Boss Life Author Follow-up, the benefits of being unemployable

Small Business show episode number 84 for Wednesday, September 14, 2016. Greetings, folks, and welcome to. Welcome to the Small Business Show. The show by, for and about small business owners or anyone crazy enough to think they want to be in this world. We would love to have you. Welcome to the club. We've got jackets here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. They're straight jackets. We should get jackets. Yeah, it's a straight jacket. That's right. That's right. Yeah. That's very funny. Good stuff. It is. It is interesting that, you know, looking from the outside and you see people running the business and you think, oh, they're so lucky and this and the other thing. But, you know, and we are. Oh, yeah. Like I said, we lead a charmed life. And I always make the comment, you know, we have lots of flexibility. I don't think you have freedom.

No.

Because you're just connected in so many different ways. There's no freedom. No. Yeah, yeah. There's just no way you can. At least at the level, I think the small business level that, that most of us operate on, you're always, you know, it's just got you, it's got its hooks into you.

Yeah. I don't know. I look at my father in law, who would be an interesting person to have on the show. Actually, now that I think about it, he runs a business that he bought. He bought a lawn care business in Florida. He moved down to Naples. He bought a lot. This was not his first business. Sure. But he bought this after he had sold his first business or two, I guess just one. And it had maybe 20 employees when he bought it. He didn't know anything about lawn care other than that people needed it and recurring revenue. He did his homework and now it has 300 employees. He's grown this thing. Oh, yeah. It's insane, right? Yeah. He's got, I mean, people say he's got the Midas touch, but what he has is the touch for A, caring about numbers and B, caring about his employees. And probably not in that order. You know, he, he really takes care of his people, but he also takes care of the numbers and, and obviously that takes care of his people too. But, but, you know, so with 300 employees, that business darn well better be able to run itself. Right. I mean, I mean, but it doesn't.

Yeah, you. Certain aspects, certainly the, the mowing the grass and doing that stuff.

Right.

It's a day in and day out that stuff happens. But you know, he's, he's, you know, running the business.

He is so engaged in it on a daily basis.

Correct.

Yeah.

And hopefully he loves it, right? He does, you know.

Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, listen, you know, sitting around as we all do, there's the things that as family members, we vent to each other about, about our various businesses and in fact all of the things in our lives. But he loves it. Like, like we do.

Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. It's. I mean, you can commiserate with each other about it, but. Correct. You know, that's, that's just normal stuff.

And it is just normal stuff. That's right.

And you power through it. So we, we just finished up this interview with Paul Downs, the author of Boss Life, and we've mentioned the book here a couple times and we'll link it again in the show. You know, and, and I kept thanking him. I probably think him, you know, too many times. But I just really. His book really struck a chord with me because it was so different than other business books. Oftentimes, you know, these business books are written by people, maybe consultants or other, other business owners that have had a lot of success, but in my opinion, you know, they often feel like manuals that are missing pages. And you know, Paul's book really was a day to day kind of walkthrough of a year in the life of his company. Good and bad, extremely transparent. And as well his personal life to a certain extent that you know, which all of us, our personal lives are wrapped around or wrapped up and tangled up in our, in our businesses, there's just, I don't think there's any way around it. So I really enjoyed the book and I loved having him on. He has a really good. He carries himself in a very calming fashion. Fashion as he's, as he's describing like really important stuff that I don't think he thinks maybe is. Well, I'm sure, I'm sure he thinks important.

But so he was so matter of fact about things and that was very, it was, it was very refreshing. I mean, even when like when I asked him a question, he said, well, that's a very west coast way of thinking.

I love that.

I was like, well, dude. But it was great. Like he didn't, he just didn't care. And, and, and hon, honestly, that's like a very east coast way of dealing. That's a very New York way of dealing with people. It's like, I'm not gonna like that. I'm just gonna call you out on it, but not in an aggressive and overly. I mean, I guess that's a little aggressive, but not really. Not in a mean spirited way or anything like. Well, I'm gonna dismiss that because I don't believe in it and I'm not gonna let you buy me into it, but I'm gonna explain to you why.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. And he was great about it. Yeah. And his speaking style was. And I love you, Paul. Before this. It was oddly engaging.

It shouldn't be very calming.

It was very calming. Yeah.

