Shark Bite Biz. David Strausser

Bob: [00:01:00] Welcome to another episode of Money You Should Ask. I’m your host, Bob Wheeler. And in this episode, we’re going to explore, question, examine, converse, dig deep, expose, laugh and cry about the money beliefs, money blocks, and life challenges of our next guest. Turn up the volume, listen, learn and laugh.

Well, our next guest is David Strausser. He’s an expert in enabling small businesses to drive growth via the promise of technology. As the general manager of the Northeast for vision 33, David empowers his customers to digitally transform by automating business procedures and maximizing business intelligence.

David is also also the host of Shark Bite Biz, the smashing small biz podcast that I was recently a guest on as well as he’s also a contributor to forbes.com as a proud member of the Forbes business development council. David. It’s so great to have you here.

David: [00:01:58] Hey Bob, thank you so much for having me here. We finally got the switch places on the chairs.

Bob: [00:02:04] We get to switch places. And I am curious because I think a lot of people out there are saying, what is an expert at enabling small businesses to drive growth via the promise of technology?

David: [00:02:15] Oh yeah. It’s catchy. I try to put a phrase in there that intrigues people, but there is one important thing that was missed in the bio. I have to call this out. I’m sorry. Yeah. Yeah, you didn’t, you didn’t say check and see if it’s on your sheet, but it was also number one fan of the book, The Money Nerve.

Oh, was I supposed to plug the book at the end? I’m sorry.

Bob: [00:02:39] You get two extra stars.

David: [00:02:42] Right. Yeah, there we go. Sorry about that. I had to do that. I know you love your comedy.

Bob: [00:02:49] I love that. That’s great.

David: [00:02:51] So yeah, I put it out there, the bio, because if I say what I actually do, the title, ERP- enterprise resource planning. It’s not a sexy thing.

I sell, I sell backend business solutions, software and you know, that means so many things to so many different people. So what we do is we get in there with that type of software. We help them digitally transform digitally transform. It can be many different things in many different people, but put it this way.

A lot of businesses are probably doing things like an Excel sheets and stuff like that. Maybe they’re entering data in and two or three or four different spots. And we kinda eliminate all of that. So that everything’s streamlined. You’re not firing employees or anything like that. Instead of having them fill out an Excel sheet.

You’re going to be enabling them to actually drive profit and do revenue generating activities. Instead of doing all this bureaucracy admin more, that really just sucking out a lot of profit from your company.

Bob: [00:04:04] All right. And how did you, and is that something like, as a young kid, you said, I want to work with a backend software assisting, like where were you at five? What were you thinking?

David: [00:04:18] It, it, it was by happen stance. So I always knew that I wanted to work for a big tech company management, running something. My own business, something in those lines. But this is it’s takes me all the way back to when I was living down in Tijuana moved down there when I was 18 which was about two months after September 11th.

And it was, it was a hard time. I mean, for being, you know, a white guy from rural Pennsylvania, Pottsville, PA to live in a ghetto, a literal ghetto, and Tijuana because I was poor, I was 18, you know, I was barely able to make enough in San Diego to come back. It was a tough life. And I’ve really had to fight tooth and nail for everything I’ve achieved in this life.

And ultimately, I think it just came down to a little bit of luck, a little bit of drive ambition, not settling. I think not settling is the biggest thing because I would get all these offers. For years tantalized in front of me, like, Ooh, come get this or come get that. And ultimately I I’d hold my guns.

No, this is not what I want. This isn’t the, the package I’m looking for the career path. And I suffered because of that being a short term, it was, it was very hard at some point, but eventually then I ended up getting a project cause I had my own consulting company and my buddy was like, dude, you’re just killing yourself.

You’re working 80, 90 hours a week. And the salespeople we have out here. And so Cal for my main company, they’re kind of goofy. I think you’re better than they are. So why don’t you come work for us? And next thing you know, I mean, I was an outsider to the industry and ERP for the most part.

