Wealth Beyond Numbers: Dasarte Yarnway's Blueprint for Business Owners

Josh St. Laurent: Welcome to the Wealth in Yourself Podcast, a show dedicated to helping you master the complex subject of money by simplifying it through stories and actionable advice. I'm Josh St. Laurent and this is Wealth in Yourself. Welcome to The Wealth in Yourself Podcast where we help people to design their ideal life and take control of their time and money. I'm your host, Josh St. Laurent. Today we're joined by DeSarte Yarnway. DeSarte is a four-time, investipedia top 100 advisor, specializing in planning for California business owners. He is a three-time author as well as the podcast host for the custodian altruist. With 10 years of experience in serving individual clients, DeSarte's greatest professional success is seeing others achieve the life of their dreams. Additionally, he is the co-founder of ONIX Advisor Network when starting his independent advisor journey in 2015. DeSarte quickly learned that underrepresented clients and advisors were overlooked and underserved. Josh St. Laurent: Due to the grave statistics associated with this reality, he sought to change the landscape of the financial services industry, one client and one advisor at a time. DeSarte is a California native and resides in the state capital Sacramento with his wife Flow and daughter Sophia DeSarte. Josh St. Laurent: Welcome. God you're here. DeSarte, that was an incredible introduction. Probably the best introduction I've had on any podcast to date, so you take the award for that one. Dasarte Yarnway: Thanks so much for having me on the show. Definitely. I've been looking forward to this. Josh St. Laurent: Just want to kick us off with, you know, for anyone listening who isn't familiar with you, what do you want them to know about you and the work that you do? Dasarte Yarnway: About me, City Kid, Boino Raisins, San Francisco from parents that immigrated here in the late 70s, early 80s from West Africa, Liberia. Much of my existence and servant leadership comes from them, coming from a place of humility, grace and ambition. Dasarte Yarnway: For our clients, we try to instill and plan for those same principles, right? So our firm is a full service, RAA based out of Sacramento, California. Our niche client are business owners in California specifically because we want to be specialists in state tax law and other business nuances that happen in the state of California. I've been in Sacramento for about three years now and I've been loving the journey so far. I hope that I can bestow some wisdom on, you know, people that are listening to this advisors as well. This is a time, especially in the year top of the year where we're thinking about what is the next level look like, right? So I have a bunch of takeaways on, you know, what I've learned this year from advisors that I've interviewed via the advisor journey as well as a lot of the successful businesses that we work with in our firm. Dasarte Yarnway: So again, it's static to be here. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, I love your work on the advisor journey. I was hoping to spend some time upfront talking about the lessons you learned as well as you know, your journey over the last seven, eight years or so in your own business. So can you walk us through like how did this come to fruition as far as you starting your own firm choosing to work with business owners and what was the evolution of that? Dasarte Yarnway: Yeah, that's an interesting question and a lot of the lessons that I've learned from the advisor journey actually parallel because advisors are business owners, right? When you run your own firm, you're essentially wearing a bunch of different hats and we'll get into that later in the show. But in terms of how I started my business, I was actually an all-American coming up at high school. Dasarte Yarnway: I played football for Sega Arcathesia and the City of San Francisco. I had over 50 scholarship offers. I could basically go to any power school in the country in conferences such as the now defiant PAC-12 SEC, ACC, like you name it. I had schools and a lot of options. I broke actually OJ Simpson's Russian record in the City of San Francisco that still stands today. And that was like my love. I thought that football was a way to get out of the neighborhood that I grew up in. Although my family was great, right? Everything outside of those walls, right, was a little rough. Dasarte Yarnway: I remember waking up early in the morning to make it a football practice, catching what they called the owl bus because it ran super early in the morning and extra late at night, going to the bar station that stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit. Dasarte Yarnway: That's our equivalent of the subway going across the city and then sprinting from the bar station was like two miles to our school just to make it like seconds before practice started. I think about these things. I think about just like what it takes to be successful, right? And once a cow Berkeley played football, supposed to be drafted toward my ACL and my Mineskis, I still could have came back and played that year. I think I left. I skipped that year. I was supposed to play with Jared Gough and I decided to get into the space, right? In another financial service space. Got a job at one of the biggest or the biggest RA at the time and it was just like a whole new world to me. Sitting here, you know, my parents or immigrants came from a war-term country. They had 14 years of civil war to playing football as a way to pay for my education and to just hopefully build a better life for myself. Dasarte Yarnway: To now being within steps of a CEO of one of the biggest independent firms in the country and serving clients that had more zeros behind anything I've ever seen before, right? So I got my mind thinking like, hey, if I want to change the wealth trajectory of my family and recently in my financial plan, I've kind of summarized my mission in one word, which is to be the genesis of health for my family. And we think about health. It's financial health, mental health, physical health, emotional health for my family. If I want to do that for my family, I need to learn these principles essentially. I need to learn what it means to make your money work for you. I need to learn what investing is. I need