Dave Launches Apple Market Forum, Partnerships and Embracing Apprehension –  Small Business Show 111

The Small Business show. Episode number 111 for Wednesday, March 22nd. Wow. Lots of repeating numbers. 2017. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business Show. The show by, for and about small business owners here at businessshow. Co. And here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Concord, California, I am Shannon Jean. How are you, Dave?

I am good. Crazy, but good. You know, I always say that, though, like, crazy good, crazy good. Yeah. I always say that being busy is better than the alternative. I really, truly can say that I have yet to experience the alternative. And for that, I believe I'm fortunate, but I don't. Charmed, in fact. That's right. Yes. But I don't really know if being busy is better than the alternative because I just haven't experienced that in a long time.

I think it depends on your personality, and I think that it is. And I'm sure we've talked about this before in the show, it's both a blessing and a curse to want to be busy and have a lot of different things going on. And then I look at some of my great friends that are very successful and all this kind of thing, very motivated, but they go home or relax, and they seem to be able to relax a little better than I do. Than I do. When I relax, I can have a great time and get out, but I still want to be doing.

Yeah, it's an active relaxation.

Yeah, I want to relax on the river or up in the snow and running around, that kind of stuff. But, you know, it is kind of a blessing, but it's good. It keeps us busy and keeps us out of trouble.

It does. You know, it's interesting, though, we're talking about keeping yourself busy and certainly starting a business that. And starting an entrepreneurial career. I'll say that is a petrifying prospect right out of the gate because you've got to figure out what to do. And you're driven because you might need, like, rent money for next week or whatever it is. Right. But so there's that time when you start, when you become an entrepreneur, that you're totally outside of your comfort zone. Right. At some level. Maybe hopefully not so far out that you're petrified, but you're outside of that. That little bubble. And I realized that my bubble has gotten bigger over the years. And it wasn't until like this past week or two that I had truly felt anxious and scared and all of that about a new venture again. And it's a good feeling. But I had gotten. I built up enough business wise and of course just life wise that I could stay very busy doing things that I was very comfortable with because I'd gotten comfortable doing all the things that needed to be done. Sure. It's a natural progression. It's not that anything was wrong. And this is what we're gonna talk about today. But this week, yesterday, Paul Kent and I launched a new conference that we're doing called Apple Market Forum. We're going to do it in Silicon Valley late summer. And the concept of the conference is. Over the last year there's been a conversation sort of brewing about how, what is the, what does the future look like for people that are running their businesses with Apple products? And this is not just small business like we talk about here, but even people all the way up to say the brand managers at Fortune 500 companies. Right. So enterprise as well as enterprise as well. And also included in that is the people who perhaps consult for those businesses that are going to run on Apple products. Five years ago, I think it was a whole lot easier to see the future of where you were going to be and where Apple was going to be for you in terms of being able to run your business and deploy all Macs and all iPhones and all the Apple ecosystem. And now that's not quite so clear. Yeah, so that was the genesis of the.

Okay, so that I can imagine. Yeah. And I have a bunch of questions for you on this. So why do you think that is more unclear now than it was, you know, four or five years ago?

Well, I think the iPhone is, is the, is the reason for that. Apple has very much sort of refocused themselves as a consumer oriented company. Right. Whereas for a time it was, you know, creative professionals were being targeted, schools were being targeted. That sor of thing it now is. Nope, it's, it's. I mean it's not. Nope, it's. That's still fine. But the consumer is here and things like, you know, Apple's high end pro products, software and hardware get a little less attention. Yeah, yeah, that, that kind of thing. So, so that's where that conversation is. And, and just to be. And we can go into any direction we want. But with Dave with his PR hat on, I just want to say this is not our goal is for this not to be an anti Apple conference or an Apple bashing conference. This is a. Hey, here's the reality of where we are. Let's talk about what we can do. And some of the conference will be tools and how to type stuff and the Other part will be sort of the heady prognostication, easy for me to say, about how best to. To survive in this new world. That's it.

Sure.

You know, so it's great. Take it for what it is. Here's what Apple has delivered to us. Great. We're not gonna complain about it. We're just gonna move forward with it, but let's do that together. And that's the conference.

Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about the impetus. How long have you been working on this with Paul to, you know, get it out of the gate?