It’s a very closed industry. It’s hard to get in. It’s one of those you have to know someone to get invited in, although it is, you know, it is opening up more now and, you know, he brought me in and you know, the rest is history. I mean, in LA, when I was out there for four years, I was doing about $2 million a year in net new sales for them now.

That’s just LA County. I did, did I do orange County? I didn’t do San Bernardino or any other just LA County itself. But in terms of this company, the highest amount of revenue they did a year out there in just LA County, it was like 385,000. It was essentially one or two deals a year. Right. So completely transformed it.

And it, you know, for the first time in my life, Doing this position it’s like I felt completed. I felt fulfilled to where I am using all of the capabilities that I have. And I mixed that with the passion of liking, to help people wanting to help businesses grow and I get paid for doing it. So it’s a, it’s a pretty good, pretty good deal.

Bob: [00:07:25] No. That’s awesome. And you, I mean, and the route to get there was sort of a little, not the normal path. I would say you, you grew up in a small town, like you said, in Pennsylvania, and then you at 18 said, I want to live the good life. And I moved to Tijuana…

David: [00:07:43] just like every 18 year old,

And what was appeal to go to Tiawana at 18, was that the dream?

No, it was… Tijuana again, that’s something that just ran from happenstance and it’s kind of funny how it happened, but basically. I wanted to get out of where I was originally Pottsville. I always felt growing up. Like, it’s just one of those places that I just didn’t fit back then, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a small town culture and I’m a dreamer.

I dream big. Think big. I think long-term as much as I think short term and every time I’d say, Hey, I have an idea. I want to do this. I want to do that. You know, everybody around me that are supposed to be enabling me and helping me be like, now can’t do that. That’s dumb. That’s stupid. Why are you going to do that?

And I really just, what did it get out of there? And I’ve always had a passion for travel. So I was actually thinking about moving to England at the time. And, but I was kind of afraid to do it by myself. So I was talking to a buddy and he was like, actually, you know, I, I just watched born in East LA.

We should go to Tijuana. So it was like, okay, I guess he’s like, yeah, we can work in San Diego. It’s right on the border. I saw about how this guy got the ported and then he’s calling and it’s literally on the border. That’s how it is. So it looks like there’s, it’s fun down there. He’s like, let’s go. So we ended up going to Tijuana because of born in East LA.

Bob: [00:09:24] That’s great. And did your friend, did your friend stay, or did you end up staying on your own?

David: [00:09:29] Well, I ended up, we went down there what we decided, I mean, we were 18, but we weren’t completely stupid. So we’ve moved down there for two weeks vacation. And it was kind of like, okay, let’s test the waters. Let’s see if we like it.

Have fun, do some partying. Cause you could, you can’t drink down there at 18. And you know, it’s not like 21 here in the States. And we went down there, we liked it. We felt safe. He had stuff that he had to complete. So he wasn’t able to move back down there for an additional four or five months. But. When I went back home and because this was right after September 11th, you got, we were afraid to fly.

I mean, we’re both 18, we’re talking two, three months after sometime. So we’re riding cross country Greyhound to Mexico.

Bob: [00:10:24] Wow.

David: [00:10:24] And yeah, you know, it was like three days each way. And then when we decided to move down there, I actually had to take two trips on the Greyhound each way to bring my stuff. But it, cause it was way cheaper than shipping it because even with Greyhound, people were afraid to.

I mean, I got round trip from the middle of Pennsylvania to Tiquana Mexico. It was like $40 round trip for the bus tickets. Keep, it was because of September 11th. And, you know, we were able to take advantage of that to move. I mean, yeah, every time I did one complete trip, it literally took me a week, but it’s, it’s, it’s funny.

I don’t know if you want to get off on this tangent, but I’ll tell you how I got my first house and into Quana.

Bob: [00:11:06] Yeah. You bought a house?

