Controlling Your Vernacular and Unconventional Ways to Promote Your Business Story

The Small business show, episode 325 for Wednesday, April 28, 2021. Greetings, folks, and welcome to or welcome back to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow. Co, where small business ing is a verb. And we do it every day, whether we like it or not. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamil.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you, sir?

I'm good, man. Yeah, it's good. Things are good things. It's a little bit crazy. You know, I. I traveled a little bit. I had to go get my. My son out of him. Out of his dorm out in Portland, and that was. It was really nice. We had a good trip. We even saw some live music indoors, which was an opportunity we didn't think we'd have. Yeah, that's a big deal. It was a big deal. It was really emotional. Yeah. And then, you know, but then I came back and I just hired that. That new person that we helped convince me to do here on the show. Business therapy, win. And so. But it's just been crazy. And. Oh, and then Apple had an event last week or two weeks ago, so, yeah, it's just a little crazy, but. And I'm teaching my class and wrapping it up, so that's all.

It's good stuff.

It is good.

Yeah. It sounds good. Like. Yeah, yeah. Productive, fulfilling. You know, I always feel better when I have a bunch of stuff like that and. And when you can get to it and manage the time, of course, that's not behind it.

Right, right.

I was out on a hike yesterday with my wife Renee, and one of the things I noticed, this place where we go kind of the trailhead. It's been a long time, and they just finally brought the porta potties back, and I. And I sold Renee. I said, that's a sign that things are getting back, you know, because they took those away and that this place is a park. They even took the basketball hoops off of the backboard so people wouldn't play basketball.

Sure.

During the pandemic. So, yeah. So things I think are turning in the right way. And when you talk about hearing music inside, that really sounds exciting to me because I love that kind of stuff. And I can't wait.

You know, you said something that sort of is something that caught my ear. You said getting back. I have been very careful not to let myself think about getting back.

I didn't say back to normal.

No, you didn't. That's fair.

I always stopped myself say, well, getting kind of Back to. To, you know, this is, I don't know, more the way we live our lives kind of thing without being, you know, having to do a lot of extra steps.

No, I'm. I'm with you.

It.

I. To me, I've been saying, getting through the other side, that's good. I like it. Just because it. It like this is this pandemic is a part of our shared history now. Like, it. It's not. We're not going to forget that it happened. I think, though, five years from now we will. We will have forgotten far more of it than we think we will right now.

But. Yeah, and getting through it is good because it's not. We'll never go back. It is everything. Not everything, but so many things have changed. Many things for. Many positive things.

Yeah. There's a lot of silver linings to this. For sure.

There is.

Yeah.

But. So. So I'm glad to be here today.

I gotta be honest, though, while we're talking about controlling our vernacular and hack our brains and language, if I'm being truthful.

Is that.

That's what I'm saying? Well, if I'm being objective, I really want to remove all of those phrases from what we say. I've got to be honest. If I'm being truthful, if I'm being.

Can I be frank?

No, you just be. Shannon, it's fine.

Yeah, Yeah.

I found myself writing an email the other day and wrote. I've got to be honest. It's like, you know, what an. What a weird thing to say. I know why we say it. We were trying to soften the blow of something, but it often, to me, it comes across as a little bit, I don't know, disingenuous perhaps. It's like, you know, you're going to say something, so just say it. Just get those.

It's kind of one of those throwaway terms. Right.

Where pleonasm, I believe. Yes.

Pleon asm. Wow. Far more sophisticated than I would have thought of. But that's. I learned something new every day here on the show. But I.

It.

And it's on a different kind of scenario. But it's almost like, I hope this email finds you well. Right. Or something, you know, where you just don't need to say those things. And I think that also with this concept of if I'm being truthful, I've got to be honest, I think it kind of triggers subconsciously that, well, haven't you been truthful up to now?

Yeah, what's the difference now?

Yeah. Aren't you honest all the time? Yeah, I think it's just a term. Those kinds of terms that you need to stay away. You know, stay away from communicates potentially.

Something very dangerous that if I don't say this, then I'm not being honest with you.