to learn what it means to have a financial plan. So I took all of that knowledge and me being ambitious and with an entrepreneurial spirit, I was like, my task here is to be the Peter Pan if you will for my community, for the people that need this information the most, but aren't wealthy enough yet to get it. Dasarte Yarnway: Because we all know investment management. It's like, you got two mill, you got three mill, right? So I'm attriculated up this ladder in Wall Street. I found myself getting further and further away from that, right? So I went from this large RIA to a brokerage to a bank on Wall Street, literally in New York. Every level up came a bigger paycheck for me, but I was distant way further from the person that I wanted to serve. So I was like 24, 25. I was like, hey, this is the time. If I failed, I can always come back here in Wall Street, make a gazillion dollars. And you know, at least I would satisfy that it's just saying, hey, I tried, you know, but if I succeed in the sky's the limit, the impacts the limit that I can change a lot of lives along the way. Dasarte Yarnway: So luckily it worked out. And here I am today, I'm running Yarnway Well for about eight, nine years in, and it's been great. Josh St. Laurent: I love that story. There's a lot of overlap there to my own story. So I can really resonate, you know, with wanting to make that work. I'm curious to hear from you. What have been some of the big lessons you've learned at Yarnway Well, whether that's the hard way, right? And trial and error and trying something that didn't work versus maybe a podcast, guess of your own versus a book. Can you talk to us about some of those big learning lessons and some of those big hurdles you overcame along the way with Yarnway? Dasarte Yarnway: Yeah. So initially, you know, my firm was called Birknell Financial Group. I started with a partner and that was hard because I wanted to take this leak and I felt like I was called to do this, right? Dasarte Yarnway: But everybody doesn't have that same feeling, right? The first lesson for me was go, even if you have to go alone, because I think we want all the answers and we want to build in security to make any moves that seem like a risk at the time. But the longer that I'm in the seat, I understand that the right people, the right tools, right? Will be presented to you when you start your journey in entrepreneurship, right? So I know a lot of people, especially as we, you know, get older, we get mortgages and, you know, responsibilities, kids, right? You start calculating the risk a lot harder, right? Mm-hmm. If only I had this then I can take the leak. If only I had a partner to, you know, to assume some of this risk with me, I can make this happen. Often times, I think if that's not how it's supposed to go, you just create more problems for you, right? Dasarte Yarnway: So go is the first thing. Go alone if you have to, right? Everything else will be revealed to you along the way. Number two is spread the gospel to as many people as you possibly can. In my first year running, y'all, working out at the time, it was called running. But now I literally the first six months I brought in like 40 households because I was on like foot on the ground just talking to as many people as I possibly can. And I think as businesses grow, you get kind of comfortable. And I always like to say that it's a difference between being secure and comfortable. Secure is saying, hey, I know that I can do this job and we're going to serve our clients well, right? But comfortable is like, I don't really need to do that. You know, it's kind of like in a relationship, right? Dasarte Yarnway: You start doing one thing and then this time progresses, you just stop, right? There's still a need for that spice. There's still a need for that ambition. That is what keeps the business alive, right? So you definitely have to remain secure, but not comfortable. I think that's important for all entrepreneurs, no matter what level of success that you've reached. And you can even say, you know, I've reached my goals in this business. You can be secure in that and still serve well and find other challenges, but comfort is the enemy of progress. So that's another big lesson that I've learned. And then number three, which we'll talk about is continuing to be aligned. I think a business can start one way and transform or evolve into something else, but it's up to the business owner to really take temperature checks and really be introspective about what they want out of their business. Dasarte Yarnway: I find so often with my clients, with my self, with colleagues like yourself, like we're running businesses, but we're creating these metrics because that's what they say we should do. We should have a hundred million dollars in assets. We should be charging X amount. We should be debating fees. We should be doing X, Y and Z. And at the end of the day, that's someone else's business. That's not mine. I didn't intend it to be like that. I didn't want this. That wasn't my mission when I first started this. And I think it takes a really strong advisor. It takes a really strong entrepreneur regardless of industry to really be so introspective that they can, like I like to say, tune out the noise and turn up their value, right? So nowadays, I'm super intentional about what I listen to because I want to make sure my voice is drowning out any of the noise that exists on Wall Street that exists in our colleagues, right? Dasarte Yarnway: And that's the skill that you have to hold it on or else you'll be pulled in different directions all the time. So off the top of my head, those are the three things that I think are super important to go. Just get it done. If you want to experiment, if you want to try something that may benefit your business, you have to go. You can't overcalculate or you'll suffer from paralysis by analysis. Number two, you got to remain aligned with what you want, right? And I think those are some key things to consider. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, I'm glad you brought up alignment. I wanted to go there and you beat me to it, but the your own personal aim has shifted. You know, I can imagine since you initially launched with a partner, right? And that has changed over time. I know through our own conversations and just following you on social media, you're making some big changes, even leading up to today. Josh St. Laurent: So can you talk about how that alignment and how that aim has changed? And do you have a process to kind of keep up with that? What does that look like? Dasarte Yarnway: Yeah. So for me, as I mentioned before, I've been very introspective. I've been very introspective this year. And you know, if you asked my co-host on the advisory journey, Jason Wink, I'm being a lot harder on myself than he thinks I should be as I've made significant process, progress in what I've aimed to do. But I'm thinking about what I want out of this life and what I, how this business can help, right? And if you're not aligned, as I mentioned before, you can be pulled in any direction, right? You can be distracted. One of the things that, you know, my wife and I talk about often as we have our meetings just because you can't, doesn't mean you should, right? Dasarte Yarnway: So we're at a place right now where we can do a lot of things, right? But should we does that align with what we want for our assets, for our money, for our daughter, for ourselves? So this whole idea of alignment is something that I've seen in the financial services base. I've seen with business owners and it's like, you're going somewhere. But is that where you want to go? You know, so as I look at planners, as I look at financial advisors, I'm saying people that are very technically savvy, they know everything about a rough conversion, tax law, QSBS qualifying, they know the stuff, right? But at the end of the day, if this stuff doesn't align with a person's goals, then you, you're not doing a good job. And nobody wants to say that nobody wants to admit that that is going to be advice that no one wants to hear, especially professionals, but that's, that's our job. Dasarte Yarnway: And it's not our job to tell people what's right for them. It's our job to give them the information that they need to align their dollars with their life, right? Outside of that, if I'm not doing that, I'm doing a horrible job. So I've started this process with myself and kind of cleaning out my closet, if you will, right, to ensure that everything that I don't need and doesn't align isn't around, you know? And after that, I can really have the space, the mental capacity, right? And the energy to go out and pursue the things that I want. So it's been a personal reflection. It's been a personal experiment. And I've seen how it's caught on with the clients that we serve because like, nobody's ever asked me these questions. I've never thought about it this way. The clients have been programmed to think about one thing, which is like, Hey, everything about retirement or you think about these milestones in between. Josh St. Laurent: That's it, right? So this alignment aspect is something for me that is the work that we're supposed to do is the work that, you know, advisors should lean into more. And that no matter what technological advancements coming to our atmosphere, right? Like, Hey, I cannot be replaced. I love that you went there. I admire that you are practicing what you preach, right? And essentially being a role model for your clients and they're kind of in a way following in your footsteps. And I really appreciate, I mean, that's what led me away from corporate finance America, right? Was this whole focus on technical aspects only maximize, maximize this concept of enough, I think is really interesting to a lot of clients of like, well, am I aligned? You know, I've done a good job saving, but for what? What is that sort of the end goal? So I love your focus on the goals. What sort of conversations are you having with business owners around like this alignment? What are you seeing commonly around? What maybe is the missing link for a lot of these business owners in their own journey towards finding alignment? Dasarte Yarnway: Well, I think step one is asking the right questions, right? So we're going to have client intake meetings. I asked a couple questions, some selfish, some, you know, really trying to understand the client. So the first question is going to be, how did you hear about this? Right? Because putting content and, you know, things in the atmosphere, you want to figure out what's working, right? So somebody might say, oh, my friend told me about you. I asked him for any good wealth managers and he sent me your way. I'm another advisor referred me to you because I'm a California business owner. But one of the questions that, you know, stand out to me is what is the catalyzing event? Why did you reach out to an advisor, right? Open ended. And then the second one is paying a picture of your ideal life for me. And those two questions alone can fill up 20 to 30 minutes of space. The right follow up questions because you get an idea of where a person is and where they want to go, right? So some of these conversations have birth, you know, personal things like I want to partner. I want my business to run without me. I actually don't like the work that I'm doing right now. And I'm looking for more and more and I need to figure out what to do. What I have, right? So sometimes, you know, we focus so much on the numbers. We're not focusing on the human aspect that lives within those numbers, right? Dasarte Yarnway: And I think that's super important. It's funny. One of my last episodes for the human advisor with altruist, I was on the Delta flight and I'm like, what are we going to talk about on this episode? End of the year, everybody's tired. So I created a kind of talking points of 2023 takeaways from clients that I've been able to serve in, you know, the advisors that have come on the show. And the first takeaway was alignment, right? If you're not aligned, you'll always be moving in the direction that may or may not satisfy your desires and his lifetime. So it's up to you as an individual, as a client, as an advisor to really interest, recalibrate, reassess as you walk on your journey as you run your marathon, right? A lot of people aren't doing that. And because they're not doing that, they live back and they're like, what was I doing? You know what I mean? And that's the real value of any financial advisor is to keep kind of like a bull in that area when you put those rails on the side is to keep you going in the right direction so you can knock any pins down that you want to hit. So that's