Embracing Change for Small Business Success – Small Business Show 194

The Small business show, episode 194 for Wednesday, October 24, 2018. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow co. The show, BFA Small Business. You know how it works here. That's what we do. Sponsors for this episode include smile. We're@textexpander.com podcast you save 20% off your first year and square payroll. Everything you can do on a desktop, you can do in the app. You're gonna visit square.com go sps for more. And as always, all our sponsor links and everything are on our website at businessshow Co. So you can always find them in case you can't exactly remember em here. Speaking of here, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

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

I'm good. I'm good. That's. Yeah, it's starting to get chilly here. It's. It's like, it's really fall now. We got our, our firewood delivered for the season and, you know, so it's all. It's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love this time of year. That's great. I really do. Yeah, yeah. The air's crisp.

That's cool. I do, too. I'm ready for. Yeah, that's right. Good to be. Good to get cold.

It is. I always find I have more energy this time of year than. Than any, you know, than like summer or winter or whatever. I don't know. I just like this time of year.

Yeah.

So, yeah. Yeah.

It's change, right? You're embracing change.

That is what autumn is all about, man. The leaves change everything. The temperature changes. Yeah, man. It changes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Things never stay the same. Things always change. So constant change that'll lead us. Constant change that'll lead us into the topic I'd like to talk about today. You know, we. We talk about change often on the show, but. And we did a show specifically about change back in 2016, episode 70, which we'll put a link up on the website. Yeah, it was quite a. So I thought it was definitely time to come back on that topic about making change work for. For you personally as well as your small business, and how there's kind of two aspects of it. I think, you know, getting yourself comfortable with change and embracing it and using it to, you know, push yourself forward, but also thinking about how it impacts your small business, your employees, even your partners and vendors. There's all different ways I think you have to be prepared to handle change and to make change a positive force. And we're gonna talk about it today.

I agree. I agree. You know, I'm gonna start right out with a confession. And you don't know this yet. That's right. No, it's good. It's good. It has to do with change.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, so I. At the beginning of the summer, middle of the summer, whatever it was, I lost that employee. That sort of surprised me, even though it shouldn't. And we talked all about that, and actually, things have been. Things have been, as always, you know, change, even though we don't like it as humans. It presents opportunities. Right. It. It forced me to do a job that I hadn't done in a while, and it. I mean, it's enlightening. I've learned a lot. I've made some changes to the business because of it, but it also made me realize, you know, I'm a. I. I've always enjoyed having a business partner. Right. You and I have been partners on. On businesses, including this one, obviously. But, you know, there's a. There's a benefit to having someone that you can just talk about the business with, and I agree. You know, and. And so I lost this employee that I'd had for a very long time, and I realized, oh, you know, like, it was my former partner with Backbeat Media, Greg Snyder, that had hired him. And in some ways, you know, he and I had those same types of conversations after Greg left. You know, just the things about the business and that sort of thing. And it was like, really, you know, I have been since Greg left, which. And Greg. I bought Greg out of the business almost 10 years ago now. Uh, he. He went on to be a Buddhist priest and founded the Brooklyn Zen Center. So all good things, right? It was a. It was a very amicable split and all that stuff, but he just had other stuff he wanted to do in his life. But I realized I'd really missed that. And of course, I thought about why I could take on a partner, but, you know, that. That's a whole. Like, that's a different can of worms bringing a partner another episode. That's a whole other. Right. But, you know, we. We wound up having about three interview guests in a row that all talked about SCORE mentoring.

Oh, yeah.

And I thought, wait a minute. You know, just because we mentor people and do that sort of thing here doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that I couldn't benefit from that. So I've been to two score mentoring appointments. My. My second one was this Morning. And I'll tell you what man, it's like it and I actually, I haven't yet but the show is not out yet. So by the time this show's out it will have happened. I'm going to Reserve the domain businesstherapy.com if it doesn't already exist. That's what it is. It's like business therapy because you go and it's a confidential conversation. It's the same mentors each time and you can tell them whatever you want to tell them. I mean hopefully you don't lie to them because then they're not.

But defeats the purpose.

