Enjoy Life While You Have It

Business brain episode 543 for Wednesday, April 24th. Administrative Professionals Day 2024. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take a few ideas, we dissect them, we analyze them, we learn from them, so that we can each tune our brains, our business brains together so that we can lead those charmed lives here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton.

And I'm Shannon Jean. My background is different because I'm not at my office, at my house this week. I'm up at our new vacation rental, River Song, that we're getting ready to have our first guest this weekend.

Oh, exciting.

So, yeah, that's it. I'm exciting. I got. I'm excited. Got a bunch of stuff.

You're exciting, too. I would agree with that. Yeah, yeah.

Some people think so, but yeah. And so I'm connected via the Starlink, so we'll see how this goes. Sometimes we get a little glitch, a little interruption here. Even though I have 93% coverage, meaning I only have 7% obstructions on this thing. It says you typically get a interruption every five to seven minutes with that. So kind of, I mean, I don't know. I can't get any better. I've moved this thing all over, but there's so many trees on the property. It's just, it's kind of the window. We, you know, we work with what we have.

You work with what you have. You sound good today. So we'll. We'll see.

That's good.

See where it goes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great. I'm a little dark because I don't have good lighting in here, but I'm going to fix that the next time I come up.

92. With. With our huge increase on the. The live stream, I would say we're. We're from 99% to maybe 97% of our audience is still audio.

Yes, that's true. So it doesn't matter what I look like.

No. And for those of you who listen on audio, like that remains our focus. We've added the streams to it mainly just because we could. But the audio thing is still the primary vehicle for this show. And we tell you this because we love you. That's it.

That's it. And unlike I want to share, before we get into our main topic today, I want to share an experience that I recently had that really, I was telling my wife who went through this with me, it's. There's some companies out there that just hate their customers, and it's Weird, isn't it? It is weird. And I don't understand why you're in business if you hate your customers. So we. We had to buy some furniture for this new vacation property that we have.

Oh, yeah, right. Sure.

Okay. So we. We find. My wife's looking around. This is her business. She runs everything. And I work for her here. So she finds a place. Okay, great. Some warehouse discount place. Maybe not even a discount, just some warehouse place. And we drive out. It's kind of hard to find. It's kind of not in a great area. But we get there, and we order this. This furniture. And the guy says, yeah, it'll be here. I'll have it by Friday.

Okay.

Okay, great. We ordered it, like, on a Monday. Great. Okay, cool. And he goes, probably Friday. I said, well, we don't have to have it till the following Wednesday. So we got a little. Little wiggle room.

Yeah.

So Friday rolls around. Of course, we don't hear anything. Monday, I call and I say, hey, guys, I want to check on the ship shipment. He goes, you need to send me a photo of your receipt.

What?

I said, yeah, that's like a photo. Can I give you the order number? He says, no, I have to have a photo. I said, well, number one, I couldn't even find their phone number. I called the phone number on the credit card slip, and somebody just answered. Hello, this kind of thing. So I said, hey, I'm calling about this thing. He goes, okay, take a photo of invoice and send it to me. And I said, well, I don't have it with me. Can you look it up on my last name? Nope, nope. I'm pretty frustrated because I'm kind of passionate about customer service. Right. We talk about it on the show a lot.

All the time.

Makes a big, big difference in your success. So I walked down to my truck where I had the receipt. I take a photo, I send it to him, text to him, and of course, I don't hear anything back. So the next day, I call the other number, and guess what the first thing they tell me is, you got to send us a. We need a picture of your receipt. This is a different guy. Different guy. So I. Okay, man. You know, I really want to get this by tomorrow because I'm. I'm leaving, and I'm going to bring it up there. This was a few weeks ago. Take another picture, send it to them. We'll.

We'll.

We'll call you back. And of course, I don't hear anything for a few days. Finally, Call. Yeah, it's going to be here. I really think what happened is they didn't even order it until I called them. Right. I just had this sense. So we finally. They say it's here. We get a call. We drive out there on a Friday. Said, great, it'll be here by noon. Go to pick it up. We walk in, the guy. There's one sales guy, he's helping somebody else. We kind of stand there. He walks back out in the middle.

Of nowhere somewhere, kind of. Okay. Yeah, all right. Okay.

It's kind of in this warehouse district kind of thing.

Got it.

And we get there, and he says, oh, what are you. Are you here to pick up? Yep. He said, and this guy goes, damn it. They didn't tell me anybody was coming to pick up. He's like, yelling this in the store.

No.

And I turned. I turned to Renee and I said, we are never buying. We're never coming here again. And so he's. Yep. Picks the phone up, yelling at people. Finally gets somebody to come out in this huge warehouse. And he says, I'm going to go around the back. I'm going to find this. Drive your truck around. So we drive the truck around. Of course, as you can imagine, even though they knew we were coming, they can't find it. So I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I'm looking around, and my wife, who is very, you know, active, and she can figure things out.

