Dave Braun
00:00:02
Welcome everyone to the HireMyVA Team and Business Building Podcast, brought to you by Yoogozi.com. Did I go high enough on that, Larry? All right, well in this podcast in HireMyVA, we help you to reclaim your freedom through hiring and thriving with virtual assistants without breaking are your means that and – bank the bank. And I’m Dave Braun and I’m here with, I think I’ve already introduced them a little bit. Larry- Larry Broughton! my great friend partner, mentor, all things amazing. Larry, wuzzup?
Larry Broughton
00:00:32
Hello handsome Dave. How are you my friend?
Dave Braun
00:00:35
I’m doing great right now for sure. Better.
Larry Broughton
00:00:38
Yeah. Good. I’m glad we’re doing this today for those who are joining us here, man, the last few days, it’s just been we’ve had to kick the can down the road on this and reschedule that’s a couple of times, you know, just life is happening, you know,
Dave Braun
00:00:54
Life and we’ve realized a few of our limits. Haven’t we, sir?
Larry Broughton
00:00:59
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Dave Braun
00:01:03
Oh, well, we’ll talk about that in this podcast. Okay. Well, speaking of which we are coming to the end, the very end of 2021, by the time when we’re recording this, you’ll be hearing it in early 2022. So we thought, well, let’s answer the question similar to what we did last year. What are the top lessons you learned in 2021?
Larry Broughton
00:01:26
Yeah, that one that we’ve had for 2020, which is a recap of 2020, like lessons we learned in 2020 that we wanted to kind of analyze and help us get in 2021 was one of those podcasts, Dave, I think we got more feedback and input and traction on that one than any other, which was really surprised. I’m glad. I think it was Brian who pointed that out, he’s one of our VAs.
Dave Braun
00:01:48
Yep. One of our VA’s yep. Got to get a VA.
Larry Broughton
00:01:52
That’s right. That’s right. So thank you, Brian, for catching that. And I went back and watched it and said like why?- it was really good! And even if, you know, it might be fun for somebody to go back and look at that is where I realized it is pretty timeless. The stuff that we talked about in there. And so I may be repeating some of that stuff because I know that we’ve got a lot of new listeners and viewers this year that we didn’t have last year. Thank you folks for the DMS and the messages. We appreciate it. And the texts that I get from a few people who are saying that, you know, that particular podcast was powerful. I do appreciate it. And I’m gonna encourage you as we go along on this, if there are things that the lessons that you learned in 2021, that you want to share or goals you have in 2022, that you want to share, throw them out there, we’d love to hear them. And you know, we all learn from each other. Life is a journey. That’s one of the things we kept talking about in the last, the one that we did a year ago, Dave is about the importance of the community, doing this journey together, you know, not isolating, right? I, it applies as much today as it did 2000 years ago.
Dave Braun
00:03:04
Absolutely. You know, and, and looking back is such a great way to remember, to learn and to reinforce lessons because sometimes what happens is if we don’t learn the lesson the first time, it will be repeated for us over and over and over again,
Larry Broughton
00:03:20
History, repeat itself. Right. So you got to think I’m tired. Go ahead. And I keep stepping on you. I’m sorry. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to say is no effective goal setting could be done without glancing in the rear view mirror. It doesn’t mean you live there. You know, there’s all kinds of adages and sayings and analogies about, you know, looking through the windshield, not in the rear view mirror, you know, there’s a reason why the windshield is bigger. You know, there’s all kinds of things like that. There’s reading, you have eyes in the front of your head, not in the back of your head. Yeah. Okay. We get all that kind of stuff. But it is true.