Sort of defeats the purpose. But you're able to talk through things and they, you know, and you're just, I mean most of the ideas frankly are mine, not theirs. But they have some good ideas and you know, some guidance or whatever that comes from their experience which is different from my experience, which is different from anybody, you know. And it's nice to have that perspective and just really nice to have especially without having a partner. It's nice to have that time in the schedule where I am forced to think about not just the daily grind of the business but the big picture stuff. Right. And, and, and it's huge. It really, it's been great. It's, it's fantastic. I mean it's, you know, it's an hour appointment each time or whatever. It's been fantastic. So there you go.

And it's a face to face. You're going.

Yeah, yeah, just go one town over. Yeah. They've got regional offices everywhere and yeah, it's fantastic.

It's fantastic. Yeah. And I think that's a really powerful thing. As you mentioned. Get getting yourself outside of the day to day stuff and being able to talk about it and have that different perspective, you know, even if it's just you're hearing your own voice and coming up with something or just being able to talk about it. And I really commend you for doing that and I will bring up that. You know, certainly you're going to have to find one of these excellent mentors to come on the show.

Yes.

And talk about score and how they got involved and the power of it. Because it just seems like such a great resource and it's amazing.

Yeah, it's amazing. It's really, it not only is it helpful for me just with perspective and their ideas, I mean it, you know, it's, I'm certainly not immune to other people. Like I'm really in fact open to these, these guys ideas because like you know, it's, it's. I have no trouble making money, building wealth, growing a business. That's, that's, you know, like, we've talked about it here. Yeah. It's just, it's a, It's a whole different thing. What did I, what did I hear myself say this morning? It was like, oh, right. It was. That which got me here isn't what's going to get me there. Right.

That's. That's pretty good.

Right. And it's. It's like, oh, yeah. So. So it's good to have this, but also it, you know, it inspires me to do what we do here because it's like, well, these guys are giving back. It's like, okay, well, I can, I can be giving back at the same time that I'm getting. Like, it's all good.

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's awesome. I look, I look forward to, you know, vicariously going along the journey with you and then talking more about it on the show. I think that's.

That's awesome. Plus, it gives me some people to effectively be accountable to. I mean, they could care less. I mean, not that. Not that they don't care, but it doesn't impact their lives whether or not I do the things that I say I'm going to do and we decide I'm going to do or whatever. But it's good to be accountable. You know, it's like, okay, great. Just like with a partner.

Yes. Yeah. I was talking about it this weekend with some folks that were visiting from out of town, and we're talking about business and different things. And I said the same thing. For me, we were talking about college, some kids, some college guys. And I said, you know, it's going to sound kind of funny, but I'm a real night person and I'm not a morning person at all. Never have been. Still, I'm not really sure. And I've made it work for me. But when I was in college, one of my terrible fears was that, how am I going to be up first thing in the morning every single day? And this kind of stuff. And I can remember saying, oh, well, I got a business partner and that guy showed up at my door at 8am or 7:30 because we were running the business out of my house. So that got you going? It just had accountability partner. So that's.

Yeah, an accountability partner. It doesn't necessarily have to be a business partner. That's right. No, yeah. Yeah. You don't need to share a cut of the Take with them just to be accountable. I mean, you know, when you have a business partner, that's how it works. But, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's really cool.

All right, I know I derailed us, but I want to get back to what we're doing here. But first, I want to talk about our two sponsors. How's that work for you?

Awesome.

