Beginning Balance

In today's episode, Mark takes inspiration from George Constanza, the perpetually underachieving and romantically inept character from Seinfeld , to confront his negative business habits. In the episode "The Opposite," George realizes that he's always followed his intuiton, but every decision he's made has turned out to be wrong -- he's dissapointed in where his life has ended up, and in his failu...

Jesse shares his experience working on the YNAB books for the first time in many years, while YNAB's head accountant is out of maternity leave. Working through monthly and quarterly close  got him thinking about how software automation could free up the accounting departments time wrangling spreadsheets to do more impactful work for the business. To that end, he engaged Mark to consult on how YNAB...

Recently YNAB announced a major shake up in the way it talks about money. Jesse explains how the realization that each of YNAB's Four Rules was really just a variation of Rule One ("give every dollar a job") led to a deeper conversation about YNAB's core identity. Every year when the executive team met to reasses the company's purpose and direction, the team would change the stated purpose of the...

Mark and Jesse discuss the pervasive distractions that cell phones and computers cause, and how to fight back against them. Jesse champions the Freedom app blocker, which locks your phone or other device from distracting websites like social media, YouTube, blogs, etc. Since implementing Freedom, he boasts a phone usage time of only 20min per day (!), working toward his stated goal of "making the...

Mark and Jesse kick off the New Year with a deep discussion on inflation and how it creates confusion about the most important price of all -- the price of money.   Mark Butler The Money School: https://moneyschool.works https://markbutler.com https://letsdothebooks.com   Jesse Mecham YNAB https://www.youneedabudget.com

Following up on Mark's admission that he dreads collaboration, whether it's with peers or employees, Jesse discusses one way the leadership team at YNAB has fostered collaboration. They call it the strategic council, and it's a two(ish) day meeting with all the functions at YNAB presenting the challenges and opportunities for growth in each function. The meeting is tightly structured, with desgina...

In today's episode Mark explains what makes the perfect diet coke, and Jesse opens his inbox and reads some comments and questions from Beginning Balance listeners, including tips for improving business leadership skills, how to keep track of all your ideas, and why studies can be highly misleading. Mark and Jesse also address a question about UBI, or universal basic income, and bring up Mark's ol...

Jesse kicks off the episode talking about one of his new endeavours, Ultraspeaking, an effort to double down on one of his biggest strengths: public speaking. This leads to a conversation about embracing your strengths, the things that feed your working genius (see episode #102), rather than trying to build up your weaknesses. Mark shares his comfort speaking in front of audiences, and his fear......

Mark and Jesse are back after a short break with a discussion about slippery slopes... real and imagined. Jesse delivers an epic rant on the uselessness of economists, while Mark talks about his hesistance applying for graduate school in order to obtain the Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist credential.   Mark presents his dillema: he wants the credential to "reduce friction" for clients when...

Mark and Jesse discuss their most recent read, Never Enough: From Barista to Billionaire by Andrew Wilkinson, a one-time barista and co-founder of Tiny, a holding company that buys and holds businesses for the long-term (like Berkshire Hathaway). At the age of 36, Wilkinson found himself owner of a company worth over a billion dollars, and in a new stratosphere of wealth he had never experienced b...

Good gardens require good soil, and good soil takes compost and plenty of time. Jesse shares his experiences composting soil for his garden, and how it applies to business. Like compost, good business ideas take time to execute. They can be executed more quickly, but that often involves more complexity. Mark and Jesse then pivot to discuss complexity in business plans, and when it's worth pursuing...

The algorithm has come to rule media, and it is a voracious beast. It consumes as much content as people can create, as often as they can create. The ones who rise to the top seem to be those who create the most content, on as many platforms as possible, but what do the economics of this look like? Mark asks the question whether playing the content game is worth it for a business, and if so, what...

Jesse shares one of his recent experiments, inspired by a guest on the Art of Manliness podcast. The challenge was to delete the apps on your phone, especially the ones you feel a "pull" from -- a pull to open it and check it every time you see it (most social media apps would meet this criteria for most people). As Jesse explains, phones don't just suck up your time, they suck up your attention ,...