first takeaway. The next one is a football analogy that I use called pick and stick. I don't know if you watch football at all. Do you do a little bit? All right. So I'm an Irish fan, play that Cal Berkeley, right? But I play running back. So we ran this kind of zone offense and the whole idea is to extract the field as much as you can, give it running back the ball and naturally lanes with develop for you to shoot through. Hopefully you can score, move the chains, get a first down, right? Dasarte Yarnway: So pick and stick means you get the ball. As soon as that hole opens up, you pick it and you just run as fast as you can to try to gain your, you put that foot down and you go, right? And I think financial planning is active, right? So you're always going to have adjustments. You're always going to, you know, change. You have the space and grace to pivot, but a lot of people haven't picked one thing that they want to pursue. They haven't picked a strategy in their financial advisory businesses that they want to work to exhaust them, exhaustion, right? So the second takeaway for successful advisors and business owners is they're saying, I'm going to go down this road and I'm going to go hard at this thing, right? So for an advisory listening to this, like how do you plan on building your business? You only need one, maybe two ways. One type of client, maybe two types of client to do that. You go all in on that thing. It's so many businesses that just do one thing and they're million, multi million dollar businesses, right? But we've gotten to this place where you think you have to do everything to be successful. And that's just not true. So pick and stick, pick your thing and stick to that thing, right? Until it sticks to you. I think that's another big takeaway that I've had from some of these conversations with clients that have done it really successfully. The next thing is kind of giving up control. So, you know, we have bookkeepers on our staff and I'm able to see like the businesses balance sheet and P&L and things like that, right? When you get down to it, some of the solo pernours, especially your small teams that we work with, they could do more in terms of the CEO or the founder delegating some of the control to grow faster. I believe in the stock market 100% is one of the wonders in the world when it comes to compound interest. But if your business is growing fast, you can give up some control to continue that growth rate, right? And that's something that I recently did. My business probably like yours is my baby. Man, you know, at first, I thought I had to do all things, but I've been able to divvy up pieces of the business and giving up control so we can grow exponentially. I'll stop here. I don't know if you have any questions, but I have a bunch of takeaways from just what I've seen over the course of the year. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah. No, that's huge. I mean, I love the points that you're making. I'm curious about like, what does that look like for you in 2024? What are some of the big shifts or changes that you're making? And maybe even before that, like how Jelana and California business owners was that the original decision or did that even change over time? Dasarte Yarnway: Yeah. So I have my personal goals that I mentioned before, right? Hey, I'm going to be the genesis of health for my family. But for my business, one of the things that I don't think I do enough is I think I think big enough, but I've been proven wrong based on what I've been able to see in the venture world sitting across from Jason Wink at Altrus, right? You should think extremely, almost impossibly big with your business. If that's what you want, right? Some folks are just like, hey, I love this thing. I just want to serve a couple clients and hang out with my family. That's cool too. It's no right or wrong way to run a business. But for me, if for what I want, I don't think I think big enough. So my next point was going to be think big, operate small. So I'm trying to expand what it means to run a enterprise business or a business that wants to go enterprise. When I first started to answer the second part of your question, I had two kind of pieces of research that I was going to build a business on. California state workers because I live in Sacramento is a government town for the most part, right? Or business owners because I'm just interested in business, right? I love the idea of having an idea and nurturing that idea to become profitable, impactful to people in the community, right? And after doing my research, I was like, I think I want to do the business on our thing because there's so many ways that you can help a business grow. And those impacts have lasting effects on a person's family, on the founder, on the community, on the clients, on jobs, right? If you're able to plan and do it well. So that's how I landed on being a business owner. Now, thinking big allows us to create plans for businesses, back-to-ing future success, right? And operating small allows the accountability over a designated time period, let's say a quarter, two quarters a year, to be able to move the needle further and closer to whatever that goal is, right? So my goals next year, I obviously want to double my revenue for my firm. But I want to build systems and processes that allow the tasks that, and this is a no for founders, the tasks that I should be concerned with, I'm only doing those tasks. I found that this year I had so many things I was doing. It kind of muddy the waters and my mental capacity. It just wasn't strong enough to really give a strong and a thought to that innovation and creativity. Because it's coming from you as a founder of a small business, right? So those are two places that I really want to improve on. It's just, who can I have do this? I've hired two people in the last like three weeks to help Gordon in the 2024. And I expect by the end of next year we have even more people to help us with our operation. But that gives me the time to do the things that matter most. And those things for me are being in front of our clients, creating informative pieces of content that they can absorb, right? And using my brain to create strategy for our firms to move forward to our goals, right? If I'm only focusing on those three things, I think success is just waiting on the