Elon Musk, Julia Child and Part 1 of Career Paths

The Small business show episode 377 for Wednesday, April 27, 2022. Greetings folks and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co the show where we are always small business ing every single week. Sponsors for this episode include banknovo.com SBS where you can set up your free business banking account in just 10 minutes and hunterdouglas.com SBS where you can go and check out all their They've got some special savings for you and everything on their fantastic blinds that are automatable. And we'll talk more in depth about each of those a little bit later here in the episode. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And here in Lafayette, I'm Shannon Jean. I'm excited about today's show.

Yeah, Shannon, what do Elon Musk, Julia Child and career paths have in common?

It's a natural trifecta.

It is.

We're going to explore each of those.

Yeah, that's right.

Natural trifecta. That's what you go for on the Small Business Show.

I will start this conversation by saying that perhaps I err too far on the side of keeping myself emotionally detached from partisan politics. But I honestly, I started the day not quite understanding all the backlash against Twitter going private and being owned and controlled by effectively Elon Musk. And maybe effectively doesn't even need to be there. Yeah, I have come to understand some of the concerns and I actually agree with some of them. But I don't, I don't know, it seemed like there was a lot of knee jerk reactions to people. And I guess maybe the place I should start is I'm not, I'm not, I could be called an Elon Musk fan. I wouldn't call myself that. I used to be very cautious and wary and concerned about him until I saw him speak a few times. And the more I encountered him, the more I realized I truly believe him at face value that he is not a malicious person. He's not out to hurt everyone else for his benefit. You know, I really think everything he does is for his vision of what would be better for the world.

Yeah, I do. That's a good point. And you have to see his vision. Right. And I think that's, I think there are, I don't know if concerns are the right word, but it's certainly a good discussion to talk about. Is it healthy for billionaires or whatever, very wealthy people to own big media properties, but they all do anyway. You know, Carlos Slim owns the New York Times. Bezos owns Washington Post. Steve Jobs wife Lauren Jobs owns the Atlantic and some other publications. And so they are all in the business of, and I say this not in a negative way, but controlling the narrative or maybe being involved in.

Yeah. Being involved in our society. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's right. And that was the part I was overlooking. Right. I mean, I think if I, if I look at everything that Musk has done and I, and I listen to the way that he speaks and I think he sees the world. He's weird, right? Definitely. A weird human, definitely. But I think a big part of that is because he sees things the rest of us normal people do not. Right. Like how many of us even, you know, someone like me. So I'm a, I'm a 50 year old man who, who grew up as a digital native, right. I was online by the time I was 14 years old, so really not any different from my kids in that regard. And that makes me like weird to, to my, you know, age related friends because most of them did not grow up online. Right. You know, they came to it later in life. But even me, like when I heard about X.com which then became PayPal.com I thought, why would somebody want to send money that way? Like we have ways to send money online is for, is not for commerce, it's for just exchanging information freely. Why would we want to do this? I didn't think we needed PayPal. None of us thought we needed PayPal until we had PayPal and then we couldn't live without it. Right? And the same thing has been true for everything else he's done in his career. He sees these things that to him are obvious solutions or obvious problems that need to be solved and the solution isn't terribly difficult. And so he goes and he solves the problem. And then in retrospect, we all look at it and we're like, oh, thank goodness somebody did that. And it turns out it was him. And he hasn't hit every mark exactly right. He's not a perfect person or anything like that. He's made mistakes like anybody else. But there's a reason the guy's super rich and it's because he's made a lot of smart decisions that have helped a lot of people that people want to use and then boom, he profits from that. But I really don't think he's out to hurt anyone. I really, I think of all the people that, you know, of all the billionaires that are out there, I think he might be the most, the One with. With the. The most heart in it. However, I'm not sure that matters because I. I think he's, you know, he's probably on the autism spectrum or something like that. Right.

You know?

Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, I'm no expert, but it. Like that, that. That fits, from what I know, and that's fine. There's obviously nothing wrong with that, but I don't know that having that much power consolidated in one person, historically, that has not worked out well. Right.

Well, I think that in my opinion, one word sums up the benefit of having someone like him. If his stated intentions are true, which I do believe they are, based on stuff he said he was going to do and he's done. In my opinion, that word is transparency. He wants to make the Twitter algorithm open source.

I like that.

He wants to document when someone is cut off or banned or put in timeout or something on the platform for something they said. And he wants to follow the laws for each country that Twitter operates in. And that sounds terrific. I think what we've had is on the left and the right.

