EIDL Loans, Accountants and Tapping into the Creativity and Productivity Faucet

The Small business show episode 345 for Wednesday, September 15, 2021. Greetings folks and welcome back or welcome to if it's your first visit here, the Small Business show where we spend our efforts Small business ing each week we like to take action and therefore we've made it a verb. Sponsors for this episode include LinkedIn.com SBS where you can post your first job for free and netsuite.comsbs where you can get their access to their one of a kind financing program. We will talk more about all of those details in a few minutes here. For now, here, back here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton and still.

Here in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean.

I was so close to you, man. I mean, so close, yet so far. I was, I was clear on the other side of the bay, the San Francisco Bay, than, than from you. And so we did not get to see each other but partially because of distance but also partially because of the reason that I was in the Bay Area and that was that there were fires in Lake Tahoe where I was planning on going. And you have a home in rental home in Lake Tahoe that you had to deal with. So. Yeah, yeah, I did.

And it's been a crazy month of watching and checking status of things and communicating with people. We have a couple of properties, one up in the mountains and the Trinity river, one up in Tahoe. And both of them were right in the line of fire. And luckily at the last minute, both of these fires kind of veered away and so we got some protection on those houses. But it's just been an emotional financial and just a headache to deal with.

Yeah.

You know, we're, I'm happy that, that we're on the back side of those, but I have another frustration I'd like to talk about for just a moment.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm happy to report I just paid back one of my Eidl loans, Economic injury disaster loan.

Right. So different from the grant in, in that it was a loan that you had to pay back. Okay. Yeah.

And it came, part of it. It was a little grant on the front end of it, which was cool. Yeah. And, and it was great. And I never really even used it, but it was an awesome safety net and I thought it was just a great idea and it helped. I just, I think thousands and tens of thousands of businesses was great.

Yeah. But.

Like most things in the government and I'm not going to get on a big government rant. I'd like to, but I'm not going to today. Very difficult. Not easy to pay it off. It reminds me of, well, easy to just go in, log in to pay.gov and you know, kind of dealt, but nowhere to get a payoff amount online.

Oh, we dealt with this for the company that we have that under which small business show is, is organized. It was the same kind of thing. Yeah, it was, it was not easy to go and say, please end this.

I just want to, yeah, I just want to send you a check and pay whatever, you know, small amount of interest is exactly open. And I, it just, you know, it reminds me of how frustrating it could be. We did a show recently all about returns and if you make them easier, you build customer loyalty and ease frustration. Well, this is just like the exact opposite because then, you know, the, the representative I have at the sba, reach out to them, very nice person. They can't tell me either. The only way I can get it is to call an 800 number and wait on hold for, you know, an epic amount of time. And yesterday after on hold for about 26 minutes, the system and I'd never had this happen before, the auto attendant came on and said there's been a technical error and all calls have been disconnected. Click. And that was it. What I've never heard of my life. And I said, wow, technical error. And only with the government because they're probably using some 1978, you know, version of an auto attendant voicemail system or something. But if you have an easy way to find out what the Eidl payoff is, please send me an email feedbackusshow. Co. I'd love to find out a quick way to do it and find it online because I have no reason. So I'm going to reach out to our, our vast audience of super smart people and see if they can come.

Up with some ideas, see if they can help you. Yeah, no, I had to go through, jump through hoops just to pay off. I mean I definitely spent way more time than it was worth to figure out how to pay them back. Yeah, yeah, it is. Speaking of, of worth it. I had to make last minute travel changes last week. Right. Because I was supposed to go to Tahoe. Even though we knew we weren't going to be in Tahoe. That's where all our plans had sort of aimed us. And, and we knew we were going to wind up not going to Tahoe. Whether we wound up in winding up in Mountain View, California, I did not expect, I expected that the concerts that we were going to see in Tahoe would simply be canceled or postponed to 20, 22 or something, and we would just go home or something, you know, I don't know what you would have done. And we sort of knew. And we. Not sort of. We definitely knew that as we were flying out, we flew out on Wednesday night, the 25th. Literally, as our plane is touching down into Portland, where we were dropping our son off, we start getting the messages that somehow the. The management for the band Fish, who was the concert we're going to see, had pulled off the logistical gymnastics of moving concerts that were happening five days later. Right. Like, I don't even. They were rumors that this was in the works, was like, there's no freaking way.

