned, I started to just feel a little bit of the bureaucracy. And I just knew I had always had that in the back of my mind. And then I got to a point where I'd come up with two ideas, revenue generating ideas that got shelved because of some red tape and bureaucracy. And it was frustrating for me. And I that's. Those were. The second one was the sign for me. It's like, okay, I know I can have an impact, a bigger impact, and I know I'm going to struggle to make that happen here because as you continue to ascend on that, you know, that proverbial corporate ladder, in my experience at least it becomes worse. I mean, I knew I was never going to be the CEO or anything like that. I was never going to reach the top. But even transitioning from the top 3% to the top 1%, I'm just envisioning like this is just going to become more frustrating for me. It's going to be more difficult for me to sort of do these sort of things. And so that's when I made the decision I was going to leave. And I'll tell you, I had no idea what in the heck I was going to do, David. I just knew that there was something. I had developed a skill set and expertise over all these years, I knew there was something I could do that I would love to do and I could help people. And so again, had no idea what that was going to be. So about. So I'm based in Columbus, Ohio, of course, headquarters for JP Morgan is in New York City, which I traveled to pretty often. And so the next time I was back up there, it was two or three weeks later, my boss is telling me about the process for being promoted into that top 1%. And I said, yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that. I'm gonna resign. And he got up and he closed the office door and he's like, that's not typically how this conversation goes. So we, you know, I explained to him sort of my reasoning and part of it too was that being in that top 1%. So in Columbus, Ohio, there are about 20,000 J.P. morgan employees. However, there are only about 15 of them that are at that level. And a lot of those jobs are IT based jobs. Things not in my wheelhouse. Meaning that again, my strategic to a fault. David, I warned you about this, that I'm thinking, you know, what am I going to do in five years?

You could start, see a ceiling to.

A certain degree in Columbus, Ohio. So then that means I need to relocate, which because of family circumstances, we, my wife and I, we don't want to do that. And so it's like, that's not an option. And I'm just, I know some people reach a point in their career and they go, I just want to hit the easy button. I want to know what I'm doing. And just like, cruise and I am not that guy. So I'm like, I don't want to have the same job for the next 15 years. Like, that's just not appealing to me whatsoever. That's part of what I love about what I do now is I work with different businesses, different challenges, Every day is different. But so then I decided to leave. And my boss, he said, you know, I get it, I understand. He said, you know what, you're probably right. Because in two years from now, I'm going to pressure you even more to move to New York City or to move to London or to move to, you know, another location to take on a different leadership role. And so it ended up, you know, especially in hindsight now, it was 100% the right decision. A lot of my friends and family, when I told them, they, they thought I had fallen off my rocker. Like, are you kidding me? You've got this lucrative corporate job, you've done so well there and what are you going to do? Like, I'm not sure yet. And they're like, what? How can you do that? But I again had a mentor and it sounds so simple, but we sat down and he said, we're going to figure out what you're going to do next. And I said, all right, sounds great. We were in a conference room in his office and he's got this giant whiteboard. Imagine it being very, very wide, probably 10ft W. He starts on the left side of it. And he said, I want to know every job that you've ever had from your first job until now. And I want you to tell me three things you loved about the job and three things you hated about it. And so I said, well, when I got out of college, he goes, no, no, no, no, no. I want to know the first thing you did that you got paid for. So we went back to when I was 12 years old. First job I had, I was a newspaper delivery boy, which definitely dates me, right? People go to newspapers. Is that right? But we went back to that and moved forward. And so then of course, when we got done all the way up to current time, he went back and circled the commonalities, right? What are the things that I liked? And geez, you had whatever, 15 different roles. This showed up 12 times that you liked it that you didn't like. This showed up 12 times. So he said, well, it's pretty simple. We need to find you something that you can do. This, this and this. But you'd never have to do this, this and this. I'm like, what the heck is that? Right? So again, what I do now, I had no idea even existed because I was so engulfed in my corporate career. I was so naive to the, to the small business world outside of the corporate space. He said, you need to be a CFO for, you know, six or eight businesses. And I said, how the heck do you do that? Being CFO for one business is a 60 or 70 hour a week job. How do you do six or seven, six or eight? And he said, no, you do it on a part time basis. You have these business owners who are really good at the service they provide or the products they produce, but maybe they don't have the business experience, they don't have the financial experience. You can help them optimize their business. And I'm like, that actually kind of makes a lot of sense. You know, there's a gap there. He said, they don't, they're not large enough to need a full time cfo, but they need someone to help them. And again, it made a lot of sense. And so I got my first client and I was there probably two weeks. I want to say it was in the second week. I was driving home from the client, from their warehouse and it was just like this, you know, if it would have been a movie, there would have been this giant sunshine above my head and like, they would have, ah, you know, singing. It was like this epiphany, like this is what I'm supposed to be doing. I absolutely love what I do. And it absolutely fits the cliche of I don't feel like what I do is work because I love to do it so much. I don't wake up in the morning and think, ah, crap, I got to do X, Y and Z. I think I wake up in the morning, go, I cannot wait to go do xyz.

