Actions you can take NOW to improve your Small Business

The Small business show episode 286 for Wednesday, July 22, 2020. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business Show. I know it's been a long time since we've introduced the show this old school. We're going old school today. It's true, it's true. It's just me. It's just me and Shannon. And as far as, as far as me, well, I'm Dave Hamilton here in Durham, New Hampshire.

And I'm Shannon Jean in Lafayette, California. How's it going, man?

It goes. And if this is your first time visiting us here at the Small Business show, we are the show by, for and about small business owners and, and today it's just the two of us. Well, I say it's just the two of us, Shannon. It's all of us here. Listen, it is, but, but we have no guests today.

Yeah, I've been looking forward to it. You know, I love having the guests. I mean, I always learn so much, but it's kind of nice once in a while just to get together and talk and some top, you know, we've had on the side, if you will. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

I think it's pretty cool.

We have two sponsors today. I just wanted to note. Yeah. Directmailmac.com SBS and smilesoftware.com podcast. So we've got PDF pen and PDF pen pro from Smile. We'll talk about why you want to visit those URLs in a bit here. We say this often, but our sponsors are our, our job when we take on a sponsor is to sort of wet your appetite to encourage you to go visit their site and learn more. Whether or not you buy. That's between you and them 100%. But it's our job to, to tell you about them. And if it's something that, that seems like it might make sense to you, go to their site, check out more. That actually really helps us, believe it or not. So, yeah, I just wanted to kind of lay that out there. We'll talk more specifically about these sponsors later in the episode, but we'll get into some stuff here. So. Yeah.

Hey, before we get into it today, we're going to talk all about action. And we know we've kind of been on this taking action kick lately. We added a new question to our interview thing, which I think is great. Got some good tips on there. But let's talk about our, this new business that we're starting. The publishing business, right.

Yeah.

If you, if you've been listening to the show, you've heard us talk about our small business guides that we've been, you know, we released the first one, I don't know, a couple months ago, all about mistakes and you know, made it totally just like it was perfect because we made a mistake when we were releasing it and you know, really.

As far as we know, we've only made one. I'm sure there are more. That's right.

Yeah, absolutely. And so we realized we needed to learn a lot about this publishing small business world. And we've brought in a coach that's helping us and we've relaunched Mistakes and you can get a copy. We're running a promo for 99 cents. I'm not here to pitch the book, I just want to talk about it. But if you'd like to get a copy, you can go to businessshow Co Guides and you'll see some links up there.

Well, and the reason we're doing this promo, I mean, I think it's worth talking about. Like you said, we hired this coach to help us become bestsellers on Amazon. And so we are in that process and part of that process is getting people to review the book. And so we needed, we wanted to make it as inexpensive as possible for all of the folks that were, that we've got reviewing the book now. So that's why it's 99 cents. But you get to benefit from that. We're also doing all sorts of ads and different kind of coordinated promotions. It's a, it's a multi pronged attack right now. And that 99 cent price point really helps to drive sales which will help drive our ratings up. And that's what we're after here right now. So. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's been an interesting thing.

Yeah, it has, it has. I've, I've learned a tremendous amount, which is great because, you know, you don't want to bring in a professional to help you and not learn. And so we've had, you know, it's really fascinating to see and to learn what to look for and how to tweak it and how the data works. And you know, I love about our coach, the first thing, you know, when she looked at our mistakes book, she said, oh, you know, your cover is crap. Yeah, you know, and I was like, wait, I designed that? You know, and even though we both.

Liked it so much, didn't matter.

Yeah. And she showed us, she says we'll go look at all the bestsellers. And we looked at them all and she says, do any of them look like Your book. I said nope.

More specifically, does your book, like it look like it belongs here? And it was like, oh no, no it does not. Yep.

So yeah, so it's fascinating. I guess it, the thing I want to point out is whatever you're interested in, you know, taking that deep dive into it, you, there's just an opportunity to learn a tremendous amount. And there's is there are like in this case, there are millions of books up on Amazon that just sit there and do nothing and Amazon owns I think between 60 and 70% of the self publishing business and we're going to get it on some other platforms as well. But right now we're trying to master this one and watching it go up the chart. So yeah, I'd love to have your involvement, love to get your review and your feedback. The book is essentially has some information about mistakes Dave and I made and overcome in our career. But it is really an aggregate of some of our favorite guests and the mistakes that they made. We ask each guest, you know, what's the best mistake that you've made? Something that taught you the most and stuck with you. It's kind of been become a hallmark of the Small Business show and we share those stories with that and you know, kind of synopsis and put those things together. So I had a great time making it. And when you buy that book, you also get an opportunity to get the, the next book in the Small Business Guide series, which is all about partnerships and there's a link to that up there too.

