Hey, hey, bold leaders. Today we are sharing an episode originally published in November of 2018. It’s a conversation with my dad and I, and at the time we recorded this episode way back in 2018, we had already been talking about a potential recessive economy for about six months. I know that some of you have heard me say that I had been planning for this potential recessive economy since June 2018, and it’s my dad that’s to credit with that. I didn’t have the foresight to see that on my own. He had brought that to my attention, and so we started planning for this early.
Now, nobody could have possibly predicted a global pandemic, nor do we even know what the economy will look like once this has all cleared up. However, I credit my dad as one of my business mentors, someone who has taught me some of my most critical skills from a very young age, like the importance of building relationships. His favorite business book is the Dale Carnegie book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. He’s taught me what it means to build a business that successfully sustains your life. I always joke around that my dad is the OG lifestyle entrepreneur.
He has even taught me that in tough times, you never stop investing in you. When he retired, he started a second business and got himself a mentor to teach him the ins and outs of day trading, and he never stops learning. With all that’s going on in the world, we’ve been speaking regularly about business strategy and how to navigate these unprecedented times. When I shared with him the actions I’ve taken, he said, “All you can do is be responsible and responsive,” and boom, I remembered the podcast that we did together way back when, where he talks about being responsible and responsive, which is what made me want to reshare this with you again today.
My dad can be so crazy. Maybe you have a crazy parent too, but I am so grateful that he has taught me how to find calm in crisis, and I hope his calm words here help you feel grounded, no matter what you’re experiencing today.
Tara Newman: Hey, bold leaders. I’m excited today to have a very special guest in the podcast studio with me, my dad, Elliot Gantz, who is a veteran entrepreneur. He has spent … How many years have you spent running your own business?
Elliot Gantz: A good 35.
Tara Newman: 35 years running his own business, and then in true entrepreneurial fashion, retires and starts another business, right?
Elliot Gantz: Well, a continuation, a smaller continuation of the business that I was in.
Tara Newman: Same difference, because he couldn’t seem to just retire and go off to a golf course.
Elliot Gantz: No, no, not at all. Not my style. Business has a certain amount of intrigue, a certain amount of problem solving, and if you’re a problem solver and you like to problem solve, then you need to be in business, and retirement is kind of … Unless you’re the type of person that could sit on the couch or watch TV or go play golf or play tennis, which I’m not, then it’s not for you.
Tara Newman: Yeah. So I did manage to pull him away from his business dealings and his day trading to come and do a podcast episode with me, because last week, we were sitting in a diner, and we were having a conversation. It was such a great conversation. I was just asking him questions and listening to him respond, and I really got so many wonderful takeaways from the conversation that I wanted to share it here with you today.
I have to say that when I decided to leave my corporate job where I was making good money and I had great benefits and I had insurance and all those things, that I was really scared to tell my dad that I was starting my own business, because I thought that he would be worried for me and that he would want me to try and stay where there was consistent income and reliable income, and I was really amazed to find that he was actually my biggest supporter in starting my own business. So I just wanted to start by asking him that question. What about what made you so supportive of me doing something so seemingly risky?
Elliot Gantz: Well, at the time, I didn’t think it was as risky as you might have thought it would’ve been. You spent many years honing your craft, working for many different people in the industries that you are now settled into, and it was time. It was time for you to go on and go out on your own, and I knew you’d make it. You might trip and fall, pick yourself up a couple of times, skin your knees and your elbows, but I knew you would ultimately, somewhere down the road, be very successful at what you were doing. It’s just your personality. You’re good at what you do. You’ve spent a lot of time learning how to do it.
Tara Newman: Thank you. I was not fishing for a compliment. You weren’t scared for me?
Elliot Gantz: It really wasn’t … You could be scared from today until tomorrow. Think about when you’re a child and you go to the ocean and you stick your toe in and it’s cold and you run away, and then a parent or somebody older says, “Just take a running dive and a plunge, and once your whole body gets into that cold water, you’ll acclimate,” and that’s what you do. If you don’t ever try, it’s going to be somewhere down the line, “Well, if I did, if I didn’t, if I should’ve, I would’ve,” and you don’t want those kinds of regrets down the line.