It's impressive.

It's really impressive. Yeah. So then I had to pull off the much, much easier logistical gymnastics of simply going to a different spot, which was super easy. But I. I know how it gets when there's concerts. And if you don't book your hotel right away, then you can't have a hotel within walking distance to the venue, and you've got to deal with, you know, all those problems. What I didn't know at that moment in time is our plane's touching down and I'm getting these notifications that the, you know, the concert has moved and all that. What I didn't know is that there are no hotels within walking distance to the venue. Right. But I know that now. So I was very quickly trying to book, and I, you know, I found we're Marriott people because we were Starwood people. And so, you know, I'm looking through the Starwood stuff literally on my phone as the plane is like, you know, touching down and bouncing off the Runway and taxiing. And I found the residence in Mountain View, Palo Alto or something.

Yeah.

And I saw, like, rooms were disappearing on this, and so I couldn't. I tried to get a suite with a queen. I wanted something where I had a kitchen because I knew we were going to have to be doing work during the day, so I wanted a little bit of room. And those residence inns, you know, tend to have a little more room than just a typical hotel room. And I watched as the queen suite went away. And so I wound up with the penthouse suite. Two bedrooms. Yeah. The space wise, it worked out fine. I should have known, though, when they charged me $190 a night for the penthouse suite that I should not set my expectations too high.

Broad interpretation.

Yeah. It was cheap and worth it, but, you know, it was fine. Like, we had room to work for somehow they. I still don't understand the Shannon every morning. Not just one morning, every morning for approximately four hours. And I can't stress enough that I am not exaggerating here. Like, this is. I'm still flabbergasted that for four hours every weekday morning, they emptied the dumpsters. And it was nice because our penthouse suite had a beautiful view of the dumpsters right outside our. Our front door. I don't know how you empty a dumpster for four hours, but they pulled off that we thought fish. Moving the concerts was an impressive feat. Emptying the dumpsters for four hours, that's even more impressive. So. Yep. Be be aware when you are booking things. I know we all know this, but, you know, the phrase cheap and worth it comes to mind when I'm thinking about this stuff. And. And I definitely proved it to myself again. So I really wasn't looking necessarily to save money. I was just looking to grab a room that was going to be functional for us. And it was functional. Like, it was totally fine. It. But yeah, was interesting.

AirPods and so you don't have to hear it.

Yeah. I mean, we're going to concert, so I wanted to kind of sleep in a little bit. But you know what? Yeah, that's fine. I spent the morning, Shannon, dealing with probably the final round of effort in the process that I've been going through of moving one of my businesses from one accountant to. To another. So we're moving Backbeat Media from an accountant that we've had for probably 20 years to a new accountant that I've had for other businesses here. So it's not. It's not a brand new accountant to me. I've known this person for a couple of years. They've been doing one of my other businesses. And. And I had a New Hampshire issue with Backbeat, and this accountant is more skilled with New Hampshire stuff, so it made more sense to move the whole business to him. And it's been an interesting. I knew that there would be. I mean, I was actually happy to move to him. He sees things a little bit differently. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Right. You know, there are stylistic differences, there are risk tolerance differences from person to person, and therefore from accountant to accountant. And so I was. I was actually excited to move to this guy just to have somebody taking a different look at things. And it has been helpful. What I misunderestimated to make up a word, was how much effort it was going to be to take a, you know, 20 years of habits and and, you know, not everybody. Everybody has the things about which they are diligent. And so there are some things that my old accountant was very diligent about that the new guy probably, you know, may or may not be, but there were definitely some things that my old accountant wasn't as diligent about that my new guy is. And so. And I knew this, but I didn't quite wrap my head around how much effort and sort of the pain of digging through the past and explaining things that had become habitual. Right. Like, oh, we do it's this way, because we've always done it this way. Yes. Yeah. And he's like, well, why do you do it that way? Well, dude, you know, I don't know. It's because we do it that way, because it's the way we do it. Like, tell me why we need to do it a different way. Tell me why we need to do this. He's like, okay, well, here's this and this and the other thing, and it's all been great, and it. It's been a fantastic learning experience. I actually enjoy accounting. There have been moments this past week and a half where I have not enjoyed accounting at all because it's just been too much of it. But it's. It's been valuable. I'm glad we're here, but, you know, with the deadline of September 15, which is the day the show comes out, we obviously record before it comes out, the deadline of that sort of looming down on us. We had to, you know, we had to get the return ready. And so that meant cleaning up, you know, not 20 years of books, but maybe three years of books, so that the. That which leads into 2020 looks right, so that 2020 can be right. And now 2021 will probably be way easier because we've sort of, you know, paved this path that this new guy works with better. And I think it is better. But it's figure out, like, yeah, like.

