Beginning Balance

In today's episode, Mark takes inspiration from George Constanza, the perpetually underachieving and romantically inept character from Seinfeld, to confront his negative business habits. In the episode "The Opposite," George realizes that he's always followed his intuiton, but every decision he's made has turned out to be wrong -- he's dissapointed in where his life has ended up, and in his failures with women. So, he decides to do the opposite, that is, everything his intuition tells him to do, he does the opposite. The result is predictably hilarious, and leads to George talking to women previously out of his league, and eventually landing his dream job managing the New York Yankees.   Mark has started employing the "Constanza Protocol," as he calls it, in business, as a way to break negative habit loops. As he has stated on multiple episodes, Mark struggles with the idea of having and managing employees (even good ones!) and his urge is to retreat to work he can do on his own -- like automating tasks or building new software tools. Under the Constanza Protocol, however, he has to do the opposite and instead run toward the manager/employee relationship, schedule calls and check ins, talk about hours and whether his employees are feeling happy about their workflow.   Maybe he won't be as successful as George, but it is a useful way to recognize your negative patterns and break out of them.   Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   Jesse Mecham YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

Jesse shares his experience working on the YNAB books for the first time in many years, while YNAB's head accountant is out of maternity leave. Working through monthly and quarterly close  got him thinking about how software automation could free up the accounting departments time wrangling spreadsheets to do more impactful work for the business. To that end, he engaged Mark to consult on how YNAB can improve their accounting processes. Mark and Jesse continue with a discussion about the inevitability of change, and how employees and companies can position themselves to handle the disruptions that technological innovation create.   Jesse references one his oldest son's college courses, where entrepreneurs visit the class and deliver presentations on their careers and the future of business. On two separate weeks, two very successful entrepreneurs shared their thoughts on AI and how it is disrupting entire industries -- one had a very positive, excited outlook, the other a bleak, pessimistic outlook. The change is inevitable, however, so Jesse asks: which side do you want to be on?   You do have a choice.   Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   Jesse Mecham YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

Recently YNAB announced a major shake up in the way it talks about money. Jesse explains how the realization that each of YNAB's Four Rules was really just a variation of Rule One ("give every dollar a job") led to a deeper conversation about YNAB's core identity. Every year when the executive team met to reasses the company's purpose and direction, the team would change the stated purpose of the company. It became clear that YNAB wasn't a budgeting app, and it wasn't a set of rules for managing money -- there was some self-actualization happening in users that wasn't being captured by the way YNAB presented its method. Eventually the team landed on the word "spendfulness," to describe a state of spending money with purpose and intention.   Jesse discusses how the company has evolved to this point, and where it plans to go now that it has redefined its purpose and even changed it's methods (YNAB dropped the Four Rules for the Five Questions).   Mark wraps up the conversation musing on the pursuit of leisure, and why he has such a hard time indulging in leisure pursuits.   Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   Jesse Mecham YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

Mark and Jesse discuss the pervasive distractions that cell phones and computers cause, and how to fight back against them. Jesse champions the Freedom app blocker, which locks your phone or other device from distracting websites like social media, YouTube, blogs, etc. Since implementing Freedom, he boasts a phone usage time of only 20min per day (!), working toward his stated goal of "making the phone in my pocket feel weird."   Mark questions his propensity to continually start new ventures as part of an anxious reaction to having free time. He realizes that creating leverage in your business ought to lead to free time, which can be dedicated to hobbies and leisure. Without careful attention to cultivating hobbies and other interests, however, free time can become an empty vessel to be filled with more anxious activity.     Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   Jesse Mecham YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

Mark and Jesse kick off the New Year with a deep discussion on inflation and how it creates confusion about the most important price of all -- the price of money.   Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   Jesse Mecham YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

Following up on Mark's admission that he dreads collaboration, whether it's with peers or employees, Jesse discusses one way the leadership team at YNAB has fostered collaboration. They call it the strategic council, and it's a two(ish) day meeting with all the functions at YNAB presenting the challenges and opportunities for growth in each function. The meeting is tightly structured, with desginated time slots for each team to present and field questions. This is critical to keep things moving and keep the focus on getting started with solving problems. It's not a time to fully solve problems and implement strategies, it's simply a time to get everything everyone is working on out in the open, so that everyone is aware of the challenges and no one is caught by surprise.   Mark points out that this type of meeting has the potential to become toxic if teams are concerned about protecting their own reputations rather than being open with their challenges, and thereby use the meeting time to deflect problems and shift blame. To Jesse, this kind of meeting can only happen productively with high trust teams, who are all aligned with the idea that the presentations are a way to make the company better. In a low trust environment, the collaborative aspect of the strategic council falls apart quickly.   Mark and Jesse end on a discussion of collaboration as a way of buying back your time. Jesse explains how his personal assistant has not only saved him time by taking care of mundane problems for him, but has shored up the "mental leaks" that occur when your focus is distracted by competing priorities. Mark shares that despite his preference to use software over humans to free up his time and mental capacity, he has found an employee with high initiative and drive to solve problems on their own to be very useful.   Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   Jesse Mecham YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