other side, right? Josh St. Laurent: Absolutely. Yeah, you're speaking my language right now. I just finished reading 10Xs is easier than 2X if you've read that book. And talks a lot about what you're talking about. Dream big, aim high, delegate. And I'm working on some of these things myself. So it's interesting to hear you talk about, you know, find that one or two things that are really going to move the needle. My coach and I sat down. It was about 23 things a day is usually the list that I was making for myself, all 2023. And so next year the goal is to get that down to three things. So I'm right there with you. I'm wanting to shift to like practical actionable advice for business owners before we do like anything else that we should talk about or we should know about yarnway wealth and just that evolution and journey or maybe even what's to come. Dasarte Yarnway: Yeah, so I would say the journey of yarnway wealth was really a young man that trying to do financial advice from what he thought was right. At the time, right was being able to offer financial services to the masses, right? People that come, I mean, if we're being honest, 99% of people don't have the type of money that's required to get real financial advice from a qualified advisor, right? So you're like the large person and you think about a tam, total addressable market. It's a big pool of people that probably aren't getting financial advice, but still could be great clients, right? And then if you do a niche down, the serviceable addressable market is smaller, but can still create a multi-million dollar business, right? So it was a transition from someone just wanting to do this right from a servant's heart to now doing it right and doing it intentionally, right? That's the biggest thing that I want advisors specifically to take away from this, right? Don't go out and build somebody else's business. Don't go out and say I have to get a million dollars in an annual recurring revenue or else I'm not a success because when you get there and you're not fulfilled, it's going to be harder to like unwind, right? Then it was to kind of get there. So I think it's super important for you to move intentionally and move and build the business that you want to create. So that's number one in terms of what's coming next, doubling down on everything business owner, right? It's a very scary thing to do because all of these people need financial advice, right? So when you start turning people away, it's almost like, am I doing the right thing? When somebody refers to a friend or a real estate agent, refers to a client that's not your demographic. Are you doing the right thing? But I think over the long term, you are, right? Because again, you're building the right business. So more YouTube videos and business owner information, more newsletters with information for business owners from my voice, more networking with business owners. But everything business owner at the center in California first, then hopefully over the long term expanding from there. I have this kind of dream that we'll start with my firm and getting everybody aligned through financial planning and investment management. But hopefully, you know, I've been able to do some venture deals over the past two or three years, creating something like a line capital, right? Where I can help business owners invest in other businesses, right? So that would be like the longer term approach, right? But I think it's super important in the entrepreneur ecosystem. Because if you have ever seen a business owner that is building, there's no greater force in the world, you know what I mean? Because they're running towards their goals. They usually are living extraordinary lives, right? And it's all because of the ambition, the discipline, the dedication that they've had towards their idea. So in terms of what's coming from Yarnway well for the next 12 to 18 months, and then again over the next three to five years, that's sort of what I have in the pipes. Josh St. Laurent: That's exciting. I'm curious about the specialization in business owners. Like I'll just be vulnerable for a second for myself when I left a big corporate finance. I didn't realize the power of specialization, right? I helped everybody and I had this story that I told myself about, you know, why enjoy the variety of conversations, which was true. But you made a point early on in our conversation here about how, you know, you can really specialize in business owners get to know the issues that they face. Josh St. Laurent: And so can you talk a little bit about like what have you learned in specializing in business owners? Like what are some of these common problems that are unique to these business owners that you're helping them overcome? Dasarte Yarnway: Yeah, that's a good question. Some of the common problems I find is that number one, business owners aren't, they don't have a team. A lot of them have started businesses out of passion and desire to create, right? They're ambitious people. So our whole philosophy, we call it business essentials when somebody comes in, is setting the founder up and then the business up with the basics, right? So the founder needs things like you call our right planning process, retirement planning, investment planning, tax planning, estate planning, right? Insurance planning, although we don't like actually sell insurance. Right, so we're doing all of that planning for them up front. Dasarte Yarnway: And then the business essentials are connecting them with our team of specialists, bookkeeper, tax person, myself, our assistant or office manager is basically like our concierge for them to make sure that they're delegating and getting things done. Right, so their business can go and say, well, we have our books. We can do a 36 month look back. We're trying to sell our business. Many businesses don't even have that stuff in place, right? So I'm finding the first thing is businesses aren't equipped for success just from not having the basics set up. The founders are heavily invested, no retirement planning, don't have a goal, no estate planning for their business. Insurance needs are high, right? They're not thinking about key man or key woman insurance, things like that. Then they don't have a team to help them kind of know what's happening with the business in real time, such as bookkeeping, etc. So