You mentioned the stylistic differences. That's what I liken it to you. When you go, if you go get a new barber or a new hair stylist or whoever to cut your hair, one of the things I always like, who cut your hair last? You know, and with this kind of, wow, okay, I can fix this. I can fix that. And I think accountants are the same way. It's like, well, you know, why did they. Why did you do this? Why'd you make this decision? And it's just everybody's background. Different things. Different things. Yeah. And it's a good Thing, you've done it, you've kind of migrated it slowly. I think that's great. The last thing, especially, you know, towards the end, because I'm like you with the LLCs and businesses. You know, September 5th, I'm always extending things. And then your personal stuff, October 15th, it just, that's always the way it works out for me. Because you're waiting for paperwork. Yeah, paperwork coming in, things are happening. It just never seems to come on time. So, you know, my accountant's used to it now, but when you, when I first change them, it's constantly like, okay, are you going to do this? Do we have to file this? What do we have to do? So you have to give them plenty of background on how you operate.

Totally important. That's what you know, and that's what I realized. You know, there was a moment in the middle of this process where I thought, I have chosen the wrong guy. Like, I'm committed for 2020 because I've only got 10 days left and I'm definitely not going to change horses again. But I've got the wrong guy. He is. I've always said you have to find an accountant who is slightly less risk tolerant than you, but that gap can't be too big, otherwise you wind up, you know, I'm someone who, I don't believe in cheating the system. I believe in understanding the system, figuring out my, the best path through it and then taking it. And some of that, some level of that comes with the understanding that at some point in time you may be called upon to have a conversation with a straight face with the IRS about why you chose to take that particular path through their rules. And that's totally fine. Like, you know, I get that. And, and they may disagree. And then you have to have a deeper conversation. Right. And that's okay. Your account. I, I like to have an accountant who is slightly less risk tolerant than me so that we can push and pull on each other a little bit and, you know, and have that. But the gap, the gap can't be too so wide that you never find a middle ground. Right. You know, and I, because this guy needed to learn this business, he was asking lots of questions that I interpreted as, oh, man, this guy's not going to like the answer to this. He's not going to like the answer to how we do this. This is. He, he wants everything so by the book that I'm not going to take any deductions ever. Right. And, and there were, there were about three days where I felt that Way in the end I was totally wrong. He wasn't asking the questions to question me or question why. He was asking the questions to question why so that he could understand, understand it. That's what they need to understand.

Yeah.

He needs to understand this stuff so that he, he feels comfortable putting his name on it. And also. That's right. Can help me. Yeah, yeah.

I found that if, if you come barreling into a new accountant and you're Mr. Risk Tolerant and this and I know it, it can kind of freak him out.

Yeah.

So it's, it's, you do have to ease yourself into it and discuss it so they can get to know you. Similar to a financial planner. They, they're, they're trying to build a profile.

Yeah.

Of okay, this person's comfortable doing this way and this is how they do it and this is how they run their, their business and they intermix this or their personal life. And so you want to, you want to give yourself plenty of time. It's not a quick transition if, you.

Know, if you think you're going to.

Drop on the new person in 30 days and you're going to have it all figured out, it's just not going to work. You're going to have a bad time if that's your expectation.

