Business Unscripted - Triumph Business Solutions

Triumph Business Solutions
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Entrepreneurship

Welcome to Business Unscripted, the podcast where real business conversations happen. Hosted by Dave Worden, founder of Triumph Business Solutions, this podcast dives into the raw, unfiltered realities of running and growing a business. Each episode explores the struggles, strategies, and accountability moments that shape the journey of entrepreneurs and business owners. With a mix of solo episodes, co-host partners, and guest appearances from other business owners, Business Unscripted offers diverse perspectives and actionable insights. Whether you're navigating challenges, seeking strategies, or just looking for honest conversations about business, this podcast has something for you. Join us weekly as we tackle the unscripted moments that define success, all while fostering accountability and connection with our listeners. Subscribe now and follow Business Unscripted for stories, strategies, and actionable insights that will inspire your own business journey. New episodes drop every Friday!

  1. 3d ago

    Stop Doing The Work, Start Directing It | Business Unscripted Ep. 74

    Dave and co-host Duarne Bernhagen start with the distinction almost nobody makes correctly: automation and AI are not the same thing, and most real workflows need both. An automation moves a document from point A to point B with zero AI in it. AI is the interpretation layer you drop in where it earns its place. Then the conversation most owners haven't had yet — liability. Insurers are quietly carving AI out of errors-and-omissions coverage because they can't price the risk. If your chatbot tells a customer something wrong, that's on you; an airline learned that in court over a bereavement fare. Dave and Duarne walk through what belongs in your client agreements now, and why an opt-out checkbox and a two-tier price shares that risk instead of parking all of it on you. The rest is about getting your time back. Why an outcome-based agent that stops for your approval beats a fully generative one. How to think like a director instead of a doer. The 80/20 rule applied to your calendar, not just your revenue — and why the bottom 40% of your time is provably unprofitable. Why "coach them up or coach them out" is the only honest answer with a team, and how "that's not my job" tells you exactly who your bottom 20% is. Plus the real math on outsourcing, and the client who doubled his business by handing off his phone. Dave closes with homework: two lists. Everything manual that's eating your week, and everything you know you should — or want to — be doing instead. Write both this weekend, then pick one thing. New episodes every Friday morning. Subscribe wherever you listen, and send this to an owner who needs their time back. Episode 74 Send us Fan Mail Visit www.triumphbusinesssolutions.pro to learn more about our services and our Profit First Cash Clarity Programs. Learn more about Triumph Business Solutions www.triumphbusinesssolution.pro Receive a Complimentary Business Stability Snapshot and see how your business stacks up again 100,000+ successful businesses. https://triumphbusinesssolutions.pro/triumph-assessment Schedule a 30-Minute Cash Clarity Conversation - Guaranteed Value or full refund - $97: https://stan.store/TriumphBusinessSolutions ​​Want to be a guest on the podcast? Register for a future episode here:  https://calendar.triumphbusinesssolutions.pro/businessunscriptedguest

  2. Aug 7

    Your Work Environment Is Either Fuel Or Friction | Business Unscripted Ep. 73

    Dave was a work-from-home believer through COVID. Five days a week back in an office changed his mind — not because home is bad, but because the distractions he kept telling himself he'd "make up later" never got made up. Duarne built an office across the yard from his house for the same reason: when he walks in, dad's at work. This one starts on environment and ends up somewhere else entirely, which is usually how these go. Dave and Duarne get into why your workspace is either fuel or friction, how to audition a co-working space before you sign one (ask for a free day and see whether anyone actually talks to you), and how to read the energy signals your own body gives you about clients, opportunities, and time-sucks. The back half is the conversation nobody has clearly: AI and automation are not the same thing. Automation repeats a process — recurring invoices, follow-up sequences, the ticketing system that auto-replies and quietly satisfies your one-hour SLA. AI reads context, drafts, summarizes, and routes the work intelligently. Used together, they give a small business owner the leverage to operate like a much bigger company. They also cover why human approval is the line on AI-assisted messaging, how to clean up your social algorithm in twenty minutes, why you are the only person who sees 100% of your content, and how to become the expert in the room by picking rooms your competitors are not in. Duarne's takeaway: before you blame your head for an unproductive week, take a minute and look at your environment. Episode 73 Send us Fan Mail Visit www.triumphbusinesssolutions.pro to learn more about our services and our Profit First Cash Clarity Programs. Learn more about Triumph Business Solutions www.triumphbusinesssolution.pro Receive a Complimentary Business Stability Snapshot and see how your business stacks up again 100,000+ successful businesses. https://triumphbusinesssolutions.pro/triumph-assessment Schedule a 30-Minute Cash Clarity Conversation - Guaranteed Value or full refund - $97: https://stan.store/TriumphBusinessSolutions ​​Want to be a guest on the podcast? Register for a future episode here:  https://calendar.triumphbusinesssolutions.pro/businessunscriptedguest