In today's episode Mark explains what makes the perfect diet coke, and Jesse opens his inbox and reads some comments and questions from Beginning Balance listeners, including tips for improving business leadership skills, how to keep track of all your ideas, and why studies can be highly misleading. Mark and Jesse also address a question about UBI, or universal basic income, and bring up Mark's old standby phrase: "incentives are undefeated."     Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   Jesse Mecham YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

Jesse kicks off the episode talking about one of his new endeavours, Ultraspeaking, an effort to double down on one of his biggest strengths: public speaking. This leads to a conversation about embracing your strengths, the things that feed your working genius (see episode #102), rather than trying to build up your weaknesses. Mark shares his comfort speaking in front of audiences, and his fear... of not feeling fear anymore. In many cases, fear is an indicator that you're about to do something that will help you grow. The scary stuff, in other words, is probably the stuff you should be doing in your work, your business, your life!   For Mark, one of the scary things is actually commiting to playing to his strengths in his business, which for him means hiring people to do all the things he's not good at. No business can grow, Mark and Jesse agree, without collaboration of people all playing to their strengths. In Mark's case, identifying and plugging gaps in the business is satisfying work, but it's short lived when it's not aligned with his strengths -- it's really another form of procrastination, chasing the dopamine hit of solving a problem in the short term rather than positioning himself to do impactful work over the long term.   In this vein, Jesse discusses his big 2024 experiment: hiring a personal assistant. While he's still figuring out how best to utilize his assistant, Jesse finds peace of mind in the bandwidth that she creates for him. Knowing he can commit himself to new projects and teams without having to worry about scheduling and other life stuff puts him in the right headspace to focus on the things he's best at and the things most impactful to the business.   Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

Mark and Jesse are back after a short break with a discussion about slippery slopes... real and imagined. Jesse delivers an epic rant on the uselessness of economists, while Mark talks about his hesistance applying for graduate school in order to obtain the Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist credential.   Mark presents his dillema: he wants the credential to "reduce friction" for clients when other service providers refer him (say, a divorce attorney that refers Mark to a couple for marraige counseling before going down the path of divorce). Calling yourself a family and marriage coach, Mark reasons, makes you have to explain yourself, whereas the title of therapist is self-explanatory. On the other hand, he already has a busy coaching practice doing the same thing that therapists do, so the actual value of the degree is questionable (and the cost is high, in both money and time).   Jesse has a different take. In his mind, any friction that not having the official "therapist" label might create goes away with a strong referral. As soon as the attorney refers a client specifically to Mark, trust is created and the work can take place. It's all about the strength of the referral.   This leads to a discussion about credentials as a form of permission seeking, and the pricing power of a provider who offers their services as a non-credentialed coach versus a licensed therapist. In many ways, the people who become therapists have what Mark calls permission seeking traits -- they jump through the hoops in school to get the letters after their name, and when they start their practice they look to the rates of other therapists and set their own somewhere in the middle. On the other hand, coaches often position themselves in a more niche area at a higher price point, and command much higher rates.   At the end of the day, credentials may be another one of those slippery slopes -- something with more perceived value than actual value in the marketplace.     Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

Mark and Jesse discuss their most recent read, Never Enough: From Barista to Billionaire by Andrew Wilkinson, a one-time barista and co-founder of Tiny, a holding company that buys and holds businesses for the long-term (like Berkshire Hathaway). At the age of 36, Wilkinson found himself owner of a company worth over a billion dollars, and in a new stratosphere of wealth he had never experienced before. What he found, though, was that the same problems which pervade life in the lower economic classes are still there in the upper crust. The presentation of the problems are different, sure (the middle class aren't generally obssessed with yachts), but the nature is the same -- jealousy, covetousness, ego, etc.    Jesse shares his own experiences dealing with business and financial success while trying to stay genuine and honest.... while cracking some terrible puns in the process.     Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

