Bank Scams and a New Business for Shannon

Business brain, episode 511 for Wednesday, December 27, 2023. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take a few ideas, we crunch them, we analyze them, we discuss them, we dissect them so that we can each tune our business brains together individually and collectively, every single week. Sponsors for this episode include gusto.com businessbrain, where you can go to get three months totally free payroll, benefits, admin, and more. We'll talk more about that in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, the last episode of Business Brain for the year, I'm Dave Hamilton, and out.

In Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean and happy. Happy to wrap up 2023.

I'm happy. Yeah.

Yeah. It's an interesting year, to say the least.

Yeah. Thank you for saying that. Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah. I had an. I had an interesting thing happen this year, Shannon. I can't believe I didn't share it with you and our listeners, but the time has come to share it because I've been approached with the same scam. And my bank saved us $25,000.

Wow.

About two months ago. Yeah.

That's amazing.

Yeah. So we're rocking and rolling. We're doing our things. Like, Thanksgiving is coming up or whatever. You know, it's like, whatever. It's like, I guess early November, maybe Halloween. Ish. It was a busy, you know, kind of chaotic time, whatever. And I get a text, a slack message in our backbeat media slack from Lisa, my wife, who does our bookkeeping, and, you know, like, all of that stuff. And she's like, hey, the bank bounced that wire. Do you have other, like, do you have any other instructions? Do you want me to reach out to the guy? And I'm like, I'm sorry, what? And she's like, yeah, like. And she told me some name or whatever. I'm like, I have no idea. Finally, it was like I needed to just, like, there was a lot of, you know, being transacted on 16 different levels. Like, we all are all the time, you know? And I'm like, all right, you got to start. Treat me like I'm five years old. I have no idea what you're talking about. And she's like, the big wire for, like, $24,892 or something. I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, to who? She's like, that. That consulting thing. And I'm like, nope. She's like, you told me about it. I'm like, nope. She had gotten an email that appeared to be from me. Email addresses are easy to spoof.

Yeah, yeah.

And it was like, hey, can you send this wire to Steve? So and so it's got to go out today and that. But the from address was not from me. It wasn't from my like David Backbeat, you know, email, but it said it was from Dave Hamilton, you know, And I'm like, I didn't. And, and in this moment she's realizing, oh my God. And so she like, she emailed back and forth with this person that she thought was me. And even as she was showing me everything, she's like, I can't believe this didn't raise any flags for me. She's like, this person doesn't communicate the, you know, doesn't use words like you do. You would never have sent me this via email. You would have slacked me. We use, we stay away from email for like inter office communication. Right? You know, we, we use slack. She's like, I don't know why this worked on me. She's like, but it did. I'm like, clearly. You know, and, and like, thank goodness the bank caught this.

So she sent the wire, she initiated the wire and the bank came back and said, hey, we need further verification.

This account is flagged as a spam account. Oh yeah. Wow. Wow.

Good on your bank, dude.

No kidding. Like, we say bad things about our banks sometimes, of course, can't say that about this one right now.

That's terrific. It is interesting because I've seen this lately maybe, I'm sure a lot of people have, but every time you hit points, log into the bank or do something with payments, there's a flag. Hey, scams are up. You know, everything. Here's how to avoid all this kind of stuff. And you know, I think I'm pretty savvy and have taught my family to be savvy and people that work for me. But it, I could just see it. Very easy to slip things through.

I got an email from, from Jeff, one of the guys that, that works for us at Backbeat the other day. And he was like, hey, make sure before I just changed banks. Things are kind of chaotic. Before you send the next payroll, please, you know, update my banking. You might, you know, my, here's my routing and here's the, you know, for the ach transaction.

Yeah.