Right. And if you're typing that in an email, I would suggest to you that you may want to pick up the phone because maybe it's a little more nuanced because email is so dry and flat. And we've had this. We've done episodes on.

Yeah.

You know, getting across the positive message and email and this kind of thing and. And the overuse of exclamation points and. And, you know, the craziness of thinking you could put a. An emoji in a business email that.

That we've actually thought about that. I do those things, though. And I do, too. I. I put emojis in business email and I put exclamation points. Works. And it. Because it works. Yeah, it does work.

So if you are thinking of if I'm being truthful or if I'm being honest, it's like, well, maybe the. The email should be, hey, can we jump on a call? Because then you get your. The inflections of your voice, and you can zoom it.

Now everybody's got.

You can zoom it.

Right.

Yeah. And so really, I think what you're trying to say, right, is I want to. I want to discuss a tricky situation or a sensitive topic, and maybe that's the, you know, way to open it up. Like, something like that.

Or if you're. If you really are just delivering. If someone asks you your opinion about something, like, hey, you know, I recorded this podcast. What do you think about it? Well, if I'm being honest. No, there's no reason to say that. It's like, okay, I listened to it, and here's what I thought. This part, not so good. This part, good. You know, and you can. I mean, there's ways of couching things. You can put things in the, you know, bad news sandwich. Right.

Where you got good news, good compliment sandwiches.

Compliment sandwich.

One of my favorites.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because there's always something you can find positive, and there's always things you can critique. And the compliment sandwich, where, you know, this is what I liked about it. Here's what I think needs improvement, and here's where I think you're heading in the right direction. That. That's a great way to do it.

Yeah.

And try to. And you can flip it around.

The thing is, I don't know why we call that the compliment sandwich. Because when I make a ham sandwich, it is not a piece of bread in the middle of two slices of ham. Right. It's the opposite. And so if I'm saying it's a compliment sandwich and I'm putting the bad news in the middle of two compliments, well, then that's bad news. Sandwich, not compliment sandwich. Yeah, I don't know. This is just me being very, very obsessive about language.

But yeah, I think it's important to think about those things. And especially when you do it in writing or a text, an email or whatever it is, you may want to jump on a call.

Yes.

You know, yeah, massage that a little bit. Use a little persuasion techniques, a little bit of leading. Yeah, yeah. That kind of stuff. So, yeah.

Yeah. I often will write emails and not send them, you know, with where. That's just to organize my thoughts for if. If it's a. If it's, if it's like, if it's something awful, you know, that really needs to be spelled out, you know, or talked out, then I will use the email. But, But I have two tricks that I use. First of all, I use an engine that delays every email that I send by, by two minutes. It's a, it's a piece of software called Mailtags, but there's other software that does it. But every email I send sits in my. In purgatory for two minutes before it's released. I will tell you, that's one of the best business tricks I've ever implemented. Yeah.

Like, can you put a link to that in the show?

Of course. Yeah, it's called MailTags. Yeah. For the Mac. But again, I'm sure there, there's others. And then the other thing that I do when I know that I'm. Or if I find myself writing an email that's like, oh, this is pretty charged. I go up to the to field and I erase the person's name so that if muscle memory hits send, it doesn't actually send to them.

Yup, that's smart. Because my fear is when I'm typing something, oh, boy. I really can't say this, even though I may want to be like, yeah.

You know, got to get it out of your system.

Yes, get out of your system. I, I think that's really good. I, I also use this trick. I have a few people in my life, I'm sure, like, we all do that are, I guess, for lack of a better word, argumentative or contrarian to my thought. Process and people that I know and love. But we think on an entirely different plane about things. And I often host discussions in my head with them without them actually being there.

Oh, oh. All the time. Most of the time when I have a discussion with someone, that's the second time I'm having it. I will.

Yes, correct.

I will have discussions with people in the car alone, in the shower, also alone. You know where. Yeah. I've practiced what I'm gonna say.

It's a good practice. Right. And so. And they're just kind of a stand in because I know that, okay, this person's gonna point out flaws and this and that. What would they say? So I have those discussions in my head when I'm having, you know, have to have a real important. Sure. Conversation or send an important email. It's a good, it's a good.