Dave Braun
00:03:55
You just reminded me of a story. Then just reminding me of a story related to that
Larry Broughton
00:03:59
One thing though, and that is, if they say that two things steal, stealing your joy. Comparing yourself to others and living in the past. And that is very powerful for me. Right. So, but normally set goals for 2022, we are going to have to glance in the rear view mirror and say, okay, what did we do right and what did we do wrong? And how are we going to improve the next time? What is that? An AAR was three little questions what’d we do right and what’d we do wrong and how can we improve the next time? So Dave, let’s hear your story. Before we jump into
Dave Braun
00:04:29
Stop me if you’ve heard it, you know, once you start getting 60, you start like, you know, losing all of that. But, but there’s a, there was a guy at church years ago, he told us a story about how, he was driving pretty fast on the road. And then all of a sudden, the cop came in and came up to the side of him and said, pull over. And then they pulled over and the cop said, didn’t you see me? I mean, I’ve been, had my lights on for miles. And our friend at church said, and, and well, the cops said, you know, didn’t you see me in your rear view mirror? And that guy said, well, I’m not going that way. Why should I look that way? Why should I look there? I’m not going there. Why should I look? So I, but I think, but that’s, you know, and that’s, so that’s what happened to him. He got a nice big fat ticket by not looking at his rear view mirror occasionally.
Larry Broughton
00:05:20
That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. That’s a good one. Yeah. So I’m going to, I think Dave, maybe using the format that we did last year, a little bit might help us to form a formulate or format the podcasts this year by introducing the whole health spider graph. I know some of the folks who follow this podcast are in our victory masterclass program or they’re in one of the coaching programs or they’re in the HireMyVA program, they’ve seen this before, but I know a lot of people aren’t and haven’t, and they’ve never seen the whole hell spider graph before. So for those who have seen this before, bear with us, it’s going to be a very quick overview for those who have not seen this before, you can actually get a copy of this. If you’re in one of our programs. And by the way, I just saw Dave, another person, three member, when we had that coaching client took the whole health spider graph and basically just turned it to pink and said, this is mine.
Larry Broughton
00:06:20
And we found out about it. Guys do as a solid, this stuff’s copyrighted. Don’t make us come after you. Okay. But we just found, we found another one the other day that’s actually somebody trying to sell it online. And is this almost the same exact thing. They just changed the, they changed a couple of the titles on the heading. So I’m going to share my screen here. Do yourself a solid – live with integrity, for crying out loud. And life’s a whole lot easier. Just give attribution where attribution is warranted. Okay. All right. We are big believers in goal setting, and I’ll be honest with you, Dave. And I, we, we changed just like everybody does. I don’t know where it ever started. That if you changed your mind about something, you were a flip-flopper, you know, in the political arena is where it got really big.
Larry Broughton
00:07:14
But the truth is if you change the way you do things, you change your approach. You change your, the way you think about things. Just because oftentimes because you’re growing, you’re learning, what’s worked what hasn’t worked on the past. Dave and I used to be really big on setting 12 month goals. And we still think you need to have a north star. You need to have a vision. You need to have a mission and a calling in your life. But this was done several years ago. In fact, I can tell you it’s on January 15th was when this thing was started by a guy named Bill Richardson, but this was our whole health spider graph. And now what we really try to get people to focus on is 12 week goals and then micro goals to support those goals. Because sometimes you just need the momentum.
Larry Broughton
00:07:57
What we’ve found over the years, Dave, is that if people will set a 12 month goal, they may not even start busting tail on that goal for 11 months, you know, until the deadline is 12 months out. Right? So anyway, what we have found over the years from just personal experience in dealing with lots of coaching clients, is it, if you focus on just one area of your life, like I did, let’s say 15 years ago, and I was all about growing my business and surviving recessions and those types of things. And I didn’t try to measure or prove other areas of my life, that I might be a rockstar professionally by leaving my family in the dust, which I did. I might leave my friends in the dust. I might not be taking care of myself physically. Right? And so the idea here is that what’s measured is improved.
Larry Broughton
00:08:48
What’s measured, is improved. And over the years, you and I have found Dave that there are really eight primary areas in our life that if we can get those under control and find some healthy balance, and that balance is not the right word, set, some healthy boundaries up around those eight areas of our life. Then we’re kind of we tend to lead a more resilient, joyful harmonious growth build life. Right? If I just focused on that, I wanted to be a fricking gym monster, and I wanted to be 300 pounds with a 6% body fat. And I was just in the gym every day. And all I focused on was by eating, but I wasn’t trying to pay the bills or I didn’t care what my, you know, relationships were like, I was going to be a very lonely Hulk, you know? And that’s no fun.
