How Can Small Business Owners Increase Their Company's Value?

Ralph Estep Jr.:
00:00

My friends, I've got a great show coming up for you today. I did an interview with David Chudyk. He's a Certified Financial Planner. But bigger than that, he's also a fellow podcaster. And today, we're going to talk about how to increase the value of your business. This is an interview you don't want to miss, and I encourage each of you to stay tuned and listen and share with anybody you know that's in business and is looking for ways to improve the value of their business. Hello David, welcome to the program.

David Chudyk:
00:32

Hey Ralph, how are you? It's good to see you again. I know that you were on my podcast a week or so ago.

Ralph Estep Jr.:
00:38

It seems like we're swapping roles now. I was the guest and you were the host. Now I'm the host and you're the guest. Well, let's jump right into it. What we're talking about today is for small business owners, and that is how do they increase the value of their businesses. So, David, I'm going to let you launch into your whole platform. What are we talking about here?

David Chudyk:
00:58

Absolutely. So Ralph, as a small business owner yourself and as someone who works with a lot of small business owners, you've probably seen your clients come to the point where they want to retire. And they think, "Well, you know what, I don't need to save, I'm just going to sell my small business for $35 million."

David Chudyk:
01:19

And then the question becomes, well, where did you get that number? Because it's probably not true. And even if it is true, is there anything that you can do to increase the value of your business? And I don't know if you're like me, but I've seen some small business owners, and maybe I've been one of them at times, and the businesses are really train wrecks. And they're not run well because a lot of small business owners know their trade, but they don't really know how to run a business.

David Chudyk:
01:47

So, I am a Certified Financial Planner, and I do all of the traditional financial planning things that you would normally do with clients. I work with investment planning, I work with their tax preparers like yourself, and we talk about some tax strategies. I work with estate planning, I work with asset allocation, I do all of those things. But I also help my clients to manage the value of what's probably their biggest asset. And that's their business itself.

David Chudyk:
02:17

So, if you think about this Ralph, you probably have a brokerage account of some sort. And you may see, let's just make up Microsoft, going up and down. And you might freak out about it a little bit. But you don't have direct control over if Microsoft goes up and down in value. But you do have a lot of control over the value of your own business. And that's where I like to start and focus.

Ralph Estep Jr.:
02:38

Absolutely, and I have clients that have come to me. I do a lot of small business work. And they'll come to me and say, "Ralph, listen, I'm thinking about selling my business. I think I can get about $40 million for it." And I'll say to them, "Oh, you know, I'll use Tony as an example. Tony, that's a great idea. But where in the world did you come up with that number?" So let's talk about that first because I think one of the things you're going to be doing a lot of is handling that, I don't know what the word is, but handling that expectation gap from the front end.

David Chudyk:
03:08

Sure. So the first thing I would have asked Tony is, "Well Tony, would you pay $4 million for your business?" And it's like anything else, anything that we own, we typically, because we have some sweat equity, we might overvalue it or Tony's business may legitimately be worth $4 million or maybe even more. So when you buy a business, what you're buying is what you believe the future cash flows will be.

David Chudyk:
03:38

Okay, so let's look back at Blockbuster. And I don't know exactly what the numbers were, but there was a time that Blockbuster was bringing in literally billions of dollars of revenue every year. Then there came a point where Blockbuster, for a lot of different reasons, they didn't keep up with technology, they didn't change their business model, all of those things. Their projected revenues for the future came pretty close to zero, or within rounding errors. And that's why Blockbuster never could get sold, right? So we need to look at what are the potential future cash flows of the business. And that should be how we base, in large part, the selling price of the business.

David Chudyk:
04:22

And I used to tell clients it's some derivative of the annual sales times some number, 1, 2, 3 times, and then I would tell them, you know, the net value of the assets. And they usually look at me like I was a monkey doing a math problem. And like, "Ralph, I have no idea what you're talking about." And a lot of times, the biggest issue though is a lot of the small business people, their biggest asset is them. It's the relationships that they've built. So David, what do you do to try to get them to grow the value of their business?

David Chudyk:
04:53

Right. So there are drivers of value and we probably won't talk about all of them today. But the most important one by far is what we call the hub and spoke. And that's with really with the business owner themselves being the center of everything.