Cool. Yeah, no, it's been fun. Like you said, you said something really, I think really important. If you hire somebody to help you, you really want to make sure you learn something. It sounds so obvious when you say it, but us small business owners, we, you know, we're convinced that we can do everything and, and at times we need to really lean on, on being convinced of that because sometimes, many times we're the only ones around to do anything. So we have to believe that we can do everything, but it doesn't mean we're necessarily the best. And when, when you are in a position where you can, you know, afford to bring someone else in, hiring someone as an employee or as a contractor or as a coach, you really want to make sure they're better at the thing that you're hiring them to do than you like that. Like I it it, I heard somebody say it, I'm going to paraphrase it the wrong way, but it was, you know, like B players hire C players. Oh, that's True, A players hire other A players. Right? But you rarely find a B player that hires an A player because they're afraid of someone who's, who's better than them. And I don't really think it's an A, B or C player thing. I think it's that confidence thing in yourself and your business. And it's really hard to say, I'm going to give this portion of my business over to someone else who knows more than I did, and they might tell me I did some things wrong in the past. When you zoom out, of course the goal is you want them to tell you what you did wrong so that you can do it better. Like, that's why you're paying them. Or at least hopefully that's one of the reasons you're paying them. But, but, but it can be hard for the, you know, for the ego and, and all of those things to, to allow that.

You have to humble yourself.

You have to humble yourself. That's it. Yeah.

Especially if you've had some success and you kind of swashbuckled your way through a lot of this stuff and you're.

Just like, you know, term, I got.

To figure it out. Da, da. You know, and, and so, I mean, I, I, I face this all the time. It's like, well, I, I can, I can figure this out. I, I've got confidence in myself that I know I can figure it out, but you can. Totally different animal. And I've learned so much in a very short period of time, believe me.

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, it's cool. All right, let's go through, let's go through some of these favorite actions. You know, like you said, we came up with this question. You know, I was listening back to some of our interview shows, and I thought, man, there's great content here, but so much of it is sort of in the clouds, right? It's this sort of nebulous, feel good, not feel good stuff. But, but, but big picture stuff is really what we were learning from people, even with their mistakes. Most of those mistakes were, you know, zoomed out a little bit. And I really thought, man, I like offering people very specific, actionable tips. Like, that's my thing. And so I thought, why don't we ask people to do that? Like, it's not, it's not that the people we bring on the show can't. We just haven't encouraged them to. And it's been working out amazingly well. But as you pointed out today, Shannon, well, you know, there are, there are two Other people that might have some actionable tips to share. And we haven't really done that yet. So here we are. Yeah.

Yeah, that's, it's good stuff. So how about I start. I'll do one. Please do one.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah, we'll do a couple. And then, and then we'll, and then we'll, we'll talk about our sponsors and then we'll do a couple more. Yeah. Okay, cool.

One of my favorite things to do is, you know, just get up and walk around that. This action thing is meant to really check in with your team, check in with your employees, find out how they're doing, ask them, engagement, you know, do they need anything? And one of the things I always love to ask, and you can't ask it all the time, but, but once in a while you walk up and say, hey, I'd like you to think about something that could make your work more enjoyable, more accurate, more productive. Because a lot of times people just get kind of into the mode, especially maybe a mid level or lower level. And I don't say that in a derogatory fashion, but maybe an entry level employee, let's use that term, and they're not thinking maybe that you're open to hearing their idea or something, especially if they just started. And so I'd love to ask them that what would make your work better? You know, and just tell them to think about it. Don't put them on the spot right then and just tell them, hey, next time I check in with you, you know, give me some feedback or if you want to send an email. And then I like to wait a few days and when you're walking around again and ask them for an answer or make, if they don't have one, just say, hey, write it down or send me an email. And then I, then I think it's critically important to, to implement it, follow up, do something. So if they say, you know, I found this tool, I'll give you an example. In the repair business, when glass became just such a critical part of our business, one employee kind of came across this, this tool that was not designed to do rep what we, you know, we're going to do with it. But it worked so well. And then for a while we shared this tool because they were kind of expensive and everything else. And one guy was like, when I asked him that question, we, we each need one of these. You know, he's like, we can, we could increase our work this much, everything. I was like, okay, let's do it. And so Everybody got one of these tools at their station. I think they were 500 bucks or something like that. And it did. Everybody felt better. They weren't waiting for certain things. And I think what you're trying to do is you want to create kind of a take action culture and have them get in on it. You want the action to come from both ways. It's way more powerful when it comes from your team, even if you're nudging them in there. So my first one is get up and walk around and ask that question.

