Confidence is a Key Factor in Success – Small Business Show 205

The Small business show episode 205 for Wednesday, January 9, 2019. Greetings folks and welcome to the Small Business show here at businessshow. Co. The show that is BFA Small Business and the is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Word expressvpn.com SBS you get three months free with your one year subscription of this really killer service. We'll talk about the details of that in a minute. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave.

Hamilton and out on the west coast, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you, man?

I am, I'm good. Actually. When this airs, I too will be, well closer to the West Coast. Yeah, that's right.

You'll be out at ces, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool.

You know, I have such a mix. I've done that show so many times that I'm envious and yet very happy that I'm not going.

So, you know, it's interesting, up until about three days ago, I was actually like the entirety of my thoughts about it were positive, which is really interesting. It's a first for me. And I attribute that mostly to the fact that I've learned how to do that show. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I try to tell people that, you know, from the staff that go with us, or especially if someone new is going, if, if Christmas is here and you haven't completely booked every moment of every day for your CES schedule and you don't know exactly where you're going to be, you've probably done it wrong. At least from my standpoint. It's not like a. It's a huge conference. It's, you know, almost 200,000 people or 150,000 people. Vegas gets really packed. And the show floor, unlike most conventions, the show floor of this convention, from my standpoint, is worthless.

It's the worst place to spend your time.

It is.

Unless you're just, you know, kind of like, wow, look at all this is cool and shiny.

I do, I. And I. There's two sections, actually three sections of the show floor that I reserve a pocket of time to do that. One is the central hall where the TVs are, because it's just cool to just like, I'm there. I might as well bask in that, right? You know, and just experience the sort of, you know, extravaganza that it is. The. There is the Apple related section which they call the Idevices Pavilion. And that for my other businesses is. Is very relevant. So I can kind of walk around there and that's like old home week, right? And like an old, old Mac world.

Exactness in that sense.

In that sense, no, very much so, yeah. It's. It's manageable and all of that in a. In a pocket. And then if I have time, my gift to myself is walking around in what they call Eureka park, which is where all the new businesses are. And like everywhere else on the show, Floo. I. By and large, you're dealing with, you know, sometimes you're not even dealing with employees of the company whose booth it is. You know, you're dealing with like their PR agency or their marketing agency or whatever. And. But at Eureka park, you're dealing with like the guy or the team that was up until 2 in the morning developing this prototype that they're showing you right now. And chances are that anything you see there, probably 95% of the stuff you see won't last the week. Right. Like these products will never exist past this week of ce. Yes, some though, actually do. And I've found some little diamonds in the rough there, but just being sort of immersing myself in that infectious energy of, you know, I mean, these people. Reality distortion field doesn't even begin to describe it, you know.

Well, I. I think the way it is. Awesome. And I. And I was gonna say my one complaint about those is that you often don't see them come to market, but directionally they are. Yes. Heading in that, you know, like say directionally, which we're gonna talk about that a know they're. They're in the right. Headed in the right direction. Yep, for sure. For sure. So that's awesome.

So, yeah, I'm mostly. I'm mostly positive on it. The. The only. I said up until three days ago, that's because I've realized, oh crap, I gotta travel and I gotta deal with all this craziness. Like, there's so much that I'm going to need to be doing that. It. You know, sort of the weight of that has started to. To hit me and it's like, okay, but that's. I mean, that's fine. Yeah, like, whatever.

And I think that, you know, we've done a few episodes about trade shows and why they're. Why you should be attending them and why they're great for connectivity. It sounds like to me we should do an episode on how to attend a trade show.

Oh yeah, yeah.

To get the most out of it, because I've done both ways where I've kind of just showed up and thought it was going to be very productive and I was going to connect and all this kind of stuff, and I've kind of wandered around and not connected very well and felt like I wasted my time. And then I've done some where it's like, been life changing, you know, where you met a critical vendor or whatever. So we should. We'll do that. We'll put that on the upcoming radar.

Cool.

That's a great idea. But yeah, so today, since we're, you know, we're still kind of in this new year mode, second week of the year when this airs, I want to do a show about confidence. I figure it's a great way to start and start out a year and. And if you're cool with that, we can.

Yeah, let's do it, man. I'm confident in our ability to do this.