Yeah. And it's, you know, it's amazing how few people ever experience that feeling. It's, it's just, it just baffles me. And I know there's what we might call the realities of life with, you know, and various commitments and other things we've got to do. But, you know, lots of people when they have, want to go freelance, when they want to set up their own business, when they have an idea or, you know, some people do it because they don't want to work for someone else. Some people do it for the idea that they've got. Some people do it for the money and some people do it for what they think is or what they hope is the freedom, the spare time, the extra time. I wanted to ask you, from your point of view, Ken, we speak lots with regards to the career itself and loving the job and of course you want to do more of what you love. When you made that transition, was there an element where you wanted to free up more of your time? Or maybe it wasn't at that point, decades later or however many years later that becomes something you're more interested in or more keen to do. Where do you stand on that side of things in terms of opening up and having more time for yourself?

Yeah, I wouldn't say it's necessarily more time, but it is in the, in regards to freedom. It's more flexibility.

Sure, yeah.

But with, with, with, you know, I've got three daughters and so having the ability to be able to make it to those, you know, three o' clock in the afternoon, you know, school events they have, or me being able to get into practice or, you Know, helping my wife, you know, we were a team and so being able to, who can do it? And having the flexibility to be able to do that. Where in the corporate world I had some flexibility, but certainly not the way I do now. I mean, I can schedule things around whatever I need now sometimes that means as well for me not to miss those things and not miss family time. And I'm a self professed and diagnosed by my wife, night owl. And so sometimes that means I'm working from 10pm until 2 or 3 o' clock in the morning while my family's sleeping. So I'm not missing any family time, but I'm catching up on work as need be and I'm completely okay with that. It doesn't bother me at all. But for me it was more, at least at this stage it's more about the flexibility, not necessarily the more time for myself because again, it's funny, my wife makes fun of me all the time when I have quote unquote free time. She's like, that's work. I'm like, no, I'm not working. She's like, yes you are. You're reading a book about something to do with your work. She's like, why don't you read a book about, you know, that's a, that's a fiction book that's about some cool story. I'm like, I don't enjoy that. Like that, that's not my gig. So, you know, she jokes me, even in your free time, you're doing things that are, you know, that relate to your work because you enjoy it so much. So I feel very, very, very blessed and fortunate because as you said, I know a lot of people never get to that point to where they truly, absolutely love working, what they do. I will find time in the evenings to sneak into my home office to do 20 minutes of work because I, you know, and it's funny, I'll be plotting in my head. We'll be eating dinner and I'll think, okay, we're almost done with dinner. As soon as we're over with dinner, the girls are going to go up in their rooms, get their showers, start working on homework. My wife's going to go up and get her shower. Perfect. Everyone's going to be preoccupied. I'm going to run into the office. As soon as I hear someone come back down the steps, I'll leave my office. But I can get in there and do some, a couple things and what am I going to do? See, I didn't quite get this done. You know, etc.

Etc.

So because I literally, I just, I love it. I absolutely love what I do. And again, I can't emphasize it enough. You have to. When you reach that, that point of, frankly, I would call it career euphoria. When you reach that point, I mean, there's nothing like it, honestly, in my life. There's nothing I've experienced. It's like that. It's amazing.