I like that. And this can very easily be implemented virtually or at a distance. Right. If your company. Well, I think every company right now is operating in virtual at some level. Most companies, not every company, but you know, check in with your people, just ping them casually, you know, just like not at a staff meeting, not at a scheduled meeting, but just a, you know, hey, I was thinking about you today. What would it take, you know, if I asked you, what would it take to make your work better, what would you say? You know, like, give it arm's length and say think about it for a couple days and then, and then like you said, come back to them with that, you know, a few days later.

And, and I like lines of communication open.

Yeah, I liked your, you know, your follow up that you have to implement. And, and I would, I would add to that. Either implement what they suggest or empower them to implement it, you know, but, but make that happen immediately. It's great if you can do it right, right on that, in that same conversation or on that same call, whatever it is, you know, and somebody says, I really wish that, you know, we were doing this with the way our YouTube channel works. And I was like, okay, well, yeah, you know, why don't we, don't we carve some time out of your schedule to do that and maybe move some things around so that you can start doing that right now. How does that sound? You know, that kind of thing. Oh God.

And I like the idea of you can also kind of focus them in areas that. I mean, my, my example is really broad. Sure. But like you say, hey, what could we do if it's the digital marketing guy, what could we do on the website that would make things better for you? What could we do on the YouTube channel that would be. Because you, you can't let them make these suggestions and then just blow them off. No, you better have a good reason if you can't implement it.

Right.

It's like, oh, like in my case, oh, you know what we can't buy 20 of these tools right now, but let's, let's buy five, you know, or let's buy 10 and then next quarter we'll buy another.

Whatever, whatever it is. Yeah. But yeah, have a good reason. And it might be the kind of thing like if somebody says, like in your case, okay, we need to buy, you know, everybody should have one of these, their station, like, okay, let me look at the budget. I'll get back to you. I'm going to come back to you by, by Thursday and we're going to have this conversation again and then that's a deliverable on you, right. So that they, they know that. Okay. Yep. He's taking a look. And this isn't an off the cuff decision, but, you know, taking it seriously and coming back and all that. So. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it's good.

Right on. All right, you're up, man.

All right, I'm up. I'm going to save my favorite one for, for later here in the show. And, and what's interesting is you and I did not coordinate on these, so it's entirely possible that either one of us. Will, will, will, yeah. Preempt the other guy. But one of my favorite things to do, and I do it every day, and it was a tip given to me by a very wise business person, aka Mr. Shannon Jean here, many, many years ago. Check your bank account balances every single day.

Someone else told me that too. I, I, I can't take credit for that.

Hey, but that just pass along.

I live it religiously, man.

Religiously. Yeah. And I will tell you, when you shared that with me, it was like, what a crazy idea. Like, you know, I was maybe looking at the bank accounts once a week or, you know, whenever I needed to, but not every day. But, you know, another smart person said that which is monitored is managed. And that's what happens here is you really get to start knowing where the health of your business is. Cash. Right? Like, unless your business is huge, then the health of your business might be something different. Like, I don't know if Apple obsesses about how much cash they have, but I will tell you, somebody's thinking about it all the time because if they weren't, they wouldn't have so much cash. Right? Like, these things do feed themselves. So, you know, checking that bank account balance every day is a huge thing. And you can set it up to be to, you know, have your bank notify you. Now usually with the app or whatever. I've tried that. I'M not sure I like that. I'm still. My inner jury is out on whether it's better to have that information pushed at you or if I've got to go pull it. Because I think there's something about going and pulling it. Because if it's pushed to me, I can see it on my watch and be like, yep, okay, I see what the number is. Great. Now I can move on with my day. There's not a whole lot of intention involved in reading, you know, interruption notification like that.

