I Almost Ran My Business Into Bankruptcy – Here’s How I Turned It Around

I’m gonna share with you today how I about ruined everything. And I mean everything. Almost drove my business and my family into bankruptcy. And uh, it’s probably going to be able to be a link that I can give to people when they ask me about my most embarrassing moment. Because it is embarrassing. This has been a humbling and humiliating experience. And I’ve decided to today to, um, Open up the curtains and share with you through this podcast. In fact, in today’s episode, you’ll discover what I did, how I almost ruined everything. But also how I turn things around and what you can do when you need to make things right in your business right away. Specifically, what to do when you need to make things right. A sale because things have turned around. Uh, but. It doesn’t change the fact that I wish we would have never gone through this experience. So listen in. I’m going to ask for you to listen with ears of grace. Um, and that you would not judge, but that you would learn. Welcome to the podcast, everyone. My name is Eric. I am a digital nomad entrepreneur. I’ve been traveling around the world with my wife and our four teenagers for over three and a half years now. Um, and we are having a great time. We’re currently in The United Kingdom. Um, and having a great experience, great time as a family, learning a lot, growing a lot. And, uh, yeah, so, so no complaints from that. We still love the location independent lifestyle. Very much, but I almost ruined it. I almost ruined it. And so in today’s episode, I’ve got three things I want to walk through with you. So here’s kind of the outline of, of where we’re going to go. So first we’re going to dig into the road back from disaster is what I’m calling it. Um, I’m going to tell you. Where we almost, uh, were at, um, and then how we’ve got things turned around here. Then I’m going to share with you today’s leadership tip of the week. And then I’ll give a travel update for those of you that listen because you like the travel side of things. Now, before I get into the story of, of what happened, um, if we have never connected on LinkedIn, I would Really appreciate connecting with you and having you part of my, uh, network, um, over there on LinkedIn. And I’ve, uh, made it very simple for a season. My, my personal vanity URL, ericdingler.com, uh, just forwards right to my LinkedIn. So Eric Dingler, E-R-I-C. Spelling pretty simple there of Eric Dingler, D-I-N-G-L-E-R, ericdingler.com. That’s going to forward you, uh, At least right now, spring of 2025. um, that’s gonna drop you right over to my LinkedIn. So make sure you go to ericdingler.com. Uh, connect with me. Send me a message. Let me know when you send that request that you, uh, I’ve been a listener of the podcast. All right. So. Let’s just get into this. All right. What, what, what am I talking about? Is it as bad as, uh, as I made it sound there at the beginning and what’s, what’s the whole backstory here? So yeah, it is as bad as it, it was. I made a massive mistake. Um, basically I didn’t practice what I preach. Uh, I took my eyes off the ball and I had gotten complacent. To be honest, and I shouldn’t be surprised. In fact, I’m not surprised. When I look back over my life and my experience, uh, this is somewhat par for the course when I get complacent, when I get a little bored. With things, um, I start searching out the new thing and, or I want to start playing with things and playing with the systems and, uh, not, not staying in, uh, The saying on, uh, mission critical tasks. And so. Last year, so let’s see, this is, we’re, yeah, a little over a year and a half ago, so fall of 2023, in the fall of 2023, um, you know, it was even actually before that. Come to think of it. Um, man, this, you know, yeah, yeah, 2022. I should have figured all this out before I hit record. Um, and in the 2023, things were, things were going great with the business. The numbers were great. Moving up and to the right every week, my wife and I would sit down and have a business meeting and, you know, we’d look at like, you know, are we on track to make budget? Yes or no? Uh, you know, where, where, how are expenses doing? If we’re not on track to make budget, what do we need to do? What’s in the pipeline? And we just had this meeting every week where we’re working on the numbers and keeping an eye on thing and And setting priorities and tasks and the business was doing great. And so, uh, yeah, I was happy and it just became very routine, very came routine set success became routine. And I get bored with routine. I get bored with routine. And so as we, we pivoted out of El Salvador and into Costa Rica, um, we, we stopped having this meeting. And that was okay for a while. Um, you know, and things went along well and, you know, we’d check in every once in a while, but I, I no longer had that regular Weekly rhythm of that, that meeting. And last January, January of, of 2024, um, all of a sudden. You know, it was, uh, I, I had to tap into a business line of credit, but I wasn’t worried because I had no, I knew about a project we had just closed and sure enough in February that money came in and I put the, the, you know, paid back the line of credit and it was no big deal. Um, but it, that should have been a big deal. That, that should have been a red flag. And then February is fine. March was fine. In April, I had the, um, Dip in again, and I wasn’t able to pay it back right away. But then it was, I wasn’t too worried about it. And then this other opportunity, something came up. And, um, so that’s it. It was January, February, March, April. I dipped back in April, May. Uh, I carried in the light of credit in June. It went back in. Um, and, and cleared the line of credit to zero in June. Um, and it’s, you know, it’s why you have a line of credit. Um, but, but then in July. I started dipping into it and I’m telling you what, it didn’t take any time at all and I was suddenly sitting there with a massive Piowa debt maxed out the line of credit and stepped into a credit card. And at the entire time, never said a word to anybody. Just, you know, kept plugging along because every single time something, we, we, we would land a project, we would land a sale and I was like, yes, This is the thing, I’m not, I don’t have to worry, this is the project, like look at this, we just did a $20,000 website, this is, everything’s turning around, you know, oh, just this new client, $1,500 a month recurring revenue, no big deal. And the thing is, all along, I knew