Oh, I see. You use it to, to sort of have, have that, that, that like you said, that straw man, to play devil's advocate for you.

They're, they're my coach. They don't really know it, but I have a few people that I've just like butted my heads against my whole life about just anything you can imagine. They have different outlook on it, which is great. That's, that's really what we have our freedom and liberty for, which is wonderful. And so I use them as a, as a tool in my head going, well, if I say this about this, this person's going to disagree with me. What would they say?

What would they say and how would I react?

Yeah, how would I react? And I try to poke holes in my own argument or, you know, concept.

And that's really smart. Yeah. They say that when you're writing, you know, an article or anything, you should be writing very specifically to a certain person because you will write so much better if you are doing that as opposed to just writing generally. Yeah, man, that's interesting.

Yeah, that is really good. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, that's good stuff, man. I think it's great advice about choosing your. Not just choosing your words, but the phrases and the vernacular that you use. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, very good.

What else we got today? That was a little bit of a jam session. What's next? What's next on the list?

Yeah, so a couple, we've talked a lot about story. Kind of, you know, a lot on this show because I think it is so important. You know, we recently we had Bailey Bernard.

Yeah.

From Media Stone Creative. He came on talking about developing story. We have just all kinds of people that have come on. Even Howard Tiersky last week with Digital Transformation talking about story and getting your. Not even just to your customers, but to your employees. Getting things across digital fashion. So. But I think there's more to discuss here than related to story, but more about how you get your story out and how your customers and your employees get that story in ways that you may not be thinking about. And oftentimes, you know, we're talking on the show about ways to get it out and it's related to money. Okay. You spend this money, you do this, you buy ads, you build this, you do that. So I've always, I've done that as well and continue to do that. But I have other ways that I've done it that are a little different and I'd love to talk about it for a few minutes today.

Yeah, man. What do you got?

Okay, cool. So I think a very important concept to get across to you for you as a business owner and your entire team is your story is the. I think the best way to share that story is by your actions. By your actions, your employers, your, the people you buy ads on, you know, the, the platforms, everything. It's. This is, this concept of story should really be baked in. It doesn't just sit alone as this marketing idea. It's really who you are, why you're in business in the first place and how that impacts your customers. So I think it's a. It's important that.

So walk the walk the walk. Don't just talk the talk, but maybe even lead by walking the walk and, and instead of. Because you can always do both. But if you just do and then maybe highlight at the right moments after the fact, that's not a. I think.

It has to be authentic. I think it has to be from the story exists. Whatever you may think it's very mundane and there's lots of ways to spin it to make him sound a little more exciting. But. And you get help with that. And that's what you know like Bailey was talking about and Howard and all that kind of stuff. But from the inside I will tell you, I think one of the most important things to do or opportunities with your business to get your story across your culture and everything. One of them is to use humor in your marketing, in your everything on your website. And I'm not talking. You should be cracking jokes and everything, but maybe a little self effacing humor.

Yeah.

You know, maybe joking around about little things but you know, humor and then be more human. Right. About you know, about your business and what you do and how your customers and this kind of things and, and laugh at yourself when things go wrong and explain what went wrong and, and have a blog where you're talking about things and how you solve these problems. People don't expect you to be perfect, but they're pleasantly surprised when you talk about how you fixed a problem.

Yes.

And if you're not funny, find somebody who is, you know, in your organization, if you don't have a good sense of humor, maybe help them craft your message while using humor. And I think you can do it in everything you can do or do it in everything, I think.

And, and if you, if you are in, in whatever way the face of your business and you are not funny, you might be quirky. And I think that's what I'm saying is like, quirky's great, unique. Like ask people around you that you trust because you really, you are going to want them to start with, well, if I'm being honest, right. Like, those are the answers. You want it say, look, what is it about me that makes me interesting to you? And if they say, well, if I'm being honest, you can show them the first bit of this episode, but then listen to what they say after that where they say, you're kind of quirky. But I like that, you know, like, that's the thing. That's cool.

And look at Brian from Sell your Mac, right?

Yes.

This is guy that everything he wears this bright blue suit and shoes and all this other stuff and talk about embracing quirk. Yeah, that's it.