If you're talking politics, partisan politics, because there's a difference here, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Partisan politics. Too many unknowns and everybody pointing a finger at each other. I'm banned. I'm shadow banned. I didn't know what I did. What happened this. So if you bring transparency in, maybe it will bring some of us together. Because, like, I for one, just have stayed off Twitter because it is such, I think, a nightmare.

It's interesting. I am very much a part of tech Twitter and various other music things and bands that I like and those sorts of things, and business Twitter. In fact, we've had lots of conversations of threads that I've found on Twitter that have been fantastic advice. I hear people complaining about political Twitter and all of that. I see none of it. And that's great.

It's really good.

It's good for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's great. But like I said, I am perhaps, to a fault, emotionally detached from partisan politics. I do not engage with any of that stuff on Twitter. It's just not an interest to me. It's not a hobby to me. And I think for some, I don't mean to dismiss politics, but I think for some people take it too far and they make it their hobby and that.

Well.

Or their career, well, that at least it's paying.

See, I didn't really understand the power of Twitter because it's like, oh, I always hear, oh, it's only A tiny fraction of people.

No, no, no.

And it's this and it's that and it's not, you know, it's not the real world. But the people that are amplifying the messages.

Yeah.

Are all on Twitter.

That's right. Right. And the message is, I mean, Twitter is the one source that is routinely quoted by what I'll call the mainstream media. Although I think that definition needs to be looked at a little more closely. But, you know, our mainstream media quotes Twitter as a source more often than any other non. And again, I say non mainstream source and lumping Twitter in as a non mainstream source, I think is. Is a mistake. But it's the only non mainstream source that's quoted with regularity on the mainstream media, so.

No, and so anecdotally as well.

Yeah. Right.

In such granular, analytic or anecdotal methods. It drives me crazy. It's like, well, that's like one dude or one. You know what I mean? And you see it, you see it come up and like. Well, Twitter users are very upset about like what?

Oh no, there was a thing this weekend. You know, I'm a fish fan. I mean, I like fish. Although Friday night, some oysters that gave me food poisoning, so I didn't want.

The other kind of fish.

Yeah, but I like fish. The band with the ph and on Friday they did this show for Earth Day at Madison Square Garden. Now it was a rescheduling of their New Year's Eve run because they couldn't do new or they chose not to do New Year's Eve at Madison Square Garden because of the omicron surge that was happening and all that. So they delayed it to April. They do a four night run. They do December 29, 30, 31, and then January 1. So the third night is always the New Year's Eve night. It's a longer show. And. And so this Friday night was their longer show. And they always. Fish always does some. Something extra for New Year's Eve. And we don't know what they would have done for New Year's Eve this year because of course they didn't play that show at Madison Square Garden. But they did do something extra on Friday. It was Earth Day and they turned Madison Square Garden into the ocean. They had dolphins and whales swimming around while band played it. We weren't there. We. We chose to, to watch the live stream of it not knowing what they were going to do. And it was like, it was more spectacular than what you would see at like a Pink Floyd tour with all the flying animals. But Pink Floyd does this for an entire tour and Fish did it for one night. Like they. And they worked with a creative team to pull all this together. I have no idea how much they spent, but it totally. I. There's no way they weren't upside down on this evening. And they're totally okay with that. Like, that's how that band is. But some. One video in particular of that that a fan just shot from within Madison Square Garden, you know, some two minute long video, if that. Okay, blew up on Twitter like Barstool Sports. So suddenly now Fish was in the mainstream, you know, and then this is a band that generally people know their name, but nobody really pays attention to them, you know, other than people who care about the band. And now it's like it blew up. Barstool Sports retweeted it and it went from there and then everybody retweeted it and it's gotten hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views. And now there's some discussion about, wow, I wonder what summer tour is gonna look like for this band. Are people gonna show up expecting swimming? Because they ain't gonna get it. It's not gonna happen. This is a one off, folks. It'll never happen again. But that's the impact of Twitter is it can change public conversation. So I was having this conversation with someone who was very concerned and it was, to your point, it was, here's this billionaire who's now in control of this thing, much like other billionaires are in control of other similar things, let's say. And the question is, in general, is that a good thing for us? And the answer might be that, yeah, Twitter in Elon's hands is better than Twitter in anyone else's hands. Now we have to be careful with just being okay with letting one person sort of who sees the world differently from us, which we've already maintained, in control of something so powerful that can lead to major. Historically, if we look back over the last hundred years, 150 years, that can be a problem, right? You know, but it can also be a good thing. And our pets live that way, right? They. They live under the wing of creatures that see the world differently than them. And they seem to live pretty well for the most part. Our pets do so. But it's hard to say. You know, I get the concern. One person, there are no checks and balances. I mean, essentially what's happening is Elon is saying, I'm going to choose, you know, that we're going to follow all the rules. And all this. But it takes all the checks and balances out of it. Right. This is.