Yeah. As he's talking about. Very tumultuous. And you know, when you read this book because you just really need to do it, you'll see and there's many terrifying moments, if you will, and he's walking you through it in a very, you know, even keeled way that I think maybe that allows you to absorb it better. Right. Because it's. Especially those of us that have been through it where, you know, you're short on cash and you're struggling, you know, at some point or you can't give yourself a paycheck at this point and you're frustrated because your employees think you guys are making tons of money. You know, he's kind of walks you through those in a very straightforward, matter of fact way that makes it more approachable, which I really liked. I loved his comment where he said he really started the business because he felt he wasn't suited to work for other people.

It was such a nice way of saying it.

My father said the same thing to me. He didn't use those exact words, but he said that to me a number of times. Who do you think you are? That kind of stuff. When I was very young and I had the audacity to just figure I can figure this out, you know, and, and, but you know that he was coming from a standpoint that you always went to work for someone, even if you were going to launch your own business, you always had to go work somewhere else and learn about a business first.

Yeah.

Then. Then leave and, and start it. And like in, in my case, I didn't do that. In Paul's case, it didn't sound like he did it, you know.

Really?

No. And so, you know, you don't. Maybe you don't know any better, but like, like we always say, you know, you're kind of, we're patently unemployable and.

And that's in our own heads. Certainly for me, I mean, the people that I worked for in the early days all loved me. But It. It killed me, you know, because I. Because to be a good employee, I had to bite my tongue some of the time. And. And really, as I got older, it got harder and harder to bite my tongue about things. When I, you know, when and can convince yourself that you're inexperienced and you are inexperienced, you can say, oh, well, I have this idea. But these people that have been doing it longer, clearly they know better. And you realize through it that, no, they don't know better. They just know one way, and it's not always better. Sometimes it is and sometimes it's not. And frankly, as now an older business owner, I'm very sensitive to that. And I always encourage people to tell me, if you think you have a better way of doing this, I will listen to you. I may not agree with you, and I may pick apart whatever you have. In fact, I will definitely pick apart whatever you have and then go with it anyway, you know, because I want to. Because I want to know what are all the problems with this idea that you have? Great. All right, well, there's more benefit than risk, so let's do it, but let's pick it apart. But, you know, I don't know where I'm going with this, but I think there's a lesson there.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that it doesn't necessarily have to be better, a better idea, but it's different.

Yeah.

And. And that's. That's a valuable thing to. To get your employees, young and old, on board with, hey, you know, we've done it this way for, you know, X number of days, months, years. What if we did it this way? Because I often find if, you know, like. Like a lot of small business owners, you get disconnected a bit from some of your folks. And if. When you step in and start having conversations, especially with newer employees, you'll hear that, oh, yeah, well, this is just the way it's done. I don't know why I do it this way, but somebody told me that this is always the way. And so I often try to say, well, do you have another way? Could you eliminate a step there? Because you got to go A, B, C and D. I mean, can we eliminate C if we change the. Whatever. Change the software, change the computer, did this, moved this thing. Right. It could be something. As I walk out in the warehouse and I'll see guys walking, you know, five feet every single time they have to grab something, and I go over and say, well, couldn't we just, like, redesign this work area so you don't have to walk 5ft 100 times a day. You know, those kinds of little things, they're like, they look at you like, well, I didn't know I could do that. So, you know, empowering people to challenge you, I think is very important for your, for your employees.

Yeah.

Creating a, you know, Paul talked a lot about what drove him because, you know, as I was reading the book is, you know, it's a span of 2012 that he went through and describes. And I just think, man, this guy's just getting beat up, you know, and I really felt for him, but he just kept powering through it just like we always do. There's like no alternative. And you know, his comment, I think about what kept him going was he loved creating the business and keeping it going and creating an environment and a culture that his employees could enjoy as well. And fundamentally that is such a great, great thing because no matter what you do, you sell something, you fix something, you, whatever, whatever you do. Yeah, whatever you do. If you can, as a small business owner, create that environment where everybody feels safe enough to challenge you or safe enough to throw out a different idea without feeling, you know, like, oh, they're just going to think, you know, I'm stupid or whatever, or I haven't been here long enough. That's one thing that, you know, people always, yeah. Think about, well, I haven't been here long enough. I don't know, you know, ask questions. If you can create that kind of environment, I think it, it's a kind of a self fulfilling thing where it just keeps making it better, you know, making things better, that culture that you want. And you know, I love that. I think it's fantastic.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, you know, and, and I also want to talk about the, this kind of pivot that, that Paul made. I mean, the reason why he reached out, I think where most of us would be kind of hunkering down, you know, when things weren't going good, he reached out to the New York Times, their small business blog, and said, hey, I think my business might be going under. How about I write about that? You know, that's a backwards thinking.