Whereas I would agree.

Yeah. So you can't see the, like, the.

Checking the balance is paramount, but you also get exposed to things. I get exposed to things that you might otherwise miss.

Yes.

If you do. Because I like to look at the quick summary and, you know, it's on your phone. This literally takes five minutes. Right. And if everything looks normal, but if something looks weird, it prompts you to go ask, you know, meet your bookkeeper or whatever.

Hey, whatever.

What's that charge? And you know, that kind of stuff. So.

Yep, for sure. Yeah. No, it, it really. It's a huge thing. And if I get, for whatever reason, if I've got stuff going on and I'm out of the habit of it, if I go two or three days without checking the balance, I suddenly start to feel lost. Now it's like, I don't know where my business is. Like, I need to, you know, get a handle on it. Where are we? Okay, that's where we are. Okay, good. That's where I thought we were. Or. No, that's not what happened. Like you said, why did things change dramatically in wonder? You know, positive or negative, that's a question you want to have answered. So. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, sure. That's great. That's a good one. I like it.

All right, I want to. I want to talk about our two sponsors right now, if that's all right with you, Mr. Yeah, yeah, let's. Okay. Yeah. Our first sponsor for today is. And talk about a tip that's good for your business. It's directmailmac.com SBS and the tip is use email marketing more in your business. That is like email. I know we think of it as like this. So many things have replaced it. Messages and slack and all that stuff. Email is something people still read. It's still one of the best ways to market whatever it is you're doing. Once you've got a customer's email address and you know what they're interested in, you know what they're doing. You can now target them and remind them of the things or tell them about new things that you've got going on in your business. And there's nothing better than running a native app on your Mac to do that. The web based interfaces, they get a little weird. This lets you manage it in one spot and you can create and send great looking email newsletters with direct mail. I've done it. We use it in a couple of our businesses here and it's just a fantastic tool because Direct mail is built specifically for the Mac. You get all your email marketing done in half the time because it takes advantage of all the great Apple technology you know and love. And what's cool is they've got two pricing plans. You can either pay as you go, like buying postage stamps that last forever, or if you're sending regularly, which you probably should be, but you know, whatever works for your business is fine. If you're sending regularly, then you can buy a monthly subscription and send as much as you want, right? So there's two ways to go. You're not locked in unless you, unless it makes sense for your business to be locked into that monthly subscription. And even then it's just month to month, but so you're never really locked in and you're, you're never paying for something that you're not using because you get to pick whether you're buying those postage stamps, you know, or buying the monthly subscription. So and if you're, you can actually go use direct mail with your own mail servers and all that stuff. But that's probably beyond what most of us. I don't even want to do that because running a mail server, I'd rather let the people at Direct Mail figure out how to run the mail server that's sending my emails and because they've already figured it out and they know what they're doing. So send your first email campaign today with a free download of Direct mail. And because you're a small business show listener, you can save 10% off of all full feature plans. So head over to directmailmac.com SBS or and see how they can help your business grow. And of course our thanks to Direct Mail for Mac. Our next sponsor is PDF Pen and PDF Pen Pro. Because PDF Pen Pro and PDF Pen 12.1 have arrived. This is the latest version of the ultimate tool for editing PDFs on the Mac. And it now includes even more powerful features including page label support in multiple formats for documents and Pro. Users can even go a step further with the ability to add or edit page labels. And that's in addition to all the great PDF pen 12 features that they brought up, which are the magnifier window that lets you zoom in on a document and you can even zoom across documents. It's really cool. You can customize your compression settings so that you're not having to take the PDF that PDF Pen creates and run it through something else. You can do it all now in PDF Pen and pick how you want things compressed so that you're getting the file quality and size balance that you want. And now they've got stationary with new paper colors for custom page designs and all kinds of other cool stuff. I use PDF Pen constantly for creating and signing contracts with people. It allows me to put. They've got some dynamic stamps that I can put in contracts that make it look a little more official when I put my signature in there, because it's got my name and it says approved by and it's got the date. And then of course, I can also put my signature in. I really like the ability to enhance it and spruce it up a little bit. A, it makes the contract look a little more professional, but B, it makes me look more professional when I send something out like that. And isn't that the point? So go check it out. Go to smilesoftware.com podcast and check out PDF Pen and PDF Pen Pro. Our thanks to Smile for sponsoring this episode. Shannon, what's your next tip?