If you do it, okay. You may, like I said, trip and fall. You could possibly fail, and if you fail, you might want to start again or you might want to say, “Okay, this is not for me. I’ll try something else, or I’ll go back to working in a steady job that I’m secure in,” but most people who want to try it on their own do succeed. What you really need to do is be responsible and responsive and that’s one of the major tricks, and not a trick, but major things of being an entrepreneur.
Tara Newman: All right, let’s take those apart for a second. Responsive.
Elliot Gantz: If you have a call coming in from a client that needs to be answered, you’d get back to them within a half an hour or 45 minutes. It shouldn’t take you two days or a day. No matter what your schedule is, you should have your organization set up where if that’s going to be your function to get back to the client, you do it in a very reasonable amount of time. A reasonable amount of time, to me, is a half hour to 45 minutes, and the early bird will most always get the worm.
Tara Newman: That’s tenacity. That’s your tenacity. So when I hear you say responsive, the word that I hear too is action.
Elliot Gantz: Action.
Tara Newman: I think action,, be in action.
Elliot Gantz: Part of being responsive and responsible is when you’re in a business or in a manufacturing business, giving good news and bad news. If a product’s going to be late, don’t wait till the last day to tell the client, “Oh, I can’t ship today,” and don’t make up an excuse. Okay, there are plenty of problems that happen in manufacturing that people should know about. Somebody was sick, a machine broke down. Should you be able to carry on in all aspects of problems like that? To a certain degree.
Tara Newman: Yeah. So this’ll be a good time to jump in and say that my dad spent 35 years running a manufacturing business, a bronze casting foundry.
Elliot Gantz: 48.
Tara Newman: 48 years running a bronze casting foundry, and which is a manufacturing business where they made bronze, primarily bronze sculptures. I think you worked in other metals.
Elliot Gantz: Right, but primarily bronze sculptures or bronze furniture and hardware and things like that. It was a labor intensive business, and there was always this minute you put the key in the door in the morning, you knew there was going to be one kind of problem or another to resolve. Well, let’s call it an opportunity and not a problem. So if you anticipate that there’s going to be an opportunity, then you really don’t get waylaid or sidetracked, because you know something’s going to come up. Just what, you don’t know, but you should have the ability with your experience to be able to solve the problem. It may not be solved that minute, it may be solved a day later. It could be a personnel problem, a machinery problem, a problem with a client said they wanted this and now they don’t want this, they want that, but they still want it on the same date.
Tara Newman: Responsive.
Elliot Gantz: Responsive, and being responsible is making sure that happens, or telling the client, “Well, if you have these major changes, yes, we can do it, but it’ll take us another five days or another 10 days,” but be responsible to that commitment. Don’t just make the commitment and walk away and forget about it.
Tara Newman: Yeah. This is taking responsibility and ownership.
Elliot Gantz: Correct, and it really relates to any business. If you’re not in a manufacturing business, you’re in a service business, even if you’re a landscaper. Okay? Landscapers have multitudes of opportunities come up being the weather, but they still have to make good to their clientele who is expecting them there on a Wednesday. So it may not be a Wednesday, it may be a Thursday, they may have to put on extra time, they may have to work weekends, but they have to get it done.
Tara Newman: Yeah. Show up.
Elliot Gantz: Show up, and those people will keep getting the work.
Tara Newman: Yeah, because you build trust.
Elliot Gantz: Trust.
Tara Newman: That’s how you build trust, is by showing up, being responsive and being responsible.
Elliot Gantz: And being responsible.
Tara Newman: The way that you can do that or what helps is to expect the unexpected.
Elliot Gantz: Correct.
Tara Newman: That’s what I really heard you saying there with the opportunity, and I love that you framed the problem and then you changed it to opportunity because I think that if we start thinking about problems and we start getting stuck in problems, we just create more problems.