Well, my problem with, and that's so, of what I did because I've been working with this guy on a different company for a couple of years now. So I figured, and it's like it's been going well and everything's great and I thought I understood, you know, where he sat on a lot of different issues. And it turns out I did, I just misinterpreted the questions he was asking about this new business simply because it's new to him, you know. And so yeah, I came, I did come barreling in thinking, oh this is going to be, this is cake. I know we know how to work together. This is no problem and it will be no problem. It just was a little bit painful. I have a, something came up about dissolving an LLC and I want to ask your opinion on this. The first thing that I want to do though is talk about our two sponsors. Our first sponsor today is Netsuite. Look, tackling your business's financial to do's can be daunting enough as we just talked about without being slowed down by QuickBooks. I've been experiencing this this week. This is timely for me. More like slow books maybe. Netsuite by Oracle is the number one financial system no matter how Big. Your business grows with visibility and control of your financials, your inventory, your HR, your E commerce and more. NetSuite is everything you need to grow all in one place. You gotta go. It's netsuite.com SBS is where you're gonna go to check out what they've got. They call it the first Cloud ERP platform, right? And they help over 26,000 customers gain visibility, control and agility to build and run successful companies. And special financing is back. Netsuite is offering a one of a kind financing program for only those ready to switch today. So head to that URL I mentioned, netsuite.com SBS right now. That's netsuite.com SBS go check it out. I think you're going to like what you see. And Our thanks to NetSuite for sponsoring this episode. Next up is LinkedIn Jobs. Look, we know how it goes, right? Today we small business owners are, I don't like to say busier. We are more productive than ever. All that time spent searching for and interviewing candidates can take time away from being productive, managing and growing your business. But you still need to do it because bringing on employees is one of the best ways to grow your business. And that's why LinkedIn jobs has made it easier to get to the candidate that it's worth interviewing faster. And I can't stress this enough, it's free. We just did this. We just used LinkedIn jobs and we posted our job for free on LinkedIn jobs. And it's how we wound up with Sadie that, that, you know, that's doing all this work for this show, for a couple of other shows for us here at Backbeat Media. And we wound up with so many good candidates. I was shocked at just how great the, the tools and everything are and the candidates are with LinkedIn jobs. And, and that's the thing, right? You can create a free job post in minutes to reach your network and beyond to the world's largest professional network of over 770 million people. And their tools allow you to focus on candidates with the skills and experience you need. You can even use screening questions, which we definitely did, to get your role in front of only the most qualified people. And then you can filter and prioritize to see who you'd like to interview. And then eventually higher. LinkedIn jobs helps you find the candidates worth interviewing faster. And did you know that Every week nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn? Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com SBS that's LinkedIn.com SBS to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply, of course. And our thanks to LinkedIn jobs for, for sponsoring this episode. All right, Shannon, So my account is. We've been going through this with Backbeat here. When we started the business, we were a two member llc. My partner Greg and I started. Actually, I think by the time we formed the llc, we were two members. We were three members for a very short period of time, but we were certainly two members that weren't married or related in any other way. So we started an LLC and that's what still exists today. Now, 10 years ago or whatever, I bought Greg out. So now the LLC is still a multi member LLC so that it can be treated like a partnership. And it's me and my wife on the, you know, in the, in the partnership. My new to this business accountant is strongly advising me to dissolve the LLC and just file it as a partnership. Well, as a schedule C return, you know, as a sole proprietorship, essentially, and, and get rid of the tax reporting burdens of filing as a partnership. This, this seemed counterintuitive to me. I've always been told, no, no, no, you don't want to muddy up your personal taxes with this stuff. Leave it this way. Have you heard differently? He seems to feel like I'm, I'm making a stupid decision if I don't do this.

Well, I, you know, I think there's, there's arguments for both, and I'm probably not the best person to voice those, but I have both of those things. We have LLC partnerships that run right down to the Schedule C. If your accountant thinks it's simple enough and you're, it's, it's over. Complicating things to make it the llc. Yeah, I love, I like the llc, you know, protections. If you have it, what could be, you know, issues that arise and you want to protect your personal assets, but if it's, you know, so, so I guess I would talk to my attorney at the same time before I made that decision.

Yeah.

And just ask him, what are the repercussions of this if something goes wrong. Now, you know, it depends on your business. Like, we are our real estate, we always hold those in LLCs because our liability then is the assets of the LLC.

Right. Not personal assets, not your house and everything else. Yeah.