But he's embracing his own quirk. That's the key. Yeah.

And people remember him. And so I primarily, I mean, just lighten up, you know, the world's serious enough without you adding to the seriousness of it. Yes. Every, all business, businesses want to talk about, you know, we're the best at what we do. We're number one, that kind of thing. But sometimes people get tired of hearing how great you are or whatever and so poking fun at yourself and, and your business can really endear, endear you to potential customers and be like, wow, these guys are, you know, these people just like I am, you know.

And you know what? Like, like let's take your example. Like, let's say you're, you're not number one in your market. Right. You're def. If that's true, you are not the only person that knows that fact. So, you know, embrace it and say, hey, look, you know the nice part about being number two? Because number two is a whole lot harder to define than number one. So you can define yourself as number two. You can do a little bit of PR here. But even number three, this, this the phrase I'm about to say works with both. Say the nice part about being number two, nice part about being number three is we can't sit here and rest on our laurels because we have no laurels. We are eager and we are our momentum. We might be number two or number three in the market, but we're number one in terms of momentum. We are cooking forward and we are here to serve you because we are eager for your business. We know we have to earn it from you at every step. That's a great story. Right. And now like that's a, you know, I want to lean in and I want to hear about more about that. Who's that guy? Who's that company?

Yeah. And especially like as also as related to price. You know, I preach the constantly don't get stuck in the price. You know, being the lowest price. It's a terrible place to be. You'll never make money. Somebody will just. It's a race to zero. So with, with Tech Restore, what we would promote, that we were not the best price or our best. We were not the lowest price.

Right.

That. That's not who we. You can always find somebody to do things cheaper, but you'll never have the type of customer experience that you will have with us. Right. That was our, our stuff. And you know, we didn't do the most volume. We weren't doing gazillions of this and that. But your repair is the most important to us while we're working, while we're working on it.

Oh yeah. That I used as a consultant. I used to have to tell people that kind of thing all the time because, you know, I'd book my schedule or someone else would book my schedule for me. It didn't really matter who booked the schedule. But you know, let's say I book four appointments a day. A ten, a twelve, a two and a four. Right. And because you expect each appointment to take an hour, hour and a half. Okay, great. No problem. Well, when that 10 o' clock appointment turns into a disaster and you're there until about 3:30, you know, the, the, the, the, the noon and the two are definitely not going to have seen you at noon or 2. And the phrase I always would use as I it got to be about 11:30 and I knew I wasn't going to make it to my noon is I would tell the client with whom I was working, I'd say, look, I need a minute to, you know, juggle my schedule. Or if when I had an office, I just would text the office and they would take care of it. But what I would tell them was, hey, look, you know, I'm, I'm going to be late or I'm not going to make it there today. Whatever, whatever. The honest answer at the time was based on what I knew. And if people would get upset, I would tell them, look, you know, here's the deal. When I'm there, you are the most important thing to me. And, and I'm with a customer now that I've started with and I'm going to finish this and then I'm going to come to you and the blinders are on and I'm there for you. And that's a great way to do it because it's true, like you can't be in two places, so. Correct.

And it also eliminates, yeah. Eliminates the apology. Right. You're just like, hey, when I'm with you, you're going to be, you know, number one.

You're number one. Yeah.

My main focus, and I think you can on this, kind of lighten up this, this humor front as well. Even if even look at your terms and conditions on your website.

Yeah.

This is one of my favorite things to do is look at small businesses where they, you know, check this box and I'm agreeing to all these things. You know, do you, if you think as a small business that putting a bunch of words together that people are not going to read that you got off some other website that you copied or your lawyer gave you, if you think that's going to protect you when things go wrong, I, I disagree. Now, you know, you need some protection and there are specific things that you need to be clearly, you know, clearly spelled out to your customers before they do business with you. Like with Tech Restore, we, we had a data loss policy that obviously there's like, hey, you need to back up your data because we are not responsible for it, period. And you, we need to make sure every customer understands that before we pick up a laptop or a bunch of iPads or something like that. Right? Sure. But the five additional pages that your lawyer wants you to put in there, people don't read. You know that. And if you need a crazy, complicated, multi page document to help you sleep better at night, at night, you need to change your relationship with your customer. That's my take on it.