David: [00:11:08] No, no, no, no. I didn’t

Bob: [00:11:09] You rented. Okay. So I’m curious,

David: [00:11:12] My buddy and me we’re it’s our first time down there to check it out and we’re in Las Vegas. Okay. And there’s this like weird guy behind us? Yeah. Beanie on. Stuff like that. And we’re waiting to get on to the gray hand. Lot of security. I mean, they were doing like airport type security for even Greyhound at that point. And we’re waiting in line and you know, we’re bored. So we just turned around and started talking to dude, like.

Hey, man, where are you going? He’s like now we were like, no way us too. So my buddy is there sitting with them on the bus between Las Vegas and Riverside and for two hours? Literally he is asking. Every question under the sun that you can imagine, like, how do you say this in Spanish? How do you say that in Spanish?

And like, after two hours, this guy’s like, yo, you guys are going to get yourselves killed. Why did you come? Why don’t you come live with me? So we look at each other and we’re like, okay, So we just met this guy in Vegas, on a bus. We knew him for about two hours and we’re we got, cause we were going down there with no hotel room or anything.

So, so it was like, bam, we had a place to live and yeah, it, it was a, it was a crazy journey. Wow.

Bob: [00:12:35] That’s awesome. A little bit of trust there. Did you, when you left, when you left Pottsville, were your parents supportive? Did they care one way or the other, it was just like, time to go? I mean, how did that, like, that’s a pretty big move.

David: [00:12:49] Yeah. You know, that was a tough time in the family life, which is also another part of the driver. I didn’t really have the family support, so I’ve always kind of felt myself as a loner. In a degree like that. So, you know, as far as getting around that mindset and negativity that I brought up earlier, it was around that too.

Yeah. It was pretty much like, yeah, yeah. Do whatever you want. You’re an adult now. Yeah. I mean, put it this way. I was being charged rent from my parents since I was 16. Yeah. So, you know, Things are much better terms now, but back then, you know, it wasn’t the best of times. And you know, it is what it is.

And, and it just kind of shows you that a lot of people think that they don’t have control over the situation and stuff like that in their life. And that they have the bad situation that they do because they do. And. I’ll tell you why I really disbelieve it. Yeah. A lot of people get, get bad cards. I got dealt a lot of bad cards, but it was just through perseverance and not accepting it.

But most importantly, focusing on what I could control and what I could change is what got me where I’m at today. There’s plenty of bumps on the road. I mean, there’s a couple of times that I built myself up. Messed up or like the economic collapse in 12, 2008, 2009. And it’s like, bam, I was worse than I was before.

But it, it just fighting through it and having that spirit and just not taking the foot off the gas pedal.

Bob: [00:14:34] Yeah. I think that’s so important because a lot of people would have stopped and said, well, you know, as you said, I was broke. And they would say, well, I can’t go anywhere. I’m stuck. I have to stay right where I am.

And even in your position of, I don’t have a whole lot of money but I watchedEast L.A,and so I’m going to, I’m going to live the dream,

David: [00:14:53] Make it work.

Bob: [00:14:54] I’ll make it work. And then you push forward anyway. And then, and I think for so many people, they just hold back because wait, I don’t have the skillset or I don’t, I don’t know how to handle my finances or I don’t have the finances.

And then they take themselves out.

David: [00:15:07] Yeah, there are ways of. Bootstrapping things, whether it’s life or a business, if you do it correctly, I mean, real quickly, I’ll just point out 2010. You know, we’re in the claps. I was honest, complete transparency. I was completely. Broke at that point, lost everything because the business I was working for went under and it was savings were gone.

I lost everything. Almost every possession I had up until that point, except for maybe a suitcase or two and ended up. Losing. And what I was able to do was I found that, you know, really good at sales. So I found a couple small sales contracts to where I was able to go out and sell cell phones, like revamp a store that was also struggling teacher salespeople, how to do it.

I did that. I made about 10 to 15,000 in about a three-month period. I took that money and I actually moved the Peru and I’m like, cause I’m not staying… at guy had moved back home to Pottsville at that point. Right. But that’s how bad it was a, you know, tail between the legs coming back, home, whatever. But I got there, I made the money I had to, and then I’m like, I’m not staying here.

