Transcript:
Neil K Carroll [00:00:06] This episode of the Smarter Business Podcast features Tony DeSimone. Tony is a business consultant, adjunct professor at the University of Buffalo Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership and runs a podcast called Entrepreneur island. As if that’s not enough. We also discuss Tony’s new book in this episode, Small Business Blind Spots: Solutions to the Eight Most Common Challenges Business Owners Fail to See. I get to read an advance copy of this book. Go get it. It has some incredible content in it very actionable. You can start working on your businesses blind spots today. On with the episode and if you like what you hear please subscribe wherever you’re taking in this podcast and please leave a comment. We’re always looking for feedback and it can help people find this show.
Neil K Carroll [00:00:56] The guest on this episode is Tony DeSimone. Tony I will let you introduce yourself. You can include as many accolades as you like.
Tony DeSimone [00:01:05] I myself I guess I guess if I were to just very shortly and sweetly tell you what I do is I teach the universal language of numbers and by doing that I help teams communicate far better with each other and in doing so it helps them get through some of the biggest problems that they’re struggling with which ultimately results in greater cash flow and profitability.
Neil K Carroll [00:01:36] Excellent and you’ve. So you do that through your company you can plug yourself.
Tony DeSimone [00:01:43] You’re the expert now. Yes I. That’s the name of my company. Which I guess if I had the opportunity, you’re a marketing guy, so you could probably help me with this is that I probably wouldn’t have named it that. I had I knew what I now know with the name.
Neil K Carroll [00:02:02] Are you having? What’s the issue? Spelling errors?
Tony DeSimone [00:02:05] Yeah for sure a spelling error because your – Y O U R E.
Neil K Carroll [00:02:09] Such a common.
Tony DeSimone [00:02:10] Is is the mistake most of the time that people make when they’re emailing because they go – Y O U R. And.
Neil K Carroll [00:02:17] Yeah.
Tony DeSimone [00:02:17] And even You’re the Expert Now; the whole point to that was to help clients understand how to read their financial so well that they can feel that they’re truly the expert of their own business and understanding the financials. However, it does sound a little arrogant may be that people might think that I’m thinking that I’m the expert and I’m gonna make you the expert.
Neil K Carroll [00:02:42] OK.
Tony DeSimone [00:02:43] And I never really thought about that too deeply.
Neil K Carroll [00:02:47] Well, do you own both domain names? You are in your like your and you’re? Because thats a twelve dollar fix.
Tony DeSimone [00:02:55] Yeah. No. That’s true. I should probably do that.
Neil K Carroll [00:02:59] Alright, Burak. Go buy a domain name or I’ll sell it to Tony after the show.
Tony DeSimone [00:03:04] Burak, put it in the show notes. Somebody else is gonna buy it and now make me pay thousands of dollars.
Neil K Carroll [00:03:10] That’s what we’re going to do. Burak is going to buy it.
Tony DeSimone [00:03:13] Burak is leaving the room as we speak and in purchasing it on Go Daddy. Well done.
Neil K Carroll [00:03:21] We use Google Domains.
Tony DeSimone [00:03:22] There we go. I don’t need to do anymore. I’ve already got all the value I need out of this one.
Neil K Carroll [00:03:28] And then I don’t do want to mention UB?
Tony DeSimone [00:03:33] I’m also an adjunct professor at UB. Thank you for reminding me to talk about myself here. Adjunct Professor at UB I started off teaching the sophomores on the basics of accounting as they were taking their classes to get into the business school. And as I was teaching at UB over on that side I learned about the branch of UB called the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership and when I looked into that and I sat down with Tom Ulbrich, who’s in charge over there and the assistant dean, I realized that those were my people. You know? Their business owners. It’s technically you’re well not technically what you’re you’re essentially learning there is basically a mini MBA and I realized that those were my people. And when I sat down with Tom UIbrich, and explained what I can do. Teach financial reports and help people understand business owners understand how to read their financials better and how to use those financials to actually improve their operations. That was a gap at the time that he had and so it was almost a very easy transition over to them and I’ve been teaching over there for gosh seven or eight years now.
