The Hero's Journey of Customer Service

Mark and Jesse discuss the role of customer service in a business, and how the alignment of customer expecations with the business owner's strengths (or working genius, if you like) is crucial to customer satisfaction and avoiding burnout. Mark shares an example from his virtual CFO business, which was highly profitable but making him miserable as his promise of what he would deliver was out of alignment with the type of work he enjoyed and thrived on. Jesse recounts a months-long ordeal getting his new car repaired, which ended on a good note -- a shop manager that took accountability for the mistakes of the business and personally took steps to re-align his customer service with Jesse's expectations.   Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

Mark and Jesse discuss Patrick Lencioni's The 6 Types of Working Genius, a book exploring various personality types and the kinds of work most suitable to each. It's more than a personality test however! Lencioni's model assesses people according to their genius, competency, and frustrations in six areas: Wonder: The natural gift of pondering the possibility of greater potential and opportunity in a given situation Invention: The natural gift of creating original and novel ideas and solutions Discernment: The natural gift of intuitively and instinctively evaluating ideas and situations Galvanizing: The natural gift of rallying, inspiring and organizing others to take action Enablement: The natural gift of providing encouragement and assistance for an idea or project Tenacity: The natural gift of pushing projects or tasks to completion to achieve results   Mark and Jesse share the results of their assessments -- their areas of genius and their areas of frustration -- and how they have seen these things manifest in problems in their own businesses. They also discuss how understanding your genius and frustrations (notice the word frustration is employed, not weakness) helps to focus your efforts where you will be most impactful, and ultimately build better, more effective teams.   The 6 Types of Working Genius Assessment: https://www.workinggenius.com/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw0ruyBhDuARIsANSZ3wriydJmSn6fd5XTmzV-EF7jo6HeJf5swq4XvPmOtW7fzv2REGhNlcAaAt9oEALw_wcB     Mark Butler, Virtual CFO The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

In today's episode, Jesse discusses his net worth tracker, a basic spreadsheet in which he records the balances of his investments and other assets quarterly. For Jesse, net worth is the scorecard of personal finance -- it's a way of keeping track of what direction you are going with your money. However, scorecard is an impersonal way to describe net worth, perhaps even suggests that one's value is tied to net worth. This could not be further from the truth! There's a lot more to a person than their net worth, but net worth does tell an important story about a person's money, and money is a vital part of a person, even if it's not their whole self.   As Mark has observed during his time coaching people to manage their money, people that routinely spend beyond their means -- that is, accrue negative net worth -- have allowed their desire for consumption to exceed their ability to consume. Their net worth represents a person who is out of touch with their tradeoffs. As Mark has mentioend in previous episodes, YNAB is all about making your tradeoffs crystal clear, and learning to love the choices you make to bring your money in alignment with your priorities. In short, learning to love your spending.   Mark Butler, Virtual CFO The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

In today's episode, Mark and Jesse discuss money as a concept, why it exists, and how trade (using money) has created tremendous value for humans throughout history. On the YNAB Podcast, Jesse has spoken about money being far more than a tool, however, and really an extension of one's self -- one's energies and desires. Mark and Jesse then attempt to connect the dots to our modern monetary system, where debt and inflation loom large. What exactly is it about money is essential to human flourishing?   Mark Butler, Virtual CFO The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

Mark kicks off today's episode with a handful of words, hoping to weave them into a broader discussion: vision, goal, strategy, plan, and tactics. Mark and Jesse discuss how many small business owners look for tactics first, various tasks focused on operations: posting on social media, starting a YouTube channel, building an email list. These may or may not be worthwhile activities -- you really need a strategy to understand the big picture of where the business is going (or needs to go), and then select the activities that will get you there. But even then, strategy is hollow, Mark argues, unless there's a why behind what you do. Unless the company has a clearly defined core identity, it will struggle to adopt a good strategy.   Mark Butler, Virtual CFO The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

In today's episdoe, Mark and Jesse discuss the importance of developing good systems, not just in business but in life! Mark shares a recent experience in which his wife left for a few days on a retreat, leaving Mark to handle her usual duties. Mark was faced with a lack of systems in day to day tasks, and enough friction to sit her down after the retreat and have a talk about family systems. Kate agreed, and, within a few weeks, became a systems expert, looking for every avenue she could find to create better processes.   Good systems aren't just for increasing business profit, they're for improving quality of life, relationships, and family harmony too!   The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement-dp-0884271951/dp/0884271951/ref=dp_ob_title_bk     Mark Butler, Virtual CFO The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

Mark and Jesse ponder the question -- what do you do when growth slows and the business plateaus? Mark recalls a story about a successful businessperson who failed at several ventures before striking gold, and notes that the "gold" business was never hard. It grew a lot early on, and continued to grow steadily from there. He juxtaposes this result with some of his clients who spend hundreds or even thousands of hours working on a business, yet never really take off. There were signs of sucess early on in the good business, and likewise there were not signs of success in the failed ventures. Looking for signs of success is a good indicator of whether a business has legs or not. If you don't see any, it's a good indicator that your time is spent elsewhere!   Antifragile by Nassim Taleb https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incerto-ebook/dp/B0083DJWGO/ref=sr_1_1?crid=JMRX5RI5RNZ8&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.C3e4IagEiQHRzgC0W8S0KkU1s2tYPbhDWivIreUIOtwe2xEXBRSw7sYgY8vGAZxpOF13z-5F3MCQJ00OZnI2iuM5RFHBnnqqX5yeUs348hp-T297HGOx2e0-cQ-XPjqTBF2D8WYJx5Kt0LCnHhsFfmbdwGDgxb3pwniTQYHi71ahb0q4CkhWvUHmByV0dJqUkoIHy2PEFt18GVXgLjePclPH4zK4uOKDXX14x9cdoAc.MlGqTaeOx35qrIkulkswcuGJuF4GOAXfSoFOGSpA4z8&dib_tag=se&keywords=antifragile+by+nassim+taleb&qid=1710465424&sprefix=antifragile%2Caps%2C102&sr=8-1     Mark Butler, Virtual CFO The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

People have been hemming and hawing over the value proposition of college for years now, and in 2024, the value that a bachelor's degree offers is more questionable than ever. Mark and Jesse, both with teenagers staring down the barrel of college (or not) in the next few years, share their thoughts on the subject. As Jesse argues, the purpose of education is "to learn how to do something, when you don't know how to do something." As Mark points out, the resources for self-education are more prolific than they've ever been, meanwhile critical thinking in school appears to be as low as ever.   Mark Butler, Virtual CFO The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

We usually talk about stress as something you need to reduce, or recover from. But there are different types of stress -- good stressors and bad stressors -- and sometimes stress drives us to accomplish things and innovate when we otherwise wouldn't. To that end, Mark and Jesse discuss Morgan Housel's book Same As Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes, in which Housel outlines the way stressors and risk taking drives us to grow achieve new things. Mark also shares a recent story about how the stress of a bookkeeping sprint at work provided the spark for him to write new software to automate a key process in his business, and save a lot of time as a result.   Other books mentioned in this episode: Endurance by Alfred Lansing The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel     Mark Butler, Virtual CFO The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

Jesse defends the New Years resolution, and offers up of his own resolutions for the year, namely being kind. Mark resolves to try really hard, and be a better friend.   Harvard study on men's happiness (started in 1938!): https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-secret-to-happiness-heres-some-advice-from-the-longest-running-study-on-happiness-2017100512543   Musical interlude courtesy of Kevin MacLeod: "Investigations" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/     Mark Butler, Virtual CFO The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com