I should have been saying something to to the team, to my wife, because here’s the thing. Bad things grow in the dark. Bad things grow in the dark. And I know this, and I teach, we tell our kids this, and we tell our kids, we, it’s okay to have surprises, but we shouldn’t have secrets. Um, because bad things grow in the dark. And this is a leadership lesson. And I know it. I know it. It’s a leadership law. But I violated it. I violated it. I was the only one that knew the numbers. Um, And, and I just, and was cocky and arrogant and, and just, Overconfident. So like I, like I started to say, uh, a sale would come in. I’d be like, oh, this is great. You know, I don’t have to say anything. We’re in the clear. And then a couple of weeks later, we would have a client leave. And, and they were, you know, the same amount that, you know, the new client was in, you know, we’d bring a client in $1,500 a month recurring revenue. And two weeks later, a client would leave. With, you know, and take $1,500 a month and, and, and people weren’t leaving cause they were mad or upset or anything like that. It was, you know, one client left because They hired a new general manager and this new manager came in and the business owner is really trying to let them lead and set them up for success because he’s he’s wanting to retire and and pull way back. And she just said, hey, listen, I have this person I’ve worked with for years. I know them. We work well together. We have a rhythm. We speak the same language. I’d like to just work and not languages and like English or Spanish, but just the same lingo. They had a relationship. And she said, I would really like to work with them. And the owner of this business who had been a customer for several years, he was like, hey, you’re the general manager. It’s your decision to make. And so they, they left because of that. And that happens. And I’m, I’m not mad. I can’t fault them. But those things just, they were happening a lot. They were happening a lot. And we get into the first part of this year, uh, 2025. and I’m screwed. I’m screwed. I am, um, I’m stressed out. I’m not sleeping well. I’ve got this big secret. Um, I’m dealing with all of these, you know, negative emotions and feelings and feeling like an apocalypse. And really just to the point that, you know, I didn’t know what to do. And here’s the thing with it, here’s why that statement is so stupid, okay? I knew what to do, I just didn’t wanna do it. I knew what to, I would pray every morning, I would beg God, plead with God. To fix this. And all along, I just keep hearing in my head, bad things grow in the dark. Why do you keep secrets? Bad things grow in the dark. But I didn’t want to tell my wife. I didn’t want to tell the team. It was embarrassing. It was humiliating. I was coaching people in their businesses. I was getting recording podcast episodes talking about, you know, how to run your business and do things. And here I am thinking, oh, my God. I have driven the bus off a cliff. And so I had to turn it around. I had to turn it around. And so what did I do? What did I do? Well, the first thing for me. Is I had to, to pray right. I had to pray right. I wasn’t praying right. I was, I was praying like, you know, I didn’t know what to do and I did know what to do. So I, I had to start praying for strength. Um, to do the right thing. And then, uh, I, I had to get right with God and then I had to get right with others. I had to confess my sins to my wife. Um, I had to confess my sins to my team and those were not comfortable conversations. Um, it, it, it was, it was hard. It, It hurt them. I hurt them. I had to deal with the fact that I had caused this hurt to them, this betrayal of trust. Um, and it was, uh, it was bad. It was, it was now the worst thing I’ve ever been through, um, as a business owner. Um, and, and one of the worst outside of like My wife and I, uh, having, you know, a miscarriage in our, our, um, our first pregnancy outside of that loss. Um, and you know, Loss of family members. Um, in our marriage, in our marriage, this has been the, the, the, the hardest, uh, Uh, thing that, that, you know, the, the biggest mistake I’ve ever made the hardest thing we’ve ever had to walk through. It was, it was really bad. It was really bad. Um, and so I’ve had to give myself a lot of grace. My wife has given me a lot of grace. Um, and uh, Yeah, I, I started counseling, um, to, to just help deal with, with, with all of this. Um, and so this was the beginning of, of 2025. you know, it’s March, you begin, you know, 2025. still. You know, but this was, this was all in, in, in January. Um, and, but I, I had to roll up my sleeves. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t, you know, lay in bed and cry about it. Oh, it was me. You know, I did it. I had to put my big pants, you know, big boy pants on and, and get back to work. And the thing is all along, like I, like I said, all along, I knew what I had to do. I knew what I had to do. I just kept refusing to admit it because If I would have started doing it, that would have been admitting Reality, which is I would was dropping the ball and and it was better to work on something new and not work on reality. I kind of explained it. To, to my wife and to the, to the team like this. Um, I, I kept going out And, you know, to use a farm analogy, if you will, I would go work on plowing new fields. Because I thought, well, if I just create enough new fields, I can get enough new opportunities ready, enough new fields, if I just do that, And do all of this activity, the activity, activity leads to success, creating opportunities, you know, multiple things like this is, this is the key. And then all along, I knew that was stupid. Um, and I, and I’ve really had to come back to the fact that no, um, right now I need to focus on my garden. My garden needs attention. Um, because a storm came through and I was the storm and the storm came through and it knocked the tool shed over. And so sheds are, you know, the shed is knocked over. The garden tools are disarray. There’s debris in the garden. We’ve lost some of our plants. Like, I need this garden. It’s where I harvest. Well, you know, our, our resources to survive and, and, and, uh, it’s, it’s, you know, I, I had to clean, I have to clean it up. Yeah. I’ve let the weeds grow up in it and I’ve neglected that. The garden. And so I’ve had to let the fields go fallow and, and focus on my garden. And, and so I’ve done a few things here very specifically. Now, like I said, recording this now at the end of