It would probably be. I could probably trace back at least six months from where this conversation started, but really, it's been two or three months of focused work leading up to this point. And then, of course, the work increases from here. Yes, yes.

That's where pulling you out of your comfort level or getting nervous about it.

You know, the thing that got me nervous is I think I'm kind of like you in this regard. I'm fine starting something and seeing how it does and then letting other people find out about it as it becomes successful. Right. And that gives me the freedom to fail privately.

Well, yes, I get it.

Right. With a conference.

Yes.

You, I mean, you, you know, you come up with a lot of stuff, but frankly, you can't even begin to try to succeed until you've told people about your conference.

That's right.

Now, maybe you only tell the people you want to speak there, or maybe you only tell sponsors, but that sort of gets weird. It's like, well, why would I want to speak there if you don't have people? And why would I want to sponsor it if you haven't told, like, you're doing no marketing and you want money from me. So that's a weird comfort, you know, I mean, so, so the, the obvious path, which is the one that we've taken for the most part, we've talked to some of those people, but it's more just a heads up, not a will you commit everything in your life to us, you know, for this thing that, that we haven't marketed yet, you know, and this would have been last week. Now we're starting to market it. But so it's this scary sort of thing that I've never done a conference before. Now, Paul Kent has. He happened to be the one that ran Macworld Expo for, you know, for many years, and then prior to that did QuickTime Live and Mac Tivity. He knows how to do a conference. So that part of it I'm comfortable With.

Yeah, and that's great. And I think that's something that we should. Let's discuss that for a couple of minutes. So the way I met you was I wanted to start a website. You know, was it 12, 13, 14 years ago or something like that?

It was 15, 15 and a half.

Years ago, dating myself. And I had this concept and I said, I want to bring these two aspects together and focus on these particular things, but I had no idea how to do it. And so partnering with an expert or someone that at least has some expertise in the field that you want to go in, I think is a great tool, especially if you. And maybe this is what you have to do is you have to convince that person that you're bringing the other thing to the table.

Right, right.

Because I often get approach coached by people that want to do projects or start businesses and with that concept. But you, you, you speak with them and you kind of realize, well, they're not bringing that to the, to the table.

Yeah.

And I think you need to, as a, as a business or prospective business owner or a partner, and we've talked about partnerships a lot on the show, is you need to really analyze that and say, is this a good fit? Is this person going to really do. I mean, if it's a 50, 50 partnership, are they going to do half of, you know, this work and bring it to the table? And so I think that's great that you identify. You know, Paul has this expertise, you know, running Macworld all those years and all these other conferences and then, you know, your expertise and connections in the industry and your, your voice and your personal brand. It's a great. Sounds like.

Plus I have the technical acumen to actually pull the. I mean, and that, that's part of it because I. Yeah. And. And it came to me. So, so that part was, was a little easier. You know, it was like, oh, yeah, okay, good. I know what he's bringing to the table. Great. Yeah.

He's got logistics and that background of handling all these things. And the other thing I noticed at reading about it @apple market forum.com.

Yes.

Is you're limiting the conference in size.

Yes.

And I thought that is the best thing, you know, a very, very smart thing to do.

Yep. I never would have thought to do that. I mean, as soon as the idea was presented to me, it made all the sense in the world. But, you know, and that's why Paul is a seasoned conference organizer and I am a newbie at that part of it. Right. You know, so. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that limited scope. No, because you need to be able to manage this. And I'll tell you, even at, you know, the numbers, we're talking about 350 people. That's a lot of people.

It is, yes.

Yeah. I've been to conferences where there's been a hundred people and it's felt like none of the people are in the same room at the same time. And then I've been at conferences that have like 3, 4, 500 people that do a great job with it. And I know that that's difficult. So I know we have our work cut out for us there. I'm not worried about it. But it's identified. It's like we can't just take this for granted.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And I like that. You know, it kind of goes back to, we always talk about on and off the show is, you know, starting and, you know, seeing if your concept has legs, if it works on a limited scale. You know, in this case, hey, we're going to do for 350 people. Even though that sounds small, like it's, it's still a lot of people.

It's a lot of people.

Yeah, but it's not open ended. Like, hey, you know, we're going to try to attract 5,000 people or 2,000 people.

Oh yeah, that changes everything.