I mean, I felt a little bit better about it when he said that his initial offer was to do it anonymously.

Yes.

Because. Because otherwise. Yeah, it's this whole, It's a good way of thinking. I mean, obviously it served him very well, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But we would never have had, there would never have been a reason for us to even know about a cabinet maker or. Sorry, he was a cabinet Maker. I guess he's a conference table maker now. Yeah. Ye. But there's no reason that he would have been on this show had he not done that because we.

That's right.

Wouldn't have known about.

You would know it. Yeah.

That's all. Yeah, yeah.

And you know, you mentioned the cabinet maker. I mean, that's what he started out. He started out, you know, making furniture for people and doing things. And he describes that in the book and kind of the backstory. But he quickly realized, hey, we were good at making these very unique and large and expensive, in some cases conference tables for some of the biggest organizations in the world. You know, any, you know, medium sized business as well. So that's kind of the direction or that is the direction that he pushed the company because he's like, well this is something unique. Not everybody does it. And in the book he describes, he just happened. He couldn't figure out where all this business was coming from until he started googling it and looking things up. And he realized that again, super transparent. It's not some mystery like he's an SEO guru or something. He's like, I had no idea why Google decided in the early, you know, 2000s or whatever it was that if you search for custom conference table, my site should be number one.

Right.

And that's what started driving his business. You know, so he's, he's not an.

SEO guru, he's an SEO savant is what it is.

Yeah, there you go. He realized it. And you know, and the thing, like it's, you know, we all wear so many hats as small business owners. And in Boss Life, Paul describes all these things that I've done, you know, working on advertising, trying to manage your AdWords account. What's wrong if I increase this bid on this keyword? Does this go up? And to his credit, he runs it through and really shares the numbers with you. Okay. I spent an extra $6,000, for example, in AdWords. Did I get extra this many more calls and that of thing. It was fascinating and extremely useful because he attached those real world, you know, numbers to it instead of just, just kind of generalities like, oh yeah, business got better, you know.

Yeah, yeah. Very, very. It's great. Yeah, I, I'm, I'm, I liked it. It's good stuff, man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did, I did too. Yeah.

And then what he, when he said, he said something interesting. Well, he said a lot of interesting things. One of the things was right out of the gate when he said, we do about 3 million a year and we're located in Philadelphia and all that. It's like no one ever says that about their business. And he wasn't bragging, he was just informing so that you knew where to level set. It's again, very. But he said, when he talked about writing the book, he said something that was very interesting. He said, I could do this with very little effort on my part, which he followed up with by saying, all I had to do was write the book. And this was very interesting to me because when he said I could do it with very little effort, I thought, well, you still had to write the book. And then he said all I had to do was write the book. And I thought, oh, what a smart guy to just intuitively know that the easy part about writing a book is writing the book. Right? Getting it out in front of people, getting it published. Like that infrastructure was pulling him in or inviting him in. I should say yes. And he took the invitation. But he knew that for him, he had to do the easiest job. He didn't need to invent a publishing company to promote the product that he was going to create. And that is creating a great product is a given in any business venture. You have to do that, or at least a moderately good product. Let's be honest. There's a lot of businesses out there that sell things that aren't great, but they do fine because they have the rest of their infrastructure in place to promote and sell and service and do whatever it is that you need to do. So I thought that one comment rung a bell with me. It was like, ooh, what an interesting thing to say. All he had to do was write the book.