March, um, this coming week we’ll, you know, we’ll be going in. And to April. And we, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve come back from the cliff where we’re not even teetering on the cliff anymore. Things are happening. Headed definitely in the right direction. Um, because I believe the last couple of weeks have been amazing. Um, I’ve got a wonderful wife, an amazing team. And uh, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re seeing lots of new fruit from our garden, lots of new vegetables. You know, we had to go, we had to go Digging for some root vegetables. We had to go digging for potatoes. We had to do some work. I had serious cash flow issues. I had to go out and dig and, and stuff. And okay, I’m going to beat this, uh, garden metaphor to death. Maybe, maybe I’ll stop right there. Um, so what did I do? What did I do? Okay. Well, number one, I had to get right with God. Number two, I had to confess my sins to my team and to my wife. Three, I had to triage. I had to triage the worst. Okay. Um, so one, uh, four things we had to do to, to triage the worst to, to right away. Um, I, One, I took a pay cut. Um, and two, I had to cut some of my staff to part time. That was hard. That was really hard. Those were hard. Hard, embarrassing, humiliating conversations that it, it, I desperately didn’t want to do that. But I had no choice. I had to take a couple of our staff and say, listen, I have to take you down the part time. Um, and so we Which means I’ve had to step into and fill the gap of the work they were doing. It’s not like they were wasting time not doing important work, they were. So I’ve had to take a pay cut, cut some of my staff to part time, Come back into more hours. It is Sunday afternoon and I just spent the last several hours Creating some, uh, reports for clients. Um, I reconciled, uh, some, uh, QuickBooks. Um, and I’m recording this podcast. And I’m sitting in the office working on a Sunday afternoon, something I don’t like to do, but had to, had to. So took a pay cut. Custom time staff to part time. I’ve had to step into the gap with that. Um, the, the third thing here in the triage is I had to lay off. Freelancers that I care deeply about. Now they weren’t quite on the team and it, you know, we didn’t have a, an agreement. They weren’t on payroll. My team, um, they’re freelancers and I know they’ve got other things and stuff like that, but for a season they’re laid off and I care about these people and it hurts that I can’t. Give them the work we, we were, we were giving them. Um, and then of course we went through the budget and cut. You know, all recurring, um, extra expenses that we could, we had let a couple things build up there that we didn’t need. And so had to, you know, cut them down, had to get rid of some things that just made life a little easier, but they weren’t a necessity. Okay, so that’s the third thing I had to do. So number one, I had to get right with God. Number two, I had to confess my sins. Number three, I had to triage the words. Number four, I had to get back to the basics. I had to get back to the basics and I had to practice what I preach. And here’s the thing. I knew exactly what to do now. I never panicked. I never panicked. I never sat and went, oh my gosh, I don’t know what to do. What am I going to do? I don’t know how to make a sale. I don’t know what was me. I always knew what to do. I denied it for a while. I denied reality. I still worked on the wrong things even though I knew what to be doing. Um, and so I just, I had to get back to basics and the basics are the basics is very simple. Basics is very simple. I had to focus on the one person with the one problem that we solve. I had to focus on the problem we solve and the person we solve it for. I had to focus with back with, with renewed clarity to providing one product that solves that problem. And I had to work my one pathway to sell the product. See, I was going out starting to try to create additional pathways and that’s that, you know, turning soil over a new fields and, Creating things and, and, and started, you know, trying to focus on some new products and, and different things. Like I, I completely violated OP3. I get away from it. That’s what I. That’s what I call one person, one product, one pathway, OP3. And I violated, even though I was telling others, don’t violate, don’t do, you got to stay focused. Stay focused. You’re not focused. You’re not focused. You know, sometimes they say people that can’t teach, right? Um, and so I was teaching real well and I was, I was definitely not doing the things I was teaching. I wasn’t practicing. What I, what I was preaching, but you know, uh, six weeks or so ago, you know, really just dug in and went, that’s it. Getting back, going back to basics. And I sat down and was like, okay, this is it. Like, I know it all. I already had my OP3 document. You know, I just went back and started like, okay, this is what I’m going to do. So we had to go back to the basics. Number five, I had to reestablish my critical mission and, and what I call my daily reading script. And so my critical mission, this is something I used to do for the longest time. And again, I got away from this kind of stuff. And so my critical mission, um, is I had to sell $3,000 per week in new sales. Like that’s it. It’s that simple. I’ve got to, I know what my monthly recurring revenue is. I know what my monthly expenses are. I know what the gap is and how I’m going to close that gap is with this. And so I had to set a very clear critical mission. And this is when I said my wife and I used to have these weekly meetings and stuff, it would sit down and we, it was the numbers. Are we on track to make budget? Okay, so we knew what we had to do for the month, so I knew what I had to do for the week. And the time to make adjustments Is on the fifth day of the month when you’re five days in and you haven’t, you know, you’re already behind the eight ball. You don’t wait till day twenty-five to look and go, oh, what am I gonna do? Woe’s me. No, no, no, no. I know what I need to do in a month. And so I know what I need to do in a week. All right. And so for me, it’s, it’s the 3,000 a week. Now we don’t need 3,000 a week. We need 2000 a week, bare, bare, bare, bare minimum. Um, but I set 3,000 a week for myself. Uh, because that’s, I just, you know, one, I got a little bit of debt. I’ve started eliminating it already, but I want to, you know, completely bust that out. So I’d like to bring in some extra for that and some other things. Um, so. Get some, you