Yeah, exactly. So I. I came around to this because I read. I read a couple of recent articles, and one of them was titled, you know, confidence is more important than competence. And I thought, wow, you know, in some way, is that true? You know, and in some ways, you know, so we got to talk about this. And, you know, one of the things in the article that. That they really focused on was that people believe what they are told and they're willing to overlook things in an effort to maintain their. That belief, you know, which I thought, oh, that's kind of that cognitive dissonance thing where you, you know, you set a belief. It is really true.

It's the Sammy Hagar thing, right? When Sammy gets on stage, he tells you you're the best crowd he's ever seen. It's the best night of the tour. You know that this is not true. Even the first time you hear it, you know it's not true. Definitely. The third time, you're certain it's not true because you've heard it before and yet you believe it. Right? You're in. Yeah.

Yeah. So along those lines, I would suggest that as a small business owner, telling your customers that you are the best is the first step. Becoming the best is step two. Yeah, so we're gonna talk about that because I. Cause I think that the more I looked into this, I was like, you know what? This is really true. And it's almost like you're programming yourself. You're programming your employees, your team, whatever it is that, hey, we're the best. We are the best. So we're gonna act this way. And I think. And you can. You know, I'd love anybody's feedback, but I think it's more important to start the dialogue with the. The fact that we are the best. And even if you're. Even if, you know, you're kind of like, well, we got to. We got to do a little more to get there. You can get there, but you've got to tell people you're the best at whatever. Maybe it's. You're the best at customer service. Maybe you're the best at speed. Maybe you're the best at, you know, I hate to say price, but value, let's say value, okay? And so you got to talk about what you're. What you're good at. And this one quote, I love it. Is that from Francis Bacon? Right. Of all people, you know, praise yourself. And I put these. I added this. End your business daringly, because some of that praise will always stick. And, you know, I don't want to talk it up and sound like, oh, this is big ego thing or whatever, but it works. I mean, you hear people that are very successful talking about that. So I think what I'd like to do is, you know, we'll talk about how you do this. But when you communicate your expertise and you display confidence, most people, or at least, you know, a good portion of, are going to believe you. And they will tend to confirm that impression and even defend. Was an example of a journalist who wrote this article said, oh, I bought a. You know, I was looking in the shop and looking in the window, and I saw these handcrafted shoes. And I asked the. The. I went into the little shoe stop and said, why should I buy these shoes, you know, versus buying. Buying a manufactured pair or whatever. And the shoemaker said, because these are the best shoes in the world. And the guy's like, wow, okay, I'm.

Going to buy them.

And over the next, like, six months, he proceeded to have to take the shoes back, like, three times to get them repaired. And each time he felt bad, like, oh, wow, this handcraftsman guy, you know, it needed to be tweaked, and it was this. But these are the best shoes, so you just need to do it. And, you know, he was kind of shocked about how it changed his whole perception of it. And I think it's true.

We are so malleable, man. We are. Yup, yup.

And we've been talking about persuasion more, and I think that's going to be a theme for 2019. Often is that how to persuade. Today, we're talking about your customers, but we talked about your team and different things before, but I think it really works. And you're just kind of like you said, people are malleable you're programming each other.

Well, I was just thinking for 2019, we need to get, get at least one guest on who's an expert in nlp neuro linguistic programming. Right. That would be.

That'd be great.

Yep.

Yeah, that's good. And, and so back to this confidence thing is people. There's all kinds of studies that show that people are often convinced not by who has the best argument or the best idea or the best product, but whoever shows the greatest confidence in that idea that are their argument or that product.

You know, True. And it's, it's frustrating when you're on the other side of that. Right. When you can see. No, no, this is actually a better idea. Like, how do you not see this? And you've got someone that says my idea is awesome. And everybody gravitates towards that like you people are sheep. But the reality is. So say we. All right, we're all sheep. So.

Well, that, that, yeah, the, the natural instincts of most people is to not offer up the first idea or the first solution because they're concerned that they're going to be judged or shot down.

Right.