Neil K Carroll [00:05:02] Yeah. Excellent. That’s where we met through CEL.
Tony DeSimone [00:05:05] Yes.
Neil K Carroll [00:05:06] Which I completed just earlier this year and Tony is a very popular guy in the CEL.
Tony DeSimone [00:05:13] Oh. Thank you.
Neil K Carroll [00:05:15] A lot of people like your chalk talks and then you’ve got the additional financial classes and so on. But yes that’s probably enough intro. Right?
Tony DeSimone [00:05:23] That’s more than enough. Oh my goodness.
Neil K Carroll [00:05:27] And you had to do it all yourself.
Tony DeSimone [00:05:29] It was enough time for Burak to get that other – You’re the expert now.
Neil K Carroll [00:05:34] To get the other domain.
Tony DeSimone [00:05:36] Does anybody know Burak is or am I just you know?
Neil K Carroll [00:05:38] No. He has never been mentioned.
Tony DeSimone [00:05:41] I might want to mention Burak before.
Neil K Carroll [00:05:43] We’ll show a clip of Burak as part of.
Tony DeSimone [00:05:49] He’s the man behind the video on the podcast.
Neil K Carroll [00:05:52] Yeah. Burak is a video production specialist here. He’s filming right now. So I guess we’re kind of breaking the wall there.
Tony DeSimone [00:06:02] I did I probably. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m not a marketing guy. I don’t know these things.
Neil K Carroll [00:06:09] I think I said it first. All right. So, Tony, part of the reason I thought it would be a great idea to have you on this podcast is because [00:06:21]you do a lot of work in building expert status around yourself around your consulting business and the main way that you’ve done that, I think at least the way I’ve come across most often is through a podcast. [16.8s] So, I really do want to give people a rundown of that podcast or kind of the areas you cover there? They might want to tune in.
Tony DeSimone [00:06:48] [00:06:48]Yeah the podcast is called Entrepreneur Island and the idea behind that is that a lot of business owners they’re struggling with their issues and many times they feel that they’re the only ones that are struggling with those issues so they feel that they’re on this island when in fact the all of the problems. Any problem that they’re dealing with has been dealt with before and is more common than they think. So, what I’m doing on the podcast is sharing some of those similar problems and offering solutions. [38.3s]
Neil K Carroll [00:07:28] Excellent. That’s a good encapsulation. It’s definitely worth checking out.
Neil K Carroll [00:07:34] If you search any, what services, Apple Podcasts.
Tony DeSimone [00:07:41] And on Stitcher Radio.
Neil K Carroll [00:07:44] Great, and then kind of dovetailing into that with the expert status, you’re going to build it out even a little further with a kind of an announcement you have.
Tony DeSimone [00:07:58] Yes. My next book which I call “Small Business Blind Spots, The Eight Most Common Blind Spots that Business Owners Fail to See. And basically this is an encapsulation of my being, really a practitioner. I get, I get the opportunity to, to go to many different small businesses, all different industries, at times three to four different businesses in one day. And I tend to see similar trends, even though they’re all different companies and they all have different issues, but similar trends in regards to those issues. And so the book shares eight of the most common trends, or blind spots and the solutions that I use to help them.
Neil K Carroll [00:08:58] Yeah. Yeah, and Tony gave me an advance copy, that’s probably what you’d call that right. It is an excellent book for any business owner, especially, I would say, you know, small business owners, folks who are trying to do some of that fixing on their own right. The, what did we say, you wanted it to be about something you could read on the, on a plane. I read it between a couple of 45-minute flights, so it’s perfect for that. It’s super actionable, and has a lot of worksheets and other resources tied to it. So yeah, I mean, I don’t know if you want to get into any specific section of it but we talked about NIECE on the disc golf course right.