Changes everything.

Well, and you see, you know, you see that on Kickstarter all the time, right, where somebody puts together not just a budget but timeline. And then it happens to be, you know, the darling of Kickstarter for that month. And suddenly instead of them getting, you know, hitting a goal of 100,000, they hit a goal of, you know, they hit 1.5 million in sales or investment, whatever you want to call it on Kickstarter. It's sales.

Yeah, yeah.

Now it's like, oh crap, I got to build a much bigger factory.

And I think that's often why they fail is, you know, they plan, okay, we're going to make 500 of these widgets, this product X widget, then they let it go and all of a sudden they have orders for 5,000. And I don't know, having never done a Kickstarter campaign, but it seems to me that you would want to limit the access and it's easier to manage and there's a little scarcity to it.

Right? Yeah, that's true. That's right.

We're only going to have X number of units or in the case of the Apple Market forum, we're just going to have this many spots for the 2017.

Yep.

You know, conference. And it'll be a better conference for everybody because of that. Because you guys have this thing in your head of, okay, here's how we need to manage, here's how many speakers we need to, you know, bring on board and these kind of things. I think that's a real smart thing to do.

Yeah. Well, good.

So I'm glad.

Thank you for. That's. That's helpful.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I know, I mean, I know we're doing a show here and this is public, but. But you wouldn't say that here if you didn't mean it. And then we'd get to the end of the show and you'd be like, dude, are you crazy? That's.

That's right. No, no, I, I think it's great because I too, and it, I'm not sure if it's a weakness or a strength, but I too, really feel strongly about small launches being a little quiet about it. I always feel better talking about what I've done versus what I'm going to do.

That's the problem. That's really what it comes down to. Yeah. Because talk is cheap.

Talk is cheap. And, you know, but in the case of hosting a conference, you can't really do that.

I can't hide.

You have to.

No, you have to talk it up a lot in soft launch. Right.

And it's just, and it's also, I think, for your as business owners, you know, time and energy are probably two of the most sacred things you need to protect how much time you allocate, you know, because you're just limited and your energy level is where you are going to focus on these things during the day. And in my experience, when you start talking about all these things you're going to, you're going to do, you're putting this energy into. You know, it's great to have these internal discussions or with your partners that you're going to do those things with.

Sure.

But if you're letting everybody else know and then if something goes awry and you have to kind of back yourself out of things, it's just that it's more energy that you, you don't, you don't have, you don't want to, have to expel if you don't have to. I'll give you a great example. I'm to buy. I've had this dream for a long time to buy this. A fishing place, a fishing lodge. That, that. Yes, that, you know, beyond the river. And we can, you know, rent it out, turn it into, you know, they'll generate some revenue. And I don't have, you know, it's a lifestyle type thing. It's not a huge money maker, but if it could pay for itself, I'd be thrilled. And we found this place and we've work. Been working on it for a few months. And I noticed in. And I have some partners, there's about four or five of us, and the more we talked about it and then it kind of started to spread. And they were talking about it to friends and family members, and my little internal voice was like, this is a mistake. This one's. This is not going to work because we're telling too many people.

Rookie mistake. Yeah, it's a rookie mistake.

And I'm thinking, okay. And everybody's excited and I'm excited about it. Okay, we're going to do this and look at this place, check out this video. And, you know, we finally all get to get. After we've done a ton of legwork, a ton of research on this property, we finally all get together to where we can go out and visit and fly out and visit it. And it turns out, of course, I was right because the pictures and the videos they show us were about 10 years old, and everything was just run down and not maintained and just in very poor, poor condition. And I walked around with these guys and the first thing I said was, and you see what happened? We told everybody about this. Now I'm going to have to back myself out of all these conversations. And every time you see these people looking like, hey, how's that going? And I'm really always focused on the positive. And I hate having to have the conversation about, oh, that didn't work out. Because not only is it you taking your energy, but people often get that little look in their eye like, oh, yeah, I knew it, I knew it.

Yeah. Because everybody, We've said it many times. Everybody projects their. I don't want to put thoughts into people's heads, but I see it as people projecting their own fear about this crazy thing that you're going to do. And in their mind saying, it's not gonna work. Because if it works, what that means is I'm actually afraid of something that would have worked as opposed to I'm afraid of something that wouldn't. Right. So it's this validation thing. And I. And I know this is total armchair psychology, but I think there's some truth in it.