that's the first thing. Dasarte Yarnway: The second thing is actually in the planning process, we discover just a clear path for the business. You don't know how many business owners I find and they get to like, there's 59, 62 and they're like, I think in the next five years, I want to stop running my business. Right? They weren't thinking about this 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, right? So the earlier we get to business owners, the more we get to plan to ensure that when that time comes and like, I only want to sell this for five years, they can do it and they can reap the benefits of it. Right? And they have a plan. So that's the thing. I don't think many business owners that are intentional about what it's this business supposed to do. Right? A couple of years ago, I used to say, like, I want to annuatize the income from my business to live my lifestyle. Right? That's changed, and I want to have an enterprise business now. But I knew exactly what this business was for. Dasarte Yarnway: Right? Girl my income, it can help our family live. Right? It can help me live a very time affluent lifestyle. Right? And that was it. Business owners haven't even got that far. Right? So just identifying what is this business supposed to do. So for example, if someone comes to me and they say, hey, I want to sell my business in 10 years, seven years, the cold goal of this business is to exit. Now we have a certain kind of rubric or filter that we go through to ensure that they can reap the benefits of a future sale. Right? So talk about stuff like QSPS, qualified seller business stock, certain ways that they should pay themselves out, whether that's W2 or 1099, depending on how the business is formed. Right? What would be the most tax efficient issuing stock to any employees straight from the corporation if it's QSPS? Certain things like that really help that person in that scenario versus a person that wants to live off the income of this business, do good work for their clients. It's totally separate type of planning that we have to do. Right? So just identifying what this business is supposed to do. I think that's super important for business owners. And then number three is maintenance and data. One of the big takeaways from this year was just understanding the numbers. And I don't think that many business owners understand the numbers, the financials behind their business. So like are we making money or not? But the true cost of running a business is there's a price, right? Something that you pay and then there's a cost, right? So you might be paying for subscriptions to run your business or for employees, but there's costs associated with the as well taxes and other things that could be unforeseen. Right? I think really looking at bookkeeping balance sheets, P&L really helps business owners understand their bandwidth for R&D, for hiring more employees, right? For maybe other things that they might need to grow their business has just taken loans or using more of their personal cash, whatever the case is. But getting the numbers right is super important. So those three things alone are like huge value ads for business owners. And I think majority of it, I would say like 85% of business owners need help with that. Josh St. Laurent: 100% if not more. Yeah. I'm nodding over here because I mean, you could cherry pick any one of those things and the impact that it would have on a business owner is tremendous, even just a bookkeeper. So I hope any business owners listening California or otherwise are hearing this as well and recognizing the value that it has just to kind of play off of that. If a business owner is listening, let's say California business owner and they're like, man, Dissart Day knows of stuff. I haven't ever been heard of half of these things that he's mentioning. I need to consider this for my business. What advice would you give them and specific to me to maybe something that they can stop doing? Because I find that with a lot of business owners, it's like you mentioned the analysis paralysis. I think a lot of people fall into that trap. What are things business owners can stop doing to actually help get themselves ahead? Dasarte Yarnway: Yeah. So the first thing I want to say is any business owner listening, hit up Josh first. All right. He's going to tell you what to do or not do. We have similar ideologies. The second thing that you should do is I want business owners to really take inventory of the things that they're doing that somebody else can do. I had a person I was working in at auto body shop doing a bookkeeping, fixing the cars, sweeping the floors. You know what I mean? Dasarte Yarnway: What are things that you can probably stop doing? Even in my personal life, we just kind of got a cleaner for our house to come every other week and just clean our house. Your time is not best spent doing these things and whether you realize it or not, it is affecting your business. Right. It's affecting your productivity, your mental capacity, your creation and innovative spirit is being hampered by doing these tasks that you should be doing. Your genius isn't found in those things. Once you find that, employ the help, whether on contract by weekly or once a week, right? And the professionals to do these things for you because with that comes a whole knowledge bank that is only going to help you think clearer and think more strategically for whatever, as I mentioned before, the goal or the intent for this business is that one simple exercise will really reveal to you what you've been doing wrong this entire time. Josh St. Laurent: You know, I strongly believe that you're super capable of human beings, right? Almost to a detriment because I feel like I put pressure on myself because I know I'm capable, you know? I know the people that I'm around are super capable. So I'm like, you could do this, right? But sometimes we're in our own way and the only way to get out of your way is to really be aware and acknowledge some of the things that you're doing, right? Some of those habits that are getting in your way. Dasarte Yarnway: So that's a really simple way to kind of reveal to yourself. Like, you know what? I spend so much time on doing this and somebody can do this for half the cost and time, right? And if I let them do this, I'll probably 10x with the time that I'm given