I don't know how many meetings have we been in where people have just kind of sat quietly? Yeah. You know, I've had that problem with employees a lot, you know, where nobody wants to, nobody wants to throw something out there for fear of failing or being judged and that kind of thing. So I think that's one of the big reasons why when somebody stands up and throws out that idea or that solution, it's like an anchor, you know, and everybody's like, oh, thank goodness, you know, now we can go thing and either tell them why it's not good or talk about it, but that, that person that has that confidence typically I think succeeds, you know, versus versus the other folks.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

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Yeah, so, you know, okay, sounds great. We would need to be confident and show this, you know, confidence to your customers, that kind of thing. So how do you create it or maybe at least the appearance of it, you know, and both are critically important. Maybe I don't can argue which one, but one, one of the things, I think the best way to do it is to promote your previous success. Successes. And you may not think them, but I guarantee you, you do, no matter how small they are. And you know, in your blog or on your website or in your promotional material, write about what you've succeeded with and what's your business. And maybe you need to, I don't want to use the word embellish, but I'm going to in a good way talk about things as if they were a bit larger in life than perhaps they occurred. Because, you know, everybody, everybody does this and it's marketing. So people know, even though people are.

Going to downplay it their heads when they hear it too. So you got to build it up. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah. And, and it may have seemed small and consequential to you, but not to, you know, not to everyone else. You got to write it the right way. And, and this is where we're going to talk about directional again. And this sounds kind of weird, but I really believe it works. You need to learn to tell directional truths. And what I mean by that is the same kind of thing about a little bit larger in life. You know, you're not telling lies because I would never suggest that, but you're going to use creative words to perhaps expand on your achievements and your business, especially when you're getting started. I think this is really important.

Yeah, well, and as I always like to say it, you know, I may or may not have led someone to believe something that may or may not be true. Right. Like you can say a thing and, and, and you can be truthful, but, but by crafting the message. Like for example, now this is actually, I'll correct myself, I'll clarify myself after I say this, but I just said in the sponsor spot that ExpressVPN is the best VPN I've ever used. That implies that I've used many different VPNs. And I actually, in the spot in your case, I have actually used many different VPNs. But you don't have to say like, that doesn't necessarily have to be the case if it's the best I've ever used. Oh, this is the, the best business podcast I've ever made. Well, I've only ever made one, so, you know, but it definitely is the best business podcast that I've ever co hosted. No question about it.

That's correct. Me too.

No question about it.

Look at the marketing around you. You're gonna see those words, easiest, best, most, you know, whatever. That's. You need to think like that when you're promoting your achievements. And, you know, and I had a few written down, you know, thousands of customers. I mean, once you get to 1001, you've got thousands of customers and nobody knows if it's 1,001 or 100,000.

Right, got it.

And it is the truth. Millions in revenue. Once you get to over a million.

It doesn't have to be in one year or one month or even one decade, Right?

Yes. You're running a multimillion dollar business. Right. You could have made a million bucks over 10 years. You are still running a multimillion dollar business. You don't need to parse it down. So small, you know, And a big one I like, you know, because companies, people always ask, how many employees do you have? You know? Well, you know, I, you got to talk in kind of vague terms. If you're trying to build, if you're trying to look bigger, you get to go, oh, we have a bunch of employees, right? A ton. We have a ton. Well, what's a ton? Yeah.

How many is that?

Yeah, we're loaded, you know, and if you want to get to numbers, you know, once you get to 12, you've got dozens of employees. Yeah. So you got to give yourself that credit. Everybody else is doing it. Marketing, companies are doing it. Learn to tell directly truths. I think it's a critically important part of your, your plan to build confidence in your business. You know, I always, I love the one where they, I see it on the side of a van or whatever. Review highest rated and in small print, it'll be like, you know, by the owner's mom or something funny like that, where you kind of a play on Words to, to get, you know, people kind of laughing a little bit, but, you know, again, trying to just promote and get people to talk about it. Yeah, yeah. Another one is talk about your existing customers. Everybody likes to hear, you know, big names. If you did a business, you know, some business with a, Even if it's a subsidiary of a large company, you could say, well, you know, we, we did some work for General Motors or whoever it is, you know, for Apple or whoever.

I, you know, it doesn't have to be recent. It could be a decade ago. Doesn't matter. You got it, you know.

Yeah. Got to promote them. You got to promote them. And the same with, you know, big deals. You did. If you did, you know, outfitted, you know, whatever the numbers, you, you want to use hundreds of computers. If you're in a tech business or you consulted with, you know, X number of employees for a company, whatever, whatever it is, think about those directional truths and promote it. If you did. If your vendors, like I use this all the time. This has opened more doors for me is I make. The first thing I usually say when I get a good connection with a new supplier, I want to open the doors with, to buy from has always been who I'm doing business with already. You know, I'm doing business with company X. And if it's, you know, when I was in the, buying tons of hardware, especially in the Apple space, I'd be like, oh, well, we buy from Best Buy, we buy from Apple, we do this, we do that. That, that helps, you know, open the conversation with a large company that doesn't know who you are.

