Beginning Balance
by Jesse Mecham
Latest episode
Stop Trusting Your Gut: Try The Constanza Protocol
Stop Trusting Your Gut: Try The Constanza Protocol
About this podcast
Jesse Mecham and Mark Butler teach you how to manage your business cash flow, hone your business model, and not freak out about money.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 120 episodes
- Stop Trusting Your Gut: Try The Constanza Protocol · 31 min · Episode 121In today's episode, Mark takes inspiration from George Constanza, the perpetually underachieving and romantically inept character from Seinfeld, to confront his negative business…
- Jesse Hires Mark, and the Inevitability of Change · 29 min · Episode 120Jesse 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…
- Jesse Introduces Spendfulness · 34 min · Episode 119Recently 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…
- Distractions, Anxious Activity, and Finding Focus · 37 min · Episode 118Mark 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…
- Bitcoin, Depreciation, and the Most Important Price in the World · 32 min · Episode 117Mark 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…
- Why You Should be Collaborating · 44 min · Episode 116Following 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…
- Diet Coke, Listeners Chime In, and UBI · 52 min · Episode 115In 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…
- Doing Scary Stuff for Personal Growth · 51 min · Episode 114Jesse 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…
- Slippery Slopes: Economics, College Degrees, and Questionable Credentials · 49 min · Episode 113Mark 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…
- From Barista to Billionaire (Mo' Money, Same Problems) · 38 min · Episode 112Mark 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…
- Gardening, Compost, and Business Complexity · 33 min · Episode 110Good 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…
- The Economics of Content, and the Case for Word of Mouth · 41 min · Episode 109The 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…
- Escaping the Gravity Pull of Phones · 25 min · Episode 108Jesse 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…
- Taking a Hard Look in the Reality Mirror · 28 min · Episode 107On 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…
- Lessons from YNAB's Price Increase · 42 min · Episode 106Mark 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…
- Cheap Business Advice · 31 min · Episode 105Mark 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?…
- ChatGPT and Learning to Let Go of Control · 38 min · Episode 104After 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…
- The Hero's Journey of Customer Service · 53 min · Episode 103Mark 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…
- What Is Your Working Genius? How to Avoid Frustration and Do the Work You Love · 55 min · Episode 102Mark 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…
- Why You Should Be Tracking Your Net Worth · 36 min · Episode 101In 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…