Larry Broughton
00:09:50
So the areas that we found were really most important, Dave are the areas of physical, financial, professional, leisure, and fun, mental health, spiritual health, family, health, and friends health. Okay. And, and those were the areas. And so what we identified is for most people is that if you do this over four periods, maybe it’s four months in a row, maybe it’s over four quarters. We give you four opportunities here. And you put in smart goals here under each category. So here for Bill. And the first time he did this was January 15th. Also he did this every two months. It looks like in January, March, June, and December. So it wasn’t even, it was kind of sporadic, right? But over the period of 2015, he did this thing. And so he said under physical health, my blood pressure is one 20 over 80. My ideal body weight is 196 pounds by 1231, 2015.
Larry Broughton
01:10:48
What do you notice about that smart goal? Dave, it’s written in the affirmative, right? It’s specific, it’s measurable. It’s attainable, it’s relatable. And it’s time sensitive. Right? You said financial. And if we have credit card debt, a professional, I’ve completed my executive program hired a mentor under leisure and fond. He’s taken six days off a month on their mental start, a morning routine, blah, blah, blah. Right? Spiritual read medication book and the morning routine to do my to-do list each night under family attend 50% of my kids’ events send monthly cards to Kim. I don’t remember what that with well and a friends, but it might’ve been a significant other friends call one friend a week to chat two coffee dates a month. And so he just measured this, right? So let’s look down at how did he do December 20? His blood pressure was 1 22 over 80, and he weighed 198 pounds slacker. He missed his goal at 1 96.
Larry Broughton
01:11:57
Alright. Financial has credit card. Debt was 2,608, a savings of 19,800. And I do remember this now. Okay. Is your $25,000 in credit card debt earlier in the year? That’s I would consider that a win, right? He graduated the executive program. Mentoring is flat. It looks like a reconsider find a new mentor. Okay, good. Leisure and fun have not been working weekends since vacation. So that’s the idea. You measure this, right? And as you plot this out, Dave, we have what we call markers on this so that you take the emotional element out of this. I’m spending more time on this than I wanted to, but we do have this electronic form that we have, and we help you then set, identify what these numbers are here. Cause you rate yourself from zero to attend. The idea is to get all of these out towards the 10 range.
Larry Broughton
01:12:55
If everything out here were 10, we would call that Nirvana. Right. We can see here, like on this blue one, for instance, Bill’s family life on the blue one, which is in January of 2015 was out here. It looks like what was his home age? Right. But his professional life was down here in a three. Right. Okay. But by December 15th, look, lots of eights and sevens. Okay. He’s way out here. That’s a lot of growth. What’s measured is improved. So what we did last year, Dave, on this podcast is we went through each of these different spans and we just talked about here’s the lessons I learned. Okay. And 20, we would do it this year for 2021. If there’s anything we want to change for 2022, that’s just an idea. We can use that same format if you want or we,
Dave Braun
01:13:50
Yeah, let’s do that. And I think, I think we’re going to turn this into a two-parter
Larry Broughton
01:13:54
You think so, huh? Yeah. It’s that long intro already. Sorry, my friends. I know some of you just like to listen to my sultry voice, but I’m
Dave Braun
01:14:05
Larry I’m twitterpated!
Larry Broughton
01:14:08
You’re so dreamy.
Dave Braun
01:14:12
Okay. All right, let’s go get into it.
Larry Broughton
01:14:15
All right. Let’s go. Let’s start with physical day. What’d you? What have you learned in here? What are the lessons you learned in 20, 21 day about physical? And is there anything you want to change about 2022?
Dave Braun
01:14:25
Well, I’m from a physical perspective, I normally will change stuff pretty quickly because, and we’re going to talk about this in some upcoming episodes about habits being healthy physically is a foundation of so many things, because if you don’t have the energy, if you’re constantly in pain, if you just don’t feel good, it’s hard to bring your best to any situation that you’re trying to, you know, exceed in and, and I’m sorry, folks. There’s so much competition in this world. We’ve got to be at our best physically. Right Larry?