Yes. Nutshell. But, you know, if you have a pretty straightforward business, like, you know, I have that handbag business that we've talked about on the show, that just runs to my Schedule Cs, there's just no liability to it, you know, it does about a million bucks a year, but it's not putting anything at risk per se. It's just a very simple thing. And it does can overcomplicate it and make it more expensive when you have to file. I mean, California LLC is 800 bucks a year.

Yeah.

And so I guess maybe just run it by your accountant and see or your attorney.

No, but if you're right, have any red flags. The liabilities are the thing. Okay. Yeah. All right, cool. Thank you.

To me, I think that is now unless I'm not interpreting those correctly, but I believe I am on the, on that. But it would be a good question for your, your attorney.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. Thank you. All right. If anybody out there has any advice on this feedback at Business show co. I'm not going to, I'm not going to jump too quickly into this. I mean, I, I have a. The LLC has existed in 2021 because it still exists. So even if we want to dissolve it before the calendar year ends, I've got plenty of time to, you know, to, to make that move. So it's not like I have to decide in the next week or anything, so. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You had something on your list, on your plate.

I do. Actually. You sent me a. A thread. Twitter, a thread, however you want to call it from a Julian Shapiro, which I really liked. And we'll link in the show notes. And it was, it was all about this conc. Of a. What he calls a creativity faucet. And he was, you know, he uses musicians in this exist. You know, his example example to talk about how, you know, certain types of musicians, they just constantly come out with new creative content and they generate hits for years and others do it once or twice and you don't hear from.

Anymore one hit wonders. There's plenty of them.

Yeah, that's right. And what Julian has said is, look what these folks are doing, and there's an example of Ed Sheeran talking about it is they're thinking of their creativity as just one long pipe. And at the end there's this faucet. And every time you sit down and you're trying to work through and be creative in that pipe is a large quantity of what it's backed up. He calls it wastewater. That's like the first mile of your pipe is just full of garbage. And the way these people get through that, these ones that are very successful is they just get down to business and get through the garbage. They know that it's going to be garbage when they first start. They have to work through this wastewater.

Right.

To eventually get to something of quality. And when I read that, I thought, boy, you know, it's really a true thing. But I also. My take on it is a little bit different too, is. I also would call it a productivity faucet, especially for. For small business owners.

Oh, yeah. This applies to so many different things. Yeah.

Correct.

Yeah.

And we always, you know, we. We've done entire episodes all about how action is so much more powerful than ideas and how getting in the rhythm of getting things done will carry you through, you know, failure and bad times and to, you know, get you to the other side. Well, this concept is kind of the same thing, you know, and you see it with business, small business owners and people, is if you're willing to just get into it and start taking action, you can work through this wastewater that's in your pipes, if you will, to get to the good stuff. But many, many people stop. They can't do it or they won't do it. They get going, they start and they hit some log jam or something. Doesn't look right. Or they're just not happy with what's coming out.

If it's terrible. Right, you stop. So I have a. And I see this in the songwriting process all the time, but I see it in my. In my own, just general processes. I'm. I'm not a. I. I do not consider myself a songwriter. I've written exactly one song. It charted fairly well, actually, on college radio, and I figured I'd quit while I was ahead. That's not entirely true. The last part's not entirely true. It did chart pretty well. But the. Here, let me give you this example. If you wrote something crappy and gave it to me, or if I wrote something crappy and gave it to you, you would probably have no trouble editing that.

Yes.

And turning it into something better. Whether it would be great at the end, we don't know. But you could definitely take my crappy thing and make it better. Right. And I could take your crappy thing and make it better. So that's the thought process I go through when, you know, with this. This creativity faucet analogy in place, when the crap is coming out the wastewater. Well, now I can edit myself and iterate on this. And a lot of times what editing becomes is throwing away and going with the next thing. But. But the process of analyzing the crap becomes an iterative process. Wait, there's one good little thing or. That's terrible. But I have an idea. You're in it now. Now, instead of just trying to create from whole cloth, now I'm in the mode of editing, which is also a creative process. And while you're editing, you have ideas and so they can become their own original things. You can say you were inspired by or whatever, but you can inspire yourself. And you need to let yourself be your own inspiration sometimes, especially for us entrepreneurs and people, you know, who are acting as solopreneurs, you need to, you need to just get the ideas out there. You know, if you had a team of a hundred people and they were all terrible at putting out ideas, but, but we're putting them out anyway, you could create value out of that. Well, if you have a team of one person, you can create value out of that. Let the bad ideas flow. It's totally. Yeah.