Well, I would say there are not there, there are no checks and balances right now.

Oh, I agree. Yeah.

Yeah. And.

But it's in the hands of, of shareholders at least. So, so in theory, Twitter's board has to, has to be at least sensitive to the public need. Otherwise they are not doing their job. Right. Because the job.

Why they sold it. Right.

Well, the job, job of the CEO on the board is to. To.

You got it.

That is no longer the job of the owner of Twitter. It could be if he chooses. But he is judge, jury and executioner.

Well, no, he. Now.

Yeah.

If you listen to. And that TED Talk he did was great. In the interview he said we will have as many private shareholders as the law allows. And he said there's something, I don't know, a thousand private shareholders or something like that. So perhaps he will have some sort.

Of, you know, maybe there will be checks and balances.

Sure, yeah, perhaps you will. And. And if he lives up to what he says he's going to do, and I think out of every human on the planet, he might. I think he might.

I agree.

And that, that transparency and, and they will live or die. You know, people are not going to stay on the platform if it just becomes a disaster. But what I find very telling, and I'll admit some of my biases here, you'll pick up on them is that there is an entire class of people like Marc Andreessen calls them the laptop class, which I really like that terminology that are very upset for the change and transparency and free speech. And it's very interesting to. If you go on Twitter and look at Mark Andreessen, you can see his. Some of these threads that he's talked about why free speech should be on the platform more. And you know, there was another. That is the right sets.

That is the part that worries me is, is him saying that there will be no censorship on the platform. I mean, I've moderated. I've been moderating online platforms since I was 15. And if you, if you have no moderation, it falls apart. Like it.

So who's the guy, yeah, who's the guy that publishes that Stratetry newsletter?

Ben Thompson.

Yeah, Ben Thompson. He had a recent article, if you search for it, you can find it about how Twitter might solve that problem. And it was just to open the APIs up and let whoever wanted to create their own, like they used to have their own third party Twitter app. So if you wanted a certain type of moderation, you, in your Twitter feed, you just, you could, you could use a certain type of app if you wanted a certain type of experience that can, you can create it and that could be there. So it may solve that problem. And like on the web, you know, Twitter's just like, you know, whatever legal.

That's true. There's no moderation on the web in general. No, I mean any given website might have their own moderation.

That's correct.

And the ones that do succeed, the ones that don't fail. So if we treat Twitter like a, like a, a, I mean it's a platform but if we treat it as just a medium, like we do the web and you choose not to see. But the algorithm would have to be like you said, it would have to be fungible and by the users so that I truly am am able to avoid like I can avoid all the politics as a hobby websites that are out there right now. Right.

Because I just don't politics altogether on Twitter. Right.

Well, I.

You don't need to follow all those people.

Yeah. But Twitter's algorithm will show you things it thinks you will engage with. So if, if they knew that I would get emotionally hot about something. No. They would show it to me. Yeah, yeah. But they just like, they've learned over time that wow, we've tried pushing this guy's buttons and they. There's no button. So we just, we'll show them the fish. Whale again. That's a freaking amazing. And then I'll watch that, you know, and so it's like, all right, this guy get more fish. Whales, let's go. You know? Yeah.

So yeah, yeah, it's going to be interesting. And I think that there. I do believe that the possibilities are very positive. And let's. Only time will tell.

Yeah, we don't know. We don't know. I just thought it would be an interesting quick discussion to have it. It became a 16 minute discussion. So, you know, sorry. We do have Julia Child and career paths to check off on our list. I also want to tell you all about our couple of sponsors here if. And I'd love to do that right now if that works for you, Mr. Shannon. Jane.

Yeah, that's great. Let's do it.

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Yeah, let's do it. All right, so I'm watching this show which I recommend. It's on HBO Max. It's called Julia. It's a series about Julia Child.

Oh, yeah.