Larry Broughton
01:14:57
I about! talking are you what know don’t
Dave Braun
01:14:59
Yeah. So we gotta be at our best. So, so that’s always been pretty easy for me. And I’m lucky. I really feel fortunate that the physical part is enjoyable for me. But so I guess for me is I think it was about six years ago. I had a disc in my neck that bowled so much, I had to have surgery and I had to have a fusion. And you remember that? gosh pain all the time. It inhibited and my exercise and all that kind of stuff, but took care of it and was feeling great. Well then guess what happened this year on another disc? I got a bulge. Well, one of the things that I did this time is I recognized that it was happening and I’m like, okay, I’m going to back off on all my workouts right now.
Dave Braun
01:15:45
And then what I’m going to do is, you know, I got the MRI and all that kind of stuff. And it was a pretty big bulge. But what I did is I said, let me adjust my exercise routine, I’ve done exercise for years, all kinds of different yoga routines. I’m going to create my own to where it’s less stress on my neck. So I’m doing a lot of inversion stuff and that, and a bunch of prayer and it’s kind of, it’s not, I’m not in pain anymore. Kind of healed up surprisingly so. I’m, I’m not in pain, but I’m very careful. So that’s one of the things that I learned is that, you know, I turned 60 this year. I think the weights are are done. So I’m using a lot of resistance bands and doing some things at home that are a little bit lighter.
Dave Braun
01:16:33
Like I fill some water bottles up with, you know, and use those as weights, but I’m keeping it a lot lighter. Yeah. So that’s one of the things that I learned physically is that, you just gotta get rid of the ego and stop trying to be like you were when you were 20 years old, you know? Cause I would always tell everybody, you know they asked me how old I am and I’d say 29. And they’re like, what? You’re kidding me. No, because I go to the gym and I enter my age in the, you know, in the elliptical and I split in 29 and it says, okay, let’s go. So the machine recognizes it, machines don’t lie. So I’m 29. Yeah. So anyways, yeah, it was always kind of fooling myself a little bit. So that’s one of the things that I learned is to embrace my, my limitations and live within them.
Larry Broughton
01:17:21
So when you told me that you were not going to be doing the surgery on this one, I’ve just gotta be honest with you. I was a little disappointed. I was so looking forward to hearing that Batman voice Folks, they did the surgery through the front of his neck and so that it strained his vocal chords. And so he thought he talked like back Batman weeks. few a for
Dave Braun
01:17:43
A little scar right there.
Larry Broughton
01:17:46
Yeah. Good, good. Yeah. Well the lesson I learned this last year early most recently, and I knew this was coming, I knew it was coming cause I’ve not been taking care of myself. Health wise, you know, the saying is health is wealth, Right? And I think I’ve had to do some real reflection on my pain threshold. I had a doctor who kind of scolded me cause you know, Dave, last week after I finally went in and talk to a doctor where I was having pain for a long time and I thought it was a six. And he said, dude, if this were anybody else, they’d be a nine or a 10. You need to recalibrate your pain scale. And because if you don’t, then something serious is going to happen. And you’re going to think it’s a little twinge, but it’s really going to be a heart attack or a stroke or whatever it is.
Larry Broughton
01:18:35
I’m fine folks. We’re going to deal with it here pretty soon. But as it turned out, what I thought was one thing happened to be three kind of different things that need to be fixed in my body. So anyway, health is wealth, take care of yourself, listen to your body, don’t use excuses that I’m too busy or whatever it is because truly, truly, truly, if you don’t have your physical health, this meat shoot that we’re wearing out there, we’re not going to be able to serve our families, our clients, our communities, we just are not going to be able to. And it’s more joyful I can tell you, I have lived through years and seasons with pain and I’ve had, you know, occasional seasons without pain and it is much more of a joy. We’re more creative, we’re more upbeat, we’re more patient when we’re not living in pain and discomfort.