Yeah, because it wasn't like he wrote the book and then he was pounding the pavement trying to get it published. He had gotten some exposure. And I would say that his willingness to talk about the numbers and his success, or lack thereof, at different parts of his career, like all of us, that's, I think, what propelled his. His. His success in, in the writing field. Because it's very unusual and I'm always suspect. Like, you know, and I've talked to you about this before, there's. There's a lot of websites out there that purport to, you know, want to help small businesses and want to do different things. But oftentimes, you know, when. When I go to a. And I see sites and they talk in all these huge numbers and we're making this and we're doing these, not only do. Do I not believe it, in many cases, I'm not sure that everyone. It's kind of like the weight loss thing or if you buy this course, you're going to be super successful. It usually doesn't happen. The people that make it, in my experience, and eventually key is eventually get to live the charmed life are the ones that put in the effort day in and day out and figure out how to get through those tough times where the people that chase these big numbers all the time, and I'm going to be this and we're going to do this more often than not are the ones that don't make it right.

Well, you know, and digging deeper into this thing about the, about the book. Anytime someone, because I've had people come to me over, you know, the last decade plus whatever it is, and say, hey, you know, we'd like to have you write a book that we could publish because, you know, I've got a little bit of name recognition, right. I've got some expertise. And so it's like, oh great. My problem with. And I have never taken anyone up on this. And the reason is like you, I get suspect. It's like, well, wait a minute, why should I let them publish my book? I should publish my own book.

Especially now.

That's right, especially now. But then it doesn't happen because I also know that's a really hard thing to do. So not only do I have to write the book now, I have to build whatever this publishing empire is, you.

Market it and everything else.

I've got some of the pieces of that in my world, but not all of them. And so it probably would have been smarter for me at some point to just write the stupid book. And if somebody else can't publish it, well, then I wait until that expires and take the book and sell it somewhere else. So it's interesting that he very immediately recognize that. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's smart. It's smart.

That's, that's great.

Yeah.

And. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's good. It's definitely on my, my list of, you know, must read, you know, books for, you know. And I asked Paul, one of the things I asked him, did he think the book was suited for new business owners, you know, or people trying to get into business versus, you know, long term business owners like us. And I kind of have mixed feelings. I do think it is very helpful to read about someone going through these experiences to know that you're not alone when you're struggling and those kinds of things. But I guess the big optimist in me, that's the cheerleader that's always trying to move people forward and help them be successful. I worry that somebody's going to read this and go, man, this is tough. How am I going to get through this? So I do have mixed feelings, but I think if, to Paul's point, it is extremely helpful to read the book to know that you're going to struggle, but then to hear Paul's story and say, look, you know, when you have these difficulties, not only do you have to just power through it and keep going for all the reasons that we've talked about here and in last week's interview, but you don't know about other opportunities that are going to come along. And we talk about it here all the time. Saying yes all the time and looking for the things and, you know, back to where we were discussing here. He's worried thinking, hey, my business is going to go under. Maybe people would be interested in hearing about that or reading about that. That's unusual thinking. And so I guess listening to his take on it, I think it would be good for any business owner or prospective business owner to have this book on their shelf or on their Kindle or their phone or whatever to be able to read through and how, you know, just a straight up real business person, real business owner, as Paul said, you know, not somebody that's, you know, got venture capital. Not to disrespect those guys. That's a whole other.

But it's a whole. But it's a different thing. That's a different thing. It's just a different thing.

Yeah. The unsung heroes in our society, you know, the folks that go to work every day that start something, that risk it all, that employ most of the people in the country and, you know, just have to power through it. So, I mean, I think it's a great example of. Of learning from somebody that's done that.

Totally, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good stuff. Yeah, it is.

So definitely want to pick it up, folks. We'll. We'll, you know, we got it linked in the show notes and definitely want to. To. To get this. This one read.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And we'd love it if before you read Paul's book, we're going to take some advice that Paul gave us after we finished the show. We'd love it if you went to itunes and gave us a review on the show here. We would love to see that.

Yeah, that's great.

If you would do that for us, we'd be very, very appreciative. It makes a difference because those reviews are the things that help itunes then surface us and more people listen and then the conversation gets bigger and bigger as it has been. So we need you to help us grow this thing just as much as you.

Yeah. The more exposure that we get, we're going to be able to bring on different business people that we otherwise wouldn't have connected with and the dialogue will just keep getting better. And we'd also love to have you on if you're a small business owner at whatever stage of your business, you know, jump on the Facebook page@facebook.com businessshow co you know, send us a text 401-472-4249 or email feedbackusinessshow co let us know your story so we can share it with all our listeners. We'd love it.

Thanks, folks. We will. We'll see you next week. In the meantime, keep working on living that charmed life, huh?

Take care, everybody.