Okay. Our first sponsor today is, as I mentioned earlier, Square with Square Payroll. And, man, this is. You know, it's amazing what we can do on our phones nowadays, right? And that's the point of what Square Payroll has done with the new Square Payroll app. You know, it brings, as they say, a crucial element of any business is back office to your back pocket. And I've checked this app out. You can do all kinds of things, everything all right inside the app, anything you can do from a desktop, setting up an account, paying your team, all like start to finish soup to nuts. Payroll can happen right from your phone. And it's fully integrated with Square payments and time cards for your W2 employees and contractors. And because Square knows what they're doing, they take care of all your tax withholdings, your payments and your filings at no extra cost. Right. It's all baked in right there. So with their app, you can go as an employer from sign up to sending a pay run in a matter of minutes. And as I said, you never have to do it without your phone. You can. You can go on a desktop and do it, but you can also do it all from your phone, which makes a big difference when, you know, our worlds are mobile these days. Right? So it's just how it goes. It's fantastic, for sure. Yep. Their pricing scales with your business. It's $29 a month, plus $5 per employee per month. Go get the Square Payroll app in itunes or in the Google Play store or visit square.com go SBS SBS for small business show. So that's square.com go/sbs to learn more. Our sincere thanks to Square and Square Payroll for sponsoring this episode. Our second sponsor is textexpander. You know textexpander, if you've been listening to the show, and if you haven't, well, aren't you in for a treat? Because textexpander makes your life way more efficient and more accurate. So what textexpander does is it allows you to take any size block of text with images, without images, however you would do it, but. And trigger that with a small little snippet. Right? So, you know, as I said, I wound up having to take over some responsibilities when this other guy left earlier in the summer, and it was like, okay, great. Well, there's these inquiries that come in from people that want to buy, you know, certain types of ads from us. And I found myself replying with exactly the same thing all the time. I'm like, okay, well, I know I'm no dummy. I use textexpander. So I put that into. I put the big long reply, I tweaked it, I got it exactly as I wanted. And now I have a, you know, four character thing that I can type, and boom, it puts this reply right in the middle of my email. And the best part is I can do it from my phone or my iPad because Textexpander has an iOS app, too. This morning I got an ad inquiry. Cold, you know, or hot lead, I guess we call it. But somebody that I didn't know came in looking for a very specific type of ad. It's like, that's the thing. I've got it. I did type my four character response from my phone, literally from my bed. I don't know if you're supposed to be checking email as soon as you wake up in the morning. That's a whole different podcast. Right. But yes, it is. Yep. But, you know, and boom, out it went. And within two hours, I had the deal done. You know, so while I was eating my breakfast, they were pondering what I had sent them done. Cash in the box. So there's textexpander for you. You gotta go check it out. Go to textexpander.com podcast that gets you 20% off your first year there. Our sincere thanks to the folks at Smile and textexpander for sponsoring this episode.

All right, when you go to that link. Yeah, yeah, when you go to that link, be sure to select small business show from where you heard about us. That would be great.

Yeah, for sure.

Awesome.

For sure.

Those are two great sponsors. Yeah. So let's jump back into the change. And like I said, I think there's two parts to this conversation I'd like to have. And the first part is really getting yourself comfortable with it. And if you already are, it's great. And if you're just. But if you're still like most people.

I was gonna say, I don't know that you're ever gonna be comfortable with change. You might learn that change is good. And so you see the. I'm speaking for myself, of course. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think it's inevitable if you understand that, hey, it's Coming. And like I always tell my kids this, look, things change. You know, bad things don't last forever, but often neither do good things. So you have to be ready to prep for either one. So there's a benefit on either side know. So, okay, it's not going to suck forever. But, you know, and maybe, you know, the good part is certainly parts of what's going good are going to change. So if you want those good things to keep working, you need to continually modify and tweak your system, if you will, to accept that change and modify what you're doing not to be complacent. Complacency is the killer. You know, relying on things to work the same way over and over is absolutely a recipe for disaster, in my opinion.

Oh, it'll. It'll kill your business. And, and the worst part is you won't even know it because.

Won't notice it.

Yeah, yeah. Because it's like, oh, well, the, the, the things that I've always done, I'm still doing. It's gotta succeed. No, not necessarily.