Larry Broughton
01:19:33
And, and I’ve got friends who are in all spectrums of the health continuum, right? I have folks like you, Dave, who were, would be considered, you know, very fit for their age for any age group. Right? And I’ve got other folks who are morbidly obese and just the movement sometimes, you know, your heart may be in good shape, but just the physical movement if you’re too overweight, I can tell when I get over 250 nowadays, like I used to be my, when I was working out, you know, at 250 with a low body, that there was much different than working out or walking out at 250 with a high body fat, you know, my joints hurt more and I’m just not the carriage isn’t being carried properly. But anyway, so take care of your body to my goal is to drop some weight. I’m not, I’m not telling you guys a smart goal when we’re just talking right now, they dropped some weight and early 2022, get these health issues dealt with and plan living for another, at least 40 very constructive years and I’m not going to do that if I’m not taking care of my myself.
Dave Braun
02:20:41
Yeah. You know, one of the things that was occurring to me too, is that as high achievers, whether or not you’re it kind of men more than women, but affects everybody who’s a high achiever where you sometimes we look at going to the doctors, oh God, it’s an hour out of my day or two hours out of my day and so I’m going to push this off. Folks, doctors are your friends. They are your friends. They are meant to help you and heal you. And, but Larry, I say this as a reminder to myself too, I have to recognize that, you know, one of the things that we teach in our program is about multiplying your time, how you can multiply your time. The idea behind that is to work at things today that will give you more time tomorrow. The physical area is one of those things, keeping yourself healthy, taking that hour or two hours get in that pain, moved away, gives you some resiliency and buffering that you need for being on this high achievement journey that we’re on.
Larry Broughton
02:21:42
The reason I’m grimacing here, is that if we are in the medical arena, that is an opportunity for you, right? If you could get, if you have an appointment at 6:30 PM, our hope that you are listening, my doctor, if you have an appointment at 6:30 PM, because you specifically ask, Hey, when’s a good time I can get in there so they don’t have to wait an hour, but you still go when you wait two hours before you even see the doctor and then you’re sent to the emergency room and it ends up being an overnight visit. You’re right. Dave, because the medical arena does have that reputation that I’m not going to get in and get out. And so that is indeed why I was kept postponed. Like I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time for that, and sure enough, I didn’t have time for it, but I had to make time for it. So had I not had I not dealt with it though, then it would have been probably actually instead of just being overnight in the hospital actually admitted and it would have been much worse, so you’re right. You do need to do it, but let’s take care of your carriage, the thing, and the thing that you’re, you’re walking around i.
Dave Braun
02:22:46
Absolutely. Absolutely. And there’s another lesson that I realized I learned, I think I’m going to put that into the mental area though, but it’s really due to the fin physical once we get to.
Larry Broughton
02:22:57
Okay, good. Well, let’s talk about financial Dave, any lessons you learned on the financial side this year that might be different that you’re gonna try in 2022.
Dave Braun
02:23:06
Yeah. One of the things is that, I’ll be honest, the, the way I look at some of my financial stuff is there’s, there’s the, you know, I had a mini MBA class and course ,several courses. It was a, like a semester with my company years and years ago. And they talked about managerial accounting and financial accounting, right the managerial is where you do whatever numbers you need to do to make the good decisions in your business. But financial is the asset statement and income statement, balance sheet, all that stuff. Right? Well, the managerial accounting on has been kind of fun. And so that’s what I’ve done. Well, the other part is I have not done well in my business for awhile. So that’s one of the lessons that I realized and, and that if I’m going to create the business that I want to really have, I’ve got to get that straightened out. So that’s going to be changing, having a bookkeeper this coming year in some way or form that we’re doing things right. Good, good.
Larry Broughton
02:24:07
Yeah. I’m surprised Dave, how many small businesses do not have active bookkeepers keeping track of their monthly financial statements for me 2021 was a good learning year. And it’s even more amplified than what I talked about in 2020 and that is, I think a lot of people know who were following my hotel company, we were a large hotel company. We really shrunk down because the hospitality industry has just been decimated with the pandemic and the continual shutdowns and those types of things. And so we are much smaller than we used to be. And what I realized is that we had revenue was covering, covering a lot of our inefficiencies in the financial and accounting side. And I used to brag about how good our financial services department was. And we were much better than most for sure, no doubt about it, but it could be so much better.
