Enriching Your Life Beyond Profits With Your Small Business – Small Business Show 167

The Small business show episode 167 for Wednesday, April 18, 2018. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business show here at businessshow. Co. This is the home of the show by, for and about small business owners here at home. Or at least in my home office in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I am Shannon Jean. How goes it out there, man? In your home office in Durham, New Hampshire.

It's good. It's all good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very good. So it's exciting, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mentioned last week that we just, you know, started a new company and. And that's like. It's. It's exciting. I like. I like that part of this. I had. Frankly, I had forgotten about this. The last company I got involved in is the one that sort of ended with that. It hasn't end. Fiery lawsuit or whatever. Like, man, it may never end. That's true.

But it kind of changes your perspective a little bit or temporarily at least.

Yeah. Thankfully, this is helping me sort of get over that. I mean, it's an emotional scar. Right. Going through all that.

Of course.

And as we mentioned in the last show, parts of it were not fun at all. Like, you know, as much as we're laughing now, there were many days where I did not laugh, but going through this process of starting a completely different company with completely different people and having some moderate but nearly instant positive cash flow, which I call success.

Beautiful.

It's beautiful. Of course, we're setting up this thing, and I'm sure there will be pitfalls along the way, I have no doubt, because it's how things go. There's partners involved, all of those things. But. But we're having fun and there's money on the table. And we had to. We got to the point in our working agreement, like I said, where we had to form a business that's pretty awesome. So it's like. Okay.

It is awesome.

Like, they're not all geckos on your success list.

Man.

You got it. Yeah, yeah.

Even just getting off the ground and starting something and making, you know, headway and getting things going, that. That alone is a major success because it just allows you to build. It's like you're building a set of stairs, right?

Yeah.

And you actually got the materials and you're starting instead of just sitting around, you know, over a couple of beers, talking about some. Some crazy idea.

Totally. And it. And it's like. Yeah, like, even, like even just creating the LLC and getting the tax Id, It's. I mean, these things are simple to do, but they are scary all the time for in. In their own moderate ways. Right. It's like, oh, wow, this is like there's a thing happening at the same time as real.

It's real.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that's exciting. Like, I. I had forgotten what that excitement was like. Right. Because it's been a long time since. Since, you know, I've formed an LLC myself. I mean, like I said, I'd been involved in others, but. But this was the one where it was like, oh, I got to do the legwork on this. Okay. That's hard. It's. I mean, it's super easy.

It's fun, though. Like you said, it's fun. Yeah. I have. Yeah. And I have a partner that, you know, a guy that I've known for a long time. And I mentioned something, you know, I was out, you know, pouring rain, sitting in a duck blind with this guy, and I mentioned a comment about, oh, I had this opportunity, but I never really had anybody that could kind of take the action and get it done. I had this. My quote, unfair advantage was access to some. Some product. And, you know, I've been talking about it for a couple years, and this. This person is the first time I mentioned it. And they jump right on it. And, you know, to your point, it's fun and exciting and you get a working agreement going and you do some very small numbers, but some good success. And. And one of the things that this person asked me is like, well, you know, you had all this stuff going on. Why do you want to do this? And I was like, well, it's fun, it's interesting. It keeps you sharp. It's like you're a tool. You know, it keeps your brain thinking. And you know that. Well, I have a wide bandwidth. I know I can't take this project myself.

No, well, right. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. You'll drive yourself nuts. But if you have a, you know, a partner that you're like, well, let's try and see how this works. And we had some struggles in the beginning, you know, getting, Getting to that positive cash flow. But I kept telling this person, I said, you know, this is just like an experiment to see, number one, how we work together and can we both live up to the working agreement and is it good when, you know, this isn't working now what do we do? What shift that we've made? And we've made some shifts over the last few weeks that have had a dramatic positive impact. So I Love it.

The thing for me was I found my mindset. There was a day and it was actually well before the time came to form this llc. But where my mindset about it stopped being how are we going to prove ourselves wrong? Who's going to be the first one to violate, not violate, but cross the working agreement and prove that this thing shouldn't happen? Right. Because I mean, that's part of what that is. It's a litmus test to see can you work well together and you're not going to find, follow the letter of that working agreement. In fact, the point here is to be adaptable and change and be adaptable. Yeah, yeah, that's it. But there was a point in time and it was actually in the middle of, we've been doing weekly meetings with this thing and it was in the middle of actually sort of the first formal one where it was like, oh, hey, wait a minute. I just stopped thinking about how we're going to fail and started thinking about how we're going to succeed. It's like, okay, that's a good sign, right? Like, I've been there before. I was there when you and I started deals on the web. You came to me, it sounded like this crazy. It sounded too easy. And a lot of businesses, that's kind of like, I feel like that's an important thing to know is, is that if you have a good idea and the time is right in the market and there's, I mean, there's some ramp up period for everything. Right? You're right. You've got to like, if you're going to sell product, well, you've got to get it and then, you know, market it. But. So there's some time. But your first success should happen pretty quickly or at some level. At some level, right. And if it doesn't, that's a good sign that maybe you're just either not organized the right way or it's the wrong thing at the wrong time for the wrong mark, whatever it is. And I had forgotten what that was like to have that, hey, wait a minute, like, whoa, we're already, we got money coming. Like, oh, yeah, that's right. That's how this works. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all good. Yep.