Tony DeSimone [00:09:49] Yes. Yeah. Oh my goodness. You’ve opened up a lot of doors there. I, first of all, yeah I wrote it. It’s gonna have about 77 pages, but I wrote it in a way where you could read it probably on a three hour flight or something like that. The idea there is that it has more actionable items within each chapter than the actual, you know, reading itself because the idea there is that I want you to read this book and read each chapter, and feel like you’ve just gained an incredible amount of knowledge, and you can walk away from this book and now save thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars for your company, and I believe that in cases like the NIECE which is a good example, you can very easily do that because a lot of small businesses don’t do what I’m suggesting that you do with the NIECE and what the NIECE is, is just an acronym for the net income effect by cutting expenses. And basically what what I’m stating there is that for the average company it takes about a hundred thousand dollars to make six thousand dollars of profit. So in other words, if a company, say for instance were a car manufacturer or something like that, if they had orders for a hundred thousand dollars worth of more automobiles, they would have to purchase the steel, and the plastic, and the engines, and the tires, and then they would have to get all of their labor in there, and then they would also have to get all the administrative help that they would also need in to add to the expense to all of those new purchases, and producing those two cars or how many cars it would be. But as you trickle down those expenses on the profit and loss, by the time you consider all those expenses you now have a profit of about six thousand dollars. So that one hundred thousand dollars, after all those expenses, is about six thousand dollars.
Tony DeSimone [00:12:16] And what the NIECE effect is is that, what’s easier in most small businesses, finding a way to achieve a hundred thousand more in sales, or is it possible that you might be able to find six thousand dollars worth of savings, and in most cases, in small business especially, they’re not run so effectively that you can’t find savings that way. I share a very simple way to go deep into your expenses, into your profit and loss detail, and review all of your expenses and determine where are the areas that I’m wasting money essentially, similar to, for example a lot of memberships. I had a client who they have a lot of turnover and they use, they use memberships such as LinkedIn, and they pay a considerable amount of money for what they use it for. And what they hadn’t done is reviewed those expenses for quite some time, and when they went through this process of reviewing all the membership, the membership expenses in total, and they got to linked they realized that first of all they are spending somewhere around twenty thousand dollars a year, but they also learned that several of the memberships were for employees that no longer even existed.
Neil K Carroll [00:13:50] Right. Yeah.
Tony DeSimone [00:13:51] So they cut those out immediately and save six thousand dollars. Now six thousand dollars is a lot easier because if you cut six thousand dollars that goes to the bottom line. You now have an additional profit of six thousand dollars. However, if they wanted to make six thousand dollars with additional sales they would have had to find one hundred thousand dollars in sales.
Neil K Carroll [00:14:15] Right. Right. Yeah. That’s the, and that’s that’s well covered in the book. I think I told you like the, the when I first had it explained to me by a third party I was like I don’t get it. But when I read it in the book it made a lot more sense in terms of when you tie everything to that actual profit. Profit level, the profit rate, then all of the sudden the math all works.
Tony DeSimone [00:14:44] Yeah. And by the way that third party, obviously someone you haven’t talked to to even ask to bring his name in here. But, but he’s somebody I worked with and that helped him significantly.
Neil K Carroll [00:14:57] Yeah right. Yeah. We won’t bring him up. We’ll get him on a future podcast.
Tony DeSimone [00:15:02] Yeah. But I know for a fact that that helped him out dramatically.
Neil K Carroll [00:15:07] Yeah yeah yeah. We gotta to do some more of that around here. So that’s the plan.
Neil K Carroll [00:15:13] I don’t, do have any last thoughts on the book, or?
Tony DeSimone [00:15:18] You know what, what I want to make sure is that people are getting an incredible amount of value for it. So that is, that is my hope that people are getting that much value for it, and I hope that after they purchase it and use it I would love to hear from them in regards to how it helped, if it did at all. So that I can, you know, make it better or improve upon it.