I agree. 100. Yes.

Yeah. And, and I think there's a better way to handle it. And I think one of the ways you can do it is you can have kind of a two step or a two stage terms and conditions, one step that or one part that points out critical issues, brief right up front. Customers see it and they agree to it. It could be a few sentences, a paragraph, like using the data loss, you know, concept or like, hey, these are critical before we do anything that you understand these.

Yeah.

And, and, and maybe you have to put a heading on it. Here's the important critical information we want you to know before you do business with us. Okay, great. And then below that maybe say something like here's the rest of the stuff we encourage you to read and understand and, or even here's the rest of the stuff that our lawyers are, are very, you know, highly suggest we put here that you agree to.

We paid our lawyers a lot of money and they told us to put this here like perfect. Well, that's perfect for my business because you're you, I communicate that way. Right. But you, you do it your style. That's right. Yeah.

Everybody loves to make fun of lawyers. So why not do it in your terms and conditions? And, and, and you know, because it's, listen, it just doesn't offer you as much protection as you think it does. And if you have to go that far.

Yeah. You've lost. Anyway. That's what I was going to say. Yeah. If you're looking at the terms and conditions, it's kind of like if you're, you know, nitpicking a five year old contract, there has been a major problem that is wasting your time. Like there's just no way around it at that point. That's what's happened. Yeah.

Yeah. And another place I really think that you can tell your story, connect with your customers is an area that most people hate to deal with. But if you do it right, you can turn it into an asset. And that is your phone system. Your, whether it's virtual, whether you have a system at your office, whether it's one or two phone lines with an answering machine, if you have an auto attendant answering those calls, or even if a human answers it and you transfer it and you have to leave voicemail, those messages and how you talk to your customers can be gold. You know, at Tech Restore, I can't stand those, those voicemail auto attendant things. And I just said that, that was one of the first things I said when I used my voice. I would suggest you do the same thing. Or if you have somebody that sounds better at your thing. I told people, I'm like, you know, I can't stand these things either, but it's just the way it is. But if you listen, I'm gonna get you to a human as soon as possible. And then we went down kind of the trees. And when they make a choice, we'd make another crack, another comment. I suggest record your own greeting. Talk directly to your potential and existing customers. Tell them why you can't answer the phone. We're all in the back working on whatever. You know, those kinds of things. Again, just some humanity on there.

Yeah.

Maybe use some sound effects, you know, that kind of thing. Get your team involved, come up with something different. That.

No, this is good advice. And I would say, even if you have a good one, if it's been more than a year since you updated it, go, we, we all need to do this right now. Go change. Talk about, you know, we like to include an action in every show that's going to help your business. This is the one. And I'm pointing squarely at me. I gotta do this, y'. All.

I love it. And you know that part of it. We would have people stick around and go through the tree just to listen to the way we were talking and joking about some department or whatever. And we would get comments all the time. And often, especially with people that are calling in with a problem, a customer service issue. By the time they get to customer service, if they've had to go through a couple of different levels of this nightmare robotic thing, they're not going to be in a good mood. But if you've talked to them, explain while their issues critically important. And we're finishing up with someone else's right now. And you chime in from time to time, whether on hold. By the time a human does pick up the phone and work with them, they're just, they, the whole attitude is different. You've gotten much closer to being on the other side of the table with.

Them before they, before they even talk to you. Yeah.

Or they've even talked to you. And then of course, you use the two token strategy and you just knock it out of the park.

There you go. Yeah.

On your customer service. So try that. And a few more things. I think every single piece of paper or digital content you, you generate should tell your story. And the obvious stuff, of course, but even on your invoices, small little blurbs at the bottom. You know, people don't make business cards much anymore. Well, I don't Know why? They're totally cheap and it's a wonderful thing to drop in a box to send in an invoice and people stick them on their desk or do whatever. I think they're great and they cost next to nothing. And it can be as simple as having a creative tagline, sharing a review that a customer left you or some something else. But everything should have your story included. Something short and brief that will show people that you really are a caring group of humans that can't wait to do business with them or you're working hard to solve some customer service issue. It's. It's a great opportunity. It doesn't cost you anything. If you want to go see a website who I think have done a great job with a sensitive subject, go to hellotushy.com T U S H Y and see how they've implemented. Now they're a bit over the top, but it's kind of that kind of subject because they sell bidets.