You know, develop her development and this kind of stuff. And as I'm watching this I realize, you know, she even says in the series, I'm not a chef, you know, And I mean, the show that she created in the book she wrote was called the French Chef. She's like, I'm not French. I'm not a chef. But what she really was was a small business owner. And we talked. We've talked about, like, problem solving. We just did an episode called Having a Problem Solving Mindset.

Yeah.

And she had to solve this problem that I. I was just very impressed with, and I wanted to, you know, share it here and just kind of call it out. So when she was trying to get, you know, the show on, and she went on, you know, as on a different public television show and was very popular, and she's like, we want to. Let's do our own show. We'll do a pilot. And these people at this public TV network were not really keen on it. And so she just said, oh, well, hey, what's the big problem? Is like, well, we just don't have the money in our budget and this kind of thing. And she says, how much is it going to cost? And it was, you know, I don't know, some number. Not. Not very expensive. But she says, great, I'll pay for it. You know, and this was like in the 60s or something. And they kind of looked at her and she says, yeah, I'll write a check and I'll pay for the pilot, and we'll see how it works. So pilot went everything, you know, it did really well, but there's still this massive resistance because on this public. Back then, I guess public television was way more educational.

Yeah.

And. And things. And then she sits down and the pilot's great. Okay, we're gonna do this thing. They present it, but it needs a pretty significant budget. And again, these guys use this tactic and say, you know, we just can't do the show because they don't want to do it.

Because they don't want to do it. Right. Yeah.

They don't think it's going to work. They don't think their people are going to be interested. And she says, well, okay, we don't have it in your budget. And she just asked that question again. She's like, well, how much is it going to cost? And they gave her this number, and it was significant. And she's like, well, I'll pay for it.

I got it.

I'll cover the cost. And she doesn't have a lot of money. I mean, you know, and so that part of it, just looking at things from another Angle, how to solve it. I just want to call that out. But the other thing I want to call out is it just reaffirmed. I had this concept that I never worry about the money. If the deal or the opportunity is good enough, the money will follow. And if the deal or the opportunity or the idea isn't good enough, you won't be able to get the money. So if, you know.

Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, yeah.

I eliminate the money problem because that's how. When I started buying things and doing things, people, oh, we don't have the money to buy all that. And I was like, well, if it's a good enough deal, shouldn't we be able to get the money?

I got you. That's. This is interesting because if you watch Howard Stern's Private Parts, right. Which was the documentary that he did, one of the things he has said and how he got his career off the ground is he said, I made the decision to never invest my own money. If I couldn't convince people that what I was going to do was going to work, then it probably wasn't going to work. He had a. He had the completely opposite approach. It was, you know, if I can't convince you to spend money on this, then how am I going to convince people to listen to this right now?

Yeah.

That's not.

Well, it's kind of the same idea.

It is, but it's.

It's like the.

It's upside down. Right. Like, it's. It's two sides of the same coin. But this is. She just believed that this was going to be good, whereas Howard proved that it was going to be. I mean, they both proved it was going to be good.

She didn't have the money. That's. No, that's the point. She didn't have any money.

I see. So she was okay. When you said she didn't have very much money, I thought she was spending everything she had. She went and raised the money elsewhere.

Well, she spent it. She spent all her own money to do the pilot.

Got it.

She was just. Everybody loved it, but these. These kind of traditional producers on these weren't having any of it. And so to get over that obstacle, she just had to do something, you know, astounding and to say, I'll just pay for it. And here was a. You know, she was. Yes, she was an author, but it was a cookbook. And these guys just kind of really looked. They didn't hold her in high regard, let's say.

Sure.

For her business acumen, but it turned out she was a fabulous businesswoman. Interesting and obviously wildly successful.

Obviously.

And so I just thought, you know, just keeping that, that problem solving mindset all the time and, you know, it's kind of hyperbole. But don't worry about the money. You'll figure it out.

You'll figure out the money. No, it's true product.

If the deal is good enough, you'll figure out the money. The hardest part in my career of, you know, buying and selling and being a merchant, the hardest part has always been finding the deal.

Yeah.

So if you found the deal, you sure enough could find the money. And I always used to make people call me and they'd say, well, how many. What should we do this? Should we buy it? And I'm like, I would always say buy it all.

Interesting.

Buy it all. You know, and it's a little harder. You can't do that quite as much as you used to be able to.

No. Well, not in.

But it works.

I mean, it depends on the, the venue, depends on the product. Yeah, yeah.

Exactly what it is.

