A decade of small business experiences with Mick’s Macs – SBS 40

Greetings, folks, and welcome to the small business show@businessshow.co episode number 44. Thursday, November 12, 2015 here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton.

And I'm Shannon Jean in Concord, California. How are you, Dave?

I'm good, man. How's business this week?

Business is good. I'm actually in the office because I'm so busy I couldn't go home and record from there.

That's not a bad thing, right?

That's right.

Wow.

Yeah, it is a good thing. Hey, and we're joined this week from one of my good friends, Mick Ginn from Mix Max. Mick is down in Santa Barbara. How are you, Mick?

Hey, I'm doing good. I'm doing good. Santa Barbara's looking beautiful today.

And that. I could think of worse places to. To be working from.

I got to be. I got to be in Santa Barbara a couple of weeks ago for the first time, and. And leaving was not the easiest part of the trip, I'll put it that way.

How does New Hampshire look these days?

Today it's like, rainy and dreary.

So, you know. Yeah, yeah.

There you go. We're pretty thirsty out here in California, so maybe bring some of that rain with you next time.

It's true. I can take nice, long, hot showers and not even think twice about it here. So.

Yeah, we do that when we travel. Now I'm getting ready to go to New York for Thanksgiving, and we're telling our kids, hey, you can actually take a long shower because when you're at the hotel.

Yeah, yeah. Nobody will yell at you. I mean, we've just got more water than we know what to do with. That's right. Yep.

That's right.

Yeah. I wish. I wish there was an easy way to send it your way. It's a business opportunity, and I know.

People think about it.

Yeah, yeah. Somebody said to me, if they can build a pipeline from Alaska.

Yeah.

Why can't we build a water pipe from Oregon? You know?

Exactly. Well, I was thinking if that whole Keystone thing falls through, they just put water in the pipe and send it down.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So, Mick, you know, we've done some business and lots of, you know, talks over the years, and your company, Mix Max, give us some history, how long you've been around, what kind of services you offer, and just tell us your story.

Well, I kind of staggered into the Apple Mac world about 25 years ago. I was actually living in Tokyo at the time, and I was working in the advertising industry there, doing TV commercials, doing voiceover. Work, singing, TV commercials, that sort of thing. The typical pre technical background that you really like to have. And I would walk into these studios and they'd be running everything on Macintosh. And this was like late 80s, very early 90s. And I had no experience in computers other than writing my senior thesis on one. And so I asked, I asked around, I mean the music and you know, I need to get a computer, I really need to know what's going on, what should I get. And kind of across the board there was a pretty strong bias towards Macintosh. So that's when I got my first one in the late 80s. And I made the mistake of thinking I could take it apart and sort of, you know, advance the clock speed and things like that. And I got in a whole lot of trouble. So I did the first thing that I knew to do. I was again on the other side of the world. I reached out. The Internet was sort of in its budding phase at that point. I reached out globally and said, who knows about this stuff? And I started meeting a lot of the really interesting people that started Websites now and things like that. And they helped me solve this problem. I finally figured out why my computer wouldn't boot and I oddly fell in love with it. I was never a mechanical person before I met Apple Comp. So that was a good 20, 25 years ago. And then I started consulting as a solo guy, just going out. And initially I wasn't charging for it. I would just ask my friends to buy me a really expensive dinner somewhere. And after a point that became okay, well I'll charge a little bit per hour, that sort of thing. And then ten years ago, or nine and a half as it were, in 2006, I had a wonderful opportunity to kind of start something new. And, and we thought, you know, hey, let's try this as a full time entity. And my wife came up with the idea of Mixmax, which had the kind of catchy little phrase, sure. And so yeah, we did the dba, the doing business as and started and we were off. So we're actually in our 10th year of business as Mixmax. Started out as a sole proprietor of course, and became an S corp after about three years. So we're Mixmax Inc. Now. So that's great.

Congratulations. I mean, you know, it's. Thanks, it's a great story. And, and even though this is not a Mac show, so many people I know they're in the Mac, you know, industry. And I love hearing that story because I think you can. It's repeated over and over and over the person gets their first, you know, Apple, whatever it is, and it makes such a big impact on their life.

Right, right.

That's awesome. So when you were, before you bought that Mac, when you were looking into starting something, were you working for somebody else?