know, get reserves built back up and things like that. All right. So I, I have to sell $3,000 a week period. That’s, that’s mission critical. So what do, what do I have to do to that, to do that? Well, for me, I know that I need to make four offers per week, four direct offers. Hey, here’s the thing. And, and, and I don’t, I don’t offer generally a website. We have some foot in the door offers. We have a, a, a local SEO boost that is, is for ninety days and now. I know a lot of people that listen to the podcast, they’re not in web design, digital marketing space. Um, and so for me though, I’m just, I’m talking about my business right now. What, what I had to do. Um, and so I have to make four offers per week. I had to make four offers per week. Um, and I also want to start having one initial discussion per week with a strategic partner candidate. And I’ll explain what that is here in a, in a, in a few minutes. And that is coming up this coming week. That’s, that’s a new for this starting this April for starting Q2. Um, and then the other thing is I wrote down the ruthless elimination of distraction. The Ruthless Elimination of Distraction. I read, just before I start organizing my task list, I came up with some new questions several weeks ago to ask myself, and that is, is this task mission critical? I’m not saying it’s not important. Is it mission critical? Is this task directly going to me selling $3,000 this week? If it is, yes, this is a direct, this task, I’m creating these reports because then I’m going to share these reports in meetings. So these reports have to be created. This is mission critical goes at the top of the to do list. Mission critical. Goes up there. Gotta be up. Mission critical. It’s a mission critical task. Now, if the answer’s no, Then I asked myself, what is the cost if I don’t do this really? Okay, what is the cost if I don’t do this? Not is it important? Not is it urgent? I’m not, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna just assume that because it’s a task there that I even need to be doing it. All right, I don’t, I don’t want to start with the premise that the task is even, even needs to be done. And classifying how important it is. No, no, no, no. I’m in, I’m in a crisis. Okay. I was, I was in crisis mode. And so it was, is this task mission critical? Yes, no. Yes, it is. Getting it done, baby. Going to get it done, put the top of the to-do list. No, it’s not a mission critical task. Okay, what’s the cost of not doing? What’s the cost if I don’t do this task? And if the task doesn’t have a cost, That I’m willing to pay, it’s gotta go away. Am I willing to really pay, lose that? You know, does it have a price? Does it have a cost that I’m, you know, un- That’s unbearable to me. All right. You know, so, uh, I got a task on my list. You know, what’s, what’s, what’s the cost? Really? What’s the cost? Of, of not, uh, I should have looked at my task list. I’ll just, I’m going to just, I’m going to go, I’m going right now. I’m going to grab my phone. I’m going to look at some, through some of my, my tasks. Here. Okay. All right. Let’s see. Um, here looking. Okay. Um, uh, oh, I need, I need to, oh, that’s a dumb one. Hold on. Um, that would, that’s very unique to me. Uh, okay. So create a plan to share some, uh, a new lead magnet with some of our strategic partners. So we got a new lead and we created a new lead magnet and I want to create a plan to share this lead magnet with, with those people. What’s the cost of not sharing that lead magnet with them? Well, if I share it with them, maybe they’ll email it out. Maybe they’ll share it to their list. Maybe they won’t share it to their list. Okay, so what’s the cost of not doing that? Well, honestly, nothing. There’s no, it doesn’t really, it’s not going to change. There’s no guarantee that it’s going to move the ball. So it goes, it goes maybe away. Or it goes to a very low. Let’s see if there’s anything else more important. Okay. Let’s see if there’s anything else more important here. Um. Uh, check the hours listed on this client’s Google business profile. That’s one of my tasks cause I gotta do. And I’m, For privacy, I’m taking their name on it. But check that their hours are listed correctly on the Google Business Pro file for this. What’s the cost of not doing that? Okay, that’s a task. It’s on my task list for tomorrow. What’s the cost of not doing that? I break my word. Because I told him I would do it. And what’s the cost of not doing it? I break my word. Am I willing to break my word? No. So I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it. So I’ve had to work to ruthlessly eliminate distractions. Then finally, I worked my pipeline. I work my pipeline and I tool. If you’ve been through OP3, if you’ve been through my ninety day accelerator, if you’ve done any coaching, With me, if uh, you did have done any of my courses on lead generation, you know that I always teach the very first thing I teach and almost everything is Create a pipeline and work the pipeline and who, how I stopped doing that and it screwed us up big time. So the final thing I did is after sitting mission critical, after doing all the other things, I started working my pipeline with a renewed sense of urgency. I just, I got away from it. I just, I waited for things to come to me. I wasn’t trying to create, um, uh, you know, I wasn’t trying to dig for gold. I wasn’t trying to… You know, dig through our opportunities. I wasn’t pushing to make things happen. I wasn’t being bold. And reaching out, uh, to prospects and, and cold leads. I wasn’t making sure that we were touching base at least six times with people. Like I had gotten complacent. I’d gotten lazy. I’d stopped working my pipeline. I immediately began working my pipeline. And so every single week, I would fill, I have one pipeline, which is a referral request pipeline. And I filled the front of it with all the people I could think of that I could call. Not email. This isn’t a mass email. This is a get them on the phone. Phone. I don’t care if I have to dial their number eight times a day for nine days. I’m going to get them on the phone. And so every week now I have picked three people and I’ve moved them from opportunity to call this week. And I start making calls until I get to them. And I call three people every week, clients, past clients, and I call them up. I’m just, how’s it going? How are you doing today? Checking in, things going good. And I always look just before I call them, especially if it’s a current client, I always look, it’s just, I just was