On previous epsidoes, Mark and Jesse have discussed the importance of scarcity, and how limitations drive creativity. Mark even goes so far as to argue creativity can't exist without limitations! YNAB, then, is a tool for viewing reality through the lens of money -- a reality mirror if you like. By understanding the tradeoffs you are making with your money, you can see the truth of your financial...

Mark and Jesse discuss YNAB's recent price increase, and the psychology of customers around pricing. You can't make everyone happy, whether you justify the price increase by citing your own increased costs or by plainly stating your price increase without explanation or caveat. Jesse points out that some customers that have complained about the price increase have moved to competing software, whic...

Mark and Jesse reminisce about the early days of YNAB, and a conversation over lunch in which Mark gave Jesse (what he thought was) sage advice -- to raise prices. Genius right? Jesse recounts how they raised prices in the earliest incarnations of YNAB's product, from spreadsheets to software to software-as-a-service. He also candidly breaks down a price increase that was poorly communicated to th...

After a conversation about using ChatGPT to organize the weekly recipe calendar for the Mecham household, Mark and Jesse talk about the concept of letting go of control in a business. Mark posits an idea: you can have control or you can have growth, but not both. And Mark hates it! Jesse draws a distinction between control of the business -- that is, controlling the mission of the business and the...

Mark and Jesse discuss the role of customer service in a business, and how the alignment of customer expecations with the business owner's strengths (or working genius, if you like) is crucial to customer satisfaction and avoiding burnout. Mark shares an example from his virtual CFO business, which was highly profitable but making him miserable as his promise of what he would deliver was out of al...

Mark and Jesse discuss Patrick Lencioni's The 6 Types of Working Genius , a book exploring various personality types and the kinds of work most suitable to each. It's more than a personality test however! Lencioni's model assesses people according to their genius, competency, and frustrations in six areas: Wonder : The natural gift of pondering the possibility of greater potential and opportunity...

In today's episode, Jesse discusses his net worth tracker, a basic spreadsheet in which he records the balances of his investments and other assets quarterly. For Jesse, net worth is the scorecard of personal finance -- it's a way of keeping track of what direction you are going with your money. However, scorecard is an impersonal way to describe net worth, perhaps even suggests that one's value i...

In today's episode, Mark and Jesse discuss money as a concept, why it exists, and how trade (using money) has created tremendous value for humans throughout history. On the YNAB Podcast, Jesse has spoken about money being far more than a tool, however, and really an extension of one's self -- one's energies and desires. Mark and Jesse then attempt to connect the dots to our modern monetary system,...

Mark kicks off today's episode with a handful of words, hoping to weave them into a broader discussion: vision, goal, strategy, plan, and tactics. Mark and Jesse discuss how many small business owners look for tactics first, various tasks focused on operations: posting on social media, starting a YouTube channel, building an email list. These may or may not be worthwhile activities -- you really n...

In today's episdoe, Mark and Jesse discuss the importance of developing good systems, not just in business but in life! Mark shares a recent experience in which his wife left for a few days on a retreat, leaving Mark to handle her usual duties. Mark was faced with a lack of systems in day to day tasks, and enough friction to sit her down after the retreat and have a talk about family systems. Kate...

Mark and Jesse ponder the question -- what do you do when growth slows and the business plateaus? Mark recalls a story about a successful businessperson who failed at several ventures before striking gold, and notes that the "gold" business was never hard. It grew a lot early on, and continued to grow steadily from there. He juxtaposes this result with some of his clients who spend hundreds or eve...

People have been hemming and hawing over the value proposition of college for years now, and in 2024, the value that a bachelor's degree offers is more questionable than ever. Mark and Jesse, both with teenagers staring down the barrel of college (or not) in the next few years, share their thoughts on the subject. As Jesse argues, the purpose of education is "to learn how to do something, when you...