Good gardens require good soil, and good soil takes compost and plenty of time. Jesse shares his experiences composting soil for his garden, and how it applies to business. Like compost, good business ideas take time to execute. They can be executed more quickly, but that often involves more complexity. Mark and Jesse then pivot to discuss complexity in business plans, and when it's worth pursuing complex solutions to problems.   Jesse's rule of thumb: if the business strategy is simple, but the implementation is complex, it's probably worth doing. Many things that appear simple on the surface involved solving complex problems. YNAB's direct import function is a good example. Direct import means that users can link their bank accounts to their YNAB account, and transactions automatically appear in YNAB for them to categorize. It's an important part of making YNAB a smooth and easy to use tool. The intricacies of actually pulling bank data from various banks, each with their own constantly changing API's and backend implementations, is very complex and requires a lot of effort to solve. On the other hand, if a business strategy complex at the outset, before you get into the details of actually pulling it off, it's probably a bad idea!     Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

The algorithm has come to rule media, and it is a voracious beast. It consumes as much content as people can create, as often as they can create. The ones who rise to the top seem to be those who create the most content, on as many platforms as possible, but what do the economics of this look like? Mark asks the question whether playing the content game is worth it for a business, and if so, what kind of business?   Many would agree that making content purely for quantity's sake, to appease the algorithm and get in front of as many eyeballs as possible, can be a soul sucking endeavour, but not all businesses seem to benefit equally from this type of marketing effort. Some businesses, espcially highly skilled service providers, do just fine relying on word of mouth marketing, and in fact, the more ubiquitous content creation becomes, the more special and valuable word of mouth referrals become.   Books referenced in this episode: Anathem by Neal Stephenson   Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

Jesse shares one of his recent experiments, inspired by a guest on the Art of Manliness podcast. The challenge was to delete the apps on your phone, especially the ones you feel a "pull" from -- a pull to open it and check it every time you see it (most social media apps would meet this criteria for most people). As Jesse explains, phones don't just suck up your time, they suck up your attention, which is arguably even more valuable. Deleting your apps creates a barrier between your brain and that instant dopamine hit, which can restore some balance to your attention span over time.   It's a simple experiment to try, and the stakes are low. If you really need to access an app, you can always reinstall it, use it for a given task, then delete it again. Chances are, you'll find many apps that you don't need that often.   Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

On previous epsidoes, Mark and Jesse have discussed the importance of scarcity, and how limitations drive creativity. Mark even goes so far as to argue creativity can't exist without limitations! YNAB, then, is a tool for viewing reality through the lens of money -- a reality mirror if you like. By understanding the tradeoffs you are making with your money, you can see the truth of your financial situation. Instead of saying "it must be nice" to... fill in the blank -- make more money, spend less on X, etc -- YNAB helps you undertstand the choices you have made and, eventually, ask you the question "am I ok with this?"   As Jesse explains, this is the real magic of YNAB: enabling people to look at their money and see future possibilities, to make decisions firmly grounded in reality, and actively shape their life into what they want it to be. It all starts by taking a look in the financial reality mirror.   Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

Mark and Jesse discuss YNAB's recent price increase, and the psychology of customers around pricing. You can't make everyone happy, whether you justify the price increase by citing your own increased costs or by plainly stating your price increase without explanation or caveat. Jesse points out that some customers that have complained about the price increase have moved to competing software, which has copied (read: stolen) YNAB's look, feel, and functionality.   Jesse's primary lesson is this: it's important for a business owner to know what is and what isn't important. It seems rational to get worked up about copyright violation and intellectual property theft, but that path leads to headaches and large legal bills, if anything can be done at all. In this case, he chooses to ignore the competing software becasue, in the end, they are focused on different audiences. The audience that wants a YNAB clone for less money is a small segment of the market that is very price sensitive. On the other hand, YNAB focuses on the segment of the market that isn't doing anything to manage their money, to help them get their finances under control and deliver value.   As Mark points out, tweaking a product or service solely based on customer feedback can be a slippery slope. You think you are satisfying everyone by responding to various demands, but there's a danger that you end up building a product customized to a small segment of the market that's already bought into your business, and losing the appeal to the broader market that isn't a customer yet.   Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

Mark and Jesse reminisce about the early days of YNAB, and a conversation over lunch in which Mark gave Jesse (what he thought was) sage advice -- to raise prices. Genius right? Jesse recounts how they raised prices in the earliest incarnations of YNAB's product, from spreadsheets to software to software-as-a-service. He also candidly breaks down a price increase that was poorly communicated to the YNAB team and to customers, and which tarnished the brand for a time.   Meanwhile, Mark kicks around the idea of lowering prices in his business!   Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

After a conversation about using ChatGPT to organize the weekly recipe calendar for the Mecham household, Mark and Jesse talk about the concept of letting go of control in a business. Mark posits an idea: you can have control or you can have growth, but not both. And Mark hates it! Jesse draws a distinction between control of the business -- that is, controlling the mission of the business and the goals employees are striving for -- and micromanagement, where the business owner retains control over not only what things get done, but how they get done. Micromanagement, they both agree, is bad for both the employee, manager, and the owner.   Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

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