Well, I had sort of an interesting thing because at the time, again, living abroad. I'd grown up in Santa Barbara and moved to Tokyo, as I said, around 1987 or so. And you have your work visa issues and things like that. But I got involved in the advertising industry quickly enough that I needed to be sponsored by one of the big management companies there. And so they really were, they sponsored my visa and I worked for them. But it was kind of like basically if your agent were to hold your visa and your agent were to be your boss, as it were. So they would send me out on jobs and I would go into various studios and we would create really interesting stuff. But out of that, interestingly enough, before I got into computers, I finally branched off from them and started my own management company there. So I sort of had some type of little entrepreneurial spirit going on before that because we would get calls and they would say, well, we really like Michael or Mick, my full name is Michael. But can you send someone who sounds kind of like him, but it's different?

Nice, that's great.

So rather than hang up the phone and go, oh, sorry, we can't help you, you know, we started, we. I knew most of the talent in town and so we would, we would start sending other people out, we would start managing them and representing them. So that company was called G Man Productions and did very well until the time I was ready to come back to the States. And I sold it to a business partner at the time. And I think it may still be churning along. It's been quite a while. That's about 20 years ago. So that's awesome.

So it seems like you made that transition from employee to at least self employed or employer went pretty smooth for you.

Yeah, it did. You always learn something when you're being managed or you have a boss. There's always that sense that as an employee, well, if when I get my own company or when I do my own thing, I'm going to do it differently. And it's sort of like how you manage your time as an employee versus how you manage your time as a business owner for very different. Your incentive to manage your time well as a business owner is obviously very, very high. For an hourly employee, even a full time employee, it's not quite the same. So as I transitioned into that and started hiring employees, one of the big issues that I had to work with was how to incentivize my employees so that they had sort of the same enthusiasm. Enthusiasm to be productive and to bring in more business as I did and find some sort of way to kind of profit share with them and incentivize them so that, you know, again, they were. They were being kind of closer to how they would be as an. As an owner.

That's a great idea.

Yeah, that's a huge thing. Right. Because you have to or you don't have to. But getting. I've always said getting your employees incentivized to do the things that make you all money is the key.

Right.

And it's very easy in some professions like sales. Right. You know, it's like, awesome. You know, I'll give you a commission. Sold. Right. That's it. But it. It gets a little different when people are doing jobs that are a little more, you know, removed from, you know, one step removed from the, you know, I brought cash in process. Yeah.

Right, right. And what was interesting for me is that over the years of having many different employees, each person, almost every person I've ever hired has been motivated by something slightly different, and many of them not by money.

Yeah, I would agree with you there. It is a massive first thing you think of, but it only goes so far, you know, and I don't know, there's. There's probably some, you know, hierarchy of needs thing that you. Yeah. Maslow's arguments. But, you know, I always comment, you know, you can't make people happy. You can only give them the opportunity to be happy and to do it themselves. And I would totally agree with you. And how do you find out what it is that really is motivating them? I would, you know, put out there trying different things or what have you. What have you done?

You know, it's. That is. That is the $64,000 question, I have to say. And, you know, I'm. I'm a fairly verbal person, so we'll have a lot of conversations sometime. You know, I'll even give an employee a choice. Well, would you like an hourly raise or would you like more responsibility? Would you like your name on the letterhead or some type of respect sort of threshold? Or would you like, you know, bigger commissions when you actually land a job and things like that? But what's weird, especially because most of the people I hire tend to be in their 20s and 30s. A lot of this generation is not. Again, my anecdotal experience with this generation is not really clear what motivates them, but it's been very, very surprising that I can give somebody a big raise. And they're like, oh, okay, thanks. And we're like, well, gosh, what is it? Do I bring in oranges or a goat or what do you want? Tell me what you want and I'll do it.

Do you find that with the people in their 20s and 30s that respect and recognition is more valuable to them than simply more money?

I think, well, what I've learned is that I, I, it's very, very hard to generalize. Okay. And then I have to really meet each person and each employee and find out. That being said, what I've noticed about this generation, because I'm in my 50s, I'm a 50 something guy, and what I've noticed in this generation is that they appear. Again, I'm going to say anecdotal experience from my, or anecdotal experience, I find that they're not as willing to work at a job where they make a lot of money, but they're not that happy for very long, which is interesting. Like for me, I was so happy to have a job in my 20s and if I could get a little more money from it was great. And I was more attached to, wow, I've got bills to pay, I've got things to take care of. Even if this job is hard and I don't like it and my boss is a jerk, I'm going to keep doing it until I can find something better. But I don't get that as much from this generation. And I'm not, I'm not sure why.