Elliot Gantz: Oh, we also get into a negative mind frame. Opportunity is a positive mind frame. A negative problem is a negative mind frame. You always want to be positive, no matter what’s going on. You always want to present to your client and your personnel positiveness.
Tara Newman: Yeah, a bit of optimism.
Elliot Gantz: Always.
Tara Newman: Realistic.
Elliot Gantz: Realistic, but optimism.
Tara Newman: Yeah.
Elliot Gantz: Yeah.
Tara Newman: Yeah. All right. You heard that folks. He’s going to be 70, and he’s been running a business for 35 years and working in this foundry for 48 years, and he’s telling you mindset is not bullshit.
Elliot Gantz: Correct, and I’m a firm believer that most people, whatever they set their mind to, can accomplish at least 90% of the 100% percent goal that they set their mind to. Again, always set the goal higher, because you don’t ever want to really grab that brass ring. You want to keep reaching and reaching and striving for it.
Tara Newman: Okay. So I have a question. So what happens, because I know that you have been faced with times that have not been positive.
Elliot Gantz: Correct.
Tara Newman: Right, like you’ve eaten your fair share of shit sandwiches.
Elliot Gantz: Absolutely.
Tara Newman: So I have an explicit rating on my podcast, by the way, dad. Are you proud of me?
Elliot Gantz: I am.
Tara Newman: All right. So, how do you stay positive when you’re facing something that isn’t positive?
Elliot Gantz: Well, it’s simple. You have to. You may go negative in your mind for a little while, and you may get tunnel visioned and you may stamp your feet and yell and scream, make sure you do it in a closet or in a room where nobody can hear you, and get it all out, but once you get it out and come back to calm, you have to make it work or make some semblance of it work. If you are running a company, you can’t fail. Okay? You’ve got to try. If one path doesn’t work, you try another path, and if you’ve tried six paths and it’s not working, then maybe it’s the wrong item for your company, but you must stay positive, you must get through it, and you must work through it, and that’s where you have a team. In business, it’s not I, it’s we, and we are the ones who accomplish, and it takes a smart person to know and research people that have information that they don’t have.
Tara Newman: Yeah. So what I hear you saying there, which is actually really important, because first, you said you just do, but then you backtrack that and what I heard you say is you can ride that emotional wave. Don’t do it publicly in front of your employees, I hear is what you’re saying.
Elliot Gantz: Right.
Tara Newman: So know where you can go to ride that emotional wave, whether it be in a closet or with peers or in some kind of community that you reach out to. Ride the wave, but then you have to come back and you have to reset yourself into this positive place. So you’re not saying don’t feel the fear, you’re not saying shut it off, you’re saying move through it.
Elliot Gantz: Move through it, but let me stop you at one point because you said something very important. Fear. Fear is something that you feel when the quantity of what you’re trying to do is unknown. So knowledge is a great thing, it always fear, and that’s where I broke into the aspect where it’s not I, it’s we, it’s the team. There are people on the team that will have knowledge that you don’t have that you need to draw upon, and you can’t be so egotistical that you say, “Oh, I have to solve this all by myself.” You can’t solve all of these opportunities by oneself. Whether you have the expertise in house or whether you have to go out of house to buy that expertise.
Tara Newman: One thing that I talk about frequently, I love that you brought up ego, but that if you want to be successful in business, you can’t be a know it all.
Elliot Gantz: Correct.
Tara Newman: You have to be open-minded.
Elliot Gantz: And you don’t know it all.
Tara Newman: You have to be an agile learner.
Elliot Gantz: You have to be receptive to information, and information is the great equalizer.
Tara Newman: Yeah, because you’re saying the way you combat fear is by knowledge.
Elliot Gantz: Correct.
Tara Newman: And getting that however you need to get it.
Elliot Gantz: However you need to get it, whether it’s in the house or you have to buy it out of the house, or you have to research it, but you need the knowledge, and that will allay the fear, and that will tell you how to go on.