Yes.

She finds it. She's looking around. She knows what it's. She's like, guys, I think that's it right there. And they're. No, no, I don't. You know, okay, great. They keep looking around, looking around. Sure enough, after about 20 minutes, they come back. They come back to where she found it, says, oh, yeah, here it is. So they cut it open, load it up. We go through this whole thing. I'm just steaming by now, right? And I'm standing by my truck, trying not to get involved really too much. And the last thing he says, he says, hey, make sure you leave us a good review. What? Yeah. And I said, these people hate their customers. So, you know, I just. Customer service along the whole process is just crucially, you know, important. And, you know, we talked about the. The two tokens form of customer service, right? Where there's. There is only two tokens. It's either a huge problem or it's no big deal.

Yeah.

And these guys obviously chose the. This is no big deal.

Right.

It's not important for us to get this to you, so, of course we chose the other token. It's a huge deal. Yeah, it's terrible. I'm going to talk about it and share it with 5,000 people on my podcast. Say the company name because you know what? I. Small business guys and I did not go leave them a bad review because I hate that too. But it reminds me, this topic today that I've had on my list and we're talking about, it's like I'm going to follow up with them and go, let me tell you about. Let me share this experience with you fellas and show you where it failed. The second you, after you got my money, it just stopped the whole caring about what our experience was. Yeah.

Well, send them this episode. Right.

That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to clip out this thing and say, hey, you should go listen to this. I didn't mention your company name, but there's some real tips in here about. I said not to handle things.

I send people a link to our 2Tokens episode route. Not routinely, but it is, it is what I choose to do in lieu of the bad review. The, you know, all of those things. It's like I, I, if I were the owner of that company, I would want to hear that from my customer. I mean, I wouldn't want to hear it from my customer, but. Yeah, but if I had created a scenario where that was the a deserve. One of the options of a deserved response. That's the one I would choose is like, yeah, tell me I screwed up. Let me, let me know. Because I'm not sure they care. I don't disagree with you, but.

Yeah, but I'm going to point it out and, you know, do my.

Yeah.

Help. Help a fellow entrepreneur small business out. So it's all you can do.

It's all you can do. And their response will either. Will inform you as to whether or not you will ever shop there again.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah.

It would be interesting to see if they came back with something positive.

Yeah, they might. I mean, you know, you would. I would, yes. And so I give other people the option to respond as I would like them to.

Yeah. Yes. Why not use your opportunity. Yeah, I like it. I like that. It's a good way to do it.

Positive spin.

Yeah.

Yep.

And if I was not a fellow business owner, a fellow entrepreneur, I would have just blasted them in a consumer review. Correct. And have told everybody, do not go here. It's a total nightmare. And, But I won't do that, so.

No, you won't. But if. Depending on how they respond and whether or not you choose to shop there. Again, if you choose not, I mean, you will tell people about them, especially as it comes up, you know, two years from now. Hey, where'd you guys get your furniture? Well, it's either gonna be, oh, go to, you know, so and so, or, well, I kind of have a story. You got time for a beer? Yeah, you know, that's right.

That's right.

Yeah.

But anyway, that. That's, you know, it's. It's customer service, you know, nightmare. Just. I don't. Rarely. I don't get them that often, but once in a while.

Yeah.

Terrible. So. But you have a more serious topic that you want to talk about today?

I do. I had a weird day yesterday along these lines I was thinking about. Just was reminded early in the day of a former boss of mine who I really loved and looked up to and actually think about him often. And I haven't had too many bosses. Like, even that term former boss might come as a surprise. Right. You know?

Yeah, sure.

But he was. He was my boss at Citibank. Really good guy, coached me, mentored me in certain ways, especially in the corporate world. And I always got along with him, and we stayed in touch after I had left Citibank, and then he wound up leaving and moving on to a different company. And then one day, he got an aneurysm and passed away. And that. That hit me really hard. And this was a guy he had, you know, he had. Had Had a fantastic career. His. His wife had a fantastic career. They had two young kids at the time. And one of the lessons I learned from him was to enjoy life. Like, he always. He didn't have enough life. I mean, he passed away, like, mid-40s. Like, this was like, you know, wow.

Yeah. Yeah. That's brutal.

Yeah. And. But. But he. He did. He traveled when he could. He. He didn't just work and wait to do all of the things he wanted to do. Don't get me wrong, there were plenty of things still on his list that he wanted to do. Right. But he. He would. He. He fit some of those in. He. You know, they traveled with the kids, they spent a lot of time with their kids, you know, all those things, and that made a big impact on me. But when he passed away, it hit me really hard. But the lesson I got from that was, like, all right, well, don't wait, because you don't know, like, you plan to live a good long time. Right? And there's a lot of good reasons to do that. However, the flip side of that is you don't know what a good long time you have. Right.