One of my biggest struggles as a, as a big business owner has been that I immediately project onto anybody I hire, you know, my employees, anybody. I'm managing my own desires, right. And it's like, well, if I were in, if I were in your shoes, here's what I want. So let me give it to you. Right?

I mean, of course.

And it's, it's all very altruistic, but when you do that, it often fails miserably because that's not, you know, there's a reason they're in their shoes and you're in your shoes.

Right, right. And it's sort of, I think, Dave, it's also sort of like that thing where it's sort of the flaw in the golden rule, you know, the golden rule, give unto others as you would have them give unto you. But the Real rule is, you know, do or give unto others as they would have you give unto. Yeah, so it's, it's, it's that, it's that, it's that extra layer of, hey, what is it that really makes you tick? What makes you feel great? Wake up in the morning, go, wow, I'm going to work today. Find out what that is. And that's what you give, even if it's not the thing that thrills you.

That's right. Go ahead.

No, I was going to say I'm always shocked when people say, oh, yeah, you know, I don't need more money. I really like the flexibility or I, I, I love that I got a, you know, a, a promotion in title. It's like, oh, okay, that's right. Okay.

And I think the, it also, what it speaks to is being connected with your employees and really having those conversations where, you know, sitting down with them once a year to do a review I think is kind of a complete waste of time if you haven't talked with them about where they're going, you know, during the year. And you really need to sit down. So, so you can at least have some sense of like, wow, what, what this person really wants is more autonomy or man, right, this guy's late every day. Let me give him, look, don't come to work at 8, come at 8:30. You know, of course then that guy probably shows up at 8:45. But you know, you try to give them that little bits of, you know, whatever it is, it is like you say it's gonna, gonna make them, you know, I, I hate to use the word happier, but it give them more from the job, I guess.

Well, for me, Shannon, that sort of segues into one of the things that I have still struggle to manage both with clients and employees, which is sort of this issue of boundaries with an employee. At a certain point, you can absolutely fall in love with an employee and what they're doing for your business and how they're performing. And at that point there's sort of a decision to be made. Like, what is the distance between us? You know, do I, you know, do I show up at his wedding like an employee got married recently? You know, do I do that? Do we, you know, where, how, how do we manage? Because there always has to be some distance in all relationships. And you know, on the other side of that is keeping a certain amount of distance between you and your clients or your customers. That works best for the business, works best for you, and also works best for the, the Customer. So those two issues, like how. What space is between you and your employees, because I think you're absolutely right. If you only sit down with them once a year, they're not going to know you. You know, they're. They're going to have all kinds of stories in their head. Oh, Shannon's too busy to sit down with me, you know, so he's got his thing going. That guy's a millionaire. Boy. He's making all kinds of money, you know, and, and you can sit down and say, you know what? I've, I've, you know, do you share with an employee at that point? Actually, we've had a really tough month this month. You know, we got, we got hit with this and we got stuck with a lot of inventory or, you know, our accountant says, you know, we might have to do an audit or, oh, you know, all this stuff. So for me, it's always that, you know, that, that question of how, how much do I share with an employee to endear them and to feed a healthy business relationship with them, and how far back do I stand as well, to serve that same need.

Yeah. And I think that transparency usually serves you very well. I mean, obviously there's things about the business and all that kind of stuff that you don't want to, I guess, really burden them with, but you do need to share that. Hey, here's what's going on, and this is why we're making these kinds of decisions. And I like your comment. If you don't tell the story, they're going to put one together in their head, and usually it's not. Right.

Right.

Yeah, I think that's great. That's a really good information. And I always tell my managers, or when we, you know, bring someone up and they get a promotion and now they're a supervisor or manager, and I always say, you know, it's going to change your relationship. You can be, and you should be friendly, but you're probably not going to be friends.

Right.

With these people now that you're managing, because everything changes.

Right. How do you. What do you do after work? You know, do you take them out for a drink or for dinner, you know, to bond? What sort of parties might you have? No matter how large your business is, you know, if you have three employees, do you take them out for pizza once a month or, you know, and how do you manage that? And again, I don't know that there's a perfect science to it.

Sure.

But it's, it's a constant flow of information back and forth to pick the right, Right way to be with those sorts of things.