David Chudyk:
05:13

Let's say you own Ralph's little hamburger shop and you cook. And every day when I come in for lunch, I get to talk to Ralph and Ralph's a good dude. And Ralph makes the best hamburgers. And every once in a while when Ralph's not there, the hamburgers aren't quite as good. That's not really a sellable business or that business would not sell for a premium. Because let's face it, I'm going to Ralph's restaurant just to see Ralph. And once Ralph doesn't own it anymore, I'm probably not going back.

David Chudyk:
05:41

And in that scenario, Ralph, number one, didn't put systems and processes in place to make sure that the same quality hamburger would be eaten, regardless of who cooks that day. Ralph did not put systems and processes in place for how his team should make decisions and just how most tasks should be handled without really the help of Ralph doing them. I do think that there is a psychological component to this that a lot of business owners, and I may be looking too deep, but I think this applied to me at a point in my career as well.

David Chudyk:
06:21

A lot of business owners, they need to feel important. And there's like this badge of honor of, "I work 90 hours a week in my place, I can't even take a day off because, you know, I just can't be gone." And it's like, none of us have that great importance. We probably can put systems in place and teach people how to do the things that we're not good at.

David Chudyk:
06:40

And one example is business owners that do their own bookkeeping, they're crazy. They're insane for doing it, so they need to pay you. They need to pay someone like you, you know, if they're not big enough to have like an in-house accounts payable and receivable team, they need to get that off their plate. But a lot of business owners are like, "Well, I got to, you know, I can't go home, I need to balance the checkbooks and I need to pay bills." And yeah, no you don't. You can pay Ralph, you can pay someone on your team, or pay someone to do that, so you can get away from the business as well.

Ralph Estep Jr.:
07:10

And I think one of the things you're alluding to, and I see this every day, I agree with you 100%, is that in our current economy, we find somebody who's good at a particular task and they grow and they grow, then they start their own business. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're great business people. And I think that's what you're getting at David, is that they don't understand how to make those systems. They don't understand how to create that infrastructure.

Ralph Estep Jr.:
07:36

And I think there's a bit of an egomaniac part to this too. And control freak, as my wife would use the term. She likes to throw that term around, a control freak. But a lot of small business people, that entrepreneurial drive is because they know how to do a task really well. So how do you work with somebody that's really good on the task side of things but doesn't really understand the systems, the functions, the ways to diversify, all those types of things, David?

David Chudyk:
08:02

Sure. So we have some tools and we have some modules that we go through. And we talk with our clients about what are some of your weaknesses with delegating. And sometimes I've been in the past, I've been a victim or I've hired people that weren't hireable. And I did it under the guise of I'm trying to help the underprivileged. And maybe part of that was true. But also, sometimes you're just worse, or sometimes you're even maybe cheap and paying, you know, lower quality people less money because they don't command it.

David Chudyk:
08:35

But regardless, a large part of my career I didn't have great people. So if you don't have great people working, then you have to do it yourself. So one thing that I had to do, and this was kind of a secondary action, was I had to get better at finding great people and paying more because great people get paid more. And then that allows me to delegate better. So sometimes the obvious, you know, people will say, "I don't know how to delegate," well, sometimes you just literally may not have anybody good enough to delegate to and you got to get better at finding good people.

David Chudyk:
09:09

So there's a lot of root causes to why we're not good business people, but we have to go through all of them. And we have to set standards for ourselves. And really just ask ourselves a question. Like if I went on vacation for three weeks, a month, a month and a half, is there really any reason why the business couldn't run about the same without me? And the answer to that should be yes, the business should be able to run pretty well without me for a month. But in many cases, we just haven't done that groundwork and we haven't given ourselves mental permission.

David Chudyk:
09:42

I think in some cases business owners, you know, there's the grind mentality and there's all these business coaches that talk about grinding and no days off and that's all great. I believe in hard work for sure. But I also believe in working smart and not hard so we got to look at all of those root causes and see why is it that we can't get people in place to which we can delegate.

David Chudyk:
10:06

I actually interviewed a sales trainer about a year ago. He was episode number 100 on the Weekly Wealth podcast. And I remember that because of episode 100. And we were talking about a blog that he wrote and you hear it all the time. Everybody says, most entrepreneurs or managers say, "Nobody wants to work nowadays, you know, nobody wants to work. All these young people, nobody wants to work." And maybe it's true. Maybe it's not true. Who knows? But he said that that's not the right question. Because the real question is, "Why does nobody want to work for me?"