And my first thought was, why is he wasting my time with this? He knows Lisa does this. So it worked on me too for a second. And then I, and then I looked and I saw. I'm like, Wait, it's. It's from his full name. So these people have figured out who the powers that be are. Or maybe they haven't. They just kind of, you know, you know, cast a wide net. Yeah, but they know who, like, the full names of people. But what I noticed, I have my mail set up for certain people to show up as VIPs, and that includes all the people that work for me and, like, my family. And it, like, I noticed I'm like, something's not right. Like, there's no star next to his name. There should be. And was like, oh, because it's not coming from his, like, Jeff at backbeat address or whatever. Yeah. And. And so it was like. So it's like, okay, well, this is B.S. jeff didn't. Jeff doesn't know anything about this. He didn't do this. But, like, I don't know, if we hadn't been through the thing for 25 grand, you know, two months ago or.

Whatever, you wouldn't have. Maybe. I don't just processed it.

I don't know if it. So that's. I wanted to share it because a, fascinating story and B, hopefully it reminds if somebody's asking you to wire them money, like, and especially if it's someone you know, like, contact them via a different method to confirm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Share your scams stories with us. Feedbackusbrain show so we can share them with everybody else and all protect ourselves.

All right, look, I want to tell you about our sponsor, Gusto, but instead of reading a script about Gusto's payroll and benefits, I want to tell you what small business owners who use Gusto, what they say. These are people who use Gusto every day. Here's one now with Gusto. I think of payroll as a 32nd job. The website is so friendly and a joy to use. Friendly payroll. I mean, like, that's new. Amy from Utah says, I love Gusto so much. They do our medical, dental, vision, and life insurance. It's so painless. It's like going to the spa and we have great options and rates even though we're a super small team. Health insurance, like going to the spa. This is I. This is why we have Gusto on as a sponsor. Right. And here's what Amneet says about Gusto's customer support team. Whenever something comes up, I reach out and literally 24 hours later, they tell us what to do or assure us they've already handled it for us. Friendly humans, smart technology. This is great. And the list goes on. And right now, because you're a listener of business brain, you get three months free when you go to Gusto.com businessbrain. Yep. Three months of payroll, benefits, admin, and more, totally free. I mean, like, we gotta go do this right now. Shannon. Again, that's Gusto.com businessbrain. Three months of payroll, benefits, admin and more, totally free. Go check it out. Gusto.com businessbrain and our thanks to Gusto for sponsoring this episode. So, Shannon, a couple of years ago, we started asking you folks, asking our listeners about how, like, what you wanted to hear on the show and that sort of thing. And one of the things that we. You didn't. You folks didn't say this, but we intuited it, and I think we got it right, and we have succeeded at all the way through 2023, and we're about to fail at, is that we stopped having business coaches on the show.

What an intro. What an intro.

Shannon, do you have a new business that you're launching that you want to tell us about?

Yeah, I want to talk about this concept. Yeah. Because for years, I have always wanted to, you know, productize my knowledge, you know, and I've written a few books.

We do on the show here.

Yeah, Right. But I was like, okay, I. I really want to get. And the other thing, I. I'm, you know, like, kind of like, I did the experiment about five years ago where I wanted to start a business just on my phone. Now I want to start a business that I'm not geographically limited because I want to. I need to do some things that I need to be different places, and I don't want to be tied to anything.

Totally get it.

Next series of my life. So I'm like, okay, how do I really build a business that can productize my knowledge? So, of course, I hired a coach to help me start a business to be a coach.

I think that's the people who I see that are coaches that are successful and thriving are many of them. Not all of them, but the majority of the ones that I see, and this is anecdotal. It's not data. Are coaches that coach people to be coaches. Right. Like the meta coaches. Yeah, because those are the people that are spending money. Yeah, yeah.

And it's interesting that one, you know, I've just had some kind of revelations of learning this, how to do it and building a curriculum and. And figuring out the why. Why somebody would hire me and. And how to focus in on what their pain points are. And so I'm learning A lot, which is terrific. I love it, you know, and it's. And it makes me very nervous because it's something brand new. And what I've realized is that for years, decades of being in the product business, well, I've kind of been able to hide behind the product, right?

Oh, of course, yes.

Me out there, if the product fails, whatever, I'll just get another product, I'll buy another load, I'll do the whatever.

Yeah.