Neil K Carroll [00:15:47] And how and where are people going to be able to find this.
Tony DeSimone [00:15:51] You’ll be able to find it on Amazon.
Neil K Carroll [00:15:52] Ok. And we don’t have an exact release date yet, right?
Tony DeSimone [00:15:56] End of September.
Neil K Carroll [00:15:59] End of September 2019. So once we get that release date we’re gonna put it in the show notes, and you’ll be able to get your hands on it. And digital only, correct? Or are you, are you printing it?
Tony DeSimone [00:16:13] Well it’s print. No it’s going to be hardcover, and it’s gonna have two different covers to it.
Neil K Carroll [00:16:19] Oh yeah. That’s a great point. We talked about that on the course too. You want to run that down?
Tony DeSimone [00:16:23] Yeah. Yeah yeah. Well first of all my daughter is in illustrations. She’s just graduated from college with an illustrations degree and she did all of the illustrations for the book including the covers. And so the Small Business Blindspot cover is originally was a business owner, a man in a suit on a high wire with a blindfold. One of the thoughts that I had was that I shouldn’t use just the man to symbol business owner. So I asked my daughter to create a second cover where it’s a woman in a suit with a blindfold on the high wire, so I think that that actually really is, I’m very happy that that I have two versions of it.
Neil K Carroll [00:17:18] You’ll be able to take your pick when you buy it.
Tony DeSimone [00:17:20] You can take, or you could buy the set.
Neil K Carroll [00:17:22] Yeah, well that’s even better see. Why not?
Tony DeSimone [00:17:27] Why not?
Neil K Carroll [00:17:32] Yeah. Well that’s great. It’s exciting and it’s an excellent book, so I recommend everybody run out and buy it.
Tony DeSimone [00:17:40] Thanks.
Neil K Carroll [00:17:40] Soon as it’s available.
Tony DeSimone [00:17:41] Thank you very much.
Neil K Carroll [00:17:42] And, yeah let’s move on to what we tried to include in all of these Smarter Business Podcasts is we talk a little bit about use of video in business. Now Tony we talked about this beforehand. You haven’t really used a lot of video in your business.
Tony DeSimone [00:17:59] What’s video? No I have not. I’ve actually been terrible with that.
Neil K Carroll [00:18:07] So but that I thought was, would be fun to explore on the podcast. So why, what’s been holding you back?
Tony DeSimone [00:18:15] You know it’s a matter of what I can get done. So I like to get things done. That’s part of what I do when I coach is to help keep people accountable and actually finish what you start. So when I look at anything I think about the time I have available, and what I’m capable of getting done. And there was no doubt to me that the podcast itself was a lot easier to get done, especially when I started it, than having you know the whole video thing going. Now you can probably make the argument to me that, why not just do the podcast like we’re doing this one with someone as capable as Burak, behind the scenes just filming the thing.
Neil K Carroll [00:19:08] Yeah. Well you know I could say that but you said it first so.
Tony DeSimone [00:19:12] You know what. Maybe with this great setup that you have that I need to figure out how to do that because, because you’re right. I should be doing video.
Neil K Carroll [00:19:23] Well and then I’m gonna I’m put a little twist on that and make the question even harder, right. So if in your perfect world you were to start say marketing your company through video what do you think that might look like.
Tony DeSimone [00:19:38] Oh my goodness. I think it would start like like I always try to think what’s the MVP right, the most viable product. And I think it would be it would be filming the podcast. It would be just doing something as simple as that. Cause I think that just, I’m already creating the content. So that would be, and I suppose then another, another area that I could go into is I’ve put together several presentations, some of which you’ve seen at the CEL, and I could probably create a video form of that, that I in fact should. There’s really, I should.