David Chudyk:
10:41

Okay, so what can I do in my organization to attract the best talent that I need? And we could put up cultural issues will always exist. But you know, out of all the billions of people in the world, let's say your average five-person small business employs, you probably can, you know, if you're very purposeful, find five good people or three and a half good people. And that comes down to being purposeful and looking at, you know, looking in the mirror and say, "Would I want to work for me?" And sometimes that's a tough question to ask.

Ralph Estep Jr.:
11:14

And that's so true. And I think a lot of it goes along with the term of casting. I think you need to cast the people that work for you. I remember when I did the Dale Carnegie courses, and this is probably 25 years ago, we got rid of the job description completely. And we flipped the script. And we created what's called a position results description.

Ralph Estep Jr.:
11:34

Because that's what you're looking for. I had a lady on my show a couple of weeks ago named Raul West. And she talked all about that grind. And what it led to was burnout. So what she had to figure out is what systems could she put in place to allow her business to grow. Now that meant casting the right people, that meant putting together the right procedure, that meant giving them autonomy and authority and measurement things that they can use.

Ralph Estep Jr.:
12:00

And I talked to her about these position results descriptions, but the thing about it is it flips the script because as a business owner, I don't need to know what each of my people is doing minute by minute. What I need to know is, are we achieving the results? Are we getting to our goals? What do you think about that, David?

David Chudyk:
12:17

I think that the results are the only thing that matters. And if you are the right person working in my organization and say, Ralph, and I say, "Hey Ralph, here's the ultimate end result that we would like to get. You figure out how to get there and I trust you. And I've empowered you." I think that's the ultimate form of freedom because now as long as you are the right person to do that job and I brought you on our team rightfully, and if I give you that freedom and I've empowered you with training, then yes, you can get that goal accomplished with little to no involvement by me.

David Chudyk:
12:53

Let me give you an example of a new tool that I'm using in my office. And it takes a little bit of time. But it's going to, it's kind of like an investment. So we use a tool called VidGuide. And it's a screen-sharing tool. And we're making a library on how to do every single little task in our office. And then inside of VidGuide, things will be tagged and they'll have different categories.

David Chudyk:
13:19

But the answer to any question, if anybody ever asked me, "Hey, how do you do XXX?" is, "Check VidGuide." Because there should be, and if there's not already, there will be one, a 30-second or one-minute video on exactly which website to go to, what to click on, and so on and so forth.

David Chudyk:
13:39

And that's going to free me up literally hours and hours per year. Because the things that only I know how to do, those are not going to exist anymore. So there should only be a few things that only I know how to do. Everything else should be repeatable. But by spending, I probably make three or four of these VidGuides a day now. And it's just simple things. And I click and say, "Hey, here's the website you go to, here's how you handle this task, here are the one or two things you could screw up." And then it's in our library. So investing a minute or two, and now nobody will ever ask me again how to do that task. And it should get done right.

David Chudyk:
14:15

So that's purposeful, right? That's being purposeful. And that's just not hoping that the business is going to get better. That's making the business better. And then if you work on the team and you don't follow the VidGuides, then there may come a point where it's like, "Look, I'm sorry Ralph, we have clear directions. You just maybe you're just not the right person. You're not on the right bus. And you know, maybe we go our separate ways or we put you in a different position." But at least this way we have very clear instructions. And in some cases, there is discretion needed for certain tasks. We talk about when there's discretion and when there's not.

Ralph Estep Jr.:
14:45

So the elephant in the room is this. I'm the entrepreneur, I'm the one that put all my blood, sweat, tears, capital into all of this. How do I get to that mental place where I just step back and say, "You know what? People are going to make mistakes. I have to accept that." How do you get to that? Because that's one of the biggest things I see my small business clients fighting. They'll say, "Ralph, I might as well do it myself. Because if I give somebody else, even if I write it all down the instructions, Ralph, they still foul it up and it ends up costing me money." How do you get past that, David?

David Chudyk:
15:18

I think you have to look at a few different things. You have to look at what is my value. Okay, so when I'm working with a financial planning client, it's $500 and up per hour that I'm making in one way, shape, or form. So would I rather spend my time working with my upper-end clients or would I rather delegate something to somebody else? And every once in a while, it might not be done correctly. Or when you say correctly, really, I mean exactly how I would have done it, and sometimes how I would have done it is not the best way.