looking at your metrics. Things are looking good. Just checking big. Are you happy with the results? All right. Now I’ve hand, I know they’re going to say yes. Yes, Eric. I am happy with the results. Great. Who is a somebody that you know? That would like results like this. Who do you know? Not do you know anybody? Do you think you would know? No. Who do you know that would like results like this? Can you share their contact information with me and let them know I’m gonna be reaching out. I’m not asking people. I’m not asking people to make an introduction. You know, I’m not, ah, hey, if you make a good, Give a referral and I’ll give you some money. Like, I’m not trying to buy people’s time. I don’t have time for, I don’t, no. Are you happy? You are? Who do you know? That would like results like you’re getting. Can you give me their contact information? Let them know I’ll be reaching out. That’s asking for a referral. So I’m doing this with three people a week and it’s working and it’s working. We have a group that we’re, we have a business association that we’re working with and so You know, they’ve been like, yeah, this is great. Offer this, offer your thing to our members. That would be great. And they gave us access to their list. And this was last, like last fall. Last fall. And, you know, I go in there and we did dibble. We dabble. We’re here. We there. But not now. Not now, nope, thirty thirty calls. I’ve got one on my team working as an appointment setter, um, making fifteen calls and I, my, my, my wife, y’all, I’m s, listen, I’m sorry. I found the best wife out there, okay? Now, no offense to those of you that are wives. I’m sure you are great. I’m sure you are amazing. I just… I won the wife lottery. I’m so thankful for her because after I told her and we worked through like, don’t, don’t get me wrong. There was hurt. There was, there’s been a lot of conversations. But the first thing she said was, how can I help? I mean, come on, y’all. Come on. That’s good. That’s good. That’s good. So. God love her. God love her. Um, so she’s making these calls for me. She’s making fifteen calls or five calls a day. Five calls a day. Hey, thank you for answering my call. I’m calling, we have a partnership with this organization you belong to. And, and the, the, the man, the guy that runs it, Dennis over there, he’s asked us to call you to let you know about this new member benefit. Because you’re a benefit, you get this free thing. You get this free thing. He’s, he’s worked with us to make this free. Would you like this free thing that that’s going to help you with your business? Well, yes, they want it. Great. Great. Let’s get that to you. Okay. And it’s a report and the report, it shows them how their, their business is ranking locally. And then we have a three month local SEO booth that fixes it and we tell them we can fix this in ninety days or we keep working for free until we do. And people are going, I want that. I want that. I want that. Great. Great. $2,000. Okay, great. Let’s do it. $2,000. Great. Let’s do it. Okay. And then as we’re getting to the end of that, you know what they’re starting, you know, uh, now they’re starting to already say, hey, how do we keep this going? Oh my gosh. It’s been three weeks and I’m already getting results. How do we keep this going? Hey, it’s been four weeks. It’s been five. How do we keep this going? What are we, what are we going to do, Eric? This is, this is amazing stuff. This is exactly, it was my pathway. I have a foot, I have a clear foot in the door offer. Okay. I, well, first I’ve, I’ve got a way to bring people in the top of my pathway. I nurture them. We reach out. I have a foot in the door offer that then automatically makes them want more. This is my pathway. This is OP3. And I’m working it. Now, what we’re doing this week is we have a list of Of people that we pre-identified that we already have a connection with. And we’re going to start reaching out to twenty of them this week. And we reach out twenty every week. These aren’t cold calls. These are people that we have a very specific thing in contact with that could be strategic partners. I could refer work to them. They could refer some work to me. We already have two of these types of relationships. We’re going to start contacting twenty a week and you know, we’re going to contact twenty of them and we’re going to keep contacting them. Um, and until one of them says, yeah, let’s have a meeting. Let’s have a meeting because I don’t have time to have one of those a week and they’re very fruitful and they work out and I just, I just need one a week because you know why? I only need to sell 3,000 a week. That’s it. That’s it. I just got to sell 3,000 a week. Okay. I can, I can do that. I can, I can do that. Now you might be thinking and going, oh my gosh, how do you do that? I would love to be able to do that. Well, you grow into it. You do the work that matters. You build the network. You make the phone calls. You’ve got people that need the service you have. You know people that need service. They have a problem and they need it solved. You just need to make sure that you can say, I can solve it. Because see, we can go out with our foot in the door offer and we can say, look at this. Mr. and Mrs. Local Business. You need more customers calling you. You need more customers clicking through to your website, coming to your store, but you are not showing up. You’re not showing up in the local search. We can fix that. Let’s fix it and get you more customer activity. Okay. So this is what I’ve had to do. I’ve had to dig in and think that. Ooh. Y’all, yeah, am I still having to work on Sunday afternoon? Yep. But you know what’s happened the last two weeks? We’ve made budget with no problem. It is Sunday. It is Sunday. And I already know coming in this week. All right, I already know coming into this week because of an email I got late Friday. I got a video message through an app we use called Marco Polo to communicate with our highest prospects. Um, I had a Marco Polo and an email and they both said, yes, we are going to do this. Let’s get on the call and wrap up things next week. Okay. Let’s get into next week. We are going to be above budget. This week and I already have so many things on my calendar. I’ve got the right things on my calendar. I know who I’m going to be calling. I’ve got meetings scheduled with people to present offers. I created three reports today to share with people that show them how they’re ranking on SEO. They raised, they said, yes, I want to see that. Please