  3. Jul 31

    A 5% Price Increase Can Lift Net Profit 50% | Business Unscripted Ep. 72

    Most owners try to fix a stuck business by working harder. This solo episode starts with the lens that creates clarity fastest — the 80/20 rule. Dave walks through how to run an 80/20 review across your clients, service lines, products, and your team, so you can see what is actually driving gross profit, where your time is leaking, and which "extra offerings" are quietly dragging you down. Ask most owners when they last reviewed their services and the answer is "never." Before you start you need three things: expenses tracked by service line, a real block of time, and a plan to implement what you decide. Then the part most owners avoid — pricing. If you are high quality and low volume, your real competition may be the higher-end option, not the bargain provider you have been measuring yourself against. Dave covers how to collect pricing data with a simple customer survey, why average purchase value matters more than the percentage, and the math nobody runs: on a million-dollar business at 10% net profit, a 5% price increase adds 50% to net profit, because it flows straight to the bottom line. Run it backward and it bites just as hard — absorbing a 5% cost increase is really a 25% cut to your own income. He also breaks down how to roll out a price change by relationship: 60 to 90 days and a one-on-one conversation for advisory clients, a group announcement for mastermind or low-touch offers, and for small-ticket retail, no announcement at all. Last, a practical tech note — how Dave is using Hermes as the bridge in his AI stack, connected through Slack, to run local workflows, fix code from his daughter's ballgame, and give the team client channels that research and answer while he is still in a meeting. The point is not more AI. It is less stress, faster answers for clients, and room to work on what actually grows the company. What is the one service, client type, or workflow you are ready to cut or fix first? Drop it in the comments. Episode 72 Send us Fan Mail Visit www.triumphbusinesssolutions.pro to learn more about our services and our Profit First Cash Clarity Programs. Learn more about Triumph Business Solutions www.triumphbusinesssolution.pro Receive a Complimentary Business Stability Snapshot and see how your business stacks up again 100,000+ successful businesses. https://triumphbusinesssolutions.pro/triumph-assessment Schedule a 30-Minute Cash Clarity Conversation - Guaranteed Value or full refund - $97: https://stan.store/TriumphBusinessSolutions ​​Want to be a guest on the podcast? Register for a future episode here:  https://calendar.triumphbusinesssolutions.pro/businessunscriptedguest

  4. Jul 24

    Your Best Clients Never Haggle On Price | Business Unscripted Ep. 71

    Your tech stack either quietly saves you hours every week or slowly bleeds your time and money. Dave and Duarne start with the question every owner asks — Mac or Windows — and land somewhere more useful: it barely matters anymore, because most of us live in a browser all day. What does matter is RAM, storage, and how long the machine will actually last. 16GB is the new floor, 24 to 32GB if you run heavy workflows, and buying used is still one of the easiest write-offs a newer business has. From there it turns into a straight business conversation. Own your own data, and ask a vendor where it lives and who can touch it before you sign up. If you are commissioning custom software, get the ownership terms in writing — changing 10% of the code makes it legally not a copy. And stop switching tools every few months, because software fatigue is something you do to your own team. The second half is the part worth staying for. Duarne's brother paid $750 a month for a phone system, roughly ten times the going rate, and it was still the right call, because the old setup was costing him customers every month. That same week, Duarne withdrew a live proposal from a client who kept pushing for a lower price. Dave ties it together: your best clients are the ones who never haggled, and the painful ones almost always negotiated you down first. If someone wants to negotiate the investment, negotiate the scope with them. If you got something out of this one, share it with another business owner and leave a review so more people can find the show. Episode 71 Send us Fan Mail Visit www.triumphbusinesssolutions.pro to learn more about our services and our Profit First Cash Clarity Programs. Learn more about Triumph Business Solutions www.triumphbusinesssolution.pro Receive a Complimentary Business Stability Snapshot and see how your business stacks up again 100,000+ successful businesses. https://triumphbusinesssolutions.pro/triumph-assessment Schedule a 30-Minute Cash Clarity Conversation - Guaranteed Value or full refund - $97: https://stan.store/TriumphBusinessSolutions ​​Want to be a guest on the podcast? Register for a future episode here:  https://calendar.triumphbusinesssolutions.pro/businessunscriptedguest