Larry Broughton
02:25:01
Yeah. I was just talking to my home office team this morning, this morning or yesterday morning about how this is an opportunity, because we’re about to go into this growth base. I thought we’re going to be one of the growth phase last year, but you know, the we’re shut down again. Right? But now we’re so close. Dave is you know, on this relaunch that we’re setting up systems and we’re getting militant about sticking to these financial control systems this coming year. And also I’ll just ramp amplify. What I talked about last year is about Cassius king. We are going to have a much stronger about me personally and my company a much deeper cash reserve than I’ve ever had in the past. During the past year, I had to close out retirement accounts and those types of things just to pay the bills, just to keep people employed, those types of things. I don’t want to ever have to do that again. So 2022 is going to be a big rebuilding year on the financial side for us by encourage people keep cash on hand for both your business. Prior to the pandemic, the average business in the U S had, I think it was 28 or 29 days of free cashflow. And what did we all learn from that? That wasn’t enough.
Dave Braun
02:26:08
It wasn’t enough.
Larry Broughton
02:26:09
It wasn’t enough. And so I’m encouraging people to have at least 90 days, at least 90 days. My goal on this, I’ll be honest with you is to have nine months of free cashflow on hand moving forward to by, My goal is that by June of 2022
Dave Braun
02:26:26
Larry, that is so smart. I was just talking to a client today who has a food truck and she survived. She has survived, but what’s getting her now is the costs of meat, the costs of cooking oil, all of that stuff that’s just hammering restaurants right now, inflation inflation. And so you never know when this kind of stuff is going to happen. I remember several years ago, Southwest airlines, you know, when airplane flight pricing was went really high, but Southwest airlines was able to keep their pricing low because they bought, they had a long-term contract because they were able to do that secure pricing because they had cash. So that’s, there’s so many reasons to keep that cash and to be able to use it.
Larry Broughton
02:27:21
Okay. Good. Good. So professional? to move we
Dave Braun
02:27:25
Yeah, let’s do one more. And then we will go into a part two, I think.
Larry Broughton
02:27:30
Oh really? Okay. Let’s do professional, Dave.
Dave Braun
02:27:34
Professional.
Larry Broughton
02:27:36
You did learn from your professional life in 2021. And what are you going to do in 2022?
Dave Braun
02:27:40
Well, professional – one of the things that I’m going to be doing is, well, Larry, we were talking about when we were talking about goal setting before, one of the things that we’re going to be doing is coming up with some new products. One of the things that we’re going to be working on is a goal setting and achieving process. We’re going to do that, but coming out what we did with the HireMyVA white glove service last year, here’s one of the things that I learned from a professional perspective that it’s important for us to do is if at all possible make yourself a beta user of your own project. So important product of your own service, if at all possible. Because one of the things that we did is we did, you know, we did it the right way, we came up with a service, we defined it and we took a few clients through it.
Dave Braun
02:28:31
As beta users gave them a great deal. They’re all happy. Everything is, it was awesome. And then I’m like, well, I need to hire somebody for social media. So I went through the process as a White Glove client myself, and acted like a White Glove client. I didn’t give him hints and all that stuff, the team. And we found several areas that really needed to be improved on good areas- it wasn’t to where, you know, I would look at it as our service was producing, like an, a nine out of 10 and you know, a rating now, I think it’s more of a 10 out of 10 and we’re continuing to learn as we get new clients and make we make improvements. But that was just an eye-opener for me to experience it firsthand from a client’s perspective. One of the things related to that, that I learned is a lot of times we might have ourselves walked through it first, but it, your new product or service can be so raw that you can’t put the great finishing golden touches on it unless maybe you go through it a little bit later. It kinda makes sense?