I’m going to go conquer the world again. And I moved down to Peru and that’s where I’ve met my wife Raquel. And we ended up then being like, okay, well, You know, options are limited here, improve let’s move back to Mexico. And, you know, we moved back to Mexico and then I was working between the U S and Mexico again, but it, it was almost like a complete reset there and a total complete leap of faith because when I moved to Peru, it wasn’t like I moved when I moved to Tijuana, where.

I mean, literally you could run across the border and, Oh, I I’m in,, United States, I mean you’re half the world away right now.

Bob: [00:17:03] Absolutely. And did did your wife marry for love or money?

David: [00:17:09] I don’t know. Good question. I would like to say, I would like to say love because either that, or she saw potential that there will be money one day.

Bob: [00:17:22] Sometimes, sometimes you got to buy the stock and you think it’s going to go somewhere and then hopefully it goes up right?

Like Bitcoin 10 years ago.

Exactly. Exactly. So in your journey of finding yourself and doing the sales and all that stuff, how did money play a role in your decision-making? Like was one of your goals to get really rich or was like, what was your money journey?

David: [00:17:46] So my money journey, I have a very complicated relationship with money, and I think maybe that’s why I’ve been sales. I like to spend money. I can’t save money. I have to always whether it’s the newest tech Ida or whatever it may be, I have to go out and buy it. I am, I think I’m worse than my wife in that aspect and diabetes. I have. I dunno, nine guitars sitting right over there, for example, but that’s a driving motivator for me because.

My relationship with money then is, is that I’m reaping the rewards of my success. If I’m not able to go out and buy the guitar that I want, then it tells me I’m not as successful as I need to be. And it’s going to drive me to make more money, no matter what that is, I’m willing to find a way to, to. Get more sales, you know do a quick side consulting job or something like that to get that revenue come in.

So does that give you a kinda an idea of where that is? Is that crazy?

Bob: [00:18:58] No. There’s lots of people like that, so you’re not alone. Most people have a complicated relationship with money. Do you and your wife talk about money like even now, or did you then, do you have conversations about money?

David: [00:19:10] We try to, but most of those conversations are honey, you’ve got to stop spending.

And is that her to you?

No, no. It’s usually me to, to her cause I buy high ticket items, but I don’t do it as frequent. She buys a lot of low ticket items. And what I’ve learned is that those low ticket items, you know, you buy enough of them. They add up. So we, we, we talk about it as far as financial planning for the future, whether it is retire bins or stuff like that.

Like even right now, we’ve been talking a lot about. Crypto. And she doesn’t understand that at all. So it’s going right over her head and I’m like study some of those because there’s opportunities out there. Like for example, I just grabbed the card that I love so far because. Every time I make a purchase, they give me a minimal 2% back, but the 2% they’re giving me back is 2% in crypto now, so far in the last 90 days.

Okay. I might’ve got, if it was like a regular credit card. Maybe I would have got 15 bucks back, 20 bucks worth of actual cash back, but because I got it in crypto and the stock actually, you know, the, the value went up enough. I mean, it was like 70, 80 bucks that stuff’s worth right now.

Bob: [00:20:42] Wow.

David: [00:20:42] So we’re looking at a lot of money. In cash flow from different angles like that. And they’re the conversations that we’re having. Like, how do we maximize if we’re going to spend money, how do we maximize our ROI on spending that money? What car do we use for what? And stuff like that.

Bob: [00:21:03] Yeah. And what would you say? Because it is so important to pay attention to all that stuff. If you look back, what would you say? Is one financial regret you had or that you wished you had looked at a little bit differently?

David: [00:21:17] I think with most people, it probably would have been Bitcoin, I think, I mean, even now you have a lot of naysayers that are you know, it’s imaginary or whatever. It’s kinda like, dude, I don’t care if it’s an imaginary or not.

People were paying $60,000 for each one of these I had a kabillion opportunities to buy it. Never bought it more than just a few small pieces. A Dogecoin is one that’s been on the news and on the rise lately as well too. I did buy those coin. Once Robin hood started offering it and I only bought it, it was like, Hey, you know, I’d have to have twenty-five bucks at it.