Neil K Carroll [00:20:23] That is, yeah those are two great ways to kind of take content, and this is just something that when we’re consulting with clients and so on we talk a lot about. It’s so effort intensive to come up with meaningful content that like if you’re not using it in every kind of way possible, you’re missing out on some of your internal value for it. So presentations, that’s a great point. You can take a presentation that you’re giving anyway, record it, and then you have it as, and I’m not talking to you necessarily Tony on this, but anybody, you record that presentation, and then you have it at your fingertips. You’re able to send it out when you have the possibility of you know speaking engagement, you’re able to send it out to clients that you’re trying to prove that you know what you’re talking about, and then you know it’s a similar thing on the podcast or anything like that we’ve made a lot internally of videos based around blog posts we’ve made. We’re starting this up within, you know with our rebrand and repositioning that we did. And it’s great because you can chop it up and all kinds of little bits like we did for episode one and you get all kinds of content to throw out there.
Tony DeSimone [00:21:52] Yeah I can truly buy into that because I do know just from the podcast itself that I’ve picked up a lot of business on that alone, because what the podcast has done for me I’ve noticed is that one of the first things that people typically do is they’ll go to the website, and considering that the podcast is the first thing that they see a lot of times I’ll just you know press play and listen and considering that these are 10 minute bite-sized podcasts they really get to, they know me better just based upon that alone and that sells them a lot. You know, and I would only believe that you could probably multiply that with video which.
Neil K Carroll [00:22:46] Yeah, and that speaks to what I was saying at the beginning there with expert status. They not only know you, but they know that you actually know what you’re talking about, which is a real issue sometimes right? People will, you know, they’ll, some folks will sell anything so you know it’s good to know that the person behind, that actually knows what they’re talking about and can deliver so.
Neil K Carroll [00:23:14] Yeah, yeah, well I mean at the end of the day if you’re not offering the value people, people are smart. They’re going to figure it out. And it won’t last because it’s a small town.
Neil K Carroll [00:23:26] Oh yes. Well that’s, that’s the beauty of Buffalo right. Is it’s such a small town that I feel like people are on their best behavior for the most part because.
Tony DeSimone [00:23:38] Kind of half to be.
Neil K Carroll [00:23:38] Two degrees, so. Ok, so we can move over to either talking about your disc golf game, or one thing that you know we can move on to the smarter business.
Tony DeSimone [00:23:54] Wow.
Neil K Carroll [00:23:54] question.
Tony DeSimone [00:23:55] We’re already almost near the end of the.
Neil K Carroll [00:23:57] We’re getting there.
Tony DeSimone [00:23:58] already.
Neil K Carroll [00:23:58] Well since we talked to Burak, we could get a time check.
Tony DeSimone [00:24:01] I’m just getting comfortable now.
Tony DeSimone [00:24:05] Wow.
Neil K Carroll [00:24:05] See.
Tony DeSimone [00:24:07] Moving right along here. Oh my goodness.
Neil K Carroll [00:24:10] So let’s talk about disc golf.
Tony DeSimone [00:24:11] We gotta talk about disc golf. You’re one of the few people that I’ve run into that actually knows what it even is.
Neil K Carroll [00:24:20] Yeah, so Tony and I played around to disc golf and we’ll put up some clips of, we didn’t get a ton of clips. I was too focused on my game I guess. But kind of following up, we got some discs made by dynamic discs that were hot-stamped with the new logo, and we gave them out at our launch party and went and, we’ve already played a few rounds. We got a few, I have a few more lined up. And you know we’ll. It’s a good way to kind of, something a little different that we found that people are often into as well, that’s a fun way to get outdoors and have a good one on one meeting or you know company meeting and throw the discs a little bit. What did you think, you’ve played before though you’re not a total newbie like some of the folks we’ve been playing with.
Tony DeSimone [00:25:20] I’ve played a couple of times before so I’m, I hadn’t played before this summer. And partly because I had an injury which prevented me from running so I’m always trying to find another way to stay active. But, it’s a great way to enjoy some of the pleasures of golf without having to have to pay for it because there’s no cost. You don’t have to reserve a time because you could pretty much jump on any time. There are no golf carts so you do have to walk and it’s an enjoyable walk in the park. And if you’re a competitive type it’s kind of fun to compete with one or three other people.