I like the phrase career euphoria. And the options and opportunities for people now are just. Are incredible. And especially when I always think of the story Jim Carrey told about his father, saying that his father was a very talented musician and. But Moo decided to relocate to sort of get what he called a safe job, I think, in banking at the time instead of pursuing his music career, and then was let go after a few years and the family really struggled. And I remember Jim Carrey saying, you know, decided from that point on that, you know, we're going to. If we're going to fail and we're going to fail in points during our career at some point anyway, why don't we fail at something we actually love to do? That's what the path he stuck on. And it is a lot of anxiety that comes with trying to operate and do your thing and do it the way you. For some people, that's not about not working in a corporate setting. It's just finding the right job, finding the right role for themselves. But to not look for that I find incredible. And what I wanted to touch on, there are a few. I know you do a Facebook Live quite frequently, so I've written a few different things down which I'd love to get a bit more information on because so for some people, in terms of confidence, I always say one of the most important things is clarity, and clarity brings things closer. So I want to go through some of these Facebook lives just to get some ideas because maybe this is the sort of clarity that people need. Let's have a look here. So we've got you add what it says. Don't overlook this easy to implement revenue growth strategy. Now, I would love to hear for myself what that looks like, but I'm sure many other people listening. Yeah. So tell us what that was a little bit about and what is it that maybe people aren't quite focusing on and where they might need to draw their eye line to. To see where there might be a little bit more growth for them?

Yeah, Honestly, I'm not 100% sure. So I've done probably 150 lives so I'm not exactly sure what that one was. But I'll tell you more than likely what that topic was is it's a very overlooked thing. And here and again I like to back things up with statistics, not just.

You know.

So and this is super powerful and I think when people hear this they go holy crap. I know. Never realize that is for a small business and actually small to medium sized business, 65% of all of your new revenue comes from one source. It's existing customers. Existing customers.

I could believe that. Yeah.

We are all out there, right everyone, right. Looking for new business and right. You can all agree that. Think about this. Is it easier to offer a new product to an existing customer or to go find someone out there that never has heard of you, etc, etc, never heard of your product, your business etc. And try to convince them to buy from you? Right? Yeah, yeah. And so you know, really starting to think about that because. And it's not just about oh, buy more from me. It's not that. Right. You don't want to be that cheesy salesperson that's just pushing stuff down people's throats. But it's more of making sure that you have that dialogue with your customer base on a regular basis because there may be things that they're purchasing elsewhere or that they need, they're already buying it somewhere else and you can say hey, you know what, I also offer that product or service. Let me, let me know. You know, let's see if we can work something out here. Because think about the ease for your customer now. Now they have one place to go for two products instead of two different places. Instead of managing two different vendors for them, they can come to one place. So it makes it easier for them. They may be able to get better pricing with you. They already know like and trust you. Right. You've already covered gone over that hump. So that is one of those things that again that's more than likely what the topic of that particular live was because it's so awesome overlooked because we're again we're all out there and again you have to do that. We're all prospecting, right? But we have to find the new new customers which of course are important but man, don't overlook those current customers you have because you may be able to provide more value to them.

I like that. I think that's a, I think that is a very common mistake. I'm sure I've made that mistake plenty of times. But is you're right in Terms of provide, you know, it's no one wants to. And let's put it this way. So for example, if someone was a life coach, a counsellor, a therapist or something along those lines, I can imagine those sorts of people even say a personal trainer, those sorts of people going, I want to get them the result and they've got the result at this point, I don't want to keep selling them. And that's quite right, you don't want to, as you just said, you don't want to keep trying to sell them and make them buy more and whatever. But it's understanding, well, what is this new value they provide? Or I like what you said in terms of, well, actually all these other things a bit like I guess what Apple do, if you can have it all in house under one kind of connection, then it makes a lot more sense that that's, you know, that one stop, you know, go to person. So I like that another one that you had which was are you missing this critical component in your pricing? Now I don't know if you necessarily remember what that was about, but again, pricing something I'm very keen to hear about. So what did you have to say about that?