Yeah.

All this stuff. So I thought it was worth sharing.

Yeah.

Again, I highly recommend it if you have HBO Max watch it. And it's. It's a really good telling of this. Of this story.

Yeah, no, that. Okay, all right. It's on, it's on my list now and hopefully it's on yours out there, folks too. If there's ever a show that you folks are watching that you think has good business lessons, either good business lessons to follow or not to follow, let us know. Feedbackusinessshow.co There's a lot to be learned from. I mean, this is a docudrama series. I suppose it's mostly historically accurate, those sorts of things. And obviously we're big fans of documentaries here. We just spent two episodes talking about them last month. But whether it's a documentary or even just a, you know, work of fiction, if there's good lessons, let us know. Feedbackusshow.co We. We'd love to hear from you about it. All right. Yeah. All right, so let's. I want to talk about career paths. You mentioned in a. You know, we were talking last week about, you know, managing people, and you said, make sure to have a clear path towards advancement, career development, and increased salary for your people. And as a small business owner, this is something I don't know how to do well. I always try to give people a fair wage. I try to increase that wage when we can, especially if their performance is increasing and all that good stuff. But Advancement, that whole idea of that in a small business environment, it's hard, right? You know, because there's only so many of us, you know, and you can have my job someday. Like, I'm not opposed to that, but. But, you know, then you got to make sure that that's, that that's the smart move for that person. Not everybody want, you know, wants my job. I'm not sure I'm qualified for my job.

There's different ways you can do this. Yeah, I think that's the. There is no set thing. And sure, especially small companies with just a few employees, it can seem like, well, I don't. What do you do? But I'm going to talk about some ways you can do that and get.

Around those obstacles, because I want to maintain my, as you like to call it, my talent stack. Right. My company's talent stack. Just not my personal talent stack. But I want, I want to expand that and I want to keep my best employees, which at least in my companies are my only employees. I don't keep dead weight around. So, yeah, if, you know, if they're here, they are my best employees. I want to keep them around. Yeah.

And that what happens with a career path is you also increase your company's knowledge base, which may even be more important than the talent stack.

That is so true.

Right. You need that. I mean, a good knowledge base. If you, you know, using that terminology, something you could search and just come up with any answer. That's what employees that have moved up, you know, the guy that was in the warehouse or the woman that started answering the phones and is now your CFO or whatever, your accountant or, you know, these kinds of things. But you can move them along with you as your business grows. And even if you don't want to grow your business, there's ways to do this. And so I'm excited to talk about it today, and it's great because I love taking a deep dive back into these topics because it reminds me how little I know about a lot of it and how. But I do know some things about it and. Good.

No, no. Yeah. Well, we all have things to share, but I, I do, I think, I think you've got some, some good things to. To say about this. So.

Good.

I know we've, we've touched on a few of the, the reasons to do this. Are there, are there any that we haven't touched on? You know, I think we're all sold on the concept of, yeah, we want to retain our, our, our best. We want to Figure out ways to retain our best. Is there, is there anything specific that we're missing that we haven't identified before we get into how we're going to do this?

Yeah, sure. One thing is, you know, people always want to work someplace that. Where they can have a sense of purpose.

Right? Yeah, it.

And, you know, at least your best employees typically do. So that career path can help with that sense of purpose. What am I working towards each day? I think that's really important. Another thing is that, and I'm going to use this term here, having career paths and ladders, you can call them, too. I like that term a lot.

I like that term.

Yeah, yeah. It helps you identify the slackers and the achievers. And both of them are really valuable.

Right.

And when I say slacker, they just may not want to go up that, you know, how far they could go up on that ladder. And that might be okay because along the way here, as you're talking about advancement and advancement, you have to remember about that. You mentioned this term a lot, the Peter Principle. Right.

Yeah.

You don't want to advance somebody up to the point where they're just not good at that position, because that's a hard thing. And you can lose people that way.

You always lose people that way. Well, yeah. And sometimes you are then forced to lose people that way. Yeah.

Yes, that's right.

You have to let them go. My dad worked at a place for a while called the Danbury Mint, and when he left, it was because he chose to leave. He left the area where it was. They make all kinds of collectibles, trinkets.

Yeah, I've heard of them.

Yep. So they're in Danbury, Connecticut, hence the Danbury Mint. They had a. I think I'm getting the right company here. I'm pretty sure I am. They had a policy that they never would let anyone go for not performing well. They saw that they had a long hiring process, so they knew that if somebody was in the company, they felt confident that that person could bring value to the company. And it was up to the company to find the right position for them.