Nice.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think that, you know, measuring that success is very important as well. And even the little increments, I think a lot of folks, especially if you're, if it's your first time, they miss it. So, you know, I would say, man, if you were able to work out an agreement and get it in writing. Not a contract. No, it's a waste of time. It's a waste of time, but some kind of working agreement that you both can, you know, say, look, I'm going to take these, here's the opportunity.

Yep.

Here's what I'm going to do, here's what you're going to do, and here's what we're going to do with any money we make and how expenses are going to be paid. If you get to that point and both of you sign that working agreement, man, you should throw your hands up and high five. Because most folks can't get past that point. And if you can't get past that point, that's awesome as well. Because you just realized, I can't be in business with this person.

Yes, we are the wrong people. It doesn't mean you're a bad person, but it also doesn't mean they are. It's just you're the wrong.

It means, hey, yes, it's like, great, we'll just sit around and drink a couple of beers and talk about these ideas. But we know we're not going to get involved further than that. And even that's a learning lesson, that.

That'S a success right there.

Yeah, yeah, it's totally cool.

And you're right about that. Sort of. I don't want to say obsessively, but it might be the right word, obsessively tracking those early successes. I mean, you need to be aware of where your finances are, no matter how many days, weeks, months, years you've been in business. But early on, like every success is going to help fuel you to get to the next one. And we've got, there's three of us that are partners in this particular venture, and one of us, it's not me, is every day posting to a spreadsheet that we share. Just how, what the money's like, because we do have sort of this trickling. It's a trickle business is what it is essentially. And we've got money trickling in and every day I get to look and see, oh, you know, there's a couple hundred bucks, like, okay. I mean, that's awesome. It's not life changing, especially when you pay expenses and split it three weeks.

But yeah, yeah, of course. But it's a sign of future success.

Yeah, right. It's a sign of future success. And we could, like, if we cashed out now, we aren't gonna. But each of us would walk away with money that we could Actually do something not insignificant with. Right. I mean, we could go buy a. Buy an iPhone or something like. You know what I mean? Like, something like, hey, look at that. I spent a thousand bucks. Like, okay, cool.

Yeah. So, yeah, and I'm going to coin a new. A new phrase here for us on the show called the success cycle. And I think that that is critically important to recognizing those little successes that are often overlooked. But if you can remind. If you can recognize and celebrate them with your partner, look, yeah, we got this going. This is great. And especially if it's a new person in business that may not think like, that helps you and it gets this cycle going where success builds upon success as well. When you do make mistakes, which you will, and you do have some failures, you're going to be able to go, well, look, we had these eight or ten successes, and then we really screwed up, but now we're going to keep going. So that success cycle is really important, and we're going to expand on that in future episodes and posts on the website, for sure.

Oh, dude, that's a magic term right there. The success cycle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's good, it's good, it's good.

Yeah.

So, hey, let's get to what we were going to actually talk about.

That sounds fair.

Yeah, it's good, it's good. We were talking about the charmed life. You know, that's another term, you know, we use a lot, especially you, is, you know, and the, you know, the charmed life of owning small businesses and companies. You know, we've said it many times on the show that owning small businesses does not really give you freedom, but it does give you a tremendous amount of flexibility that can help you to lead a charmed life. And when I think about that, the flexibility is one of the things that really comes up first in, you know, what I'm thinking on that charmed life. So I thought we'd talk about that for a little bit today.

I like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very good, man. Very good. You want to kick us off here?

Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. The best thing that I like, you know, I'm a storyteller guy, you know, and you can phrase that any way you want, BS or whatever, but the best thing about it is you get to create your own reality, your own story, without the normal boundaries of working for someone else. And throughout your life, there will be people like you, Dave, that will appreciate it. Then there will be a lot of people that will. It will either kind of piss them off because they don't understand it.

Yeah.

And. Or it will. They. Some people idolize it. So you have this, you know, trifecta sometimes seeing people get, you know, angry about your success or frustrated. Well, let's say. What's the word? Not angry, but frustrated is good. Frustrated maybe looking at it. Jealous. Sometimes I hate it too. Sometimes that's kind of fun. You're like, oh, you know, whatever. And, and, but then also have getting, you know, people look at and go, wow, that's awesome. I don't know what your secret is. Well, you know, come listen to the last 166 episodes and you will get that. There is no secret. It's just that actions that we take. And I just.

Persistence. I like that. That if there is a secret, it's that it. That's all it is. Yeah. And, and I can, I can tell you from personal experience, when you lay off the gas on the bullheaded persist, success doesn't come as easily or at all. You gotta have your foot on that pedal all the time because that's how bullheaded.