Yeah, so a couple typical things that I see that are missing in different pricing models. And so if you have products and you're producing products, the number one thing that's missing in a pricing model is shipping. Not just shipping to the customer. Right. Most people capture that and they just charge it directly to the customer. It's more so the shipping, your shipping freight that you incur as you're acquiring the raw materials to make those widgets. So that's a big one on the sort of product side. Yeah. And on the service side, too often what I see is that. And even it happens all the time, David, when I talk with owners, even today, everyone, as I mentioned again, I don't want to get too far into the accounting weeds and too much numbers gobbledygooking people get lost. But everyone quotes, everyone quotes their gross margin. And gross margin, for those unfamiliar, is your sales or your revenue minus what they call cost of goods sold. And the cost of goods sold are the things that go directly into producing whatever it is, your service, your products. And so then you subtract that, that's your gross profit margin. So everyone, every time I sit down, even with and a prospective client, the first thing they say, oh, my margins are 60%. And I'm thinking, I know that's not accurate because you wouldn't have called me Otherwise, right, their gross margin may be 60%. So what I'm getting to is everything below that is often not fully accounted for in pricing. Meaning that all of your overhead, all of your administrative costs oftentimes are not fully incorporated into your pricing. Things like that, people forget about that they have expenses for of, you know, not just even the obvious things of the rent for your office space that you're leasing, but you know, all of your material costs when you have to buy new computers for you and or your team, when you invest in audio equipment to do videos or do interviews or you know, like this or all those things need to be incorporated and you have to have a full view of your P and L. And so I tell people, often is two things. So if you have, if you produce a product and this breaks it down really simply almost to elementary of a level. But I tell folks, if you produce something, sit down at your desk and have whatever it is you produce and look at it and think about all the costs that go into that. Like, okay, it's a coffee mug. And so there's the material to make the mug, there's the frame that that goes into, there's the painting, there's the, you know, all that, the oven that goes in to bake the enamel onto. You know, you can really start to think those things through. And then if you have a service, a service based business type thing is really print out your, your profit and loss statement and really go down. Especially again in that overhead administrative side of things. Make sure that every single line that's on there, that you have expense in, you're capturing that in your pricing. Meaning that here are my expenses for this particular service and I want to have a margin of 20%.

Therefore.

Therefore, you know, here's what it is and you know, add 20% to it. Are you charging that? I would venture to guess from my experience, most of the time you aren't, you aren't. Now if you have a consulting business, it's, you know, margins are much higher for that because typically your overhead is lower. It's spread, spread differently. So, but you know, attorney's office, things like that, professional services type things, it's a little bit different because there you should expect to have much higher margins. Although sometimes in those, you know, look at it like a law firm, they may have to have a fancy location. So they're paying very exorbitant lease, you know, leasing expenses for their space. So again, making sure that you're. Because a lot of people have. My newest client, he has A media company. And one of the. One of the things they do is that they provide for realtors. They work with realtors and they go do photo shoots at houses, photo shoots, 3D tours, videos, all that sort of thing. And even when I sat down with him, he's like, okay, well, charge the realtor $300 for this service. And I pay my contractor 150. So I make $150. I'm like, no, you don't. He's like, what do you mean, no, you don't? So we were sitting in his office space. I said, is this free? Does this not cost you any money? What about the fancy camera that these guys use that you had to buy? How do you have that incorporated in your pricing? What about the lighting, the light poles that you have for these shoots? What about the tripods? And he was sat there like, holy crap, I never thought about any of this stuff, you know? And again, it's not just the everyday expenses. Some of it are things like that that are more. He doesn't have to buy a camera for every shoot, obviously, but you need to somehow have those expenses baked into your pricing to ensure otherwise you may end up finding that you're. And what's. What we found, interesting side note to all this, and the proof is in the pudding, as they say. David is his highest volume service that he provided. He was losing money on every single shoot that he did.

Really?

Yeah. And he. And guess what? Because his pricing was so low, his volume was through the roof. Right? Because compared to his competitors, he's doing it way cheaper. But for every shoot he does, he's actually losing money. And so again, he was in that scenario that I mentioned much earlier, is that he's got this product, this service, in this case, that he's selling like crazy. And my gosh, I got all this volume. I got all this revenue coming in. Why am I having trouble making payroll? This just doesn't make sense. And so we had to go through that, peel back the onion and figure that all out and then find, you know, to the point of, you know, your existing customers with him. Just a real quick example we found. Again, think about in that situation where you have realtors who are listing properties for sale, he does the photo shoots, videos, he does drones, he does. He does many other things. But that this is the core of his business is that. And I said, so let's. He said, how else do I get, you know, deeper into my current customer base? And I said, well, what else do those people do? What Does a realtor do you give them the photos? What do they do? He's like, well, they, they put it on a website. I'm like, okay, do you do website work? And he does, right? So he's like, oh my gosh, yeah. I said, have you offered to build websites for them? Have you offered to fine tune their websites? He's like, oh my gosh, great idea. And then I said, what else do they do? They have these properties, they want to sell them. So what do they do? He's like, well, they have to market them. I said, come up with a marketing kit. You do marketing. Come up with a marketing kit that's an add on and say, hey, you know what? We're doing your photos. Do you want this marketing kit? We can add it on for you. And here's what it entails. We're going to do this, this and this. We're going to post on these social media platforms. We're helping promote this. It's a $29 add on. We implemented that. So when they go out, so they, it's all automated when they come on and book these shoots. And we added that on for $29. 78% of the shoots in the first month added that on. That product cost him a $50. He charges $29. And it's an, it's a value add for the, for the realtor. You know, they, they'll pay $29 every day. As a matter of fact, he's talked to two of his largest customers that do the most volume with him and they reached out to him and said, this marketing kit is amazing. I wish you'd have done this earlier. And he said, well, how much value did you get out of it? And they both said, we would pay much higher price for it. He said, don't raise the price on us, but $29 is way too inexpensive. So it's just another example of when people say, well, there's no way for me to really get further into my current client base, you know, and be able to tap into that 65%. You got to think outside the box and think innovatively and don't think about more money for you. Think about more value for your customer.