Yeah, then all of a sudden Elon Musk starts tweeting about it being the currency of the future currency of planet earth. That $25 turned into $1,100. Wow. Yeah. That much, that high. Cause I got it at like 0.00001 1 cent per coin. And you know, it went up that much in value. I can even look at. And you know, more recently, two, three years ago I was looking at the radium and I was going to purchase a reviewfew.

And at that time I think it was like a hundred, hundred and 50 bucks. And. You know, between me just being nervous, spending the money on something I didn’t fully understand. But I mean, it’s worth nearly $2,000 every coin right now, I would say the number one regret I have, especially being a tech person that I am is that I didn’t buy into the crypto early enough.

Now that being said. I still think that we’re in that the pre-market we’re in that pre-market area, the, the us is coming out with their own digital cryptocurrency, their digital dollar. I think when that comes out, that’s when it’s going to be the more official market. Yeah. So we’re still, pre-market, there’s still a ton of investments and opportunities to be made, but it’s probably my biggest regret that I think that’s the big thing that gives me the what ifs almost every day right now. Right?

Bob: [00:23:39] Yeah. Absolutely. And it’s so hard to know. Right. Because we can watch people invest a bunch of money and then they lose it all. Or we can watch them. And it skyrockets.

David: [00:23:49] And there was a lot of scams going back just a few years ago, too, with all those ICO’s, you know, and you had like a lot of the people that ended up getting arrested around those.

So, I mean, you have to, I think a lot of that stuff’s been sorted out the, the market. Places themselves and the industries have done a pretty decent job of regulating themselves in those degrees because you know, you get a lot of scam coins coming in. I mean, it basically, you know, creates doubt in the market and it hurts everybody.

Bob: [00:24:20] So do you have any regrets there with crypto at all? Yourself? I go back and forth, you know, I was. So I avoided it for a while. And then I heard an economist speaking. I was, I was a speaker at an event. And the guy before me was this economist for one of the big brokerage firms. And he said, look, I don’t believe in Bitcoin or cryptocurrency one single bit.

But I’m investing $10,000. Cause I don’t want to miss the boat just in case I’m wrong. Right, right. Right. And so that was my impetus to go and say, you know what, I’m going to put some money in it. I waver back and forth because I’ve watched, I’ve had a couple of clients make, you know, a couple hundred thousand or half a million dollars and then I’ve watched other people just eat it.

And it’s, it’s one of those things it’s just. You know, there’s no guarantees my crystal ball broke. So it’s sort of annoying.

You almost have the same guarantees though, as you would with the stock market. So I think my super basic analysis of this for your audience, I think we can put it like this. Think of crypto, almost like a digital form.

Stock in a way, be the big difference between, you know, buying an actual piece of corporate stock and a piece of crypto is that with this, you can use it also as currency, as an asset like that, you can do micro transactions to very large transactions. Most of the crypto out there, if you study on it, It’s not like they’re actually not doing anything in a completely imaginary, they actually power networks and do things, whether it’s blockchain or the maker network you know, there’s a lot of different stuff out there that, that, that, that is kinda tied to.

And when you really start breaking it down, it makes, it seems like, okay, so really. Year invents, ear investing you know, in a company or organization kind in a way or a belief. And I think that makes it a little bit more we’re real.

Yeah. No, absolutely. There are no guarantees, but let me ask you this. You started a podcast and that was because it’s so lucrative and you’re going to make millions of dollars in the first six months.

What took you to be inspired to create a podcast?

David: [00:26:47] So, yeah, as we talked earlier, background information, Yeah, Bob Wheeler has been on my show. He was an amazing, amazing guests. And we kicked it off last July, July 6th. It’s called shark bite bears. We did this show because look, I’m a people person. My industry, I got to get out network people, you know, not just because, Hey, I want to sell people, but it’s, I look at networking for three reasons, personal growth, business growth, professional growth.