Love that.

So they would advance people and sometimes mistakenly, you know, into a position. But they were not too proud to say, hey, this is not the right position for you. We want to try you over here. Now, they were a company of, I don't know, at least 50 employees. It might be. It might have been 150 easier at.

That point, but it's easy.

Yeah. There's more places to test and put people There. But it created an atmosphere where everybody felt free to make mistakes, felt free to experiment. Everybody knew you weren't going to lose your job. I mean, I think if there was some sexual harassment, there were reasons you were going to lose your job.

Anomaly.

Yes, but, but just not being in the right role was not a reason you would lose your job. Which in many companies is exactly the reason you lose your job. If you're the wrong person for the role you're in, oftentimes you're let go. It's just how it works.

Well, yeah, and that's such a good point is that, and I didn't even think about it, but building that into the advancement process and having that clear conversation is just a great thing not to miss and to tell your people, hey, this is how you get up there. But you know, if you find yourself in a position that either A, it turns out you really don't like it or B, your set of talents isn't good for that, here's plan B and here's how we handle that so that they don't come to you one day and say, you know, I just don't like this job, I'm going to leave or you have to go and tell them you're no good at the job.

You know, here's your two weeks.

That is really important. And maybe the most important thing you remember from this episode is have a way to off board them, if you will, from a position that it turns out is just not for them.

That's great. No, yeah, it's great. If your company is wide enough workforce wise to be able to do that's a powerful thing because it creates an air of loyalty in a huge way. The, and, and oh, go ahead, go ahead.

No, I was gonna have a couple more little things.

Okay, yeah, go, go through the little things. I was gonna get into the why, but go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you know, talking, talking about the why is you, you get to create what is, you know, a multi generational workforce if you do this right, for sure. Because people, people stick around longer and you know, obviously it's a competitive advantage when people know that they can get up and everything. But one thing that, as I was kind of reading up, I was reminded that as an owner, if you have career paths and you can be pushing, you know, or helping people climb that ladder, it allows you more flexibility. You know, we always say you don't have flexibility, you don't have freedom because you're just, you know, tied to these companies and stuff. But you do have lots of flexibility. So if you can move people into these other positions and they're used to that, they learn more, they get better at decision making. It's going to give you more flexibility to have more time to either make your company better, grow it bigger, or start another. Another business. So don't forget that flexibility is part of the equation because you have to get something out of this, too. It's not just about, oh, no, the.

Company needs to succeed and grow and thrive.

You personally as an owner, that's fair. You're going to get that out of there.

All right, so let's get into the how of. Of this, right? Because now we've talked about the benefits, we've talked to some of the how one. One example of the how that's not really functional in most businesses. But let's, let's get into this in a more generic sense. You know, where. Where do you. Where do you start? How do you lay the foundation for this? Yeah, yeah.

And if you've heard this, if you've listened to the show for a while, you know, we're huge fans of the E myth. The book needs to be, you know, everybody needs to read that. And one of the founding principles of that book is the org chart, your organizational chart that you should build early on, even if you're the only one, Even if you're the only name that gets put in all those boxes.

Yeah.

You should create that org chart. And even if you have two people or whatever, because everybody wants to look at, you know, here's the company. It's a, you know, a visual representation of the company. And maybe you can make it more interesting and add some artistic things to it or, you know, I don't know, uplifting things or make it look better than just a Microsoft, you know, org chart.

Sure.

A bunch of boxes.

Sure. Yeah. Have fun with it if it's. Especially if it's just you. Right? Yeah, exactly.

Yes. Or maybe you print a big poster and you let people write on it in the break room or something. But that org chart should be posted publicly. It shouldn't just live on your computer, you know, so people can look at it and see, oh, you know, what this person here. And maybe you even have, you know, come think of it, historical versions of it that people could look at and say, oh, you know, Dave started here and look where he's now, you know, because it's just a really good thing that they can see.

Oh, that's interesting.

Keep it updated. Yeah. Keep it current. And then maybe you're Maybe you have a dream org chart, right? Or something you call aspirational org chart, where you talk about, we'd like to start this new thing or new division, and these are all the slots we'd need to fill to build out that.

I like that idea. I like the aspirational org chart. Yeah.

I guess that's kind of what it is. In essence, if you're.

Because you're putting yourself in every bucket, it's pretty aspirational.