You got it.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I think the, the first way to do it is to, you know, practice, you know, embracing change for yourself. Get yourself really used to it. And I'm going to recommend a couple things that sound kind of funny or weird, but in my experience, it really works. One of the first ones is change the side of the bed you sleep on. Don't get used to sleeping on the same side. Change. Split things up with your spouse, your partner, even if you just. You sleep by yourself. Change. Don't sit in the same chair every night. When you eat at the dinner table or when you eat lunch, or whenever you're at the table with your spouse or even by yourself. Change. Make those small habits take a different route. When you drive to work, when you drive to a client, just, you know, they sound simple and they sound small. Although when I tell people to change side of the bed, often, they freak out. Crazy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's crazy. I, I do that every time. And I remember we had this conversation two years ago during episode 70. But every time we get to a hotel, I asked, I always ask my wife, so you're taking that side this time, right? She's like, whoa, no, no, no, no, no, no. But when a hotel, I always take the other side because it, it just makes you think differently. And, and really all of these things, what they do is they condition you to the fact that even though change is naturally uncomfortable to us as humans. Yep. The outcome is never really Terrible. I mean, no, it's changing the side of the bed. What's the worst thing that's going to happen? You're going to wake up, you're going to go, oh, yeah, I got to go that way. Like that's it.

Well, that'll be the exercise. That, that's going to be the exercise this week. I'm going to challenge you, Dave. You need to get Lisa.

It's not going to happen. I'm already telling you, this is not. Listen, today, October 24, 2018, is my 20th wedding anniversary. If I. Congratulations. Thank you. But if I've Learned something in 20 years, it's that that is a non negotiable scenario.

Okay, I'm going to take it on. I haven't done it in a while, so I'll take that task on. We'll talk about it next week and see how it works.

I would love to join you in this because I frankly would like to do it, but it's, it's not worth it. Trust me.

You'd be changing on the couch.

There would be. Yes, it would be radical change. Yes.

Yeah, that's right. But you know, it's true. It just kind of rewires your brain, those little small things to accept larger change. And as you go through this and you see, oh, you know, nothing bad happened when I changed, you know, the side of the bed or when I. The way I did this, actually, maybe things improved a bit. You're reminding yourself that. And I really believe this change makes you stronger. Good or bad, you're going to learn to adapt and it's going to make you ready for greater changes in the future. And if your business is doing great right now and just killing it, that's wonderful. But be ready, you know, when things that will change, things start to slip, things change. Or if, or if you're really struggling, you know, it's going to help you accept and try new things to help you come out of that, that slump.

It's true. Yeah. Fear and pain, excellent motivators for imposing change. Right. Because if you're afraid of, say, not making payroll next month or the pain of not having made payroll last month. Right. Those are things that sort of force you into that change environment. But it's better to be comfortable with change or at least conditioned to accepting it so that you can make those changes before disasters happen. And you're comfortable with that. I'm often reminded it was almost, it was maybe seven or eight years ago, you know, I was petrified. As most young parents are but like, how the heck am I going to pay for college when that comes? Right now I'm here, now I'm paying. I know you are, too. And it was like, how this is going to. And I was just. It was something like, I didn't obsess over it, but anytime I thought of it, it was like, oh, my. Like, I don't even know how that's going to work. Like that. That. That number's insane. And then at the business, we decided to sign up for a thing. It totally failed. But this signing up for comScore, they're like the gestapo of the web ad agency world. Right? And they, you know, the saying goes that if you're not on board with comScore, then you won't get. You won't get any agency business. And we weren't getting any agency business for the. We do actually, with the podcast stuff, it's totally fine. But with the web stuff, we never really cracked that egg. And it's like, ah, maybe it's because the Comscore Gestapo. Okay, fine. So to join Comscore was $36,000 for a year, and you had to commit for the entire year. Yeah.

Nice, nice.

And it was like, crap. Okay. You know, and so I'd always, yeah, yeah. My response was that f. That. No way. And then one year, it was like, you know what? I gotta know. I have to know. And so I did. And the moment I signed that contract, I was like, wait a minute, I just signed a thing that. That I agreed. I'm going to spend at least 36 grand and maybe 72 and maybe more. You know, and it was like, if I'm comfortable doing that. And I, you know, in my head, it's like, okay, well, here's how I'm going to budget this, and here's how it's going to work. And, you know, we can. We can swallow this. It's, you know, it's kind of like hiring somebody. Here's their base salary. Okay. We just don't have another person here, but hopefully it pays off. Spoiler alert. It didn't, but, you know, it was a waste of 36 grand. But that was the thing. And that day it was like, oh, I don't need to worry about college. Like, it's just a. It's just a big expense, but you break it down and you figure it out and you do it, and it's all fine. Yeah. And it really, like, it was a super powerfully enlightening day, even though I wasted 36 grand on the Stupid cost. Yeah, yeah. It's just.