Yeah, I think. And. And the better you are at kind of reading, picking up what their needs are or what's really important to them, the. The better it's going to be for you and for them. Because there's. There's not going to be those surprises. Because some of the things that you think are great to. To your point, Dave, scare the heck out of somebody that's working. Like, no, no, no, I don't want that. You know.

Yeah, yeah, that's not me. Right. Yeah, yeah.

And you're like, wow, I would love to have all this freedom to do that. Like, no, no, I want you to give me a more detailed plan of.

What I'm doing each day.

And that always shocks me, but I run into it frequently.

Well, but it makes sense, right? I mean, you. You would have wanted that. And because that's you. You created an opportunity for yourself or took an opportunity that was presented to you, or a combination of both that led you to being more autonomous and more in charge and now running the show. Right. You know, every person on the planet aspires to do that. In fact, it, like you said, Shannon, it might scare the heck out of them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. And that's okay.

There's nothing wrong. That's a really good thing. Yeah, yeah.

Otherwise nobody would work for you. Right, Right.

No, seriously. And yeah, that's that. I mean, yeah, that's. That's not a. That's not a snarky comment. It's just a.

That's correct.

Honest comment. Yeah, yeah.

I've always shared a comment with people and I used to do it with everybody. It's like, hey, you should always be training someone to take your job. And in the beginning, though, when I was a much younger business owner, I would see lots of panicked looks when I made that comment. And so now, you know, I kind of phrase it a little differently, but I think it's true.

Right. You know, I have the thing that I've. I've said to almost everyone that I've hired, and I think this applies beyond the tech industry and everything, but I've always said to, you know, an employee, you know, at a certain point, I don't want to be the smartest person in the room. I want you to be the expert on what you are doing, and I want to come to you and say, hey, what did you do on that job? And how did we fix that? I don't want to have to Be because I can't pull back and work on my business if I have to be the smartest person in my business all the time. And I think there's a certain amount of confidence involved as a business owner to allow your employees to really rise that way. But again, that can be a wonderful incentive for, you know, new employees to really rise up and bond and feel like, you know, they're really doing something.

Yeah, I agree. And we can only hope we, you know, find great people like that, that, that want to do that and that, that is, you know, that working on your business instead of in your business. You know, like it's such a powerful phrase that just encompasses. Encompasses so much. So that's fantastic. So let's talk about marketing for a few minutes because, you know, we've great, we've got these people working for us, right? We're at this stage. But how do you get your business into Mixmax? How do people find you?

Well, we are, you know, we're an Apple technology company. So the first, I've had some very, you know, funny sort of anecdotal experiences. You know, 10 years ago we even experimented with putting an ad in the yellow pages, you know, the old paper book. Even though other people in town, you know, who had shared their experiences with that in this industry were saying, oh no, no, no, no, you don't want to do that. And I'm like, oh come on. And the irony was it was one of the most expensive things that we ever did for a year and it just brought the wrong kinds of clients to us. It was such an interesting disaster that I learned from it. I'm like, oh my gosh, that's just. I get it, I see why you don't do it. And we definitely paid more money for the ad than we ever made in terms of business and grief. But these days, really how everyone find is they pull out their phone, they go Mac repair Santa Barbara and boom, we're one of the top one or two hits that they're gonna get. So then instantly there's always a link to Yelp or reviews on Google or straight to our website, something like that, and they'll hit those. And that's the most common way that people find us. We would love it if most of our the new clients and folks who find us, if they actually got that through referrals. And we used to be a heavily, heavily referral based business for quite a while until the Apple Store came to town. And that really changed the metrics and the measure of what was There all of a sudden you had Disneyland in the heart of town with all.

That's a good point. And I definitely would like to talk about that. How do you. Because we're small business focused here. And so then you have the, you know, the, the 800 pound gorilla or whatever. The multinational corporation, largest company in the.

World, shows up in the world.

Yeah, that's right.

And now you're competing with them. So let's talk about that for a few minutes. How do you. Because I know we've talked in the past and you know, it's a struggle sometimes, but certainly you've succeeded and have distinguished yourself in a different way. Talk about that if you will, for.