share this information with me. We are doing the right work. And I know because this is the stuff we did and we did it for a long time and things were just good every single day. Week, every week, every month. Are we on track to make budget? We’s on track to make budget. Next week, we on track to make budget? Uh-huh, uh-huh, we’s on track. Next week, we’re on track to make budget? Nope. What are we gonna do? Well, let’s, what if we did this? What if we did this? I’ll do that today. That’s now my mission critical task. These things that aren’t mission critical, they’re going down because I’m not on track to make budget this week. So I’m going to do these things and I do those things. And then the next week we on track. Oh, we on track. We on track. This is the strongest the track has ever been. We’re on track next week. We on track. Yep. Next week. We on track. Yep. Next week. We on track. Nope. Okay. Let’s, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? Is it a pipeline issue? Is it at this? And here’s the thing. This is why this is so important. This is why I didn’t panic. This is why I didn’t panic. Because when you know how it works, when it stops working, you know how to fix it. I’ve said this before. This is why in the past I talk about the principle behind the practice. You got to know the principle behind the practice. You got to know why something works because when it stops working, you’ll know how to fix it. Now, why did it stop working this time? Because I stopped working it. I took my foot off the accelerator. I got distracted with this new thing and that new thing. And I started getting a little big for my britches. And I started working on things that were we need, but we don’t need them yet. We’re going to need them one day. And I’m not even the right person working on to be working on them. So, we fixed it. We got it going. We fixed it. And you can do the same thing in your business. But let me just tell you something. I’m just telling you right now. I never want you to have to fix it. I never want you to have to fix it. I want you to stay in your lane. Stay focused. Don’t get distracted. Know your numbers. Look at the data. Do the things you got to do. Have the people that are asking the questions. Have the people in your actual questions. Have, uh, transparency. Bad things grow in the dark. Now, it has been a month since I’ve released a podcast episode. You know why? It wasn’t mission critical. I love doing this. This is, this is, I, I get charged up doing the podcast. I look forward to recording the episodes and releasing them because I know I’m helping. I know because I hear from people. I have people contact me. I have people let me know specific things that they heard that this was helpful for this reason. Hey, thank you for this. Are they, hey, can I ask you a question? You said this. Can you, can you share a little bit more about that? I have people signing up for the community. I have people, you know, that are taking advantage of strategy sessions not the last several weeks. You know why? Because they were mission critical. Now, here’s the thing. Is the podcast mission critical today? No, not really. But we’re on track. We’re making budget now. Things are, we’re moving in the right direction. I’ve, I have the time and the capacity but I want, so I wanted to do this and Um, it’s good for me. I need a creative outlet. I need an outlet. I need a way to teach and to share because if not, I just get way too bored. Doing the same thing. And you, I mean, I like to win, but the activity to get to the win is boring. I don’t do well with boring. And so I, I wanted to just, I wanted to get this recorded. I wanted to, to pay it forward. I, I almost recorded this, um, last weekend or not last week. I didn’t work last week in middle of the week. But I, I didn’t because of the, of the humiliation. I mean, come on. It’s embarrassing to tell you that, uh, you know, I, I screwed up so bad. That I, that I, I, I hid things. I basically lied. You know, um, and that’s, that’s embarrassing. I’m gonna be fifty years old this month. I’m gonna be fifty years old in April. And I, and I acted like it. I acted childish. And it’s, it’s embarrassing. And so I almost didn’t record it again, but I thought, you know what? Somebody needs to hear this. Somebody needs to hear bad things grow in the dark. Somebody needs to hear the system works. Not just when things are going, not just when things are going good. But when it’s critical, when it’s an emergency, the system works. Get a system. Work the system. Know why it works. Safe up. Clarity. Less. Do less with more. We do less activity. We have done, I have done less things the last six weeks. But the less, the fewer things I’ve done, I’ve done them with more focus, more energy, more excellence, and the results have multiplied, uh, exponentially. So. What do you, what am I asking to do? Well, this is the thing. If you would like to learn how to put an OP3 system together for you, Okay, if you would like an OB, if you would like crystal clarity on who your persona is, what’s the problem you’re solving? What’s the product that solves it? What’s the pathway? Like, this is my profitable business model. I used to follow it religiously and we were, we crushed it. And I got away from it, and in about a year, it took a year, but a year after just boning it in, not being focused, It took a year for the momentum to fall off. It took a year for the system, for the results to stop. It took a year. But then we just got it within, and then I got in a hole. And, and, and I’ve gotten almost completely out of the hole. Well, in a matter of a few, getting back to the system, in a matter of a few weeks, We’ve, we’ve, you know, we’ve turned the ship around. We’ve headed in the right direction. And as of the numbers, I, I, I looked at this morning when I was, you know, reconciling in QuickBooks and cleaning some things up and doing some projections. I think we’re gonna be completely out of this mess in about eight weeks. Now that’s crazy to me. It’s crazy to me. Um, and, and it’s not me. I can’t take the credit. If I could take the, how can I take the credit? I’m the one that drove us almost drove us off the cliff. It’s my team. It’s our system. It’s my amazing wife. It’s the support. It’s my friends. It’s my God. I mean, it’s, it’s not me. It’s not me. Obviously. I’m not left alone to myself. Not good. Not good at all. So I would like to invite you, uh, the, in, in every quarter, um, I’m going to do, uh, an Excel, a ninety day accelerator. And I’ve got