Yeah, yeah. And when I, when I work with people with, in around sales, one thing that I think just probably aligns with what you just said right then, which is you're ever selling to someone or you're ever trying to persuade or influence or trying to, you know, encourage them to purchase something within your business, something I bear in Mind, or always do is just use two words, which is lean back. Because actually when you try and lean into it, when you start thinking about from the point of view of I'd love to make this out, I'd love to make more money, I'd love to, you know, increase my margins, it just doesn't seem to work. But when you lean back so that they can lean into it, so they can tell you what value is required. And of course part of that is market research and everything else, so, so that you can understand how to give them unbelievable value, then people just buy into it. So I totally agree with everything that you've just said and I think that's a really, really, really cool stories. And I think that's almost the curse of the creative, right? The people who get into business, but they're the creative minded ones, not the business minded ones. You get those two different ones. The business one always seems to end up with all the money. The creative one comes up with the great ideas. The creative one has to upslip. You know, I was more of a creative. I had to massively upskill. And you have to. It's a bit like the chef who loves cooking. Then he thinks, you know what, I want to set up a restaurant. And he hasn't quite worked out or realized shit. There's a load of other crap that comes with setting up a restaurant aside from the bit that I love, which is cooking. So sometimes, so sometimes you've got to understand whether who you are. But if you want to do your own thing or grow your business, you have to really upskill and find the right people to help you do that, such as yourself is invaluable. And before we think about wrapping up in this conversation, has one. I've written a load of notes myself, so thank you very much for that. But I'm sure very useful for a lot of people. Before I sort of let people know or get you to talk about where people can find you to hear more from you, Ken is. I like to talk to people about everyone wants to leave footprints for other people to follow, right? And whether they regard that as something they do every day, whether they regard that as legacy, whether what if they regard that as the people have in mind that they want to leave some footprints for other people to follow. And I always want to encourage people to leave footprints. So what I want to ask you the final question really is what footprints are you looking to leave for other people, you know, going forward or however far you get in your career? And the work that you do? What are the footprints you want to leave for other people to follow?