back, right? So that's one of the tasks that I'll have business owners do. Josh St. Laurent: If you do that task, you'll see hit up Josh and he'll give you the rest of the keys. It's an important and hard lesson to learn, though. I mean, you make a good point and I've struggled with this myself, you know? It kind of reminds me of that 80-20 rule, a 20% of the work you're doing is, you know, you're getting most of your results, but it's hard to like go out of that 80%. You're exactly right. There's someone out there who can do a better faster at a lower cost. So I love that less than the delegating is huge. Josh St. Laurent: What else are business owners? We talked about getting, knowing the numbers. That's huge, right? Knowing the intent of what you want. And I will just say another thing that business owners can stop doing is, or start doing is start amplifying your voice. Dasarte Yarnway: I do believe that if you're a business owner, people aren't going to break into your house and throw their money at you, right? I think it's up to us to be strategic about placing our product and our service in front of people, right? If you do that, the world shows pretty much as a business owner, right? And if you do that consistently, I mean, success is pretty much, I don't know what's it guaranteed, but it's very likely. So I think that's something business owners, I see, can start to like, well, we've been kind of stagnant over the course of the last 12 months to start to, is there anything that I can do? And I'm like, you got to go out there and you got to go out there and earn it, right? But that's not any business. Dasarte Yarnway: You have to go out there and kind of tell people what you do. And that's the only way that you can grow. So those are two big keys. A lot of the times selling is the answer, you know, especially for advisors, but in any business, right? How you do that varies, but that is the answer, right? That will help a lot of your problems. And I find that a lot of business owners that I talk to or serve that, oh, if I only have these processes, right? If I only can automate this and that, then maybe more people will come into my business. And that's the complete wrong approach. You have to have a volume problem before you have a digestion problem. If no one is opting into your service, these processes will never be triggered, right? So as I look at businesses, especially the ones that we serve that are scaling, even the ones that are trying to grow, it's like they know that sales and sports and get injured, they're like, time heals all. It's take time to get back once you hurt yourself, right? In business, a lot of times sales can be a huge kind of remedy for some of the issues that you might be having. So I would say go out and tell your story, go out and, you know, meet someone new, right? Strategically, put yourself in front of the places that you know your clients may frequent, right? This would make a big difference. So it's a top of the year in the year. Don't want to have a long list, but those two things, right? If you just focus on those two things, I think the outlook of many businesses look different. If they're able, right, to check off things or list things down that they shouldn't be doing, especially for the founder and then number two, going out and pitching, selling, talking to people about what they do. Those people that are unafraid to do that usually have success on the other side. Josh St. Laurent: It's always been incredible to me, to your second point, you know, those people who do have that go-getter attitude, I'll call it mindset, you know, I'm probably oversimplifying the point, but these people who have that mindset dialed in, they seem to be unstoppable, right? No matter how many hurdles they come across, they're going to get it done. They're going to find a way. So whether it's, you know, maybe maybe a client of yours who has a business that's scaling quickly, maybe a business owner slash advisor that you've interviewed, like what do you see as that differentiator when it comes to mindset? Because I'm fascinated by this like in my grad school work, like I've dug deep into this psychology behind, like is it, you know, what's causing this imposter syndrome? Like what makes, you know, this person over here different from this person, like just wanted to get your take on that. What do you see that's making the difference when it comes to mindset for successful versus unsuccessful people? Dasarte Yarnway: Number one, it's an extreme amount of faith that whatever idea that they have will come to fruition. That's first, right? Because who wants to continually be rejected, right? Except for me when I met my wife, I guess, but who wants to continue to be rejected, right? You have to continue to ask. You have faith to carry out these tasks all the time, right? It's like, hey, I have faith that this is going to work. One of the things my co-founder Burke now said to me, he was like, you've already won. Now you just have to go and experience the win. And when you have that level of faith, like I've already done this. Now we're just playing out in real time. You're not afraid to go out and ask and knock on that door and make that phone call or attend that meeting, right? So it's a immense amount of faith that happens for those people that are just like, it's gonna happen. I don't think that's number one. And then discipline is number two. I don't believe that anything happens overnight. We look back and you find that somebody's, I read a post actually. Josh on LinkedIn, it was Matt Faber who earned an investment firm in Southern California. And he was like announcing this week our firm finally crossed a billion dollars in assets under management. There was like a long post, like a ticketed minute or two to read. And then at the end of it, like if you want your firm to grow to a billion dollars, you just have to give it 17 years. You know what I mean? So it's an immense amount of discipline and patience that is involved. And after that, I mean, it's luck, right? It's a little bit of luck involved as well, right? There are no right answers, but I know that those two things are extremely consistent with all of the business owners that are successful. It's sometimes even to me impressive when I talk to my clients. And I'm like, are you sure? I'm sure we just got to do this and