Right.

And the way they've built humor into their entire platform, it just kills me. And it's very effective all the way from the packaging when it comes to the stuff they put inside to the emails. You get it. It just works very well. I think so. I love that. So think about it. How can you put this into your day to day existence?

That's it. Yeah. You tell your advice to and like you are an expert at this. This is something that you, you are also a student of this, right? Like, yeah, this is something you've been doing for a long time. Your mailing list that you used to send out from Tech Restore had that, you know, you were telling your story everywhere and at every opportunity you had, whether that was actually you or. Or not, it didn't matter. You. I mean it was right. But, but it crafted this image of a company that is personable and that's an interesting thing. Right.

I've always wanted to be connected closer to the customer.

Yeah.

And so in that example on the, on our newsletter that went out well, I would always do and I called it a monologue. Right. Because I'm trying to soften everything up. I'm not just trying to sell you this. Another company I think it does a great job at, this is Small Dog Electronics. You know, Don mayer and@smalldog.com sign up for their newsletter. It's just a great job. And like one of the most popular and most responded to newsletters I ever sent out. And I opened the newsletter with my Son eats his Boogers and I was lamenting the fact as a parent and a little kid. And I was like, oh, my gosh, you know, how do I deal with this? But it got everyone's attention, right? And. And another thing that we did was at Mac World Trade show one year, when we would take everybody's name, we'd be like, hey, you know, we're not going to spam you. We're not going to this. Knock on that. And the, the title of the newsletter or the email I sent out to every single one of those people after the show was, okay, I lied and I just said, I've. I've already, you know, and I explained, I'm. I want to send you this email. If you don't want to get any more, that's fine. But if you click this link, you continue. And the number of people that click to continue getting our newsletters, it was out of the park. It was like 30%, which was, you know, unheard of in the low, single, single digits. So be creative about how you do it. I like using short little bits, you know, or better little bits of content. And, you know, whether it's on your website, whether wherever it's at, I think it's fantastic and I think you can find ways to do it. To your point, I'm not sure if I'm an expert at it. I'm definitely a student. But it was out of necessity because I never had a ton of money to hire these big companies or whoever to go out and spend a bunch of money crafting this story. We just had to do it ourselves. So how could you make it memorable? And that's what we did.

Yeah. No, how can you make it memorable and have fun with it? You're doing this all day, every day. Make sure you're having some fun. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. It's good stuff. So, you know, and I love that action item. Go change your auto attendant, change your voicemail, change your answer machines. That's just a great thing to do. Update it all the time, make it seasonal, timely, that kind of stuff to where people really do want to listen to it.

Yeah, it'll change things. It'll change things. Yeah, for sure. You know, you could do that. I was thinking about your terms and conditions, too. You could put some, like, funny things like little Easter eggs inside your terms and conditions. And then, you know, it gives people something to do. Like, who are these people? Why. Why do they talk about Lawyer Stan and why do they hate it? How about a coupon? How about a coupon code?

Oh, right, you hide a coupon. We used to hide coupons on different pages of our website to get people to click around and find it. And you know, we would tell them that right there, hey, congratulations, since you've made it, there is a coupon on our website on one of these pages, you know, and you, you'd get it.

That's awesome. I love it. Folks, thanks so much for listening. Send in your questions. We would love to hear from you or your thoughts or your ideas. We are happy to take them and expand on them. Feedbackusinessshow.co it is always great when we get to hear from you and we would love to hear from you. What are your thoughts, Any ideas that we missed in getting your story heard? What are you doing with your business? Or if you have a good example, let us know. Feedback, business, show. That's what I got today, man. You got anything else?

That's what I got too now. Thank you very much for listening, everybody. And we'll be back with you next week.

We'll be back next week. Keep, keep living that charm life, would you? It's fun. It's more fun, I think.

I agree.