Okay. And. With this pandemic, I couldn’t do it. So that’s where I ended up launching this show. It focuses on those three topics during the pandemic. It’s been pretty amazing. We’ve had rock stars on like Brian Vander are from the verb pipe. We’ve had William hung you know, from American idol. What she bangs.

We’ve had him. We’ve had Jack Douglas. We’ve had person from Aerosmith. In fact, you want breaking news for your podcast? I have not announced this publicly yet. All right, let’s hear it. First live. I am going to have Solidad o’Brian the former CNN anchor. And now with BT, a new show, she is going to be on Shark Bite Biz in May..

Bob: [00:28:10] Oh, that’s awesome. That’s fantastic.

Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. And this show really just focuses on. How businesses, how people are growing and transitioning. It’s a personal journey. I call it and I bring everybody just for the ride with me. And that’s how I got to meet somebody like you. And, you know, I’m really grateful, grateful for it, for the experience for your friendship. I mean, it’s been a great experience.

Yeah. I, you know, I love what you’re doing it. I think it’s so important that we have these kinds of conversations with different people. So that, because I think for so long people Don’t know what’s going on behind the curtain and right. And people are afraid to ask or people, they see things they want, they don’t know how to ask.

And by having these conversations with all walks of life, whether it’s about money, whether it’s about business, whether it’s about connection with other people I think it just helps make it an easier conversation for people to start to feel comfortable that they can go forward.

David: [00:29:08] Oh yeah, because the thing is I like to do everything different. Like when I had my events out there in LA, I called them the anti luncheon. We had off the wall speakers. I would serve dessert first and we’d do this at the city club. At that time, Los Angeles, you would get chocolate cake. People would be confused, but the way the meal was planned, it was.

Perfect that way and a gourmet meal, I would always bring, cause that’s who I am as an individual, I look at things through a different lens, a different angle to really make people think and that’s right during the show. So even when I have somebody like William Hung, or I have a rock star on the show and they’re like, okay this is a business podcast, a small business podcast.

Why do you have the Verb Pipe on here? And it’s like, well, you know, the Verb Pipe still is a business, you know, and he is struggling. He is a creative business owner, no different than any other musician. Plays at coffee shops, it’s on this show or any artists that listened to this show, it speaks to that type of creative entrepreneur.

And you’re hearing how he is successfully maneuvering and pivoting his business so that you can be inspired. And I get some of these most amazing stories out of, out of people if memory serves me. Correct. I believe when we, when you were on the show, we were talking an example, a lot of your travels, I think, right?

Bob: [00:30:33] Yeah. Absolutely.

David: [00:30:34] And how that’s inspired you. And I like getting those types of stories out of people that, that personal story. I don’t want somebody on talking to corporate bullet points, you know, that’s where it’s going to be. Like, I don’t know if that’ll air, but I’ve let those real stories of who you are and what makes you, you.

Bob: [00:30:53] Yeah, absolutely authenticity is, is a big factor for me anyway.

David: [00:30:58] Oh yeah, definitely so important. It is. Yeah.

Bob: [00:31:00] Well, listen, we are, we are, the time goes so quick. We are at fast five. So I’m going to ask you, I’m going to ask you five questions and we’ll just see where we go. Of the five senses. Which one would you say is your strongest?

David: [00:31:15] Wait a minute. Wait a second. There’s five senses. There’s five?

Bob: [00:31:17] I know it probably think there’s three, but there’s five.

David: [00:31:19] Taste, taste.

Bob: [00:31:21] Right. And what three things do you think about the most, each day?

David: [00:31:27] Money sales and money.

Bob: [00:31:31] What’s the most interesting thing you can see out of your office or kitchen window?

David: [00:31:39] I would say all the studio lab surrounding me for my podcast. I got about ten here. It’s like what big solar plant?

Bob: [00:31:47] There you go well, it’s, you know, it’s it’s technology. You should have all that. What, what was your last impulse buy? And did it meet your expectations?