David Chudyk:
15:54

So yeah, I mean, I've heard different statistics from different business coaches, but they say if somebody else can do a lower-level activity about 70 to 80% as effectively as you think that you can do it, then you need to just pay them to do it. And more than likely they can do it better than you can do it. There are administrative tasks in my office that if a client asks me about a bill, I don't even know where to look. So you know, I would just refer them to the person that knows that answer. And I would use my sarcasm and say, "Look, I'm going to send you to Jessica. She knows all this stuff better than I do. I'm going to probably even forget to check on it if you leave it up to me. So let's just put it in the hands of the person that knows how to do it."

David Chudyk:
16:38

And then the other thing, and I think this is very important, you have to train your team. But you also have to train your clients when they come to you. Because if you are the answer of all questions, then you never get to get anything done. I always use the example of if I need a prescription refilled from my doctor, I don't call the office and then they come get the doctor out of surgery so he can talk to me. And then he can call CVS and say I need more blood pressure medicine.

David Chudyk:
17:08

That's not how it works. But the doctor is doing his deal, which is a highly specialized, highly paid, and highly valuable position. Then he has somebody else who knows how to log into their system and send a prescription refill to CVS, so everybody has their job. But I don't feel offended that the doctor didn't leave his patient or her patient to come talk to me. I just know that there's a process. And I do think that sometimes business owners feel like, "Well, if I personally don't call this client back, they're going to be mad at me." And the client just wants their issue resolved. And oftentimes, you know, I would guarantee in your business, Ralph, there are problems that you are not the most capable of solving.

Ralph Estep Jr.:
17:47

So, and I've gone through this with clients, they'll call and say, "Hey, I got to talk to Ralph." And my secretary is a good gatekeeper. She'll say, "Well, what is, what do you need to talk about?" "I just need to talk to him." And I've had to say to her, now, one of the big things you're alluding to though, David, is that the people that you cast for these positions have to also be very good at relationship building.

Ralph Estep Jr.:
18:09

Because I know I hired a public relations firm about 15 years ago. And I asked them to come into my business and say, "What am I doing right? What am I doing wrong?" The first question he asked me, he said, "Ralph, what business are you in?" And I said, "Well, I'm an accountant." He said, "Wrong answer." "Well, I'm a tax guy." "Wrong answer." So he said, "No, you're in the relationship business."

Ralph Estep Jr.:
18:30

And I think most successful entrepreneurs and small business people, once they realize that it's all about the relationship, but they also have to understand that they need to find people and cast people that know how to address that relationship. So let's go back to what I was talking about. So when that client calls in and says, "Hey, I need to talk to Ralph." If I've got a key staff member that says, "Hey Tom, yeah, Ralph mentioned that you might be calling today. What do you need me to help you with?" "Oh yeah, you know, Ralph doesn't even know how to do that. I'm the one who handles that." Sure. And it's all about cultivating that relationship.

David Chudyk:
19:03

Yeah. So Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks, he said, "Most people think that Starbucks is in the coffee business serving people. But we're in the people business serving coffee." And so you get that experience, you know, when you go to Starbucks and that's why they can charge seven or eight dollars for coffee. So as business owners, we absolutely, the things that we can't delegate is like, how do we guard the culture of our business? How do we guard how our clients feel after they deal with us?

David Chudyk:
19:37

And like I said, if I felt like only Ralph could answer my question on why is my accounting bill $6 more than I thought it was going to be, then number one, Ralph has a stressful life because he's handling everything. But then Ralph is not making as much money because he's dealing with, you know, why is my bill $6 more than I thought it would be instead of doing tax returns?

David Chudyk:
20:02

So Ralph just needs to, you know, train his people to go to them when it's okay to go to them and then go to you for the bigger things. I mean, you know, the IRS shows up at my house, I'm calling Ralph and saying, "Look dude, they're here. They're taking my stuff. What do I do?" And that's the phone call you should take.

Ralph Estep Jr.:
20:16

Absolutely. So let's cut to the chase. What are the value principles that we're sharing with people who are watching our show today, they're listening to the podcast? What are the actionable items that you're giving them today, David?