Well, I think that's. Yeah, I think a really important aspect of that is how you perceive change. That's a critical part of your own, you know, personal way you look at things. If you're ready for it, if you learn from it, you know, look at the lessons, good or bad, it's going to make you a stronger person. And the perceiving it, you know, if you huddle down and you're just, I don't ever want this to change. It's so great. Or this is never going to change, it's so bad. Now that's the wrong way to look at it. The perception is critical. As we talk on the show often about creating your own reality and how you look at it, it really will pull you along and get you more comfortable with change. Because what we're going to talk about next is getting your business more comfortable with change and the people that are around you, which could be far more difficult that, you know, than you think. So you need to be comfortable with it to start that.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah. Yeah.

So, you know, in your business, I think it's. It's really important to just. You're trying to build change into your culture, and that's important because there are people that work for you that are very afraid of change, you know, and getting them to embrace. And you may, like, say you may have embraced it, and you're just an awesome change agent and all this kind of stuff. You need to look at it from their perspective, and you need to handle change differently for your employees, your team, your partners, your advisors, your bankers, your attorney. I mean, if things change a lot, you know, bankers freak out. I mean, all that kind of stuff, you have to manage to your audience.

Right?

Oh, I like that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because if it's your employees. So we're going to focus on employees here, and I think from the day you hire them, change needs to be part of the conversation and your culture and part of your story. You know, and I tell the story when one of the first companies that I founded that was pretty successful, you know, Mac Rescue, we ramped up based on the products that we were working with. And back then it was, you know, big. It was printers, big monitors, you know, big desktops. And we needed tons of space, you know, 50,000 square foot facility and all these employees and all this heavy equipment to move everything around. But over, you know, more than a decade or 15 years of that business, everything changed. Right. Because we followed a Product cycle. And as the product cycle peaked at these large, you know, pieces of equipment, and then we went to flat screens and then it, you know, laptops got more powerful and ultimately leading to, you know, phones becoming everything and iPads. I mean, we didn't need a 50,000 square feet, you know, facility, right?

But if you hire someone and then two years later you say, we're closing our 50,000 square foot facility and change is not part of, as you say, your company's story, that person's gonna be petrified that the company is going downhill.

Right? So what you do is as you talk and get people this part of your culture, we do it all the time, mention it casually. It's not a, hey, you know, things are changing. Whatever. It's, it's, you get everybody comfortable. It's repetitive. It's, hey, what's going on? It's, what side project would you like to work on that you're interested in because you know your job is gonna change over time. Dropping that. We used to, you know, I've talked about here on the show. We used to have lunch every week and we'd barbecue and stuff. I would talk about it all the time. Hey, here's some new stuff coming down the pike, you know, with the technicians. What piece of equipment would you like to work on? What do you, what do you want to tear apart and see if we can create a business out of it? You know, we used to buy cameras. We thought we could get in the camera business. And yeah, thank goodness we didn't do that. But we, you know, had boxes with, with cameras that technicians tore apart, took things home, you know, figured it out. When Nvidia came out with a little handheld, you know, device tore that thing down. So trying to get your people comfortable with it a little bit at a time and always making those comments and asking questions like, hey, what do you want your next job to be? And often people look at you like, what is my job in jeopardy? You're like, no, but don't you want to do something else? You know, I mean, you're in a few years or something, so, you know, your job is certainly going to change. So what would you like to do in the future? And you get those people on, on board with you. So when you don't need that 50,000 square foot fac, because you can put 50,000 phones in a 3,000 square foot facility, the team you have, and obviously there's gonna be some attrition there, of course, but the team that you're left with, they're ready for it, man. They're like, let's go. Let's go on the next thing. And we got into those businesses by making big bets. When the ipod first came out, I'm really dating myself now. We didn't know anything about ipods, but we're like, okay, well, let's go buy 5,000 iPods and let's buy a bunch of returns and let's get involved with these companies that sell all this product. And we had a giant mound of this product show up and pallets full of them, and you tear them all apart. So there was a lot of people that stuck along for the ride over 17 years or so. They embraced it, they got it. And those side projects were really important. Constantly asking them what they want to do in the future that they're not doing now and getting them comfortable with it. That in a casual way, then they're not. They don't feel like they're having the rug pulled out from them. You know, when. When that change does happen, it's really, really important.