Tara Newman: Yeah. My team, I have a small but mighty team right now, and they’re amazing. I come to them and I say, “You know, I’m not sure I’m feeling fear,” or, “I’m not sure we can do this,” or, “I’m having this challenge,” and the second that I’m open and honest with them around what I need, which I think comes to ask for what you need, they come up with a lot of creative solutions and we find ways around things, and it’s really valuable.
Elliot Gantz: It’s called brainstorming.
Tara Newman: Yeah, brainstorming. Having that sounding board. I mentioned asking for a reason, because I think that you’re really good at asking for whatever it is that you need.
Elliot Gantz: Well, how else will you get what you need if you don’t ask for it? It’s a simple concept.
Tara Newman: I know, dad, but people really struggle with asking, and I’ve struggled with asking.
Elliot Gantz: Because it’s the fear factor of asking. Some people don’t want to seem like they don’t know, and they’re embarrassed that they might not know, or they may be afraid of the answer that they’re going to get. Listen, there’s a million things out there you can do in a million things you can’t do, but you need to ask, because whether the answer is positive or negative to what you want, it’s an answer. It’s a definitive end to the question.
Tara Newman: Mama always used to say, if you don’t ask, it’s always no.
Elliot Gantz: That’s true, that’s true, because if you don’t ask-
Tara Newman: Right? If you don’t ask, the answer’s always no.
Elliot Gantz: Yeah, that’s how it works, but asking is educational because you’re asking something that you don’t know and you’re getting information and education on what you don’t know. Ego can get in the way, and I think ego sometimes runs rampant in big corporations, because everybody’s trying to one up everybody else, and they’re trying to climb the corporate ladder on everybody else’s back, so they don’t want to come off as not knowing.
Tara Newman: I think where I see that happening in small business opposed to a corporate environment is that small business owners, they often don’t want to admit that they’re struggling and that their ego is really self-protecting them by not speaking up.
Elliot Gantz: Well, it’s not self-protecting them. It’s self-damaging them by not speaking up, because they never get out of the vortex that they’re in, that they’re not doing well. It’s a vicious cycle of a dog chasing its tail.
Tara Newman: So I asked you this and I love the answer. I asked you this last week and I loved the answer, so I’m going to ask it of you again. What was your favorite business book?
Elliot Gantz: I didn’t have a favorite business book, because I learned business from people that I hired, I learned the counting from my accountant that I hired, I learned law from my attorneys that I hired, and that’s how I got my business education, by absorbing the knowledge from these people that I hired to help out in our business.
Tara Newman: I have to say, that is one thing … Because in our friend circle growing up and things like that, people that we know, there are a lot of families with dads your age or moms your age that had their own businesses. They didn’t go to college, they started a business, or maybe some of them did go to college, and they started a business, and the one thing that sets you apart from your peers that I’ve recognized is your willingness to learn.
Elliot Gantz: Well, if you’re not willing to learn, then you’re not going to progress, you’re not going to have a business.
Tara Newman: You and I both, we’re not going to mention names.
Elliot Gantz: Correct.
Tara Newman: But we can think of people who … Similar situation to you, high school education, started a business, but made no attempt to know what they didn’t know.
Elliot Gantz: That is correct.
Tara Newman: They got along, but at the end of the day, they didn’t have much and it collapses.
Elliot Gantz: It just works so far, and along with the knowledge of structure of business, you also need knowledge of the world. You need knowledge of current events, you need knowledge of economics so that you could plan and map out your business, and also to understand when trends happen so that when there are downtrends throughout the world, because we don’t live in a limited township anymore of business, we live in a worldwide global economy …
Tara Newman: Yeah, a global economy.
Elliot Gantz: You have to know what’s happening in other parts of the world that may or may not influence your company, what you do, whether it be a service company or a manufacturing company, and trends will help you know that, and again, will allay the fear that you may have of, “Oh, what if this happens? What if that happens?” Well, you’ll know what to do, because you’ll have the information already stored in your portfolio of knowledge.
Tara Newman: Yeah. Back to you fighting fear with knowledge,
Elliot Gantz: Fighting fear with knowledge. Always fight fear with knowledge.