David Chudyk:
20:32

Okay, so let's talk about recurring revenue, right? And there are different types of recurring and reoccurring. So Netflix gets money from me every month, regardless if I use it or not. There's a car wash that gets money from me every month, some months I use it a lot, and some months I don't. If you were buying my business and if you knew that I had, let's say, a million dollars of recurring subscription revenue coming in every month, or let's say my neighbor has the same business, same products, they have a million and a half of revenue but it's not recurring. So they have to make a sale all the time. Which one of those businesses would you pay a bigger premium for?

David Chudyk:
21:18

Right? I mean the one where you know how much money, within reason, is coming in is a huge thing. And that's why the subscription economy has just taken off because all these car washes everywhere, you know, they're in the subscription business, and Planet Fitness, you know, they're charging 10 or $20 a month. And they know almost nobody goes there. But you know, once it gets on your credit card and it's coming out every month, it's a lot of recurring revenue.

David Chudyk:
21:42

So definitely want to look at recurring revenue and almost any business can add some sort of subscription in there. There's a cool story about a florist who said, "You know what, I don't like having this major risk of making like 80% of our money on Mother's Day and Valentine's." So what they did is they shifted their business model, they went to high-end hotels and restaurants and they said, "If you pay us X amount of dollars per month, we're going to come in, we're going to change out your plants, and we're going to make sure you always have nice seasonal plants and all that stuff." And that turned their business around where they had predictable revenue every single month. So recurring revenue is huge. And I challenge you to think, anybody listening, any of your businesses, there's probably a way to get some more recurring revenue.

David Chudyk:
22:26

A couple of other things would be what we call the Switzerland structure. And that's not relying upon any one thing, any one person, any one industry. So let's say I'm looking to buy Ralph's business and Ralph has one salesperson that generates 90% of their revenue. Well, once I buy Ralph's business, let's say that dude jumps ship, let's say that guy dies, and let's say that guy gets sick. All of a sudden Ralph's business is not all that valuable because it's relying on one person or let's say Ralph is just in one industry.

David Chudyk:
22:58

So you don't want to rely on any one platform. I mean, if you are an online seller and if you're only on Amazon, well, you know, online platforms have changed before. We want to look at what your growth potential is. So obviously if you're in an industry that does not have growth potential, that's going to lower the multiple that you might be able to sell for. Obviously, customer satisfaction.

David Chudyk:
23:20

And I think we all believe that our customers are satisfied. But you know, there's a difference between, "Yeah, Ralph does a good job," and "Oh my God, I have to tell everybody how awesome Ralph is." And some people will never be total advocates just because they're not that kind of person. But we need to make as many of our customers advocates as we can. And the only way to know is to ask them in surveys, like, "How am I doing? Are you happy? Are you neutral? Are you a raving fan?" And how can we make them into a raving fan?

David Chudyk:
23:51

And then another thing that's important to think about is if I were going to buy your business, how well I know you could because this is your business, but how well could you defend the numbers that you're saying the business brought in? So are your expenses documented? And can I trust that they're accurate? The revenue of the business that I'm looking at buying, you know, are those books audited? Or kept very well? Or is there just a shoebox, you know, with some receipts and I don't know what I'm buying?

David Chudyk:
24:21

So the cleaner the books are and the more accurate the financial statements are, the more of a premium I would pay for that business because then I know what I'm getting. So those are a couple of things that we work with clients. And if you think about it, if you get those things right, you do have a more sellable and legit business when you're ready to sell. And even if you're not ready to sell, if you get those things right, you're going to have an easier and more profitable life today.

David Chudyk:
24:52

And I like easy. I like easy in the sense of as little preventable stress as possible. As business owners, there's always stress and we're going to get errors. And that's great. But I hate, I don't know about you, I hate dealing with stuff that didn't need problems that didn't need to happen, you know, just stuff that, "Hey, you know, we're supposed to fax in this form all the time and upload it." And we just, for the eighth time this month, didn't upload the form. And now some customers are mad at us because their deal didn't go through. And those are the kinds of things that I don't like dealing with. And those are the kinds of things that by dealing purposefully with your business, your business becomes more profitable.