Right? Yeah, they know, they know that you know how to do this in our business. It's, it's, it's the ad agencies, right? They, they want to hear, they, they want to compete with their, their fellow ad agencies, but they also don't want to hear that you're the first. Right. Or they're the first.

Right.

Because they want to know that, oh, you know, how this, you know how the system works. Great. Yeah. And that's really what you're communicating is I know how the system works. You don't have to train me. We're good, you know, and that's, that's helps build confidence for sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in, in my, you know, business, you know, history again, where I'm always, always looking for deals and we were, we're opportunistic buyers, you know, we were always looking for new, new deals, new companies to buy from that, that had problems that we could Solve we were buying, you know, reef used damaged defective products, you know, stuff. Well, how I got in the door at Best Buy was we started buying from Best Buy in the open market, like on ebay or, you know, whatever you could do. And I made a phone call and said, hey, we're already buying from you guys. Who else do I talk to so I can buy more? And it was the truth. But I didn't call and say, hey, guys, we're a small company and we buy from you on ebay or whatever. You just leave that out. You know, you don't need to tell them all those details. You say, look, I'm already buying from you. I spent, you know, about 100 grand worth of product or whatever it is, thousands of dollars worth of products from already I'd like to buy more. And it opened the door to a direct relationship. Now, it took me about three months, but eventually you get connected to somebody who says, oh, wow, I have tons of this product I'd love to sell to you. You know, and there's that word again, tons. And so it's one of my favorites because it's so vague, yet it sounds so powerful. And so, you know, use those. Lean on those little tricks to open doors for you.

I like it.

Yeah. One of the things that may sound counterintuitive, but we talk about on the show here a lot is talk about your mistakes and more importantly, how you overcame them. Because that's the powerful lesson. Not that you made the mistake, but that you took some action and you rose up and solved that problem. We just did a show about debt last week and how overcoming that can be really powerful. So using that trick of saying, like, you know, oh, yeah, I made this big mistake, or we really screwed up here, but then this is how we fixed it.

People admire to fix it.

Yeah, yeah, people admire. People admire that. And all along the way here, I'm talking about, you know, building confidence with customers, vendors, suppliers. But at the same time, these same tricks are building confidence in yourself for yourself. Because the more you talk like this, the more you're programming your own, your brain, you know, you're creating the reality. And the more you hear this story like we talked about here, you get to create your own story with your small business, the more confident you're going to be and you're just going to build on that. It's true. Yeah. And so one of the things I have is if you haven't achieved a ton of things, talk about the goals you're working your way towards, you Know, we recently had the founder of sellyourmac.com on the show and, and he talked about some really big numbers, and I was like, wow, that's impressive. He wanted to beat 50 million or something like that. And he had a long way to go, but they've achieved a lot already. I think he was a 5 million in revenue or something. That's an impressive number to throw out. And am I going to follow up with that? No, I'm thinking, wow, man, this guy's striving to doing 50 million in revenue here over the next, whatever, five years or something like that. That's impressive. That makes me feel confident about this guy's business that he's got this go.

This goal, and it's just a thing he said. I mean, I assume that he, like, he's ready to back that up, but only because of what he said.

Well, that's the first step, right? I'm gonna do 50 million in revenue. If you never talk about it, you're probably. You won't, you won't do it. And another one thing that I actually added to this list this morning that's not in your notes, Dave, is, you know, 2019, and I've already started, like, putting my numbers and, you know, I've got. Got four or five different companies that I've got to settle out for the year. And, you know, a big part of confidence is knowing your numbers for your business or your businesses. And I added this, even if they suck, you need to know them and know where your revenue is and where your expenses are. And, you know, I have one new business, you know, that I'm working on. And you know, man, it's just a money pit right now. And I, I have this because I feel like I'm such a positive person. I'm always looking for the upside. One of the thing how that hurts me is that I don't like to look at bad news. And I feel kind of some anxiety on this, excuse me, on this project here this last few weeks, and not until I really sat down this morning and got all the numbers updated and I was like, oh, it's really not that bad. And look at all this other good stuff we have. So I would say that even if the numbers are not what you want them to be, the more you know them, the more confident and you're going to be because you're gonna be able to make decisions that are gonna help you solve those problems. Or maybe it's not as bad as you thought, which is the case for me. Today. And I feel, you know, I'm like, that's great. We're not.