Larry Broughton
02:29:40
That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. We’ve learned a lot by putting ourselves through our beta programs. Haven’t we? we thought we were done. We went through it. Oh yeah. This makes a lot of sense. But then when you actually do the beta, it’s like, oh, this is not what I meant. Right. And we can be so much better than that. I’m really glad. Thanks for sharing that one. Dave. For me, there’s a lot in this area. I’m gonna try to, I’ll share some of my stuff, but also try to keep it general enough that it, that it helps everybody. I think what, with the, when we do these reflections, Dave it’s oftentimes just a TFTR, thanks for the reminder on stuff. And so this is one of those TFTRs for me. We have to stand out from the competition. We really do.
Larry Broughton
03:30:26
And so this is a time to reflect, okay. How did I do this past year from standing out from the competition and it sometimes it might start from the name of your entity or the branding of your business. But I think that every business ought to have at least one major differentiator from your competition. Yes. Okay. And so you can’t know what that is unless you do a competitive set analysis. Well, gosh, Larry, what’s a competitive set analysis. Well, if you were in the victory coaching program or the higher, my VA, and you might know that. But yeah. So do a competitive set analysis to find out or to help you identify what is your one significant or a major differentiator? A couple other things, Dave, is that a big reminder for me is to put your team first, put your team first, particularly during moments of crisis. If you don’t have your team buckled down in, on the same page as you, and you’re not all singing from the same song sheet, as they say, and they are not, I don’t know.
Larry Broughton
03:31:40
I don’t wanna use the word loyal, cause that sounds wrong. But if you know, if they’re not supportive of your efforts, then your clients aren’t gonna matter, you know, but I would say then strive to put your clients a priority, put your team first, make your clients a priority. Okay. And again, for those who are just joining us, who haven’t been on the, what the hell is a client, why aren’t you calling customers? Our philosophy is that customers are transactional. Clients are relational. And given the acquisition cost of a new client, why not get someone get a client and keep them rather than spending that money over and over and over again to get a new customer. And so we’re putting a lot more emphasis on that in 2022, and we’re getting back to the slow to hire quick to fire approach in 2022.
Larry Broughton
03:32:43
What do I mean by that? But we’re to make sure that we really bring in people on board who share our core values, who believe in the direction we’re going, who love what they do. And then if we find out pretty quickly that they’re not who we thought they were, then we’re going to coach them up, or we’re going to coach them out and do it quickly and do it quickly and not let it linger because everybody notices that, you know, and if it happens to be a low performer that frustrates the hell out of high performers, and everyone wants to be on a winning team and the better, the better your team members are and brings everyone’s performance up.
Dave Braun
03:33:19
All right. Yeah. And let me tell gait on a couple of those things. So on the competitive set analysis, I’m glad you brought that up because one of the things that I realized going through the victory program was so many people think it’s a one and done, you know, you do your analysis and it’s done and we’re done and maybe five years or revisit it. No, you need to do it every year. Every single. Yeah. And so I think that’s a good, that’s a good, I dunno, probably rhythm, you know, like you said, at least that’s a decent rhythm, which,
Larry Broughton
03:33:49
So I’m here for a second before you switch to the next one, let me jump in because I was going to say for us, we do it. We start doing it. Like our budgeting season starts mid August. That’s when we do it. Okay. August and September, because if you looked at your competitive set analysis and you’ve not looked at it in five years, your competitors may have provided new services. That’s right. They may have pivoted, you know, their pricing may have switched completely. They may have been purchased by someone else. Right. Who the heck knows, but if you do it every year, then you can say, look in that competitive set analysis and see, well, gosh, what we thought was a competitive advantage. What we thought was the major differentiator last year. Well, everyone saw how successful it was for us. And now they’re doing the same thing. Yeah. All kinds of things could change in a year- a year is a long time.
Dave Braun
03:34:37
Yeah. So it’s, you’re right. Then it’s time to innovate.
Larry Broughton
03:34:40
Just do it during the budgeting season and it will be part of what you do.
