Celebrate Business Milestones

Business brain episode 452 for Casual Friday, May 26, 2023. Greetings folks and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take different topics and run them through the filter of our business brains to get a better perspective and and increase our chances of living that charmed life. Sponsors for this episode include notion.com businessbrain where you can get to try where you can go to try notion AI for free and also found.combrain where you can sign up for free for all kinds of things. This business banking that tracks your expenses and helps you find write offs. It's very cool. We'll talk more in depth about both of those in a minute. For now here and in Durham, New Hampshire on Casual Friday ahead of the extended holiday weekend here in the United States. I'm Dave Hamilton.

And I'm Shannon Jean out here in Lafayette, California. Looking forward to the long weekend too. I'm going to see Duran Duran Sunday. Oh, I bought tickets for that.

I. Have you ever seen them before?

I have not. I'm looking forward to it.

I walked into a Duran Duran show at south by Southwest maybe eight years ago and did not know what to expect. It was one of those just opportunity struck and you know, it was like my badge got me in and it was the. I was in the right place at the right time. So I just walked in and I was blown away. It's like, how come nobody told me in the 80s that these guys can play like they are? John Taylor, that bass player.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Owns the stage. He is a monster. And you get that one of the opening bands I think is Nile Rogers from Chic and Daft Punk and all that stuff.

Yeah, it's going to be great.

Yeah, it's going.

It's going to be a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not to make this right. I have a theory about concerts is the best ones are when the artists are on the way up and on their. And I don't want to say on the way down like it's a bad thing.

No, no. When they're not at the Plateau. Yeah, yeah.

The plateau is. Is the least. My least favorite.

Yeah.

Because you know, it's massive stadium can't really whatever. But on the other side of it, man, it's perfect.

Yeah. If. If they make it to the other side, they're usually very humble and. And just appreciative to be able to do what they do for a living. And. And yeah, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's great. We have tickets for September to go see that same tour, my wife was like, I don't think I want to go. And I'm like, wait, are you kidding me? You're like, you love 80. How, what, what part of you doesn't want to go? And then like, four days later, she's like, we should definitely go. Like, I know. That's why I said, let's go. So thankfully we were able to get tickets and go.

Awesome.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's so good. So what are we talking about on Casual Friday?

Well, you know, we're coming into this holiday weekend, which is celebrating a, you know, a thing. And I've been thinking lately about how easy it is for us as entrepreneurs to overlook. I mean, I know some entrepreneurs who have overlooked the fact that it's a holiday weekend coming up and that, you know, that happens. But in our own businesses, it's so easy for us to overlook what I'll call business milestones. Things like you've been in business for a year or two years, you know, the anniversary of your business, or, you know, a milestone of a certain product.

Launching or really a new client, whatever.

Yes, any. Well, anything that, yeah, anything that you can share either with. And you're not necessarily doing this for yourself, although I would argue that it probably wouldn't hurt. But you're doing it for, at times your team, if you have a team. But even if you're a solopreneur celebrating these things for your customers, it shows that your business is thriving. It allows you to share something positive that's not salesy. Right. You know, and, and it, it allows that whole PR aspect of it to really shine. And I'm terrible at this, by the way. Like, I, I, I, this is something I put on my to do list and then thought, well, it also needs to go on the business brain discussion list because this is one of those things where our business brains, like, if you take a look at this objectively, it really can be a fantastic thing. So I would challenge all of us as an action item to just look at our businesses retroactively. What day did it start? Right. Find that and put it on the calendar and then put a tickler out maybe two weeks before so that you can plan, even if it's just sending out an email or social media posts or whatever, something to celebrate the anniversary of your business. And, you know, the first employee we hired, like, that could be another one if you want. Whatever, you know, whatever it is for you. Don't. It's. No one else is going to say, hey, it's backbeat. Media's, you know, 24th anniversary or something. That's a huge freaking deal. And I happened to. This came up. Cause I happened to send an email out last week talking about something to some of our kind of key clients. And in it, I casually mentioned that, you know, we've been doing this for almost 25 years and in podcasting for almost 18. And it's like, well, that was a really nice way to humble brag. But it's also a nice way to just inform our customers that, you know, we've been doing this a long time, we've survived a lot of things, you know, and that's strong, that's a good thing to show. But it's not something that I would sit there and say, hey, I made it through another year. I'm more interested in where are we going here. I don't think about the past a lot, but it is good to remind people. So find those milestones in your business.