Oh, the world is full of naysayers, right?

That's it. Yeah. But there's a reason for those naysayers, and it's the fear of. Fear of success and failure. I feel like I often say they're two sides of the same coin. I think they're the same side of the same coin. I mean, it's really the same thing. There is going to be a massive change for you if this thing fails or succeeds.

Yeah, that's right. And in my opinion, usually the way you think about it, you're going to be right.

Yes.

So if you're focused on it not working, you're going to be right. It's probably not. And if you're focused on it succeeding, more than likely you'll be right. And so it is a challenging thing with the conference to do that. But, you know, you have to spread the word. You have to get, you know, people involved and keep, you know, people exciting. So let me ask you this. Setting this thing up and putting it together, what have you learned about this so far that that's maybe surprised you the most?

Well, let's see. I have a lot more to learn. Of course, the. What I've learned is that it's not really the logistics of this are not as scary as I would have thought. And it was one of those things. And Paul and I have kind of been learning this about different aspects of this from each other. When it comes to the tech side or whatever, it's always, for me, it's like, well, yeah, we'll just make that happen. It'll be no problem because I've done it a million times. Right. But he would be drilling me with questions like, will he get off my back? Dude, gonna be fine. I told you it's gonna be fine. But simultaneously, I'm drilling into him like, dude, you haven't sent me like a. A budget on this. I know he sort of talked loosely about it, and he's like, yeah, it's gonna be fine. It's gonna be fine.

Yeah, but it's like your comfort level, each is different, right?

Totally. Which is. Which actually is the sign of good partners. I don't want to say it's the sign of a good partnership. I mean, I think in this case it is. But, you know, it's the sign of. Of good partners where you've got. But totally different skill sets, but obviously the same end goal in mind, and that's where there's a lot of benefit. But yeah, it was like we kind of had to have a heart to heart at one point recently. And of course, Paul and I have known each other for Decades. We do the gig gab podcast together, but we've played on stage and we've just known each other forever. But we needed to have a heart to heart. And it wasn't that long ago, it was maybe 10 days ago, that we kind of sat down and was like, okay, hey, there's been a little friction here, but I think it's just because we're each comfortable with radically different things. Sure. Yeah. Yep, yep.

That makes sense. And if you're, you know, on the flip side, he's probably thinking, well, Dave hasn't delivered these things. I need to, you know, I want to know. So it's like, it's good that, you know, you can both sit down, have that conversation and understand that, look, I'm going to take care of these things.

Yes.

And I'm going to handle. Okay. All of these things.

And we're both, we're both, we both could be micromanagers on anything we do. So there's a little bit of that too. Like, okay, you know, let's just be careful that that doesn't happen here.

Sure, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. And I think, you know, your comment earlier is important too, where you said, you know, it makes for a good partner. You're really not sure yet. How about a partnership? Because there's so many different aspects to it. You know, how everyone communic. What everybody's level of, you know, their kind of work ethic. You know, I don't want to say work ethic, but style. Yeah, the style. And, and you know, are, is someone comfortable with the phone call at 11 o' clock at night versus someone else going, dude, it's 11 o'.

Clock.

What are you calling me for? You know, and, and those are, those are important things to just like in any relationship, which, you know. Yeah, don't, don't fool yourself. The partnership is just a critically important relationship.

You're getting married, man.

Yeah, at some level.

I mean, that's right. Maybe not for life, but yeah, you know, short period of time.

Yeah. Well, and if you start out at a, maybe a limited or a, a smaller level with this, a partner potential partnership, you have a chance to kind of, you know, see how the other person operates and, and maybe adjust your style a little bit. But if your first project is building the Empire State Building or whatever, some giant thing, there is no time for adjustment because you have to hit the ground running. And that's where I think a lot of startups that take a lot of cash in and bring in a lot of people and maybe they don't know each other as quite as well, often can crash and burn or never get profitable.