Dave Braun
03:34:43
And you know, that also led me to believe you, you know, to think about the, you’d already talked about the victory program and where we took people through vision and telling all that, that really needs to be done. That victory program, people need to go through that really once a year. Yeah. I have an idea for you. I just came up with, I’m not going to share it, but we’ll talk about it later and write it down. The other thing that I realized from a professional perspective is, you know, I, I, you know, I pride myself on doing systems and, and operating procedures and stuff like that. Well, we brought, like I mentioned a social media manager in, but I have, we’ve had Daff and Brian on the team for so long. We kind of knew We knew a cadence with each other and everything where everything was, and it’s like, this new person came on, Djuls, and she’s like, well, where’s this, where’s that? And I’m like, oh my gosh, we don’t have so much stuff documented. We got very, very lazy. And there’s, that’s related to one of my, my BHAGs coming up, big, hairy, audacious goals coming up in 2022 for my business. Yeah. So I realized that, so that’s a good lesson as professionally bringing in somebody new to your team will, will help identify areas that you really need to improve on.
Larry Broughton
03:36:02
Yeah. That’s, that’s so good, Dave. And one way to do this is just to have a Google drive folder on your standard operating procedures. Basically everything you do in your business should be documented in a folder, somewhere, everything from, if you’ve got a physical facility, what happens when the first person who drives up to that curb in front of your store, that you know, a half hour before you open, they step out of the car, then what, how do you unlock the door? How do you turn off the alarm? How do you scan the parking lot? How do you put the cash drawer under the, into your point of sale system? All of it needs to be documented. And
Larry Broughton
03:36:45
Happens if Dave, you have to go in the hospital, I know, you know, and the business must go on. And this is where the real value comes from a business. It’s the systems that generate the revenue. All right. The example I always use is what if someone were to walk up to you and offer you some sick number to buy your business, but the caveat was when we closed this deal, you are out of the business and the business must function without you. Ooh. Right. How does that happen? You know, that can can happen. It can. Yeah. So that’s, that’s, that’s kind of the, the threshold we need to meet.
Dave Braun
03:37:26
And we, we, we do a lot about, in fact, we, we have a whole section when we teach in the victory course about SOPs and how to do them and, you know, folks, probably our best advice on that. It’s just to get started. The easiest thing to do is get some kind of a screen recorder of Vimeo, Loom, whatever’s out there. Start recording what you are doing on your screen. You use your iPhone, if you need to, or your, your Android phone start recording stuff. Okay. Well, we’ve gone through the physical, financial and professional three of the eight, and I think we need to go through the other five in the next one. What do you think, Larry?
Larry Broughton
03:38:05
That sounds good. it! do Let’s
Dave Braun
03:38:06
Alright. Shall we bring this one to a close?
Larry Broughton
03:38:09
Let’s bring it to a close. Don’t forget to stick around for part two.
Dave Braun
03:38:14
Yeah. And then also go to some of the lessons that we learned in 2020. Go listen to that previous podcasts. You can just search for it. You’ll find it. I wish I could remember what episode it was. Darn it, but that’s okay. All right. Well, thank you folks for joining us today. And remember building a team is the way to reclaim your freedom and we’re here to help you with our course and community. And what we talked about briefly is our white glove service, where we find a rockstar VA for you. You heard, I used it myself. Awesome. So it’s going to be awesome for you. The three things we’d love for you to do, and we’d really, really appreciate it. Number one, subscribe to this podcast, if you haven’t already done. So either on your iPhone or Android phone on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and click on the little bell next to it, to get reminders. Number two, give us a rating. Leave a comment below this video. Any comment because it’ll help us get the word out. And then number three, go to hiremyva.com for more information on our course and community and our white glove service. Because remember even without experience, you learn how to prepare for hire and thrive with virtual assistants. Larry, were helping more and more folks, bringing more in our community. We’re excited about it, and we want to help you guys too. So remember go to hiremyva.com for more information.
Larry Broughton
03:39:33
That’s right, my friends! Hey, do the world a favor, do yourself a favor, go do something significant today. But before you do that, God bless you, God keep you and God hold you! Alright my friends, go get them! We’ll see you next time.
Dave Braun
03:39:44
Okay. Bye.