Well, I think, Shannon, I think that's the key. You just used a very important word there. Just how do you distinguish yourself and what you are doing? How do you make what you are doing as a small business so unique and so attractive that you're not going out and pulling. In fact, in our business, we call them clients rather than customers because my sense of the word client is there's a deeper kind of relationship, there's a longer term commitment and we're not looking for foot traffic and somebody stumbles in and goes, hey, how much are you going to charge for that? Which is always the worst question you can ever get as a small business person. And we never answer that question right away. We get to know the person and go, oh, well, what's wrong? What's going on? So that's one of my experiences. Just never answer the price question right off the bat. But if we have these clients that are coming in, how do we share with them why we're a much better place to come as opposed to that giant multinational, largest corporation in the world, place where everybody thinks at least they're going to get a free ride. The way we do that is by distinguishing ourselves and saying, well, first of all, you're going to have a one on one relationship with who is working on, in this case, what is probably one of your most valuable pieces of equipment in your life in terms of what's on it. The data that's on it. It's totally different than working on your car, which is your lovely thing that you might use to commute to work. This thing is even more important because it has all of your data. All of our lives today in 2015, they're on our computers, they're on our iPhones, our devices, our iPads. So do you want to go to a shiny store where there'll be a new employee there every time you walk in or would you like going to somebody who you're going to know instantly and have a very different kind of relationship? I mean, I want to use the word intimate without snickers or anything, but it is a more intimate relationship. It's a one on one and you're not paying any extra for it. Now the other things that we did, we realized where, I mean you always, you need to look at your competition no matter what you do. It doesn't matter if they're a multi, almost one trillion dollar corporation that you're working against or they're just another small business in town. You need to look at their weaknesses and you need to hear what others are saying about their weaknesses. And one of the things that we hear again and again about where people try to go get help in the big beautiful Apple Store in town is that they feel like a number. They feel like there's lights and there's noise and they don't feel quite as taken care of. And that's not true for everyone. And I'm not here to, to ding the Apple Store.

Oh yeah, yeah.

What they do, they do really, really well. But the story that we want to tell is the Apple Store's main job is to sell brand new equipment. Our job is to help you keep that equipment vibrant, alive and functioning as long as possible so you don't have to go back and buy brand new equipment every two or three years. You might have a, you know, a seven to eight year arc on your, the life of your equipment. So it's forming that personal relationship. It's using what we are. We're small, so we're personable, you actually get more time with us. And using that as a plus rather than a minus, that's great.

I think those are all really, really good, valuable tips. And you know, one of the things you mentioned earlier too on your marketing was reviews and things like that. And do you specifically ask your customers to do reviews or have you come up with another way to encourage them to do those reviews? How do you handle that?

Well, as you know too, with your business as well, the whole online reviews thing has just become monstrous in the last 10 years. I mean, you know, it is a very sharp, double edged sword. You know, it used to be that was a simple thing. You could say, hey, you know, if you really like what happened today, you know, go to Google and leave us a review or whatever. And we had dozens and dozens of people that did that. And then Yelp came along and Yelp really changed the whole paradigm of what was happening, because they became the gatekeeper for what good reviews they would show and what good reviews they would hide. And it completely changed the landscape. And I know of some very good businesses in town, restaurants, florists, things like that, who have a two and a half star Yelp review when they deserve a four and a half or a five. And it's truly changed. And Yelp is very, very insistent about. You cannot ask your customers or your clients to go leave a review for you there. Who knows what everybody does. But we have a wonderful Yelp page, which I'm very proud of. And we have resisted the calls from them to advertise with them because in a way, I feel like that keeps them honest.

Sure.

And it keeps us honest. Why should we pay you money for a review site that you're going to advertise when our organic Google results are already great? And if we're doing the right thing, then our Yelp reviews should be great too. But it's a spiky fruit, that low hanging Yelp fruit.

I like that spiky fruit. That's very nice. I'm going to say that the next time the Yelp guy calls to sell me advertising.

I know, put them off. Put them off. Put them off. Yeah. I'm getting an operation. Can you come back in six months? Whatever you can do.

Yeah, that's great. And then another thing you mentioned that I, I thought was, you know, worth exploring is when you first try, you know, you're trying some yellow pages advertising and all that stuff and you know, I used to do that too. You made a comment that, that you, it attracted the type of customer you didn't want. And I think for especially business owners getting started that are, you know, looking for every dollar that comes in the door.

Right.

And maybe they don't have the, the understanding yet of how some customers are very expensive and not very profitable. Tell us what you mean by that it brought the wrong type of customer.