another one coming up. I’m recording this episode on March 30th, 2025. I’m going to release it on April 8th. April 8th, 2025. Tuesday, April 8th, 2025. The next 90-day accelerator is starting. And I just wrapped up a cohort. Um, we had a lot of fun. They’ve all built their systems. Um, and you know, it was weird. The beginning of the, the, the cohort when we launched it in January, um, you know, I was, I was, uh, telling them what to do and how to do it and how good it was and all these things. And off the calls, I’m, I’m just not doing it myself and, and, and bearing the weight of that because things weren’t worth it. That wasn’t working. It wasn’t working. And then just as we’re wrapping up theirs and I dug back into OP3 and followed my system and the exact same thing I would see exactly, not doing anything different, just doing exactly what I taught them. Thank goodness we’re coming out of it now. We’re coming out of it because it works. And so I would like to help you build an OP3 model for your business. And so the promise is this. You sign up, at the end of ninety days, you’ll have a profitable business model built on OP3. I guarantee it. If you don’t, I will work with you one on one until you do. You will have a profitable business model at the end of those ninety days. And then after you launch that model, after you deploy that model, ninety days after that, you will double your investment into getting into the accelerator. Or again, I’ll work with you one-on-one until you do. Because sometimes you need somebody to keep you focused. Because look at what happens when you don’t, look at what happens when you lose focus. I know, I’ve just done, I’ve just walked through, I’ve just been through this. So, if you’re interested in this, reach out, let me know. LinkedIn, ericdingler.com, over on LinkedIn. Send me an email, eric at dnepodcast.com. Go to the website dnepodcast.com and schedule a 25-minute strategy session. I’m only doing, um, I’m only doing two a week. So schedule one of the, the two, um, I, I can do, I can give that away a week and that’s it. I used to do, um, about six. I’ve had to cut it down. I’ve had to. The last several weeks I’ve done none, but I’m back to the point like, okay, I do two of these because I’ve got systems in place. I’ve got accountability back in place. I know what I can do. So that was the road back from disaster. Um, I’ll keep you updated, um, in the next several episodes. I’ll keep you updated, but I would love to help you build a system for your business, a model. That’s profitable. That helps you go out there and crush it really quickly. Um, so if that’s you, let me know. Now, this week’s leadership tip of the week. I had something different planned, but then I scrapped it and I put this in here because it just had to be a little more on the nose, I think, for today. Because here’s the thing. Why do I share a leadership tip of the week? Because Your leadership capacity is the capacity of your business. You’ll never grow beyond your capacity to lead. I stopped leading. We stopped growing. In fact, we went the other direction. You have to lead. You have to lead. You have to lead. And your leadership capacity is the capacity of your business. This week’s leadership tip of the week. Practice what you preach. I know that’s the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it? But I’m back to it. And I’ve got to keep this in front of me. Because when I practice what I preach, life is good. When I don’t, life ain’t good. So, practice what you preach. Well, for those of you that are still here, thank you. I think some of you probably checked out or like, well, this guy obviously is not worth listening to. He can’t even run his own business. Um, so if you’re still here, thank you. And if you like travel updates, um, we are having a great time. We’re, we’re still in Liverpool. Want to be here for a little bit over a month. Um, next weekend, uh, we’re going to rent a car. I’ll tell you more about that. We’re going to rent a car and go out and do some sightseeing and stuff. But, uh, the last couple weeks, uh, you know, it, it, it, It, it, I, I had been so stressed out about the business and, and had all of this darkness because, you know, bad things grow in the dark and I was keeping secrets. Um, that I had, I had, I didn’t realize I had stopped doing this at home, but, um, I was not doing anything to bring joy into our household. Um, and that’s, that’s sad. That, that really bummed me out. Again, embarrassing. And, and my wife and I talked about that. So the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working hard and having a good time bringing joy back into the household and, um, brainstormed a whole bunch of new activities and, and just having fun. And so we, this last week, um, last weekend, Uh, well, yesterday we, we painted portraits of each other. So you, if you’re on social media, you’ll see that. So, um, I mean, you see people do that. We didn’t, we didn’t post ours. Uh, but, but yesterday we, we did that. Um, after getting my butt kicked in monopoly by my twelve year old, he’s becoming, he’s so good at monopoly, but, um, We, uh, last weekend we had our kids choose numbers. So we gave each of them a range and we said, okay, you, you pick a number between two and ten and, and you pick a number between four. You know, one and five and you pick a number. So we gave them each a range. They had four numbers. Um, and then we gave them a final number between, I think, fifteen and twenty I think it was fifteen and twenty It was fifteen and twenty Um, And so the last number, we averaged that. So we took their answers. They all had to pick a number between fifteen and twenty We took those and we averaged And it was, I think it came out to like, I think it came out to sixteen So we’ll just say sixteen And then what we did with the other numbers is we walked over to a bus stop, not far from our house. And we, we said, okay. The first number was for the bus stop and, and our daughter had the, had chose the first number and it was number eight. And so we said, we’re going to stand here until the eighth bus cops. And so we just stood and waited. We just stood and when buses kept going by and people kept asking us, are you getting on the bus? Nope. Nope. We waited and the eighth bus got there and we got on the eighth bus. Okay, I got on the 8th bus. And the same bus number, it was bus fourteen and bus fourteen had just come before this one, but we waited, we waited for bus number, the, or the 8th bus. And then the second number was how many rides or