  5. Jul 20

    Stop Trusting Memory, Start Trusting Systems | Business Unscripted Ep. 70

    The fastest way to stall a growing business isn't a lack of ambition, it's a missing system. We're on the road for a tournament, short on coffee, and talking through a surprisingly high-stakes topic: why checklists, SOPs, and onboarding processes fail when you need them most, and how to rebuild them so your business can run without constant heroics. We dig into real examples from hiring and client work where “the checklist existed” but the documentation behind it was outdated, generic, or trapped on someone's computer. That's where stress spikes, training breaks, and even billable work can't be tracked or invoiced. We also get practical about communication systems: quick acknowledgement emails, out-of-office notices, and setting expectations like an SLA. When customers know you heard them, they stop spiraling and you stop getting buried in follow-ups. Then we shift into AI productivity for small business operations. Duarne shares a powerful ChatGPT feature, “branch into a new chat,” and how it keeps marketing plans, brand strategy, website content, and logo tasks clean and focused. We also talk about mixing tools, using ChatGPT for heavy drafting, Claude for polished formatting, and Gemini inside Google Workspace for data extraction, spreadsheet cleanup, and even building dashboards from Sheets. Finally, we weigh cloud AI against local LLMs, covering data sovereignty, hardware cost, maintenance, and what's realistic for most owners today. If you want more time, cleaner operations, and systems your team can actually follow, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a business owner friend, and leave a review with the one process you're ready to document next. Episode 70 Send us Fan Mail Visit www.triumphbusinesssolutions.pro to learn more about our services and our Profit First Cash Clarity Programs. Learn more about Triumph Business Solutions www.triumphbusinesssolution.pro Receive a Complimentary Business Stability Snapshot and see how your business stacks up again 100,000+ successful businesses. https://triumphbusinesssolutions.pro/triumph-assessment Schedule a 30-Minute Cash Clarity Conversation - Guaranteed Value or full refund - $97: https://stan.store/TriumphBusinessSolutions ​​Want to be a guest on the podcast? Register for a future episode here:  https://calendar.triumphbusinesssolutions.pro/businessunscriptedguest

  6. Jul 10

    How To Sell Without Sounding Desperate | Business Unscripted Ep. 69

    A stranger called us during a client meeting and used call screening to claim they needed bookkeeping help, then flipped the script and launched into a software pitch. That one move highlights a bigger problem in modern sales: when we lie, push, or chase a win at all costs, we train good prospects to resist us and we burn trust before we even start. We break down what went wrong, why it feels so bad on the receiving end, and what ethical selling looks like when you actually want long-term clients. We talk sales strategy for business owners who didn’t plan on “being in sales” but now realize it’s part of the job. That includes how to start discovery calls without sounding desperate, why “thanks for your time” can backfire, and how non-committal language like “possible path forward” lowers defenses. We also dig into the daily realities of business development: if you’re not prospecting consistently, your pipeline can dry up 60 to 120 days from now, even if you feel busy today. Then we get practical about growth and hiring. If client work is consuming every hour, that’s often the signal to bring in support so you can protect time for outreach, leadership, and vision. We close with persuasion-style questioning (inspired by Jeremy Miner and NEPQ) to handle resistance and objections without pressure, including how to quantify the cost of doing nothing and let the buyer persuade themselves. Subscribe for weekly, practical business advice, share this with a business owner who hates selling, and leave a review if it helps. What sales habit do you want to improve next? Episode 69 Send us Fan Mail Learn more about Triumph Business Solutions www.triumphbusinesssolution.pro Receive a Complimentary Business Stability Snapshot and see how your business stacks up again 100,000+ successful businesses. https://triumphbusinesssolutions.pro/triumph-assessment Schedule a 30-Minute Cash Clarity Conversation - Guaranteed Value or full refund - $97: https://stan.store/TriumphBusinessSolutions ​​Want to be a guest on the podcast? Register for a future episode here:  https://calendar.triumphbusinesssolutions.pro/businessunscriptedguest