I lost a. Just a great business partner. Guy was a mentor to me. He passed, you know, he had a heart attack at 50. And when his wife called me, I said, oh, how's he doing? When is he going to get out of the hospital? Thinking that, you know, okay, I'll come out and see him, he'll recover. But, you know, her response was, oh, he's not coming out of the hospital. And so. You're so right. We all work so hard all the time. We're trying to build things as entrepreneurs, businesses, everything else. But you have to enjoy it along the way. Right? The journey is huge.

Yeah. And then last night I heard about another friend who a musician and also very successful in business and all these things, and recently retired his whole thing. He had worked really hard, built his perfect recording studio in his house that he really. And this is where he was, you know, and is planning to spend his retirement. And I heard that, I don't know, sometime in the last couple of months he developed some extremely rare hearing issue that has. It basically makes that at least currently impossible. And the prognosis, the outlook is questionable as to whether he can recover from this. So he's still alive, obviously, but, you know, worked for decades to be able to do this thing. And he enjoyed the ride too, don't get me wrong. But, you know, it's one of those things. It's like, man, if he had pulled the ripcord on his career five years sooner, 10 years sooner, he had plenty. And he was not the one that kept pushing his career alone. It was like the people that worked with him and all of that sort of pushed him and kept him there. And, you know, he's like, I just want to do this. And finally, you know, he got out and, And. And then this.

Well, it's interesting. Yeah, man.

Yeah, it sucks. It sucks. And so it just. That's what's been swimming in my head. I, you know, I just, like, as I was going to sleep last night, I'm like, man, like, it's not fair when something like that happens. But as we all know, life isn't fair. It's. We don't get to do that. And so it really made me kind of. It was like, wow, it's interesting. I was thinking about Roy, my former boss, earlier in the day. It's like, huh. Like these two lessons, like, make sure you take some time, you know, a little Bit of time, like you said, along the way to lead that charmed life. Right. It's not all about the work, unless you can make your work part of that enjoyable path. Like, that's the charmed life, I think.

Right. Yeah, well. And as entrepreneurs.

Yeah, yeah.

As entrepreneurs, we have a unique opportunity to create that life that we want, that journey that we enjoy. And you know, I talk about all the times, like when I. Looking back and explaining things to people that I've done, I'm just like, well, really, I was just, I was trying to have, I was trying to have a good time.

That's it.

Enjoy myself. I was trying to learn as much as I could, Trying new things, trying to, you know, I love deals and buying and selling and all this kind of stuff and finding new suppliers and working with great people. And so that is what really guided me. You know, there's this concept that the, the most entertaining outcome is what usually happens. And I've started to think that maybe that's the way we should, like, try to guide our life if we have the opportunity. And if you're listening to this show and if you're a business owner, entrepreneur, or an aspiring, you know, business owner, that's the opportunity that we have to try to do it and enjoy it along the way, you know, because you just, you just don't know how long you're going to get. You don't know.

No. And, and, and you don't. Yeah. You don't know. So. And like you, my whole, my career has been informed by my desire to do things that I enjoy.

Yes.

I don't enjoy every bit of what I do. Don't get me wrong.

Nobody does.

Right. Well, you know, I make it. Sometimes I make it sound like I do because the majority of it I actually do, but there's parts of it that suck, don't get me wrong. But. Yeah, but, you know, it is. And, and I think that phrase informed by is probably the right one. Influenced by my desire to do things I enjoy.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's important to do always.

Doesn't always work out that way.

No.

You know, that's going into new things or making decisions. It's like, well, wouldn't that be fun to do that? Let's, let's see. Is there, is there a there there, like, you know, let's tug on that thread a little bit.

Yeah, yeah. Experimenting, trying to figure things out. We, you know, we share our experiences here all the time about trying new things and, well, with this, is this a viable business and what would it do for me? We talk about it on the show here that. Oh, we. I do this show because I learn a lot every time. And I enjoy talking business, you know, and. And I enjoy the collaboration each week, which is very important, especially as you get to the point where maybe you don't have employees that you're working with anymore, like, kind of where I am right now.

Yeah.

So it's great to have it to look forward to. And, you know, it's funny talking about the journey and how much is enough and everything I want to talk about on our Friday episode, this concept that I have been working out, kind of this overarching strategy of why I've done the things I've done, created the businesses that I have, and it's this. I'm looking forward to introducing this new concept with you about how much is enough?

Ah, I like it. So that's Friday.

Yeah.

After Heavy Wednesday, come for cash.

How much is enough?

Yeah. How much is enough? All right, well, we'll talk about that on Friday. Thanks for hanging out with us. As always, feedback at BusinessBrain Show. We'd love to hear from you. And we do love to hear from you. It's amazing. And sign up for our mailing list@businessbrain show, and we'll send you the show notes with all the links to the things we talk about. And until then, keep living the charmed life. We'll see you Friday.