My next one's all about Story. You know, we talk about story all the time, how important it is and everything. And this one's a little tougher and it's. And I have a tough time with it too, even though I do like to write, and I write a lot. But get out there and write a blog post. If you don't have a blog on your website, get one. If you don't write, get someone that works for you to do it. Hire someone to do, you know, contract, whatever, you know, get started, get your story out there, right? Create some content, share it on Facebook, LinkedIn and to your other channels. If you don't have a website, if you, you know, service business, I don't know why you wouldn't have a website. But if you don't break up these longer blog posts and post them in parts to your Facebook business page, you know, and you can write about anything. You can tell a story about how somebody used your product or your service, share pics of your employees. I mean, we used to post photos of our employee lunches every Friday, you know, literally Anything. People want to connect with you. The key is to do it on a regular basis, weekly, bi weekly, whatever, and then share it wide. People want to see it, share photos on Instagram, Facebook, whatever, because people are going to search for your business or the services and products that you offer. And the more kind of robust library of content you have out there, the more credibility you have. You know, you're around for a long time. They can click an about link. They find you on Facebook. Oh, that comes up in search. Oh, they found you on Instagram. That comes up. What do people say? People are commenting. You, you. You know, there's never been an. A better time to start today to write something. And I'm talking, when I say write something, you don't have to write like a, you know, a big long. This could be one or two paragraphs, and sometimes shorter is better if you do it on a more regular basis. Or take that thing you wrote and chop it up and push it out, you know, every few days or something like that. But that regular production of content that's related to your product, your services, it's really powerful. And the time is now to start.

Yeah, yeah. You know, as someone who has been in charge of publishing a website for now almost 22 years, I am the worst at getting blog posts out now. Thankfully, the people that work for me are not. So that's really good.

That's perfect. That's how you solved it, right?

Yeah. But here's the thing. Like, there are things I know I should be writing, and I hate the word should, but I'll use it against myself here. And I am the worst procrastinator when it comes to writing blog posts. Because in my head, I think, oh, this is a big fiasco. It's going to take a lot. And the reality is, like, I'm a really good writer. Most of us are much better writers than we think we are because we're getting so much practice these days between email and social media. I mean, think about how many words you write on Facebook a day, commenting to people, writing your own posts. I mean, I've seen things, I've posted things that I've tapped out on my phone that are like, you know what? This is really well written. Like, I care about it. I edit it, and I did it on my phone in four minutes. And it's like, you know, that could have easily been just a blog post for me. And now instead of. Instead of giving Facebook my content, which is what happens when I post there, I can give it to me and so think about those things when you're doing that. In fact, here's a brain hack. Start your blog post as a Facebook post, and then just copy the text and paste it on your own blog instead. Or in both places, if you want. Right. But it is not nearly as time consuming or involved as I think it is. And my guess is that I'm not alone in this. There might be some of you out there that sort of get yourself into the same scenario or like, oh, that's such a. It's a blank slate. There's so much to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And one of the things that really held me back on creating content for a long time was I was always paranoid about my grammar. I. I know I'm a decent writer, but, you know, guys like you, Dave, are always calling out that damn Oxford comma or whatever.

I'm a jackass about grammar. That's right.

So I was always there. So I. I signed up for this service called Grammarly, which I highly recommend. They should sponsor this show. I talk about it.

I agree. Yes.

But Grammarly will set you free, because not only checks your grammar, but it'll check your tone, and it'll suggest ways to not make sentences so wordy. I mean, lots of great stuff, and it's relatively inexpensive. And if content is something that you've been struggling with, it can really be a big help.

Yeah. Yeah. Good.

Cool.