Neil K Carroll [00:26:08] Sure you can ramp it up or you can ramp it down. The one that we played, or Paul and I played, the day before we didn’t keep score so you can go either way with it.
Tony DeSimone [00:26:19] I like keeping score, I gotta admit. And it’s a game that the millennials love. It’s amazing how competitive of a sport it is. It’s far more of a millennial sport which is great to see. And then there’s people that show up with a backpack of 24 discs that are really into it which is incredible.
Neil K Carroll [00:26:43] Yeah we saw a few of them out on Chestnut Ridge when we played right?
Tony DeSimone [00:26:47] And they could throw that disc man.
Neil K Carroll [00:26:48] They can move it, yeah.
Tony DeSimone [00:26:51] I know now to not say Frisbee. You say disc, you know, Frisbee, come one. It’s amateur, it’s amateur hour.
Neil K Carroll [00:26:59] Disc golf right, so. Well I’m glad you enjoyed it. Yeah we’ll, we’ll have updates on future ones, and we’ll get some clips up there. All right. So let’s get into the, this is the meat, the big question of the episode right. Smarter Business Podcast. I’ll recap too last month Joe Neiman said hire happy people. That was his one very smart tip. His way to make your business more effective. Do you have a single tip that is maybe, I don’t know, you’re going head to head with Joe here. Hire happy people. What’s Tony say.
Tony DeSimone [00:27:41] Well, you know I guess this might be a little bit of a long answer. I hope you don’t mind, but what I’ve discovered with working with a lot of small businesses is that many times they’ll say they’re struggling with cash flow, or something like that. And cash flow is probably the most lagging of lagging indicators. By the time you have a cash problem, there’s a lot of other issues that have gone wrong because cash flow is never your problem. The problem are all of the issues upstream that caused that to happen. Ok, and so what I’ve discovered with working with a lot of these businesses is that even before we can get into the numbers, there’s usually these topics that nobody wants to talk about because they just cause fights, arguments, emotional breakdowns, things like that. So it’s important to get the team in the room, your top executives, your key employees, the family members, whoever they are, in the room and get them to a point to feel so comfortable that psychological safety, that they can say anything without it becoming emotional, or personal, or anything like that. So what I’ve learned, and really the value that I bring has a lot less to do with the numbers than it does with getting them to feel that psychological safety, and part of the way that I do it is that I like to start the meetings and say to everybody in the room, “I want you to be able to answer this honestly to yourself, and I want you to feel comfortable with sharing with the rest of the team everything in regards to these two questions. What am I not saying that needs to be said?” So I want everybody in the room to not hold back because that happens so often where they just don’t want to share something because either they, they’re afraid somebody is going to take it personally, emotional breakdown or whatever. “What am I not saying that needs to be said?” and in the second question is “What am I saying that’s not being heard?” Because a lot of times people keep saying the same thing over and over and over again, and feel that other people are just not listening. So if I can get them all to feel comfortable with both of those, then I can truly get a far more psychological safe just safe place for people to actually talk about the real issues. And that’s the key to success. And that’s one thing that those two questions, now what I was doing for the longest time was getting them to answer, and to try to create that psychological safety, and then I had heard a Tim Ferriss podcast and there was, and I forgot who he brought on that said it so concisely with those two questions. But I’ve used that ever since because that is perfect. That is exactly what you’re trying to accomplish. Again, because if you can do that, and my goal then in the room is to make sure that we create the great accountability. So in other words one of the things I say is, I want to make sure everybody before we leave the room has properly answered those to themselves, because the last thing I want to hear when we leave the room is it getting back to me somehow that after you left the room, You’ve had this complaint, or you had this issue or whatever, because part of my accountability as the coach there, the facilitator, is that if I hear that, the next time we meet, that’s where we’re gonna begin. I’m going to make sure you’re aware that I heard that, and I’m going to make you accountable for that, and we’re gonna talk about that first because this room is about safety.