Yeah. I remember years ago, you said something to me that, that, that communicated. We weren't, we were just having. It was tangential to the conversation we were having, but you essentially told me, oh, yeah, you know, I look at the bank balance every day and I thought, man, like, yeah, what a good idea. Like, that really hit me. And this was probably almost 20 years ago, you know what I mean? Like, it was a long time ago, but it was like, yeah, you gotta do that. And I've, I've noticed when, you know, when things aren't going well, like you, I don't want to see bad news, so I will not look. And it's. I'll catch myself saying, oh, I don't have to look today. It's like, oh, no, no, no. You need to see that, if only just to motivate you. But also, like you said, you gotta know your numbers. Even if they suck, you gotta know em.

Yeah, well, you may be in. It may be a crisis, and you may not know about it. And let me, like we talked about last week, crisis is a tremendous motivator.

That's the thing is like, if, you know you're in crisis, man, you know, just imagine how much better things are gonna get once, you know, and once you accept it, you know, it's like, okay, here we are. Great, now I know how to solve like. Like I was thinking about this after we did last week's show, because the same thing, I like to solve problems, right? But with running a business, the hardest part is when you don't know what to do next.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

And so crisis in that sense is actually very easy because you know what the answer has to look like, right? You don't. You might not know how to get there, but at least you've got like, okay, cool, we have to get there. How are we going to do it? Well, by any way we can, you know, and you figure it out. But you figure it out, you know, when you're not in crisis, you still have to put that goal out there or that next step and whatever it is, because you've got to have something that you're. That you're working at, you know, otherwise it's not working. And that can be your system or whatever, but you've got to have it there so that you know what to do next. That's the hardest thing. I remember I had a part that. Who is no longer my partner. And I knew this day that this person would no longer be my partner. Very soon was it, we were having a conversation, and this person was in charge of the business. I was a junior partner. And, And. And, you know, I was saying, well, you know, you got to do this stuff. And this person said to me, well, no one told me what to do.

Oh, that's a death now.

Oh, gotta go. Pull the rip cord. Pull the rip. Of course no one told you what to do. Welcome to the big leagues, you know, or. Or the small leagues or whatever league it is. Yeah. Like you. You have to. That's up to you as the business owner. Yeah, that's correct. And crisis is the easy way to know what to do in. In many senses. Yeah.

And I have to give credit that, you know, checking the bank every day, I learned that I had a business partner who was. He was an accountant, he was a cpa, and he was a terrible part. I mean, him and I didn't get along. He was a good guy, but we had. We had. We were headed in a different direction. So our partnership didn't. Partnership only lasted for about four years, but he taught me that. He's in. He was the one who said that. Oh, I checked the bank every day. And at the time, it was to check to see how overdrawn our business was. Right. Unfortunately. But it stuck with me that, wow, that. That is a really powerful way. And, you know, whether you're using, you know, PayPal or your balance on. On different marketplaces, which is what I check a lot now, and the bank, it. It motivates you in wherever it is. Yeah. Wherever it is. Look around and just check cash. Because it's often hard to put your finger on profitability Right. Quickly. You know, you can run your P and L. But for me, I'm always frustrated because I'm waiting for data, I'm waiting for reports, I'm waiting for the bookkeeper to enter stuff. I'm waiting for stuff to come in so I have our time. I was like, I gotta. I gotta wait, you know, a week or two weeks. But I can always put my finger on how much cash I have. And that I think is. Is more important. And it's either a confidence builder or it's a crisis indicator that allows you to act right. So it's good. So, you know, confidence, it's critically important, you know, and I would say showing that confidence is, you know, extremely important for your small business. Ultimately, your actions and your small business actions are going to build the most confidence for yourself and for your customers. And for your suppliers. You know, all three are really very important in. And they kind of shift around. And I'd love to hear your stories if you've got some stories. How you build confidence and trust is also the same thing for your employees. Contact us@ feedbackusinessshow.co or come talk to us in the Small Business support group@businessshow.co. facebook. And I hear the music.

The music is here. Why not? Sure.

Thank you for listening, everybody. Hope you're having a great start to your new year, and we really appreciate having you here.

Yeah, keep living that charm. Love life, folks. That's. That's. If you can't think of a goal, start there and work from that. So there you go. Take it easy, folks. See you next week.