All right. So this is definitely my current favorite one, and it's another brain hack. And my advice to you, my tip to you, is to let your calendar run your life. And by that I mean, if something is on your calendar, do it. And get in the habit of this. Because once you sort of surrender yourself to letting your calendar drive what you do every day, you now have the ability to decide what future you is going to do. So let's take that blog post, for example. Today, I don't want to write that thing. I got stuff to do. I got the show to record with Shannon. Crap, man. Like, I have all the reasons in the world to say today's not a good day for me to write that blog post. Now, we all know it's going to take me 10 minutes. It doesn't matter. But if I go put it on my calendar for 9:15am tomorrow morning to write that blog post, I have just now hacked my own brain. Because when 910 comes around and I get the alert from my calendar that in five minutes, I got to write that blog post, it's like, oh, that's right. I got to write that blog post, it's on my calendar. I've done the same thing with, you know, I like to, I, I actually, I enjoy riding my bike. We have a great neighborhood to ride around. I can get like a nice half hour ride in. I try to do it just before noon time each day, but you know, 11am comes around and it's like I got all this other stuff to do and I wouldn't, I wasn't doing it. And I know it's good for me, but it, like, it's good for me physically, obviously, to get out and work out, but it's also good for me mentally because it becomes that meditative time that we talk about so much. Like, you know, it's where I process things. And so I just put it on my calendar and now it's like, oh, yeah, that's right. I got to finish up what I'm, I got to wrap this up because I got a bike ride in seven minutes, so. Okay. And it's no different than a conference call that, you know, I might have with you. I always said that having a co host for a podcast gives you the benefit of having a friction point. If you want to delay, cancel, postpone the recording of the episode. Right. Because now I have to come to you and say, hey, man, not today. Like, we've done that for each other and it happens, but it's, it's not. Yeah, but it requires a little bit far between. Yes, but it requires some negotiation. It requires a discussion. And, and so I, I have, I have just become completely surrendered to what my calendar says now. I say completely. There are times where it's like, oh, yeah, I'm not going to get that bike ride. Like, I got. There's something going on, there's an emergency, something happening. Of course I know that. I'm the one that put it on there. I can take it off. It's okay. Right. But by and large, I would say 80 plus percent of the time, I just follow whatever's on my calendar. And that ability to dictate what future me is going to do is huge. Huge. So it is my current favorite brain hack. I mean, I've been employing it for a very long time, but I forget that it's one of my tricks sometimes. And like, like I said with this bike ride thing this summer, it was like, oh, right, I just, just got to put it on my calendar and then, and then the brain hacks already in place. I just, now I'm utilizing it better.

So, yeah, totally makes sense. Yeah, I like it.

It's good.

I like it. That's cool. All right, so mine kind of related to content, but also more about representing your business. So there's, it's. It's kind of one type of action, but there's three things, and I'll dig into each of them. One is if you don't have a Facebook business page, go create one. It's quick, it's easy. Your customers want to connect with you. The second one, create a LinkedIn page for your business. Again, it's free. People want to find you a great example of a company, really, that hits it out of the park. I think on their LinkedIn page is tech defenders and Gary von Merriw, who we've had on the show. Take a look how they're doing it. They share similar things on their Facebook page, but they, they do it differently on LinkedIn, which I really like. And then lastly, create or claim your Google my business page if you know it's already up there. If people start leaving reviews and search that anybody can do it, but you need to take control of it. If it's already there or you need to go create it because you want that representation to come up on the side of the search results. Again, it's your story. You create that narrative. Get out there and create those three pieces of digital real estate that don't cost you anything, but a little bit of your time. Yeah, really, really important.

I like that. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, link up your, your blog posts so that they go to LinkedIn and then make sure that, you know, and Facebook and I don't think you can do blog posts to Google my business pages. But, but, you know, keep the content flowing to those things. Whenever you've got content coming out on your, on your website, make sure your socials, you know, are getting that and echoing that so that you've got activity and people see that there's things happening. It makes think about when you look at a business, you know, if you're going to buy from somebody or visit a restaurant or whatever you go to, and, you know, you wind up finding them somewhere and it might be their website, it might be their, you know, for a restaurant or something, it might be their Yelp listing. And if you have, if you're in a business where it makes sense to have a Yelp listing, I would add Yelp to this list.

For sure. Yeah, for sure.

But, but, you know, wherever it is you find them, you want to see that they haven't. It's Just not like crickets and spiderwebs, you know, in a post from 2007 or 2017 or something. Right.

You know that does the opposite of good, right?

Yeah, it's like.

I know.

Don't know that we should. What. What else is out there, you know? Yeah. So, yeah, that. That's where the benefit comes in of claiming your free digital real estate, because it doesn't cost you anything to claim it, but not having it may well cost you. So. Yeah, I like that one, man. Y.