Yeah, I look at it as really my overall goal, life, career, business, family, etc. Is, and again, it's going to sound sort of almost corny, but is ensuring that I fulfill my life's purpose. And again, that sounds very generic, but the reason I say it that way, and that's how I define success. I don't define success by a certain dollar amount. I don't define success by a certain philanthropic amount. I think and part of the reason is that that answer is different for every single person on the face of the earth. And that's why I think that, I think that's a good way to define it is because some people, their purpose in life is I want to make $50 million so my three generations from now don't have to work. And some people say I want to make enough money to pay my bills and I want to go to South Africa and do a bunch of philanthropic work and things like that. So it's a different answer for everyone. But I think again, I want to make sure that I can have a positive impact and leave that footprint, especially with my children, making sure that they see the impact of those things. And so we're in the process now, and it takes a long time to do, but we're in the process now, for example, of starting a foundation, my wife and I, and I'm going to take a percentage of all of our revenue that I bring in in my different lines of business and it's going to funnel into the foundation. And then we're going to have someone who runs a foundation and of course do some philanthropic activities to raise additional money. But you know, things like that, you know, even in my corporate career, for example, we, when I would get my bonus every year, I would set aside a percentage of my bonus every year for philanthropic things. And so to make sure that it was having the impact that we wanted it to have on our children is there was a particular organization that we would work with a lot and they have, they have on their website all these different services. So if you donate $500, that means that they're going to plant, they're going to buy goats for these particular people. So now they can sell goat milk and become more self sufficient. They can. This one you can donate X amount of money and it buys bicycles so young girls can bicycle to the next town to get education. This much money will help drill a well for water that will have water for 15 families. And so we would Involve our children with that and say, okay, we have a budget of X dollars. How should we donate this money? What causes should it go towards? And the girls bring that up all the time. We know that it's had a massive impact because they'll say, when are we going to do that? When are we going to sit down and go through that? When's the next time? Because I have some ideas. It's to the point now where they start to think about those things. And so it's very rewarding for my wife and I, because my wife and me, because we feel like we have planted those seeds with them. And so hopefully that's part of the footprints. They'll walk in, our footprints to continue to have that sort of mindset of when you. And I'm a firm believer in, you know, you've got to be able to put food on your own table and pay your own bills first. Right. That's the primary thing. But once you get past that point is giving back in the appropriate way and making sure that you're making other people's lives better as best you can and in whatever way you can. I think oftentimes just writing a check. A lot of times it's time, which is sometimes difficult when you're very busy and running a business and things, but putting the time in when appropriate. We have certain activities that we do as a family that philanthropic activities every year, but even more so, you know, again, involving them. And it's not just, oh, I'm going to donate, you know, $5,000 to this charity and let them do whatever the heck they want. I like the idea of saying, I know, presuming that they're truthful and that's exactly where the money's going. That, and I did a lot of research on the organization, so I feel comfortable with that. But, you know, and the girls talk about that. You know, our daughters talk about that, you know, that all of they're helping. They're helping, you know, unfortunate children who are in bad situations be able to get the education. So hopefully they can better their lives down the line instead of being uneducated, et cetera, as an example. So those are the types of footprints that I want to make sure that I leave for people to be able to, you know, and frankly, some of it is on the business side. As a lot of my clients and owners that I work with, they're family businesses. So in a lot of cases, their younger children are going to take over the business. So hopefully I'm helping them create successful footprints. For their families to fall in as far as this is the way we should run the business and, you know, more proper way and optimized way to do that. So I guess that's the way I would look at it.

What a footprint that is. That is some footprint to leave. Can I thank you very much for summer. Really appreciated it. You create. And the other thing I really like is something really simple is you create a lot of content as well, which I think is always, you know, content isn't necessarily where the, you know, where the money is necessarily. It's just an opportunity to be able to provide value for people and you create a lot of it, which I think is always. Is always worth noting. For people who want to find out a bit more about you and find that content, where can. Where can they find you?

Yeah, you can go to mrbizsolutions.com is our website. You can go Facebook, Mr. Biz Solutions or Mr. Biz on Instagram, on Twitter. If you look for Mr. Biz on pretty much any of those platforms, obviously LinkedIn. Yeah, we do. I do a lot of videos, as you mentioned. I do a lot of lives. We share content on all of the social media, all of those social media platforms pretty much at a minimum five days a week. There's at least eight pieces of content that comes out almost every single day. And that's the whole, you know, aspect of it is. And I would encourage your listeners to anyone who's listening that, you know, hopefully got some value out of this. If there are other topics that you've heard, you know, sort of what's in my wheelhouse, you know, go out to the Facebook page or go out to the website or, you know, reach out and let me know. Because I take, as they say, I take requests. So, you know, if you. There's a particular topic you want, I love it. You know, we'll cover it. I have my radio show, Mr. Biz Radio, and we'll, you know, I do listener questions periodically. I have a show where I just answer listener questions, but more specifically, I'll do a video. Like someone will say, you know what? I'm having this problem. And I'll. If they, if they want, I'll give them a shout out and, you know, help promote their business a little bit and then walk through that particular thing. Because more than likely, whatever question you have or challenge you're having, there's a whole bunch of other people that are having the same thing. So definitely reach out if there's something like that. You think I can help with. I'd be happy to do a video and, and help you any way.

Awesome. Well, definitely. I had the pleasure, as I do with all my guests, of researching them beforehand and very much enjoyed the content and very much was looking forward to this conversation. So, again, Ken, thank you very much for your time.

Yeah, thanks very much for having me, David. Have a great time.