But like a tech restore, you know, when we wanted to start a parts business and, you know, we were. We were parts consumers for, you know, decades. So we didn't. We knew a lot about the parts, but we didn't know about selling those parts. And so it was. We had to create a whole new division. And I didn't do this, but I could now, looking back, I could say, well, you know, we could have added another branch to this org chart that we had and say, this is how we would build this out and these are the people that would do it. So, um, and. And I. I'll be the first to admit I definitely lost people because I didn't do this. All these things I'm talking about.

Oh, yeah.

Definitely lost people that have left because I didn't do a good job at this.

Yeah. No, and. And one thing I, of course, like, that's. I mean, that's how it goes. And, and you're going to lose people anyway for reasons that are not your fault. But, but of course, if you can mitigate the reasons that are, then you have a better chance of keeping people, especially the people that you want to keep. And I've, you know, I've definitely done this. I need to be more intentional about it, but I've definitely done this sort of as a. Just as a, an evolutionary thing where I've had like. Like Jeff, who's been with us for 17 years, almost 18 years, he. Which is amazing, you know, but he didn't. He does sales for us now. He didn't come in to do sales. He came in to do sales support. And he was just helping out with all the campaigns. But we noticed, well, wow, he's doing great with all of the clients that he's working with. They like him. And so we experimented a little bit. It was like, hey, you know, that one's coming up for renewal. You seem to have a good rapport with him. No reason to rock that boat. You want to talk to him about renewal. And he needed to be coached through it a little bit or he Wanted to be coached through it a little bit. And so it was like, okay, we'll show you what to do. No problem. That took a lot more work than it would have to just step in and do the renewal. But, you know, that kind of work generally can pay off down the road. And. And it definitely did because it got to a point where he not only became comfortable doing it, but he became good at it. He has his own style. Sometimes he drives me crazy with his style because it's not exactly what I would do, but you know what? That's. Because we're different people, and he's successful and he's effective, and it's totally fine, you know, so we created a position so that he could move into that position. I think with the aspirational org chart. The idea of that is creating the position before you have a need for it or a person to fill it. Feel free to let your org chart also be fluid in the way that if you realize that you've got somebody that would be good at a thing that you're not currently doing, maybe create that role and let them build it.

Because that can be a great part of the process. Right.

Make them part of the process. Yeah. Ownership over it and all of that stuff. Yeah. I mean, essentially, that's what we've done with Sadie. And her position will continue to evolve because of her skill set and what she brought in when she came here and what she learns while she's here. She will continue to evolve. I mean, it's fantastic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's good stuff. Yeah. We have. We have a lot to talk through here. I want to. I want to ask you some questions about how to craft job descriptions and then how to take those people that have been at your company a little while. And instead of it being like I just described, you know, I had to be the one coaching Jeff. And so, you know, how do I teach my people to coach each other so that I don't even have to be involved in that process and let the company kind of run itself more and more. I wonder. We're at, like the 42 minute mark here. I wonder if we should sort of extend this into another episode, Shannon, so that we can keep doing this, be.

Worthwhile, that we wouldn't have to rush through it. I want to talk about.

It's a good spot to sort of pause this conversation because we've talked a little bit about the why and the big picture of how. And we can dive even deeper next week to go. To go into the nuts and bolts of it. And that gives you folks some time because these days, we are recording these episodes right before you hear them. So let us know. Feedbackusinessshow co. And we will, you know, if there's more to this that you want to hear, you're going to hear it next week, but you've got a week to ask us questions. And of course, if the show has already come out, next week's show has already come out and you're hearing this for the first time, you can always ask us questions. Feedbackus show co. It's how it works.

Yeah, yeah, that's good. I'm looking forward to. Because this stuff is hard and there's some tricks to it and some hacks that can make it easier on you because it is difficult to get set up, especially once you're going or in the beginning. But once you get this system in place, it can be really transformational for your small business. And so I look forward to having you come back and hear part two.

Yeah, we'll. We'll dig deep. We don't want to rush through any of this. I think that's. I think it's a good idea. Yeah. All right, folks, thanks for hanging out with us. We look forward to hanging out with you next week. Thanks for checking out our sponsors. Of course, as I, as I said during the episode, we have banknovo.com SBS and hunterdouglas.com SBS go check those out. In the meantime, cogitate on this. Let us know what you think. Feedback back at businessshow.co. keep living that charmed life. We'll see you next week.