Cool. Right on.

I've got. Well, I've got many more. I don't know how many more we should each do. I mean, I feel like I'm going to do one more. I can do more than that, but. But my next one.

Let's each release to one more.

Okay. My next one is stopped. Stop trusting your memory. I have an extremely good memory. If you ask me my credit card numbers, I can read them all off to you. If you ask me for specific pieces of information, I can remember them. I'm gifted that way, and it's awesome. I'm super stoked that I have that ability. However, that does not mean that if I have a thought in the moment right now while we're doing this show, that I am going to remember it at the moment, that I need to take action on that thought later. In fact, I can almost guarantee you, based on past experience, that I will not remember in that moment or perhaps ever until someone says, hey, have you ever thought about this? And it's like, you know, I have, but since the moment I thought about it, I have not. So you've got to find ways of. Of capturing the thoughts that you have. And, you know, in the podcast here, something you turned me on to a long time ago is this glass whiteboard that I have above my keyboard. Quartet from Quartet. That's right. And it's great because I can just jot things down on it. But if I'm not doing a podcast, I will capture it either in Evernote or. Or simply putting it on my to do list, you know, is. Is a great thing. I. I have limited places where I will put things, because if you have too many places where you will put things, that's like storing it in your head, right? It's. It's there, but it doesn't mean you're going to stumble across it. But find systems that work for you for, you know, retaining or being reminded of what you. Of the. The prior thoughts you had. You still get credit for having the prior thought. There's there's nothing wrong with capturing it and moving on. And I say that because I've, I've, I've encountered people that are like, oh, no, no, no, I'll remember. I don't need. It's like, yeah, oh, cool. But it's probably false. You know, it's. Yep. You have the thought. Capture it and then, then you can take action when it's appropriate. And, you know, if you combine that with my last tip, now you've got your calendar there you have the thought, you put it on there. Now you've just given future you a task. You essentially treat with the calendar, you're treating yourself like your own employee. Right. You know, it's like, so, yeah, there you go. So, yeah, don't trust your memory. Yep, it's. I love it.

I use the Reminders app all day long to help me with that.

Yeah.

Because I'm constantly going around, oh, I got to take care of this. Or someone will ask me something and, you know, I'll go ahead and, you know, have. Try to try to get it to where I'm going to remember the thing. And using that reminders really helps me a lot.

Yeah, yeah. Whatever it is that works for you, there's many different systems of it, but yeah, find one and I would, you know, there's the whole GTD thing and all of that stuff. I don't know too. I know a few, but most business owners, entrepreneurs that I know are not GTD people.

That's fun. Yeah, yeah.

You know, I find a lot of employee type people that are great with gtd, but most business owners, I know, it just, it. I don't know, maybe it's a mindset thing or something. Find something as no more complex than you need is really what I would go for. And the Reminders app, you know, you're talking about Apple's Reminders app. Super simple. I mean, it, like, arguably too simple.

Right.

But is it, you know, like, do you need it to do more? Maybe not, you know, like, get it simple, complex enough to get all of the things you need and nothing more so that it's not. You want it to work for you, you don't want to work for it. And with gtd, I find like, I'm, I, you know, I'm, I'm constantly falling behind on the things that I need to do to manage my list. And it's like, no, no, that's not my job. My job is to run my business, not run gtd. So that's, you know.

Yeah, yeah, I agree yeah, totally. So I'm going to wrap this up with something a little bit different. I have, of course, a bunch of other stuff that we can. We could have a whole nother show. One of the things that I've starting to champion and I'm going to do it more on the show. You've heard me a little bit in some of the introductions is that I'm trying to create a system that we can turn the term small business into a verb. And just like when you go Google something, Right. So, you know, when I say I'm ready to small business, you know, that's action. You know, I want to embrace action all the way around when we're talking about small business because just think about the things that you do. And I would challenge all of our listeners and myself and Dave to start thinking of that term small business as a verb and that we're going to always take action. It's just going to be a. We're constantly programming our brains and if we think about. What are you doing today? Oh, I'm going to go small business. What are you going to do? I'm small businessing. I'm going to teach my employees to how to small business or I'm going to go share how to small business on the small business show.