how many stops we got, we wrote it to. So we just, and we counted, we counted. Stop one, two, three. And I think that we had to go to like stop sixteen We just kept riding the bus until it was the 16th stop. You know, push the button and we got off. And then the next number. Was how many blocks, how many blocks we walked back towards our house and, and our kid there, he picked two. He picked a low number. Um, and so he picked two. So, We walked two blocks and then the next number was the restaurant we came to. That number was like number three or seven or something. That number restaurant we come to, that’s the restaurant we’re eating at. And so, and then the final number, that was your budget. We had no idea. That was your per person budget. So if it was a super, super, super, Kind of fancy restaurant, you know, we might have to, you know, order, you know, one entree per person or per group. We might have to share. We might have to get three entrees and share. You know, we didn’t know what to expect. So we ended up finding, uh, the, the restaurant we came up to was this restaurant, um, that, uh, was an, uh, Had a lot, had ramen balls and, um, udon and, uh, all kinds of Asian cuisine, um, sweet and sour chicken. And it was great. And, uh, the average typical entree was around, you know, twelve um, Box. Um, and so twelve pounds here. Um, and so, you know, that worked out. So everybody got their own thing and a drink. And a restaurant we would have never gone to, would have never tried, would have never even found. And we had a blast. We had an absolute blast and a great meal, um, and, and stuff like that. So we just, uh, So I would encourage you the next time you travel, come up with a way to randomly choose A restaurant that you have no idea. Like, hey, we’re gonna, we’re gonna do this thing and, and that’s gonna lead us to the restaurant. It was almost like a, it was like a reverse scavenger hunt. Like we, but we didn’t know what was at the end of the scavenger hunt. Okay. Uh, so, and just, we were committed. We didn’t care what it was. We, that’s what we were going to eat and we were going to either end up with a great story or a horror story. Um, Well, we did say it had to look, it had to be cleaned. Cause there have been times we walked, we’ve walked in the restaurants and gone, this is disgusting. This is too gross. We’re not eating here. So we did tell the kids it has to be, it has to be a, a clean restaurant and we have to be, We also, you know, can’t violate the dress. If it requires, you know, a tie, you know, we were almost going to get it. We didn’t have ties. So those were the the the the only restrictions. And here, uh, one of the things we came up while we were there, the kids kept saying, this is so much fun, can we do something like this again? So they came up with an idea for an Uber Eats roulette. Um, so they, they want to one day, everybody will get a budget and they will have to draw a name out of a hat. And they will order that person something to eat from Uber Eats. Um, and it has to be within that budget. And you can order that person whatever you want from Uber Eats and you don’t tell them, you know, let’s say what it is until it, until it gets there. And so we’ll end up getting six different Uber Eats deliveries, but, uh, that’d be, that’d be fun. It’s going to be fun. And so we’re, we’re going to do that in a couple of weeks. Um, so yeah, so just that’s been our travel update. We’ve just been enjoying the city we’re in, but just focus on having joy in the home. Just having joy. Um, because I, I kind of lost track a little bit there for a bit. Um, I, I got complacent and I realized that that complacency ran over. It ran over. Um, and, and I wasn’t being the leader I wanted to be. I wasn’t being the husband I wanted to be. I wasn’t being the father I wanted to be. And Who wants to live like, and I just, it wasn’t good enough. I, I could do better. Um, and so I, I feel like I’m back. It’s, uh, I told my kids. They don’t know everything, but I told my kids the other day, we were having a conversation and I said, um, I feel like I’m coming out of a fog. I never knew I was in. And this has happened to me in the past. I’ve had, in the past, I’ve had seasons where Um, not like this, different things, um, completely different things. But I, I would, especially when there were, there were, when, you know, I, uh, once a year, uh, and I didn’t do it last year. Ha ha. Interesting enough, I didn’t do it last year. So most years I pick a season and I pray and fast for twenty-one days. Um, and every time I do that, I feel like I am coming out of a cloud and out of a fog, but it’s not like I ever knew I walked into it. And it just, it was there. And I didn’t, I didn’t realize it. And I didn’t, I didn’t do that last year. Another reason, like I said, the first thing I had to do to get out of all this, I had to get right with God. Um, but I feel like I, I had, Walked into a fog, but I had walked into it so slowly that I never noticed it was there. I had allowed it to consume me, swallow me up. But I never noticed it was there. And now that I’m coming out, I’m like, oh my gosh. It was so much brighter. It’s so much brighter. I had no eye. Well, dear listener, podcast friend, thank you for listening to this point. I really appreciate it and value you. Um, would you do me a favor? Let me know if you’ve made it this far. Uh, comment on the, on Spotify, send me an email, like review, subscribe, do all the nice things. It would mean the world to me. It would let me know that somebody’s listening, that um, this, this kind of stuff, this, this raw All, uh, transparent, all vulnerable, no show off, nothing, like, it’ll let me know this was helpful to you. And so if it was, let me know. Otherwise I’m going to think that it wasn’t. Okay. And so, um, and don’t think somebody else will let me know. Okay. This isn’t a huge podcast. I don’t, I don’t have thousands of people. I don’t have hundreds of people, you know, uh, listening to every single episode. This is a small podcast and I’m not trying to make it anything bad. I mean, it’s pretty niche, you know, location independent business. And, you know, um, so, uh, so don’t, don’t let, please let me know. You let me know. You let me know, comment on Spotify, send me an email, drop me a message on, um, LinkedIn. And if you think somebody would benefit from this. Share it. Share it. I don’t care. It’s public. You know, and you know, so just that. Well, until the next time. I want you to chase the big dream, lead with courage, and safe travels.