Well, I think it was you at one point. I remember we were having a conversation many years ago and you can correct my quote, if I'm right. You said at one point, one of the business school sort of sayings was, you can do three things in a business. You can be the fastest, the cheapest, or the best in terms of expertise or something like that. But you can only choose two. Which two do you choose? And everybody goes, well, I definitely want to be fast and I want to be good. And it doesn't serve me to be the cheapest at Least that was certainly the decision that we made. Economies of scale being what they are, we are a low volume, higher margin business, as you know, opposed to Costco or Walmart, you know, which would be flipping that or even Amazon. So once we knew that that's where our focus was going to be, we realized that we didn't want clients coming in who all they were concerned about were discounts, discounts, discounts, let's low, low, low. And because the trust wasn't there and in our business, we really needed our clients to trust us. It's like, it's like going to a therapist or a doctor or a lawyer or even your accountant and not telling them the story, you know, how can they help you if they don't know, you know, all the dirty details of what's going on in your books or your life or, you know, whatever the case may be. So I feel like we're kind of the same in our business. We really need to know what happened to this computer before it came in. Will you please trust us to do our best work? And we're going to. We're on your side. But it was interesting. There was a correlation between the people who were trying to find the cheapest work that they could get done and their level of trust for the people doing it. So we learned very early on that these are just not our clients. I found this book called Book Yourself Solid. I don't know if you've heard of that book. I wish I could remember the author's name. And it was a wonderful book to read. Right around the time that the Apple Store rolled into town, we started doing a lot of marketing research and thinking, well, we're not going to get all of our clients through referrals right now. So what type of media and marketing do we want to do? And this book had the wonderful analogy, I think in chapter one or too called the Velvet Rope Philosophy. And he said really, what if, if young small businesses could pick this up early on. And it's in tandem. What you said earlier, Shannon, that really your business is like an exclusive club and you really want the best clients that you have. You know, that you remove the velvet rope and you let them in and there's some that you don't let in. And what that leads to ultimately is learning how to say no to a client that know is. I forget the phrase used. It was really, really great. Consume all your energy and don't really bring any profit in or something.

Oh yeah, sure, yeah.

So that was really helpful moving forward. And if I were to go back in time, I would absolutely, I would just trust, you know, trust the universe or whatever. I had to trust that the good ones will show up. You know, it's sort of like the Kevin Costner film. If you build it, they will come. If you build that business with high integrity and really great service and speed and just good stuff, eventually people are going to hear about it and they're going to want to work with you, regardless of what your business is.

I think you hit on a keyword and you glossed over it there, and I know it's important to you, and that's the high integrity right there. There's no way that the good customers are going to continue to come if you don't have that as the foundation. You need all the other things too, right? But the high integrity, man, that's, that's, to me, that's the key, right? Because people, even if they, they don't think, they pay attention to that, which most people probably think they do anyway. But it's, it's a, you know, it resonates with people. It really does.

Yeah, they pick it up. I mean, you're you in. In everything you do from the moment they start interacting with you. Like you said, building that trust over time. Right? That's, that's for sure. And, and if you, if you build that foundation with that trust and integrity organically, your business is going to, is, you know, it will grow. Maybe it's as fast as you, you know, I mean, my thing has always been how do we do it faster, how do we do it? And you just kind of have to trust to your point, trust that it's going to come, you're going to get rewarded. And, you know, you constantly have to analyze what you're doing. But, you know, I love that club analogy. You know, the customer has spent a lot of time deciding which business to go to amongst, you know, all your competitors. Well, at the same time, you probably should be thinking about whether to take that customer, whether, whether you have a fit for that customer. And we do it all the time. And, you know, as one of the things that's happened in the, you know, last year or so and maybe a little longer, as the products that we service have gotten more complex, we've stopped doing free diagnosis because it just takes too long. And over time, some customers, oh, no problem, I understand it. You know, the diagnosis price goes towards a repair if you do one. But some people, right up front, oh, there's just, I'm not going to do it. And that's okay. And you go, oh, here, I'll give you a referral, somebody down the street, no problem.

Right?

Yeah.

Right. And that's a sense of confidence I think, that I wish I'd had early on in my business of really, not only does the customer have to trust you, but we as business owners have to trust ourselves and trust what we're doing. I mean, really believe in our vision, our vision of integrity, to use, again, my word, that Dave picked up as well, to really believe that we're doing something right. We're providing something that is really unique enough, it's not there in our local marketplace or whatever our marketplace is, and that people will eventually learn about it. People talk, and they will eventually hear about it through one means or another. And when you get a them and they're the right match for the business, keep them forever, keep them happy for the life of the business.