Business show. Yeah.

I think that if we can just get in this mantra of small business all, you know, being all about action, we're all going to benefit and we're all going to be able to share in our mutual success as we just, you know, continue to embrace action here. And I think that is really going to be a big part of. Of what we're going to do here going forward is. Is pushing that. That concept.

I like it, man. Yeah. Turning anything into an action. Yes, it's great. Yeah, exactly.

What we're doing, it's not sitting back on your computer, you know, thinking of ideas, trying to invent the great mousetrap, whatever. It's doing the work.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, it's implementing things, looking at ideas and thinking about minimal viable products that we can get out and then iterating.

Right.

Taking action, iterating over and over. How do we change it? How do we change it? You know, we all know people that have been waiting for the home run their whole life and talking about how they're going to make millions and do this and do that. Well, that's great and that's wonderful. Them and I wish them the best of luck. And sometimes that happens.

Yes. But most of the time when you make that million dollars, it happens in retrospect, you're like, oh, look what happened. We weren't focused on just collecting this big pile of money. We were focused on driving something forward. Forward and in the, in the, in the path, the, you know, the, the cash generation machine, the wealth generation machine starts to grow and starts to do its job. But you're driving every single day. You, like you said, you're not sitting back letting the machine go. Although I, I mean, I have times where I dream of maybe that would actually be a really nice.

Some of it.

Yes. Yeah, yeah.

But once that, once that, once you do, once some of your systems do get automated, build new seasons.

Yeah.

You're developing more. Okay, now it's time to small business again. How do I add this? How do we do this? How to grow this? And I would argue that if, if you haven't been hitting not to focus on baseball metaphor. It's, it's on my head because it's on now again, you know, is baseball.

I, I don't follow baseball. Is it, Is baseball happening?

Yeah, they're just doing some pre stuff yet my wife's all excited because the Giants are playing the Dodgers, I think, Thursday.

Wow. Hey, look, the world is moving forward. This is good.

Yeah, there's nobody in the fans, but they are typing in noise, which is kind of surreal, but.

Oh, that's weird, huh?

Yeah, it is weird.

But maybe they could put, put microphones on everybody's TV and they could hear everybody cheer and pipe it all back in. I don't think that's a good idea.

But, but if, if you haven't gotten learned all the skills that it takes to hit singles and doubles and all that kind of stuff, when the time comes, when the opportunity comes to hit that home run, I don't believe you'll have the talent stack to take advantage of it. I've seen it. It slips through people's fingers.

You won't have the momentum to take advantage of it or the knowledge or.

The network or the advisors. You know, you want to have the.

Confidence you want of the guts.

Confidence.

Yeah.

You know, no. So, you know, you need to be able to just act and you need to be able to small business as a verb and really take action when those opportunities come up. So you hear to hear first. We are all about small business action and we're going to continue to focus on that going forward. There might be a small business guide in the future.

I'm totally going to be a hypocrite here because I started the episode saying we talk about this pie in the sky stuff, the big picture stuff, but really we want to talk about specific things you can do. And my favorite takeaway from this episode is this last one from you, which is definitely a big picture thing. It's. I mean, it is and it isn't, but. But, yeah, yeah, yeah. But. So, yeah, it's good. This is great, man. I'm glad we. I'm glad we did this. I hope you're glad we did this. Look, tell us. We. We are very shallow people. Okay. And so we love like to know that what we're doing here is helping even just one person out there. So if you're the one hearing this and it might just be you, it's probably not, but it might be. Maybe we've crafted this particular MP3 just for you and nobody else gets the same version. So send us a note. Feedbackus show co. You don't even have to put content in the message. Just say thanks in the subject line and hit send. We would love that from you. If you. If you want to add more in the body, that's great. And if you have a business tip, an action tip that you want to share, put it in the body of the message, hit send. That's feedbackusinessshow.co. yes. There's three S's in a row there. Business Show Co. Send us an email. We would love to hear from you. That's what I got for today. Shannon, you got anything else that's good for me?

Me, man. As soon as we're done here, I'm getting back. I'm going to go small business some more.

I'm going to go small business some more, too. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Thanks so much for listening, folks. Thanks for checking out our Sponsors, direct mail, Mac.com SBS, smilesoftware.com podcast and make sure you keep living that charmed life, because that's what it's all about.