Yeah. It also helps set, you know, your culture. So you're celebrating things and, you know, recognizing those even small things and, you know, it gets employees excited about it. Giving out awards for little things, you know, hey, 90 days and nobody was late or no accidents.

That's whatever it is.

Find things to celebrate so that when you need to critique, you can kind of use that compliment sandwich concept. And it's more powerful when you come down on people when they know that you love to celebrate the good things.

Oh, I love that. So send in. Let's share these with each other and we'll share some ideas on the show too, in a future episode because I think it'll really help us spur our minds to think about the things that we've overlooked as small business owners. So feedbackusinessbrain show, send them in. We'll share em. I think this is great. All right, business brain listeners here at Business Brain, we know that our brain power is best spent on running our businesses, right? Not on the annoying details of saving receipts, calculating our taxes, categorizing expenses. All of that stuff that we know we have to do but isn't really what we got into business to do. What if there was something which could take care of all of that for you and free up more of your time? There is. It's our sponsor called Found. Found is a business banking app built specifically for. For the self employed. It's all in one banking, meaning it comes with the smart tools you need to run your business. You can manage your income, your expenses, your taxes and invoicing all from the Found app. Even sign up is easy. It's free and takes just minutes. Plus, if you spend $100 with your found card, within the first 30 days, you'll get a $25 bonus in your account. There's no commitment to Try Found and see what a difference it can make. Head to found.com brain or use promo Code Brain to Try Found today. Terms and conditions apply and Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Found's banking services are provided by Piermont bank member FDIC. Remember, head to found.combrain or use promo Code Brain to Try Found today and our thanks to Found for sponsoring this episode so obviously we've been talking a ton about how to leverage all the new AI tools here in our businesses, right? They're great for helping us flesh out language that we've written, or taking a well crafted prompt and turning that into maybe our rough draft that we can edit. But one thing that's true about all of these tools, or at least most of them, is that you're jumping between where you're actually doing your work and the tool that's doing the AI part of it. Well, our sponsor, Notion, combines your notes and docs into one space that's simple, beautifully designed, and now more powerful than ever thanks to AI. And that's because they have Notion AI. Notion AI helps you work faster, write better, and think bigger, doing tasks which normally take you hours in just seconds. And that's because you can leverage the power of AI right inside Notion across all your notes and docs without the need to jump between your work and a separate AI powered tool. Notion AI is designed to help you with your work right in the place where you're doing your work, not this separate tool. And that cuts down all that friction. So whatever you're working on, Notion AI lets you skip to the good part. You can save time and write faster by letting Notion AI handle the brainstorm in the first draft, or turn your messy notes into something polished. And for a limited time, you can try Notion AI for free when you go to notion.com businessbrain that's all lowercase letters. Notion.com businessbrain to try out the incredible power of Notion AI today. And when you use our link, you're supporting our show. And that's a good thing. We appreciate it. It works out for you too. This is a limited time offer. Try Notion AI for free right now at notion.com businessbrain and our thanks to Notion for sponsoring this episode.

Hey there. Okay, let's talk about celebrating. I love that Concept and one of the other things I wanted to talk about today that I saw online that I really loved as a by a company called the Bolt Company B O L D T. Okay. And they do lots of great promotional stuff and they're a massive construction company, build, you know, massive buildings. And I know one of their chief operating officers, kids went to school together. I've talked to him about it a lot. I love hearing about how they build things. But I came across a post they had on LinkedIn that we'll put in the show notes and I'll just read it to you here because I love it. So. Bolt says today we hosted our annual career signing day for youth apprentices at Bolt. We celebrated students signing to the trades as registered apprentices. Those continuing their youth apprenticeship at Bolt as well as welcoming, welcoming new youth apprentices. Thank you to the families, educational partners, unions and Bolt mentors that joined to congratulate the students on taking their first step to toward a career in construction. And they had a bunch of photos and you know, if you've ever seen like a student athlete having a, you know, event where they announce what school they're going to and they pick up, yeah, they pick up a hat or you know, from the school or whatever. Well, they do the same thing up here and a kid picks up a construction, you know, hard hat, puts it on and it's just a great way to celebrate and also recognize the importance of you know, young people going into the trades which I think is really important.