That's really smart. We. Okay, so we didn't. We didn't dig that deep into that part of your philosophy back then, because this is both new to me and, like, hugely powerful. So that. Thank you for sharing that. That's great, man. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's.

It's just, you know, I'm. And one of the things that I learned along the way also is, is being casual about it. Mentioning it over and over again is a big part, because I really love change. I get bored very easy, and I'm like, okay, let's change this. We're going to flip everything around. And what I didn't understand when I was younger is that that often freaks people out. And when I get really excited, some people inevitably are just going to be, what? This is crazy. I don't want to do this. I don't want to work here anymore. You know, and people leave. And I can remember being shocked. As a relatively young, you know, business owner, it's like, well, why?

What?

I don't understand. And we do, like, an exit interview kind of thing. Sure. And I get people say, you know what? It's just not steady enough. And I said, well, I don't understand.

Why would you want that?

Yeah, why would you want to do the same thing over and over again? But there are a lot of people and, you know, not saying anything negative against them at all, because you need folks that are going to show up and just grind it out every single day. That folks that don't want change. They want to show up. They want to do the same job. They want to get paid. They want to be rewarded for their expertise, which is great, but they don't want to have some, you know, guy walking around like me saying, okay, what's coming next? We're not going to be doing this forever. And they.

Look, I would. I would describe those people as not yet comfortable with change. Right. Because. Because you can. As you. As you pointed out, you can. You can change that part of people. There's some parts of people you can't change but change.

Correct.

Someone's temperament toward change. Resistance can be altered. And I found. I found and I learned this from a former business partner, Lee Robin, down at Computer Nerds in Texas. We were doing something, and he's like, us, right? He's crazy, likes change all the time. You know, he has an idea and it's like, well, let's try it. You know, I want to try it.

Sure.

And in his mind, he knew. He was like, like, you know, okay, well, this new idea is better. We're just gonna do it. And of course, like most of us, he informed the staff of it mostly that way. And that scares the crap out of most people. Like, wait, we're changing everything? Yeah, we're changing everything. It's fine. Trust me. You know what? He learned and he taught me. He pulled me aside, you know, one time maybe, perhaps I did this because we had partnered up and I was running a part of the business, and, you know, I scared people when I said, oh, yeah, we're just. Now, from now on, we're gonna do it this way. And he's like, whoa, whoa, come here for a second. Let me teach you something learned. And he said, I know what. I know how this goes. He says, but you can't tell people that. He says, tell them you're trying something new for two weeks.

And I was just going to bring that up. You've mentioned that here before, and that's a brilliant way to do it.

And as soon as he said it, it was like, oh, yeah, duh, yeah, of course. Two weeks. Because two weeks is long enough that you're going over that middle weekend, right? So people know they've got to come back to work and do the same thing they did last week. Week, Right. That. That was. And we talked a lot about, you know, why two weeks. Oh, this is why. And. And the reality is, even if, you know, I think or he thought or you think something is a great idea, well, if you do try it, and within two weeks or two days or two months, it's failing, you will change again. So yeah, that's right. It seems permanent, but nothing's ever actually permanent. You know, it's just how it goes. And so by telling everyone, oh yeah, we're trying it out for two weeks, you wind up getting buy in. Right. Where people, people come.

That's so important. Yeah.

People will come to you and say, wait a minute, you said we were only going to do this for two weeks, but this is actually way better. Can we do it longer? It's like, yes, great. Or you'll, or you'll also get the people that if they, if they have some really, truly valid, strong reason against even doing it for two weeks, you'll hear that right away. But otherwise you've sort of mitigated off those, those change resistant responses of, you know, oh, we're just trying it. Okay. Then we can go back to what's comfortable, no problem.