David: [00:31:56] Last impulse buy? Oh, I have it right here.

Actually it’s a Fender Mustang, micro amp. So fender Mustang abs are modeling amps, which means that it can play a lot of different types of guitar. Sounds. And this is the micro one that gives you all that power in a small little package to hook up to headphones or directly to a computer. So this has believe it or not, you’re going to think I’m weird.

Well, you already do, but. Imagine me with my guitar. This is connected. And then I’m just wearing my big pair of headphones. I’m doing laps walking around my block, playing guitar because I’m completely mobile and nobody can hear me because of this that’s awesome. Best hundred dollars I’ve ever spent.

Bob: [00:32:45] There you go. No regrets. That’s great. If you could eat only one thing for the rest of your life, what would that meal be?

David: [00:32:52] Pizza. Pizza. Pizza. Meat? Yeah.

Bob: [00:32:58] No, just any meal, any meal that you could eat, if you only get one meal?

David: [00:33:01] Pizza

Bob: [00:33:02] You don’t even have to think about that that was like, Yeah, I’m gonna guess you’re gonna have, sounds like pizzas for dinner tonight.

David: [00:33:09] It pizzas, you know what I’ve been doing? Goat belly, just to get some Chicago deep dish pizzas. Oh my God. I put on about 10 pounds, I think in the last month.

Bob: [00:33:17] You know, I think with COVID we’ve all been on about 10 pounds in the last month, or maybe I’ll just speak for me and you.

So You know, with all the stuff that you’ve gone through and you’ve got your music and you’ve got your podcast. You’ve, you’ve had your ups and downs. You’ve been to Tijuana. Do you have this is our M and M sweet spot, our money and motivation spot. Do you have a piece of practical. Advice on some money or some wealth wisdom, something you would give to our audience.

David: [00:33:46] Yeah. So I think, and this comes back to my professional growth where we were talking to in the beginning of the show, and I’ll kind of explain how this all links to personal money in a second, but with the software that we sell, it’s essentially financial software and it allows you to track. Everything you have business intelligence.

I mean, even if you’re small business, you’re getting enterprise level technology at the small business structure, but it’s given you the full breakdown where your expenses are, how much time is it actually costing you to do this or that? And I think a lot of times what people don’t do is they might have that for their business.

Or they might not call me if not, but if they don’t ha you know, have it for their business, they need to have that for their personal life to analyze, I think their, their money kind of like you would, if it was a business. Cause I do view family is like running a business. I’m running a five person organization here, team stressor.

And you know, once I started treating. The family more than just the budget. I mean start analytical insights. I got this brand new app. I think it’s called bright money, but it gives me alerts like, Hey David, if you pay your capital one credit card, On this day, you’re going to save $3 and 19 cents of uninterest.

Even if you just pay the minimum payment, you’re going to save it by paying on this day, compared to play it on the due date. So little things like that, I’ve started doing, making all these different tweaks and by doing all of that, I mean, It’s actually freed up a lot more of my cashflow too, where it’s allowed me one to put more into the podcast itself, as far as like ads and stuff like that.

But as of today, I just submitted paperwork to the government. I have Dead Brands, LLC is my new corporation. And another breaking news I’m launching by coffee brand called Dead House Coffee. That’s actually available today.

Bob: [00:36:00] All right. Well, we should all get a cup of coffee. That sounds good. Really?

David: [00:36:05] Yeah, but it’s, but basically I need all the things.

What my main point is is that all that stuff that that I did, I learned for my professional job about. How to manage all that stuff. And I was able to find a way to translate that into my personal life and by having business intelligence with my own personal financials, not just my work financials, it really enabled me to, to, you know, find out where I was wasting things and how I can move my money smarter so that I could make a startup coffee business.

Bob: [00:36:42] I think that’s so awesome. And I do think you know, what I’m hearing you say is like that it pays off when you’re a little bit intentional and when you’re actually paying attention to the details, I know for a lot of people, money is loud. It’s so boring, but I love having it, but I don’t want to actually.