David Chudyk:
25:25

And like you said, businesses sell for some version of multiple earnings or sellers' discretionary earnings. So let's say that you're someone who's thinking about selling in the next three to five years, okay? So we've already covered the fact that your business is going to sell based on a multiple of either sales or profit or some version of profit. Well, if I can get the business more under control and have more profit, and then if I can get the business to where it's worth a bigger multiple of profit. Now it's a double whammy because of more profit. And let's say my business was kind of a train wreck and I could sell it for one and a half times my profit of $100,000.

David Chudyk:
26:04

Now let's say I've gotten a profit up to $250,000. And now because it's a machine, like I can literally document that I went to Europe for three months and nothing happened negatively to the business. Now maybe I can sell it for two and a half times $250,000. So now I'm not even smart enough to do those calculations, but that would be what we call a lot more money.

David Chudyk:
26:25

So that's why we want to look at these things. And I find that when business owners look at doing these things, it takes other financial stress away because these are things that you can control. And you know, my brokerage account, our firm, we manage money, we have a great process for managing money. But guess what, we do have clients that lose money. I mean, it happens in the short term. And even for six months or a year, sometimes the markets are down. And there's not a whole lot, you know, I can't call the CEO of Apple and say, "Hey, if you would just do these things differently, your stock price would go back up." But I can do those things in my business and I can get the value of my business increasing. So I think it is very empowering as well.

Ralph Estep Jr.:
27:06

Alright, David, let me challenge you on this because it's a conversation with clients about building value in our business. And the first thing they say to me is, "Ralph, if I show all that income and if I don't take personal expenses, man, I'm going to pay through the nose on taxes." It's funny because I just recorded a show this morning on tax evasion and how you might be cheating the IRS. And that'll come out next Thursday on my show. But that's one of the chief obstacles that people put in front of me. They'll say, "Ralph, that all sounds great. But if I don't pay for my personal expenses and I don't do all these things that help reduce that taxable income, man, I'm going to get guillotined by the IRS." How do you deal with that objection, David?

David Chudyk:
27:48

I mean, I think you can add those things back in. And so one of the things that you might suggest to a client is, "Hey, you can pay your kids, what is it, $12,000 a year." And so let's say you have four kids and you pay them $12,000 a year each. So that's almost $50,000 you can obviously account for that and say, "Look, you know, I'm paying my kids." So that was $50,000 of expenses that you wouldn't have because you wouldn't pay that much money for someone to come and sweep the lobby on a Saturday.

David Chudyk:
28:17

So you can definitely justify those things. But the bottom line is, and I had this conversation with my accountant a couple of years ago, we were having lunch and he said that there's a big restaurant in town. I can't tell you the name, but you would recognize it. And he said he does their taxes and their profit was something like $50,000. And then they were trying to buy another location. And they were trying to borrow money. And they came back to my accountant and said, "Will you please write a letter basically saying that our profit wasn't $50,000, it was like, you know, a million or whatever the number was because they won't lend us money."

David Chudyk:
28:52

So we all want low, we all want the right numbers to be low and sometimes artificially low, and the right numbers behind artificially high when we're paying taxes. But that may end up biting you a little bit at the end. Because if you're making the profit, if you're using some gray area to make the profit look too low, then yeah, that could affect the selling price. So maybe for the last three or four years of your career, you take a few less of those deductions, but we can also be reasonable. And they do call it seller discretionary earnings. And there are things that you can add back in manually and say, "Look, I mean, I'm paying for my own car, I'm paying my own health insurance, I'm doing these things. And if I weren't here, there'd be this much more money back for profit that you won't have." So, but a good question.

Ralph Estep Jr.:
29:36

Well, I want to throw one more thing at you then we'll start to wrap up. I always ask the people that I interview this, you know, I'm a person of faith and I know you're a person of faith also. So one of the things that I always challenge people is, how do you manage that? How do you bring that faith into your business? I'm going to ask you that same question, David. What is it about your faith that makes you more successful and builds character in your business?

David Chudyk:
30:01

That's a really good question. So I think I have an alarm on my watch that every day at 11 it just says prayer. So, and I don't know if you're like me, sometimes you get busy, and sometimes even a person of faith that's very open about it like you, you know, you may go like literally a whole day. And I'm not saying you're not a Christian, but you just, you acted like a person, not a Christian just because, you know, sometimes like anything else, Christianity has to be purposeful. So maybe you didn't do anything really bad. But did you really advance the kingdom? And I can speak for myself, there are plenty of days that just didn't kill anybody, didn't hurt anybody but didn't advance the kingdom.