Well, and you can adapt if, if it does turn out like, oh, wow, this, this part of it is really abrasive or, you know, it doesn't work.

Right.

Let's just, let's just adjust. And, and but you're right, that buy in is so great. And you know, the funny thing is I just use, I would say that this is also a very powerful thing to use in your personal life. I just went through my son. I wanted him to, he goes to tutor high school and math and stuff, and I wanted him to go to a different tutor that would also focus on the math and study skills.

Right.

Because this is what he needs some help with and planning and all this kind of stuff. So I was, and I thought of you, man, because I was like, hey, tell you what, what, let's just try this for two weeks and if you don't like it, we don't, we don't need to do it anymore. And, and he was like, oh, okay, that's great. I'm all, you can be in control. If you don't like it, we'll go back to the other guy. And you know, a couple weeks in, he's like, yeah, this is working pretty well for me. I'm pretty happy. And this is, you know, like, oh man, this is so great. Yeah, he got buy in. So it's a great method to do it. And one more thing, I wanted to mention that.

And it's accurately reflective too. Of, of yes. What's really happening. It's just hard to communicate that to people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what was the other thing?

Even if in your head. Yeah, well, even if in your head as a business owner is like, well, this is going to be the way it is, you know, even if you think you've got it figured out, that two week introduction eases everyone into it and gets that buy in. It's really powerful.

Unless your employees listen to this show and then, and then you kind of.

Ah, yeah, that's okay. But that could be the best lesson of this, this whole episode here. But the one thing I also want to mention before we wrap things up is you've mentioned a few times, you know, losing the past. And what I mean by that is this, you know, old investments mean nothing. You know, the sunk costs.

Yeah.

If you are involved in a project and you've spent, you know, money and time and it's just not going anywhere, not working the way out, you know, that being able to embrace change and look at it and go, you know what, what? Even though we spent X amount of dollars and that could have been a hundred dollars or ten thousand dollars or whatever it is, if it's not working, make the change, you know, and, and do it. I think that's a really powerful lesson as well.

Yeah, you got to lose the past. I mean, you need to learn from the past. But, you know, and I actually found myself saying this to the score guys this morning was, you know, occasionally I said, if I, if I could afford myself the luxury of just looking back in the past for a moment, here's a thing I've learned, right? And that's it. Like, there are lessons that there are things that you've learned and you can afford yourself that little cheat, right? Of. Okay, wait a minute. There was this thing we did, and I think it's still valid, but it has to be seen as a cheat. You know, like, and it's okay to cheat sometimes. If you know you have the right shortcut, take it, but don't rely on it. You know, you can't rely on all of them because like I said, the path that got you here is not the path that will get you there. So. Yeah.

Yeah, that's really good. So you know what? I'll leave you with change. Change is coming whether you want it or not. So make preparing for that change part of your plan, part of your system, and then bake it into the culture of your company. And I believe you'll be really surprised at how you get everybody on board for those changes. And, and speaking of change, we talked last week, Dave, about changing up a little bit on the businessshow Co on our website and coming out with the building the new newsletter. And I think you've done some work on that. I think it's ready to go.

Yes, it is ready to go and it is live. So if you visit BusinessShow Co, you can sign up for our mailing list right now. It will alert you when there are new episodes out. But we're going to build some other things into it too. And of course you'll be able to tweak what subscriptions you get. You're not just inundated if you don't want to be, but. But right now it's just a once a week thing. When the new episode comes out, you get a little detail about what the episode is and then of course, obviously a link to go listen. So.

Yeah, yeah, so you can listen to it and say, oh, you know, I don't want to miss this one.

Right? I don't want to miss it. Yeah, exactly. Cool. Yeah.

And if you have some, you know, feedback for us, we'd love to hear from you. Feedbackusinessshow Co. Or come over and make some comments in the small business support group group at BusinessShow Co Facebook. That'll redirect you over there. We would love to hear from you, hear your story, tell us what we got right, tell us what we did wrong. And thank you for listening. We appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you so much for listening. It's been. This is a good one. It's a good one. Visit our sponsors textexpander.com podcast square.com Go SBS. Keep living that charmed life, folks, and we'll see you next week.