Tara Newman: So I remember when I was first starting out, the thing that I struggled with the most that I think you really helped me with was my confidence.
Elliot Gantz: Confidence. Are we really always confident, or are we really confident at all? A lot of it is mind over matter, where you hype yourself up into being confident, and soon that hype turns into a real thing, it turns into being confident.
Tara Newman: So when dad’s talking about hyping yourself up and then it turning into confident, that’s actually science. It’s about reprogramming your neural pathways. It works. That’s the whole point of mindset. I love that you know, these things just innately.
Elliot Gantz: Take for instance, if you are a shy person and you’re in sales and you need to pick up that phone and make a cold call or make a call that you’re not comfortable, it’s outside your comfort zone, you have to get over that, and you have to build the confidence in yourself saying, “Okay, I’m going to pick up the phone, I’m going to make that call. I may struggle during that call, but the next call, I’m going to do a lot better with,” but if you don’t make that first call, you never get off of home plate. You never run to first, and once you run to first, you could run to second, third and back home again for that home run.
Tara Newman: Yeah. Confidence is about building it in increments.
Elliot Gantz: That’s where knowledge will negate fear, which will give you confidence. It all revolves around-
Tara Newman: Yeah, when you overcome the fear, you become more confident.
Elliot Gantz: Right. It all revolves around the same thing.
Tara Newman: Bravery.
Elliot Gantz: Self-confidence.
Tara Newman: Self-belief.
Elliot Gantz: Belief, knowing where you are in the world.
Tara Newman: You always were really good.
Elliot Gantz: That’s what you had when you came to me and said, “I want to start this business.”
Tara Newman: I was confident.
Elliot Gantz: You were confident.
Tara Newman: Then my confidence kind of started to wobble.
Elliot Gantz: It always will. It’ll wobble, you’ll pick yourself up. Yeah, I said to you, you scrape your knees, you scrape your elbows, you pick yourself up, put a couple of bandages on and go forward again, and you may take five steps forward and two steps back, but you’ve gained three steps.
Tara Newman: Yeah. You were always really supportive in me seeing my value, seeing my worth, making sure I was charging appropriately, making sure I was charging.
Elliot Gantz: Charging period.
Tara Newman: So I asked my dad, I said, “You know, you need to be on the podcast,” and he says, “How much are you get to pay me?”, which I thought was so spectacular, because this is really an area that people struggle with.
Elliot Gantz: People should get paid for what they do, and there are all different skill levels and pay rates for those skill levels, but they should be paid commensurate with what they do, and they should be happy with what they do, because they’ve chosen to do that. So whatever you choose to do in this world and be in this world, if you choose it and you know it has a minimum and maximum of remuneration for that job function, accept it or change it and grow to the next step to the next function.
Tara Newman: Yeah. You’re saying take responsibility.
Elliot Gantz: Take responsibility, and then be responsive to that responsibility that you’ve taken.
Tara Newman: Yeah. I think that when you were coming up in business, I’m sure that there were fad strategies and things like that maybe then. Maybe not as accessible. I’m sure there was always the convention or the conference that gave you the new piece of business strategy. Maybe you went to them, maybe you didn’t, but today with the access to the internet, there’s all these people giving strategies and giving dogma around how to grow a business and how to do things, and one of the really popular, we’ll call them celebrity entrepreneur entrepreneurs, right now, Gary Vaynerchuk, he wrote a book, and he talks about jab, jab, jab, right hook, which is give value, give value, give value. What he’s talking about is free, free, free, and then right hook is ask for the sale, but you have to be giving value and asking for the sale, and I think that people really get tripped up when they start to try and follow this stuff, because all they hear his jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, jab, which is free, free, free, free, free, free, free, and then they forget or are afraid to ask for the sale. So they’re out there giving away all their value for free.
Elliot Gantz: But you always have to hold some value back, because that’s what … People will pay for value. You could be selling the same item that John Doe next to you was selling, but your item has more value, and that’s why it’s more expensive than what John Doe is selling, and as long as people feel they’re getting value for their money, they will pay for it, and you should not be ashamed or embarrassed to ask for the remuneration for your value that you’re putting into either a business as a consultant or a product that you’re designing, but ask for a fair price for your value.