That's awesome. So talking about that, you know, if you could tell yourself things when you started, you know, one thing, I mean, one of the questions that we always ask is if you could go back, looking back now at the vast experience that you've had running a successful company, what. What critical piece of advice would you tell yourself based on where you're at right now?

Oh, that one's so easy. You know, I would go back in time and I would say, mick, it's not important to be right. It will get you in more trouble with your clients and your customers than anything else. And, you know, if I really, and I'm quite serious that if I could go back in time, because we're working in a very highly technical area, and quite honestly, we, when we say something or we do something or we do a type of repair, suggest a course of action. We're almost always right 95% of the time. Every now and then, we make mistakes, but that's our job. Anybody who is a professional, who is a master or an expert in their field will understand that. But what it doesn't do is it doesn't connect you with that customer or that client. If they feel that you are wrong or you have done something that they don't like, even if you did it for all the right reasons, I would go back and I would tell Mick of 10 years ago, do whatever you can to make that right, to make the relationship right, even at the cost of being wrong. And it's so hard because I grew up in a society, in a culture where, oh, being right is everything. But as my wife says, you can be right. Or you can be connected. And even if you have to fire that customer or that client later on through very polite means and say, you know, I think we're probably not a good match for each other. You seem to want a certain kind of attention or type of service that we're just not able to provide. Even if that's gonna be the ultimate outcome, going in and repairing that before it becomes an horrific review on Yelp or something blows up. I just. Boy, I would have slept many more nights if I could have just taken that message to heart.

Well, you know, and I go by full circle. You made a comment earlier about wanting your employees to be, you know, you didn't want to be the smartest person in the room. Right, right. Well, it's almost. You could say the same with your customer. You kind of. They need to feel like they're Sometimes they're the smartest person in the room, and maybe you have to let them have that, you know, once in a while.

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. When things go south and there's somebody that's unhappy, because it's just impossible, whatever your business is.

Oh, yeah.

You know. You know, you may have a wonderful high, like 95% of everybod, 97% of everyone who walks through the door is happy they love you or they're. Or at least satisfied with what you do. But, boy, if those 3% are unhappy and they start consuming 50% of your thought process throughout a week, you gotta do something to put that fire out as soon as possible.

Yeah. Very good advice. Well, hey, man, we really appreciate. Yeah, yeah, that's good.

And then sage. Then burn some sage, and sage the room when they're gone.

That's it. Yeah. And it's the. I mean, that's the only way that advice can come. Right? You know, know the. The. You could go back in time and tell Mick it's not important to be right, but what he would tell you is you're wrong. Right. I mean, you have to learn that lesson, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's great. That's awesome. Well, man, there's some really good stuff, you know, here about with your experience. It's. I really appreciate you spending some time with us today. And, you know, what's the best way for. For people to learn about your. Your kind of.

You know, our website seems to be this wonderful storefront that people find whenever they. You know, we cover all of Santa Barbara county. We're just, you know, a few hours south of U. Shannon. And as I've said, You know, we have just been really lucky or blessed or whatever. The perfect analogy is that, you know, when you Google Apple repair or Mac repair or Mac support or Apple support, we're always above the fold. We're always one of the top two or three in the market. And we're really blessed to have an excellent Yelp profile right now, which people seem to believe.

Well, it goes back to your. Like, Dave was talking about your integrity and the trust you've built over time with your customers.

Yeah, yeah. It's hard work, but well worth it.

Awesome. Dave, you have any more questions for Mick today?

I don't. Mick, this has been awesome, man.

Yeah.

You've got a great, great history and a great experience, and you're aware of it, and that's awesome. So thank you for coming on the show, man.

You're welcome. You're welcome. I really, you know, if any other small business owners are listening to this, I just, you know, I really applaud them. The entrepreneurial spirit, I think, in any country. But in this country as well, if you read statistics, more and more people are starting to work for themselves, I think, than ever before in our economy. Don't quote me on that. But it's. It's a wonderful, fascinating, interesting way to pay your mortgage. And it's just full of life lessons. It's so interesting. I've started businesses thinking, okay, it's just going to be about paying the bills and doing what I love to do and making money. But I walk away with interesting philosophical bents on life that I end up applying to other areas of my life that have been very positive in the end. The end.

Oh, that's great. Some really good stuff for everybody out there running the business. So we appreciate your time today. Yeah, you bet. And thanks for joining us today, folks, and we'll be back with you next week.

See you next week.