And I think that many businesses get stuck in the wastewater, if you will, and they don't. To your point, they don't iterate enough to get out of it. If you see businesses that have bad customer service, they're only focusing on price. They don't adapt to change very well. They're always focusing too much on the competition or you're, you know, the owners micromanaging. Those folks are in the garbage. And the only way I believe, because it, because in this analogy, there's only one pipe. It's all coming from one spot.

Yeah, right, right.

There's not this little things that you can finesse, so you have to work through it. And if you don't iterate, if you don't constantly try new things, like if your customer service department is, you know, full of people that are not happy, because if, if your employees that are in that department aren't happy, I guarantee your customers aren't happy and vice versa. It's a circular thing. You have to start introducing some change and iterating and trying new things till you can get to, you know, to the good. To the good stuff. And you know, as business owners, there's lot. There's so many things that hold, that hold us back, especially if we're just trying to get started. You know, fear of failure, lack of support, pressure, society pressure. Right. Bad decisions. All this stuff lives in this wastewater of this pipe.

Yeah.

Analogy here. And you have to keep pushing to get through them to get to that success. And I, I would argue that most people stop because they either don't get the support they get. They, all the naysayers, you know, go listen to our episode about fueling yourself on the tears of your naysayers very Important to spin it and try to prove those people wrong and use that as your foundation to go. You have to keep working through these things. And this example of writing is great. There's no shortcuts. You have to just start creating. One of the things for me that held me back as a writer for years was my fear of poor grammar. Not using the stupid oxford comma or whatever you want to, you know, whatever it is, you know, over and over. Because I always felt what people are going to judge me. And it held me back from creating content and not until I. And I. And I really not a huge fan of using editors because I like to do everything on my own and not wait. But once software started to improve to where it could advise me and I lean heavily on the Grammarly pro now that I love that, that application, it's just really great. It's not always right, but most of the time it gets me to where I feel comfortable to where I can publish that. And it's allowed me to write a few books and really changed my life. So finding tools to help you get through that wastewater is really important. And, you know, you just have to start whatever you're going to do, you have to take that action. Don't be focused on the quality right away. You know, just get it going. Write down your ideas. Start with your actions that are very small. Keep track of what you're doing. You know, use our to did list concept where if you, you know, you want to keep track of the small little things you're doing all day. So at the end of the day, you can look and say, wow, look what I achieved. It wasn't some major breakthrough, but I've got 12 things done that have been on my plate and been bothering me for a while. That is what's going to carry you through to that quality stuff.

Yeah, we. I. Well, I'm not going to say we. I have a major issue with doing something, creating products, putting myself out there with things at which I am not already an expert. Now, the only way to do something new is to not be an expert at it. Right. I intellectually understand this, but yeah, sure, right. Obviously, you know, you can't be an. If they say it takes 10,000 hours to. To become an expert at something, well, you know, that first hour, guess what? You ain't an expert. Right. Like, there's no way that you're going to be perfect the first time out. Of course, over the course of 10,000 hours, you realize that you're never going to be perfect. And Then. And then you continue spending, you know, another 10,000 hours and another 10,000. But I still catch myself being like, I can't do this. I'm not an expert at this, so I shouldn't even try. And I have to catch myself at that even still today. Like, nope, go try it. Figure it out. You'll iterate. You're smart enough to apply some filters, and other people pay far less attention to your mistakes than you do. That absolutely right. Like, that's the key to this. And especially when it's this kind of creative process where you can just let it flow. Like, people don't necessarily have to see the wastewater. I mean, they are going to at some point, right? At some point you're going to think, oh, this isn't wastewater. And you put something out there, it's like, oh, yeah, guess what? It turns out it still was. Yep.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but. And you can.

That's okay.