Tara Newman: The one area that I’m seeing you do this, actually, now that makes me so happy, and I love watching you do this, is when you’re mentoring Winnie around her pottery and her going to these fairs, and I think it’s so … Winnie’s my stepmom, she is an amazing artist. She’s a very talented potter. She puts so much of her time into learning new skills and taking her pottery. It’s gorgeous. Her pottery is gorgeous.
Elliot Gantz:Thank you.
Tara Newman: She goes to these fairs, and typical artists or anybody else, they fail to see the value in their own work, because it probably comes easy to her.
Elliot Gantz: Well, what happens is the artist doesn’t see the value in the work, because nothing is ever good enough. So if the artist doesn’t deem it good enough, then how can I ask for this price for it? But what the artist doesn’t see is that the public doesn’t see what the artists sees. They see something that’s beautiful, that’s utilitarian, or they put it on a shelf and then people ooh and aah over it, and they don’t see the possible imperfections that an artist would see, and the artist, the piece is not really imperfect, the piece is imperfect to the mind of the artist.
Tara Newman: I think we can all really relate to that, but what I love when you talk about it in the sense of she goes to these fairs, you’re helping her really market.
Elliot Gantz: Correct. That comes from many years of setting up trade shows.
Tara Newman: And how that adds value and showcases the piece.
Elliot Gantz: That adds value to the piece, and therefore, you could charge more for the piece. Where Winnie would set prices on something and I’d come in and I’d raise all the prices, and she said, “Well, how are you going to do that?” I said, “Just watch, watch and see what happens.” I said, “It’s easy to drop your pants. It’s not easy to pull your pants up.” So start off, and I would reevaluate the pricing, raise the pricing, and pieces would sell.
Tara Newman: Yeah, and it’s how it got presented. It was the conversations that you were having, the relationships you were building with the people who would walk in and look at her pieces. It was the stories I’m sure that you were telling.
Elliot Gantz: It’s listening to people and listening to people in your 360, what they’re saying about other work in the fair.
Tara Newman: Okay, so you’re doing some market research, as you’re standing there.
Elliot Gantz: As you’re standing there, but you learn how to do that after being to so many trade shows.
Tara Newman: All right, so market research, going around to knowing your audience. I think that this is something that I really beat my head in the wall, because so many entrepreneurs actually fail, because they haven’t done the research. They haven’t tested their product in various phases. They haven’t tested the pricing of the product. They haven’t tested the language that they’re going to use to sell the product.
Elliot Gantz: They could be stuck in the mindset that this is the way it’s always been done, but it doesn’t always have to be done the same way. You could be an innovator and branch out and make a new way that it could be done.
Tara Newman: Just because you love the idea doesn’t mean that anybody else is going to love the idea.
Elliot Gantz: Correct.
Tara Newman: Or the way I think … The problems that I think people have are not the same problems that they’re languaging.
Elliot Gantz: We’re going back to because you think it might be a good idea or not. Other people, that’s why you have a team. You bounce the idea off of your team, and then you get some outside information, whether you’re literally pulling somebody off the street and present it and see what they say, or some of your peers from other businesses and see what they think, but then you put all that … Again, it’s information. You put all the information together, and you come up with a plan.
Tara Newman: All right. I’m going to ask you a question that I know you have some experience with, and I think it’d be really valuable to hear. So if somebody is listening to this podcast and they’re struggling, they’re struggling to make ends meet, they’re struggling to make money, cashflow might be an issue, what advice would you give them?
Elliot Gantz: I would say step back a few paces, clear your head so that you can see.
Tara Newman: Stop and reflect.
Elliot Gantz: Stop and reflect.
Tara Newman: Does this shock anybody that my father’s telling you to stop and reflect?
