Jason: (00:05)
Broadcasting from a small mountain town high in the Colorado Rockies. My name is Jason Owens, and this is The Renewable Confidence Podcast — a show that helps you build confidence in yourself and in your business every day.

Well, Hey everyone. Today’s episode is called the school of transactions. So let’s just dive right into it. Hope you guys are doing well. Hope you’re having a wonderful day or hope you’re getting ready to start a wonderful weekend. One of the two. All right, so when I say school of transactions, probably the number one place that an entrepreneur or small business owner can learn is this school of transactions. You simply can’t Google everything, right? I mean, you can do due diligence, you know, as as much as you want, but there’s nothing. Nothing compares to taking your idea, taking your product, taking it, your creation, your creativity, your artistry, taking it out and letting it meet the customer, right?

Jason: (01:04)
Meet their prospects, meet [inaudible]. Well, reality, for lack of a better term. So by school of transactions here, what I mean is, all right, so you think you have an idea and you’ve created this thing. Whether it’s an online training program or it’s the next greatest and latest and greatest bread slicer. It could be a business to business product, whatever it is, this new invention of yours that you have this creation of yours, you’ve spent time working on in the shop, you take this thing out and you then introduce it to the public. You, you do the networking thing, you do the sales thing, you do the email marketing thing, whatever that is for you, and you put it out there in the market and then you begin to get feedback from it, right? That market then gives you feedback. The feedback could be there is no transaction at all.

Jason: (01:52)
And by transaction, I mean, nobody wants it. No one buys it. Transaction could also mean, um, there’s no, no one’s given you, um, referrals on your books or, or no one’s giving you a [inaudible] any kind of feedback. Right? So there’s, I mean there’s, there’s nothing, right? It could just be crickets or on the other hand, it could be, Holy cow, where did you get this? Can you make one for me? Right. Well, okay. As a matter of fact, I did make this and I’ll be more than happy to make one from you. Okay, so that is of course when you are approving out a product or proving out a business model in the very front end, any kind of time that a person’s going to write you a check or swipe a card, that’s great feedback. Or when someone’s not willing to write a check or not willing to swipe a card, that is also great feedback.

Jason: (02:45)
So another type of transaction is okay, you are in to some kind of business relationship for a person and now you have to, maybe this is your best client, maybe this is someone you’ve been working with for a while. So you feel like you’ve at least graduated that grade in the school of transactions, but then it really becomes apparent to you that it’s, it’s long past time for you to raise your prices. Okay. How do you do that? How do you say, wow, I know we’ve been doing business for a while and I know you enjoy my price and I enjoy working with you and you enjoy working with me. But that price that you enjoy, yeah, that price is going away and now you’ve got to start paying what everyone else’s bank. Now you’ve got to start paying the market price cause the market’s gone up for whatever reason.

Jason: (03:30)
Gosh, I’ve got all these tools that I need to do this work for you and man, look at this tool and how much this costs. Right? Okay. How do you have that conversation or do you even have that conversation? Right? So having that is, is phenomenal. And believe me, believe me, you will learn whenever you go into a pricing increase conversation, you’ll learn how to do it because the first couple of times it might be pretty dang rough and then you’ll start to go, ah, there’s gotta be a different way for me to do this. Okay? Again, school of transactions. So I borrowed this term or I don’t know if borrower’s the right word here. Maybe it’s shamelessly steal. Um, this term school of transactions from Dan Sullivan, uh, just want to give credit where credit is due. I did not create this term, but I’ll tell you what, I’ve been using it, uh, for a while and, and love it and have internalized it.

Jason: (04:23)
And I’ll tell you what, for entrepreneurs, there’s just no better way than going out there and experiencing it. Uh, so yeah, I’m really speaking here to a couple, maybe three or four different types of individuals, one of those individuals that I’m speaking to. And you know who you are, you are the researchers, you are the people who have your spreadsheet. And by researchers, I mean you have an idea and you’re kinda thinking about it and maybe one day you’ll do something about it and you’ve gone to a class and you’ve gone to a conference and you’ve gone to a seminar and you’ve bought this audio and you’ve gone here and you’ve gone there and you’re just amassing all of this learning and you’re not pulling a trigger on any of it, right? You’re not doing much with it. You might have a whole bunch of spreadsheets, but together and your business plan and all this stuff, but you haven’t actually taken the leap. Okay.

Jason: (05:13)
Fantastic. For your spreadsheets. All right. I love you for the spreadsheet. Diligence is good. I get it. Trust me. Your spreadsheet does not reflect reality. I know that may be a sad realization to come to. It does not reflect reality. Put your spreadsheet away. Go take your stuff out and start selling. All right. I can’t put that any other way in time. You will then learn, Oh dang it. I need to go back and tweak my spreadsheet. This area turned out a little bit better than I thought. This area certainly turned out a lot worse than I thought. Right? So get rid of the spreadsheet, get out, go meet your customer. Um, another kind of person that I’m talking to here is really, it’s the person who just beats themselves up, right? Just like, Oh my gosh, I believe I didn’t see that coming. Right.

Jason: (05:59)
You guys have heard the term shooting, right? You said you do not need to, should on yourself. Wow. I should have known that this was going to happen. I should have known this wasn’t going to happen. I should have known that this person wasn’t going to pay their invoice in 30 days. I should have known that this person wasn’t going to pay me at all. Right? So I should have known fill in the blank, right? No, you shouldn’t. If you have never experienced it before. How in the world should you have known now after you’ve experienced once, okay, that’s a learning opportunity. If you don’t make any adjustments on that, believe me, the school of transactions will provide you another opportunity to retake that class. Okay? After a while, you will start asking for people, asking people for money up front, right? And you will then stop the chasing.

Jason: (06:48)
You will stop all of the rigmarole about the checks in the mail when it was never in the mail. Um, you’ll stop all that and you’ll start running a business like a business and you will start having a lot more fun. Okay? So anyways, school of transactions when you get into renting property. Okay? So you end up choosing your first location. Gosh, I should have known that this wasn’t the best a place in town. I should have known that I was too excited to get a store open and maybe I didn’t choose the best location in the world, but I’d choose chose what I could afford at the time. Right? I mean, you’re again, you’re going back to, gee, maybe I jumped the gun. Right. So you’re living in regret. Yeah. Don’t, don’t do that. Do not live in regret. Um, this world is a great world to live in and it has all kinds of learning opportunities.

Jason: (07:42)
And the great thing about entrepreneurs, the great thing about you is that you can learn to pivot. You can learn to [inaudible] to just adjust with the flow. You can go with the punches, roll with it. You can learn how to make things fly for you. You truly, really can. And that’s what the school of transactions is all about. So if you’re out there and you feel like maybe you’re, you’re, you’re hitting some headwinds or maybe you’re just kind of getting beat up along the way, trust me, you are in great company because there’s a lot of us here in school with you. I tell you what, uh, as time goes on, we, we can tell that we’re growing and we can tell that we’re moving from one grade to the next. And I don’t know if this is a school that you ever truly graduate from, but I’ll tell you what, it is a great and powerful teacher. So don’t try to get out of school. Don’t try to cut class. Uh, just hang in here and you’re learning tons. You’re doing great. So I’ll tell you what I love doing these episodes. You guys keep the feedback coming.

 I’ll see you guys on the next episode. Take care everyone. Bye, bye.