You know that's worth a whole other conversation and I couldn't agree with, I couldn't agree with you more. Like yeah, there's, there's not enough people in the trades.

Correct.

And there are good livings to be earned, man.

Massive, massive. And so many, you know, college educations are sold. You know, high schools push them out. So you know, oh, you got to. 98% of our kids go to a four year school. But how many of those kids get sadd with a lot of debt and.

A low for their entire lives?

Yeah, yeah. For a job that has a, you know, low return on investment. So you got to analyze these things and you know I, I think they do a great job in this post and you should go check it out. It's a great company to follow. Another, you know, one I want to mention as far as celebrating things is some, you know, we've had on the show their founder and CEO Gary Von Meer is tech, Tech defenders and you know they're another one on LinkedIn to follow if you want to see how to celebrate your employees, your culture, your clients. I mean, these guys just do a fantastic job. And, you know, they have their employees of the month, you know, constantly talking about they, they do this core values award and they give awards out to. It's just really well, well done. And you'll get the concept of what Dave was talking about and the first half of the show about how you can use that to set your culture, reward things. And I do believe, you know, it makes it more powerful when you do have to critique things, because they know you're not just always pointing out, you know, hey, we got to improve this, got to improve that.

Which is, which is how we're thinking. Like, like that is our natural state. Well, this is why I think it's important to do this stuff is. I mean, exactly what you're saying. You. You need something to balance it. Even though in your head you're like, oh, these people are doing a great job. I just want them to do a little better with this one thing. Well, yes. You know, they don't hear you say this. Obviously, they're doing great. Otherwise I'd have fired them. Like, I'm not going to spend the money on somebody that's doing a terrible job. They don't think of it that way, and nor are they supposed to. Like, it's your job to remind them of that.

Yeah, that's right. And so when you give somebody a promotion, are you going up and creating or is your social media person creating a post on LinkedIn or wherever your followers are, Facebook, Twitter, you know, that's an important thing to do. And people love it. It's like, wow, you know, we just sent this out to 3000 of our followers or whoever, and, you know, they get, they get recognition. People love that recognition. We're used to it as business owners that, you know, we don't get patted on the back a lot. We have a, that we have to have a different rubric to measure it. And, and it takes time to get to there. And we've talked about it on the show before. But you, the people that work for you, your partners, even your clients, you gotta celebrate them. So I just, I love this concept and it's just a great way for. Great thing to talk about on Casual Friday.

I love it. That's good stuff, man. Yeah. So send those ideas into us feedbackusbrain show and we'll share them with each other and, you know, make sure we're all doing the right things, because we're not going to remember all of them, but together we're a good resource here. So thanks for hanging out with us folks. Make sure to check out our sponsors, of course, found.combrainnotion.com businessbrain and do me a favor, keep on living that charmed life, will ya? We'll see you. See you next week. Howdy, fellow control freak entrepreneurs. If you're like me and you have trouble giving up control, I've got an episode for you to listen to. Gary Von Meer joined us in episode 236 to talk about a lot of things, but one of them was growing our businesses and adding employees and how to bring our control freak selves to the conclusion that it's okay to bring someone else in, even though in our minds we we believe that they couldn't possibly do whatever job we're going to hire them for better than we can do it. Of course, in the end, they generally do it better than us, obviously, but we got to get over that hump and Gary's got the 80% rule to change our minds to hack our brains to get us there. Go listen to episode 236. I'll put a link in the show notes for you and thanks for listening and keep on living that charmed life, huh?