David Chudyk:
30:39

So I think that the 11 o'clock prayer reminder is important. And then I also think that I've had some sick relatives and I've had relatives that have passed away. My sister was 51. And she was in hospice and it was indescribable how, there's no other word, how ugly it was at the end.

David Chudyk:
31:05

And we're all going to be at the end at some point. And when you take the perspective of looking back, you know, for the most part, can you say, "Well done, good and faithful servant?" Now we all have our shortcomings. And there's no question there. But can we say, you know, a lot of the times I attempted to do the right things, I failed a lot, you know, you and I are both forgiven. But we're also, you know, the amount of times that we've sinned, we can't even count it, it's so many. But I think having that long-term perspective of, you know, when I look back and say, "I did my best a lot of the times," and that's what I try to look at.

David Chudyk:
31:51

I don't think there's anything wrong, you know, some people think if you're godly, you're Christian or you can't have money because money is the root of all evil, even though it's not. And if I have a nice car, that means, you know, I should sell it and give it to the poor and maybe, but maybe not. It took me a long time to be okay with having a little bit of money.

David Chudyk:
32:09

So I think we have to have a relationship that's healthy with money. And that can be an absolutely biblically based money, biblically based mindset. But of course, with money and biblically based, there is no debating, no argument. We have to be generous, but we can also, in our own way, having financial blessings is not a bad thing.

Ralph Estep Jr.:
32:32

Yeah, I say this to people on my podcast all the time. You're never going to be able to help someone else if you don't steward the resources that you have well. You're never going to be able to be generous, you're never going to be able to be charitable, you're never going to be able to help other people if you haven't figured out how to help your business, how to help your finances, and all that sort of thing. So David, as we wrap up now, tell my listeners and viewers how to get in touch with you, what you do for them, and how that all works.

David Chudyk:
33:00

Absolutely. So check out the Weekly Wealth podcast and check out the episode that I did with you. So you can go to the Weekly Wealth podcast on Apple, Spotify, on all the platforms, or you can go to www.weeklywealthpodcast.com. Listen to any episode, but I thought the one that you and I did was really cool.

David Chudyk:
33:20

And if you have questions about building the value of your business, check out my website there. It's called www.allofmyassets.com. And the premise is we want to manage all of our assets, not just, you know, the typical traditional financial planner will manage your brokerage account, your rollovers, and everything. And I do that, but then they, you know, they're not looking at the business. So we look at the business as well.

David Chudyk:
33:47

And you can look at some videos and you can actually take the value builder score as well. And the value builder score, which takes about 13 minutes, asks you some questions about your business. And it'll give you some of the areas where you can improve. It'll give you a general, none of this is a certified appraisal, but it'll give you a general range of value of what you might be able to sell your business for based on income and business class things like that.

David Chudyk:
34:16

And then we can just chit-chat about that and see where there are some opportunities that you can be proactive about your business so that it can be the asset that it needs to be. Not a business owner, they don't think about their business as an asset. They think about it as a job. And even my wife to this day, she'll be like, "What time do you get off work today?" I was like, "No, no, I don't have a job. This is not, you know, this is not a job. This is something that would never change." But it is different than a job. And some people choose to have jobs and that's great. We need people with jobs. But the entrepreneurs need to not think of it as a job because it's not a job.

Ralph Estep Jr.:
34:49

Now that's true. And I had, I think it was my grandfather who once said, you know, once you find your calling in life, you won't call it a job anymore. And I think you're absolutely right. So, well, thank you for joining me today. I think you've given us all some great ideas and some things that we can put into place. And one of the things I talk about on my show is action items. And I think you've given us some really strong action items. So again, David, we'll put all your information in the show notes, people can reach out and speak with you. And I'll encourage them to go to your website and to do that value builder questionnaire. I think that's perfect.

David Chudyk:
35:22

Absolutely, yeah. And hey, you and I should do some episodes a couple of times a year. I think we work really well together. And I think we're both, you know, we have like the same message. So I think it's pretty cool.

Ralph Estep Jr.:
35:33

Absolutely. That'd be great. And like I said, I'd encourage everybody to go listen to that episode when I was on David's show and I'll put that in the show notes also. So again, David, thank you for joining me today.

David Chudyk:
35:42

Awesome, Ralph. I appreciate it.