No, yeah, it was interesting. I had, and this was maybe three or four weeks ago, it was sort of the thing that led to this eventual conversation that I just mentioned. But I had a busy stretch of maybe 48 hours. And at the very beginning of this 48 hours, Paul had texted me something on Slack and asked, what about this? Or whatever? And I was like, I saw it, but it was one of those things. It was, I was in the middle of something else. It was like, yeah, okay, like that's not urgent. We're not, it's not like we're launching tomorrow or something. Like, I can deal with this. And then I had like 48 hours of insanity and I didn't, didn't reply to him. And then finally. Right. But you know, and I, I mean, in retrospect I should have, and I should have just said, hey, dude, like, give me two days, you know, and that's all it would have taken. But it was like, whatever, you know, that's not it. It wasn't a priority for me.

Yeah, I understand.

And so then that part of it came to a head and he asked me, he said, I don't know how to read this. I've never known you not to respond. And so is something going on? Is this some passive aggressive thing to try and teach me not to ask you questions at 11 o' clock at night or what is it? And I said to him, I said, okay, first and foremost, I will never intentionally be passive aggressive. You know, I might not have an answer for you, and sometimes that might lead to a lag in a reply, but that's not intentional. You know, if I need to teach you a lesson about how to deal with me, I'm just going to sit down and we're going to talk about it, you know, because it's way easier that way. Yeah, but I totally get why he asked the question. Right? I mean, it's a totally valid question. But you know, that kind of thing, you need to be able to. The fact that he felt comfortable enough to come to me and say, what's going on, dude? That's the most important part of partner to partnership in my book, is you gotta be able to communicate and you kind of need to be able to take all the filters off. And if you feel like you've got a partner that you need to handle with kid gloves, you have a bad partnership.

Yeah. And it's probably your shared History that really allows you guys to do that. So if you have a new partner that you don't know much about or trying to start something up, you really have to. To put that energy into having those conversations and talking about that, because it can easily go awry if you don't.

Yeah, very easily. Yeah. Yeah. You can't. You can't. And I've. And I mean, part of the reason I can speak as an expert on this subject is that I've experienced both sides of it. I've. I've had, in fact, like I mentioned, that lawsuit I'm in the middle of. It's exactly this. It's a partner that I couldn't communicate with. I don't know whether or not this person could communicate with other people. That's up to other people to decide. But it certainly didn't work. And we couldn't. I tried to have these sort of stark, like, we need heart to hearts. We got to have the. You know, some people call it the come to Jesus moment. Right.

That's right.

And we never were able to have that. And that's where a partnership just fails. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree with you.

Yeah.

Well, this is exciting stuff. I mean, I'm congratulate you guys on, you know, rolling this out. I'm looking forward to continuing to talk about it over the coming months. Sure.

I'll have a ton to learn.

It's gonna be awesome.

Yeah, man.

Yeah, it's gonna be great. But that's why we're all here, right? Yeah, we're all here to learn.

And it's felt really good, like. And it was yesterday where I realized it's been too long since I've been. It's. Scared's the wrong word, but. But it's not wrong.

Got it.

It's apprehensive. Apprehensive. There you go. Yeah.

Yeah.

Those kinds.

And even I just. We had a kid I was talking to last night that's, you know, young guys, just getting his driver's license. Not my kid, but a friend of family and, you know, very nervous about thing. And I just said, you know, in my experience, the things that make you nervous or apprehensive are usually the most rewarding things in your life. And I really think it's true. And when you get kind of stuck in that rut, you know, a rut is just a grave with the ends, you know, know, kicked out of it. You need to do something to get yourself out of that. And, you know, I didn't even realize.

I was in a rut. And I wouldn't sure classify the last, you know, whatever two years, but, but it, I mean, it certainly was, you know, I was in my comfort zone and had plenty to do, so I didn't need to break out. And it's like, wait a minute, you know. Oh, thank goodness.

You know. That's right. Yeah, that's right. That's great. That's awesome. Well, it's good. I appreciate you sharing with us and we'll keep chatting about it. We have some other good guests coming up in the, in the coming weeks on the show, and it's going to be good. We're going to have a great spring on the Small Business show.

Yeah, I think it's going to be. It's going to be a lot of fun. Yeah. Good stuff, man. All right, folks, you can find us businessshow Co. Of course, our small business support group is businessshow Co Founder, Facebook and your feedback at Business Show Co. What is it that we always say.

Keep living that charmed life?

That's what I like to say. Take it easy, folks. See you next time.

See you later.