  7. Jul 6

    You Don't Need More Sales, You Need Better Math | Business Unscripted Ep. 68

    Recording solo from a hotel on the road over the July 4th weekend, Dave gets real about the quiet systems that keep a business steady — the ones that don't feel urgent until a good opportunity slips away. If you've ever left a great meeting and then watched the deal fade because there was no next step, this one's for you. He starts with the simplest fix: a no-drama follow-up list — a spreadsheet works, or let AI read your calendar and keep it updated for you — then zooms out to the compounding power of finding just one hour a week. That's about 500 hours, nearly three working months, back over a year. Then the part most owners skip: the math behind a "big" goal. Dave breaks down gross margin and real revenue and shows why a $100,000 goal at a 50% margin actually needs $200,000 in top-line sales — and how that shrinks to roughly ten new clients, or fewer if you raise your price. He also makes the case for a direct cost allocation account so a big deposit never tricks you into spending money that's already spoken for, and for trading one-off cleanup projects for long-term, recurring engagements so you only have to close once. If this helped, subscribe, share it with an owner who needs a better follow-up system, and give yourself permission to take the day off when you can. Episode 68 Send us Fan Mail Learn more about Triumph Business Solutions www.triumphbusinesssolution.pro Receive a Complimentary Business Stability Snapshot and see how your business stacks up again 100,000+ successful businesses. https://triumphbusinesssolutions.pro/triumph-assessment Schedule a 30-Minute Cash Clarity Conversation - Guaranteed Value or full refund - $97: https://stan.store/TriumphBusinessSolutions ​​Want to be a guest on the podcast? Register for a future episode here:  https://calendar.triumphbusinesssolutions.pro/businessunscriptedguest

  8. Jun 29

    AI Workflows That Give You Hours Back | Business Unscripted Ep. 67

    You don't need an "AI transformation." You need one workflow that gives you your time back — then a second, then a third — until your whole week feels lighter. In this solo episode, Dave walks through the exact AI automation system Triumph has been building: a command center that works like an executive assistant, keeps everything in one place, and turns a pile of scattered tools into one clean daily system. We get practical on the big four workflows: daily prep (email and task summaries plus meeting briefs), meeting automation (prep docs, transcripts, action items, and follow-up emails), content creation (social posts and article drafts pulled from podcast transcripts and newsletters), and outreach (DM drafts with full history, an approval step, and pipeline tracking). Dave also names the trap most people fall into — letting AI become a yes-man — and the fix: set guardrails so it challenges your thinking and forces clarity instead of just agreeing with you. He also shares a July 4th Triumph special for owners who want to stop doing reconciliation and financial statements by hand, then closes with a live Q&A for younger listeners: how to start a business with no money, how to think about tech layoffs and job anxiety, and why the long game — skills, networking, and consistent learning — always wins. If you've been meaning to automate something but never got started, pick one workflow and build it this week. Episode 67 Send us Fan Mail Visit www.triumphbusinesssolutions.pro to learn more about our services and our Profit First Cash Clarity Programs. Learn more about Triumph Business Solutions www.triumphbusinesssolution.pro Receive a Complimentary Business Stability Snapshot and see how your business stacks up again 100,000+ successful businesses. https://triumphbusinesssolutions.pro/triumph-assessment Schedule a 30-Minute Cash Clarity Conversation - Guaranteed Value or full refund - $97: https://stan.store/TriumphBusinessSolutions ​​Want to be a guest on the podcast? Register for a future episode here:  https://calendar.triumphbusinesssolutions.pro/businessunscriptedguest

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Welcome to Business Unscripted, the podcast where real business conversations happen. Hosted by Dave Worden, founder of Triumph Business Solutions, this podcast dives into the raw, unfiltered realities of running and growing a business. Each episode explores the struggles, strategies, and accountability moments that shape the journey of entrepreneurs and business owners. With a mix of solo episodes, co-host partners, and guest appearances from other business owners, Business Unscripted offers diverse perspectives and actionable insights. Whether you're navigating challenges, seeking strategies, or just looking for honest conversations about business, this podcast has something for you. Join us weekly as we tackle the unscripted moments that define success, all while fostering accountability and connection with our listeners. Subscribe now and follow Business Unscripted for stories, strategies, and actionable insights that will inspire your own business journey. New episodes drop every Friday!

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