Neil K Carroll [00:31:48] Yeah, ok, excellent, yeah. I mean that’s a big, that is a big issue, right, within any business. Kind of, if the communication is not truly open and you’re not talking about the things that need to be talked about, then things can fall through the cracks, or you know, things can not get fixed when they need to, so.
Tony DeSimone [00:32:13] People are not really communicating with each other.
Neil K Carroll [00:32:16] Right, right. So communication, if we sum it up, real communication.
Tony DeSimone [00:32:20] Real communication.
Neil K Carroll [00:32:22] Alright. Excellent. I like it. That would make a business smarter for sure.
Tony DeSimone [00:32:26] Yes.
[00:32:28] And we kind of finish up here with an open-ended question. Is there anything you want to kind of add to the podcast, anything that you feel like we didn’t touch on that’s important to kinda put out there to the audience. Joe recommended a book in this space. You know that’s a good avenue to do that, but, it’s you know, if there’s anything that you feel like has been unsaid.
Tony DeSimone [00:33:01] Yeah I guess, two things if we’re gonna talk about books. One of the books that, that I shared I’m part of a, I facilitate a mastermind group at the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, and one of the books that was by far, the one that gets talked about the most is called “Never Split the Difference, How to Negotiate if Your Life Depended on it” by Chris Voss.
Neil K Carroll [00:33:28] Yeah, yeah, that’s a great one I’ve read it.
Tony DeSimone [00:33:30] It’s fantastic and I know several of the students in the class that saved thousands, tens of thousands just on that alone. So it is definitely worth, worth reading. And then as far as just learning, I teach a “How to Read your Financial Reports” class at UB CEL, and there’s another one that’s starting up in October. And if you don’t really fully understand how to read your profit and loss, and your balance sheet, then you’re missing out on a tool that, that if you did know, can help you just become far more profitable. You could make far less decisions that are going to cost you, and you can hedge your risk in a way that you never hedged before. And I can, with the class, what I can do is help you get to the point where you can understand your, your company’s financials, as well as any other companies’, and learn to ask the smart questions so that you’ll never be fooled again. And then use that information to actually improve your operations.
Neil K Carroll [00:34:50] That’s excellent, yeah.
Tony DeSimone [00:34:51] It’s a seven week class.
Neil K Carroll [00:34:53] And I have, I know somebody who’s taken it and they swear by it. They said it was the best class they’ve taken.
Tony DeSimone [00:34:59] That’s great! That’s great! That’s great to hear!
Neil K Carroll [00:35:01] Is that person real? What do you think Tony? No, it is a real person. Yes. And I won’t name names, but yeah. Ok, well that’s it, and we’re, yeah we’re up over our target mark there, so we’re gonna shut it down, but thank you Tony for coming on. It’s not so far over It’ll be fine. Yeah people can, people can shut it off early if they’re not interested.
Tony DeSimone [00:35:27] Burak’s finger is on the off button as we speak. Uh-oh.
Neil K Carroll [00:35:33] All right well thank you for coming out. Thanks for taking the time, and I look forward to the book. Plug it one last time for us.
Tony DeSimone [00:35:42] Small Business Blind Spots, the Eight Most Common Blind Spots that Business Owners Fail to See.
Neil K Carroll [00:35:49] All right, thank you Tony.
Tony DeSimone [00:35:50] You got it.
Neil K Carroll [00:35:51] Ok, that wraps up this episode. Check out Tony’s new book, and if you’re a business owner interested in pushing your business to the next level, check out the CEL Core Program that Tony and I mentioned during the show. It’s been transformational for my business, and Tony is a big part of that. I’ll drop a link in the show notes. Thanks again for checking out The Smarter Business Podcast. Subscribe and comment on this episode to help us grow our audience.