this and this. Josh St. Laurent: If I can't talk you out of it, you have a ridiculous amount of faith in what you are pursuing, you know, regardless of what the technical say, the numbers say, right? I mean, you have to have an immense amount of faith in discipline to get it done. So many gems in there. I love that about the conviction and the discipline. It's so true. I want to segue into some questions more personal to you. These are the kind of the big three I ask everyone towards the end of the show. So first up is a simple question, maybe not simple to answer. It's what is living a wealthy life look like for you? Dasarte Yarnway: Living a wealthy life look like for me. It's being time affluent. So I lost my dad when I was 12. I want my daughter to have a long life with me and her mother. So part of why I do what I do is to invest my time now so that I can continue to invest my time later with a family, my family, and the people places things that I love the most, right? So time affluence is a big part of wealth, a healthy lifestyle. So my health is number one. And creativity and ambition is to I love to create things. I love to build things, right? I think that expresses this gene that I have and I'll continue to have forever. But I'm able to create and serve. I think that's one of the coolest things ever. So being wealthy to me, good health, time, right, to spend with my family and the people that I love and creativity. Josh St. Laurent: Love that. If you could give one message to someone working to gain financial freedom, who isn't there yet, what would it be? Dasarte Yarnway: One message to somebody that would be able to gain financial freedom to me if I could tell them one thing. There's so many things, Josh, one, there's tough. But that one thing for me would be pick your thing, pick your thing, right? I think we live in the age where people want to do everything to build wealth, right? They want to invest in crypto. They want to start a business. They want to sell art and buy artwork digitally. They want to do a lot of things. They're really going to risk those things. But I think if you pick your thing, talked about picking and sticking earlier, if you pick your thing, right? And hone in on that thing, you can create wealth if you're patient enough, right? And I think that's what I've been able to do. That's what I see, you know, my mentors, like Jason Wankin, some of those guys are able to do even some of our clients at Intek. That's what they've been able to do. But get really knowledgeable and specific about one thing, right? And that's how you build wealth. And then diversify once that wealth is made. But I think that's sort of the best way to do it in the way that I've seen it most frequently. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah. hone that focus in. I think that makes a lot of sense. Josh St. Laurent: Hardest question of the day, you ready? If you only had a thousand dollars and you were starting over, what would be the first thing you would do without money? Who we? Dasarte Yarnway: A thousand dollars and I was starting over what would I do with that money? Five thousand dollars, I would invest in, I would buy a notebook and I would be really cheap to write my ideas down. I would buy a buy notebook. Because I think internalizing your goals is important. So I would have to strategize what I would do with that. So with the other 900 I would put half in the bank or yes, that's for 450. And then with the other 450, I would pick an idea, buy a domain name, register my business, right? And then begin to begin to build. I think that's what I would do. Josh St. Laurent: So for people who are listening, who want to connect with you, what's the best place to connect with this our day? Dasarte Yarnway: Yeah, part of tuning down the noise. Josh has been me kind of getting off the social. So like I'm not on Twitter, I'm not on IG. Only places that you can connect with me are LinkedIn and via yarnwaywealth.com. So for the connect, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, feel free to visit yarnwaywealth.com. I'd be happy to find some time to chat. Josh St. Laurent: And I'll put those in the show notes to make it easy for folks. Josh St. Laurent: And I want to make sure to plug. I think I saw you're starting a YouTube channel as well, right? Do you want to say anything about that? Dasarte Yarnway: Yeah, youtube.com slash yarnwaywealth. It's there as well for all the business owners that want some information on some of the things that we talked about. I think it's super important to just give tips, give information on how people, whether they become clients or not, on how they can be better with their business and be more aligned with their money. So again, youtube.com slash yarnwaywealth is where you can find all of our content starting in the new year. Josh St. Laurent: Cool. I'll be excited for that. You know, I'll be following along. Dasarte Yarnway: Yeah, please. Josh St. Laurent: Well, this our day. Thanks for being here. Dasarte Yarnway: Yeah, my thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Definitely. Josh St. Laurent: This has been the wealth in yourself podcast where we help people to design their ideal life and take control of their time and money. Our guest today was the start day yarnway. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next week. The wealth in yourself podcast is hosted by me, Josh St. Loren and edited and produced by Ray Hakecraft to learn more about how to make your money work for you. Visit us at www.wealthinyourself.com and connect with us on all social media at wealth in yourself. This podcast is educational in nature and is not meant to be investment advice. Please do not construe anything said to be advice and the opinions of the guests may or may not represent the opinions of wealth in yourself. This podcast and the information presented are separate for my employment at Golden Gate University. Still, they are part of my mission to make no-cost, financial knowledge more accessible. If you like the show, please take a moment to leave us a review. We read all of your feedback and we want to make sure we cover the topics that matter most. If you have a specific subject you'd like us to explore or a guest you'd love to hear interviewed, don't hesitate to shoot us a direct message. And as always, thanks for listening.