Elliot Gantz: And analyze what you’ve been doing. Think about why it’s not working, meaning what you’re doing incorrectly. Get somebody else in who you value their opinion to bounce off of, so you’re out of your own vacuum in your own head, and put the plan back together again, and go forward. We may take three or four times to do this. It’s called reinventing oneself or reinventing one’s product or business, and every so often, you have to do that. You have to strip your business down and yourself down and you have to reinvent so that you can go to the future. Again, that’s where current events and economics and everything comes into play. It’s one big ball of wax, so to speak.
Tara Newman: Yeah. So what I do on a weekly basis is I reflect on what’s working and what’s not working every week, because there’s always something that I can find, that 1% that could be improved, whether it’s related to my business or my personal life or me personally, that I can take action on. So I’ve made it a habit to always be in this space of what I call radical self-reflection and business reflection. So I can catch the things before the bottom falls out, or before I wind up in a space where it’s like, “Oh my god.”
Elliot Gantz: Okay, but that’s where people need help, because they don’t know how to do that.
Tara Newman:I know. That’s what I help them do.
Elliot Gantz: That’s right. That’s absolutely correct, and if you don’t know how to do it, again, don’t be ashamed, don’t be embarrassed, don’t be afraid to find the information.
Tara Newman: Yeah, yeah.
Elliot Gantz: We’ve come full circle.
Tara Newman: Yeah. We have come full circle. Will you come back on the podcast with me?
Elliot Gantz: Absolutely.
Tara Newman: Now that you’ve gotten your first one out of the way.
Elliot Gantz: Absolutely.
Tara Newman: Because I’d really love to have you come back and talk about money.
Elliot Gantz: Okay.
Tara Newman: Could you come back and talk about money?
Elliot Gantz: Absolutely.
Tara Newman: Because this is still a taboo topic, and if you are a business owner, it can’t be taboo.
Elliot Gantz: Well, what is the timidness about talking about money? Where are you going with this about talking about money, about people charging what they think they should charge?
Tara Newman: I think it’s a lot of things. I think it’s around charging properly and asking for the sale, but I also think it’s about what do you do with the money that you make? I think there’s a conversation in the world of social media, where everything is so carefully curated, that there’s a lot of businesses out there that perpetuate that everything is always up, up, up, up, up. So I know that’s not true. You know that’s not true. So how do you weather the dips? How do you weather things as the cycles come through? I know that what I’ve learned from you around this is that profit doesn’t just come from increasing your revenue, profit comes from watching your expenses.
Elliot Gantz: Money management.
Tara Newman: Money management.
Elliot Gantz: It’s called money management.
Tara Newman: Yeah. So you’ll come back?
Elliot Gantz: I will.
Tara Newman: All right, thanks for being here.
Elliot Gantz: You’re welcome.
Tara Newman: I often share lessons learned on this podcast. It’s one of my favorite things to be able to do, and I’m able to do this because of a strong commitment I have to radical self-reflection. This commitment means that every week, I’m looking at what’s happening in my business and in my life. The good, the bad, and yes, occasionally the ugly.
Doing this work allows me to look at my months and even my years with real data, even for the less tangible parts of my business and life. I call these weekly meetings CEO debriefs, and I do them twice per month inside the BRAVE Society. We do them together. I have pulled together some of the highlights from CEO debriefs that I’ve done inside of BRAVE, and I’m sharing the best of the best with you.
You might’ve heard a couple of these on the podcast, but I want you to take it a step further and feel what it’s like to do these with us inside of the BRAVE society. So head on over to my show notes and sign up now to receive 10 CEO debrief questions you will want to ask yourself. Plus, listen in on some of the most popular shares that I’ve made. Listening to someone else’s debrief is a great way to find the language for what you’re experiencing, get a concrete example of radical self-reflection, and learn how to grow your business, because it’s oftentimes not what we think.
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Special thanks goes to Stacey Harris from Uncommonly More, who is the producer and editor of this podcast. Go check them out for all your digital marketing and content creation needs. Be sure to tune into the next episode to help you embrace your ambition and leave the grind behind.
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Listen in on CEO Debriefs and Get 10 BOLD Questions for your own debrief.
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