Yeah, it is. And you can find examples of this all over. You know, if you, if you're not seeing the results that you expect, I would say a good analogy to think about is, I'm stuck in this waste. I'm stuck in the wastewater. The pipe is just still clogged. So look at what you're doing. Maybe you need to change your leadership style a little bit, Introduce something different. New ways to manage your employees, new opportunities and challenges for people that work for you. If that's not working right, maybe you need to move past a product that didn't do well for you, like, you know, you mentioned, and making sure you understand the, this fallacy of sunk cost. You know, where you think, I've invested so much in, I can't give it up. I think a great example of a company that does this is other world computing. And we're in the Apple, the tech space. So we know this company well. And Larry o' Connor and his team over there, we see the outside where they've iterated and introduced, you know, dozens, maybe hundreds of new products and things going and whatever. But you see this constant iteration, and I guarantee you on the, on the inside there's failure after failure, but on the outside, you know, it's like, oh, look, they've got a new product. And even when they didn't have new products coming out, they embraced, generating revenue other ways. For a while they would, and maybe they still are, but they were selling, you know, refurbished, you know, Mac, Macintosh stuff and phones and iPads for a while, kind of in the, in between as they transition from one type of business to another. I think it's a great example. I think ebay does the same thing where they try new things. Many of them fall flat on their face and fail and they just, okay, we're going to abandon that, but we're going to keep this little nugget that we learned from this process and we're going to put it in with another product or another service.

And so somebody on that tweet stream mentioned Pixar's 22 rules of storytelling and specifically highlighted number 12. So we will link to all of them. But number 12 says discount the first thing that comes to mind. And the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth. Get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself. That's the key, right? Is like, yeah, don't do the obvious stuff, but you have to acknowledge it because otherwise it's going to be there because it's obvious. So acknowledge it. Look at it. It's okay, right? And then once you've looked at it now, you're not going to be obsessed about it anymore. Move on. Right? It's like meditation, right? When your mind, the idea is to have a completely clear mind with meditation. We. Any meditator, whether they are their first day or their, you know, hundredth year of meditating, will tell you they fail at that. We fail at that all the time. The trick is learning to acknowledge that. Yeah, there's going to be these things that our minds obsess about. So the best thing to do is to acknowledge them. There it is. Yep, that's the thing. Okay. Then you're freed from it usually, you know, so.

Yeah, no, it's great. So I, you know, I love this concept and I think we've, you know, people that are successful have embraced it and, you know, without knowing it, but just getting it started, taking action. This is why we love to think of the term small business as a verb instead of just, you know, a. Just a term. Because the folks that are going to make it are the ones that are just constantly taking action, iterating, not getting stuck. You know, it's. It's only way I know how to get through bad times. And we're all going to have them. We, we've had a rough, you know, year or so of this Covid thing and getting through all this stuff and making your business, you know, be as successful as possible. You just have to keep moving.

So that's how I, that's how I do it. I realized last, you know, I was away for 10 days for that trip and it's the Second time this month or last month that I was away for, you know, a stretch. And the first time I really, I didn't intentionally detach from work, but schedule wise, I kind of did. And I came back really, you know, stressed about a few things because I didn't keep up with stuff and I didn't really plan not to keep up with stuff stuff. And this trip, I was a lot more intentional about it and I realized, you know, I deal with my stress by being productive. That's how I, that's how I, you know, make that go away. And, you know, thankfully the, the dumpster emptiers woke us up at, you know, 7:00am every day, so I had plenty of time to, to get my work done and be plenty productive, which was great. You know, and then I take a nap and then we go to the concerts. It was fine. So. Yeah, that's great.

Yeah, it's good stuff, man. So, you know, if, if you believe in this concept or you have examples, we'd love to hear from you. Feedbackusinessshow co. Share your successes and failures with us here so we can help each other continue to succeed.

That's the idea. Yeah. We'd love to hear from you. As he said multiple times. Feedbackusinessshow co that's three S's in the middle there all together and then a fourth S, you know, earlier in the word. But it is feedback business show. We would love to hear from you. Thanks for hanging out with us. Make sure you check out our sponsors. Of course. Like I said, netsuite.com that's n e t s u I t e.com SBS as well as LinkedIn.com SBS have a good week. We'll see you in a week. Keep living that charmed life. Thanks, Shannon.

Hey, thank you, Dave.