But now, but if this doesn't work, well, it's on me, right. It's my knowledge. It's. It's really hanging it out there. And, and so I've struggled. I've been working on it for about a month or so and I've got this great guy who's helping me through it. And a big part of it is, to your point, building credibility and authenticity. And what I've learned about the coaching business is a lot of coaches out there that have never started a company, never sold a company, never had employees, never had to fire people, never had, you know, don't have a podcast that they've run know with you for eight years and almost nine episode. Almost nine. So when I explain, when I connected with this, you know, my coach, he was just like, dude, you, you have all this stuff that most of these people don't have. We just have to figure out how to point it into where someone, hey, this is. I can be of help. This is how to do it. So it's, it's really been great and it's definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone, but I feel like the last couple weeks especially, I've made some really good progress and I'm at the point now where I actually need to practice and I'd love to make this offer and find a few people, listeners that would love to connect and maybe I can help solve a problem. You may have a particular pain point, you may have a question, you may just want some feedback, but I'd love to give you half an hour of my time for free and to just go through this framework that I'm working on and answer some questions. So it would, it would hopefully help you. I think it will and I know it'll certainly help me. And the way to get connected with me is just go to my website, which is my name, shannong.com and slash free. So Shannon jean.com free. And I'm going to pick about 10 or so people. I'm putting this out on a few other platforms as well. And I'm going to, I've got a questionnaire to ask, you know, hey, tell me about your business. And if I feel like I'm, you know, because I really do love talking about this. Hopefully if you've heard me, you know, talking for the last five years, you understand how much I enjoy this stuff and that's why I do this show. So it'd be great. I'd love to meet it. Meet some people, share some knowledge, solve a few problems and keep going down this path. No, and I'll keep talking about it.

I like this, this idea of a coach. Like what, what you're going through. I like what you're offering people. But, but the part that gets my wheel spinning is like what you've been doing for the last month. Ish. Where you've got somebody that's, that's a professional, an expert, but absolutely. But really just an expert third party helping you get over that. That. The imposter syndrome, really, in a sense.

That'S a big part of it.

Yeah. It's like, no, you have all these things and then of course, not just convincing. You need to get over it. But part of the process of convincing you is helping you assemble your knowledge into a curriculum and deliverable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, let me show you why you're not an imposter because I will help you build this class and, or whatever you're, you know, this, this framework. Yeah. Yep.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So it's, it's been great. And it's, it's. I feel like it's, it's. I, I should have done like I said earlier. You know, I'm always about 12 months behind and I talked about the last episode, so it's. I would love to have started this. That'll be my one regret. And I always say it. It's like, I wish I would have started it earlier. I wish I would have done it sooner.

Yep. And second best time is today.

Second best time is today. Right. And you know, I posted up on X this morning, you know, there's this. You say, oh, that was time well spent. Well, think about that. Every day we're spending our time, no matter what. It's the most valuable, precious thing we own. And every day we're spending it and are we making those right decisions and is it, you know, so I am super committed to focusing on spending my time in valuable ways. And, and I'm also, you know, I love helping people. It gives me a great feedback loop. We talked about the social stuff last social benefits in the last episode. It's a very similar thing. You want to work with great people and you want to, you know, impact their lives in a positive way. So I would love to talk to, you know, business owners, Shannon Jean.com free and we'll put a link in the show notes for you.

It's already, it's already there. Yeah.

Terrific. Appreciate you. Let me give me the opportunity to talk about it, Dave, and I'll keep talking about how it's working, whether I'm sure I'll fail miserably at some things.

And hopefully I have no doubt that's how we learn. Folks, thank you. To Shannon's point, thank you for choosing to spend your time with us not just today, but, you know, over the last year, over the last nine years. For many of you, it really, that is not something that is lost on us. I know we say thank you at the end of every episode. Every episode. And it might sound automatic, it might be automatic, but it is heartfelt every time. You know, I say it because I mean it. And Shannon, I know you feel the same way. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for hanging out with us. Thanks for a great year. Have a safe new year, folks. And, you know, we'll see you next year. Make sure you check out gusto.com businessbrain to get those three free months of payroll, benefits, admin and keep living that charmed life. Happy New Year. See you on the other side.