Deal with it. And the thing is we actually do have to deal with it. And then, and then even if you don’t have money at any given moment, if you’ve got the mindset that it’s just a bump in the road that you can have, you can have whatever you have, if you’re willing to just get back up and keep pushing through it.

Cause we’re all gonna have obstacles. They’re all going to come in different flavors, but if we can keep just getting up and pushing through it, we’ll overcome.

David: [00:37:20] Oh, definitely. Great. And one other piece of advice is I would like to say my savings I ended up taking $10,000. I had one of those high-interest savings accounts, I think with American express.

And I took the 10 grand out of there and I diversified it in different cryptos. And when you put it in the crypto’s a lot of accounts out there, they have like, Earn accounts where it’s basically like, Hey, you give it to us to hold. You can take it out at any time you want, but if you leave us, hold it, you’re going to be earning two things.

One, you’re going to still hold the value of the crypto. Meaning that if it triples, when your time is up and you pull it out, that you’d have that triple value, but they’re also paying sometimes five, 10, 20, 30%. Interest for you to deposit it and hold it there. So you’re earning almost double dipping in those ways.

I ended up diversifying by safe. Cause I mean, I’m telling you, it’s making a lot more in those earn accounts, then it did. Sitting in a, you know, the, the high percent yield American express savings account. So I mean that, that’s another smart move that I have done to make money without really doing anything else, but save money.

Bob: [00:38:41] Yeah, go crypto for research. Yeah. Do the research, do the research. And I would always say for people out there that want to invest, always know that you should invest no more money than you’re willing to lose. And, and not just count on it, even though there’s a lot of great investments out there.

David: [00:38:59] Oh yeah, definitely. Definitely a fact. That’s funny that you say that because remember when I told you about when rabbit had started selling those coin, that I bought $25 worth of those going. That was good, because back then that’s all that I could afford to lose. So there’s 25 bucks, but it turned into 1100. It was, it was worth the $25 bet.

Bob: [00:39:19] Yeah. Yeah. Where can people find you online and social media and where can they find your coffee and all those good things?

David: [00:39:25] Oh, thanks. Thanks. I appreciate letting me do some shameless plugs. So Shark Bite Biz, you can find us YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you watch or listening to podcasts. You can find us also the website, sharkbitebiz.com.

For me personally, you can go to davidstrausser.com, the new coffee business, which is definitely we’ll be at by the time this episode airs is deadhousecoffee.com. You got to remember everybody’s a zombie in the morning, Bob, until you drink your coffee, Dead House Coffee, get back to life.

Bob: [00:40:01] Okay, there you go.

David: [00:40:04] And Vision33 .com. I got so many things going in it going on and that’s good. Keeping busy is what helps you have the incomes. It gives you the stability. One false. True. You have something else. So LinkedIn, you guys look just Google. My name. You’ll find me. You can find me on forbes.com. I’m everywhere.

Bob: [00:40:24] You’re everywhere. We’ll find you we’ll find you. I want to say to our listeners, don’t forget to share the love of follow us and like us. On Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram search for Money You Should Ask, all one word. You can subscribe to this podcast or The Money Nerve book. I love it. Subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player, visit Apple podcasts and search for Money You Should Ask or click on the link in the description.

If you prefer to watch your episodes, head over to YouTube and subscribe to our channel. For more tips, tools, or how to learn, how to have a healthy relationship with money. Visit themoneynerve.com. Nerve not nerd, just like the book. David, thanks so much for taking the time and joining us and sharing your personal story.

David: [00:41:03] I so appreciate it. Oh Bob, thank you. This has been so fun, so much fun. I hope I didn’t overwhelm your audience and I hope they reach out to me. I have a L they can come on my show if they want everything’s on the table.

Bob: [00:41:15] Absolutely. Well, we’ll get it out there and we’ll we’ll try and get everybody to buy some software so they can start paying attention to their finances.

David: [00:41:22] Oh, definitely. Definitely. Thank you again, Bob.

Bob: [00:41:24] Thanks.