No matter how great your story, no matter how great your idea is. Yes. If you're not grinding it out with that bullheaded persistence, you know, nothing will happen.

That's my experience. Others may feel differently and, and more. You know what, man? More power to them. I'm, I'll be envious. I'll be envious of that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you got it. You got it. And you know, and one of the things I, you know, I love about leading this charmed life is, is time. You know, it is our most precious commodity.

Right.

We've had guests on the show that. And I'm probably not going to say it right, but where they've said we're basically buying our time back with our business. Is that right?

Is that how. Yeah, I think that was Kyle that said that. Was it Kyle Backus that said.

No, it was, it was. No, we're going to find it. It was one of the service providers year and a half ago.

That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mike somebody. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We'll find them and put them in the show notes. And the thing about, you know, having small businesses, especially if you can get to the point where you can have more than one and then diversify a bit, your time is often more flexible. You know, you may be working Friday night at midnight sometimes and you may be excited about it if it's something you're working on. But you may also be solving problem but you'll also be able to attend all your kids games, sporting events, you won't miss a school play and you maybe even be able to catch a movie during the day with your wife once in a while or go playground of golf and not worry about I can't get out, I can't do this, I can't do that. And that flexibility with your time is priceless and I've been able to do that for a long, long time and I really value it. And I would encourage you to grind it out and keep that persistence going to where you can get to that point.

You know, it's, you're talking about that how time is, is precious and, and I implore everyone to take your advice when you have that moment and go see that movie in the afternoon, go, you know, do whatever it is you want to do and, and screw off for an afternoon and don't feel guilty about it. Like that's the thing to train yourself now you don't want to train yourself that, you know, it's okay to just wake up in the morning and put on your sweats and sit on the couch and eat bon bons all day every day because you're not going to have a business. I mean, unless you've already worked that out and then everything's golden, man, and then more power to you. But come on the show and tell us, tell us how you did it. Yeah, Tim Ferriss and your four hour workweek be damned. Right? But, but don't feel guilty when you do take advantage of this charmed life. And the reason I say that is it's really easy to show up at that two in the afternoon or maybe four in the afternoon, depending on when the kids get out of school showing up for that lacrosse game or whatever that you get to watch. And it's like you and maybe some other parents that don't work because they take care of the house while their spouse works or whatever and you're the only working parent there. And you know, it takes, like you said before, some people have trouble wrapping their heads around that. Be okay with it because you know that sometimes you're up at four in the morning working, sometimes you're up on a Friday night working. You never get to stop thinking about work, right? All of that stuff. Maybe you never really took a vacation because you know, you can't truly detach. All of those things are the flip side of that. So don't feel bad watching that lacrosse game. Don't feel bad sitting in the movie theater like these are things that. It's just. I don't even want to say you've earned it. It's just, it's the trade off that you make to be able to live this charmed life. And to some people, the charmed life isn't charmed. That's the other side of it. So, yeah, sure, yeah, no, it's great.

It is great advice. And I really think it's an important part to step back and look at that flexibility with your time.

I. I agree. Yeah, man, absolutely.

The other part of the flexibility that I always like to talk about with people, because it's amazing to me is that as you build out your stable or, well, your small business or multiple businesses, your financial picture becomes incredibly flexible. It can also become incredibly complicated. And go back and talk about good accountants, but. But you'll be able to make choices related to your finances that ordinary humans have no idea even exist. When it comes to planning with your money, saving, spending, paying taxes, all those kinds of things, there's so many more opportunities to maximize your life and live that term life. When you have a small business in your back pocket, so to speak, and you go to do anything. When you start to plan, you'll just see it when you meet with a financial planner, as you start to generate some revenue, it changes the whole conversation. When you meet with an accountant, you're not just handing him, you know, that your W2 and your mortgage statement, all that bank statement stuff, there's all kinds of other paperwork. Yeah, you're going to pay more for your accountant, but they're going to look at things and go, oh, you could do this and you could do that. And you know, in the beginning, yeah, lots of options.

I always. The way I, the way I present this to people is I say, you know, 90% of my life is tax deductible. And people think that that's.

Agree.

You know, people think that that. Whoa, like that sounds illegal. No, no, no, it's. No, it's not. Not. It's also not my rules, but it's that, you know, I've started businesses in areas that would otherwise be hobbies for me. You know, generally speaking, that's technology and music, right? I ear playing my drums. So guess what? That's a business too. And I get to write off mileage for that. I get to write off drums that I buy. I get to, you know, all of that stuff. It's like, it's, it's awesome. But it, but it's legal. There's nothing wrong with it. Of Course, it's just because I've turned my hobbies into businesses, and, And. And there are times when that is a pitfall, too. Right. Because now it's not just the thing I have fun doing. It's like, oh, crap, right? I got to like. Like, I have to be a little more intentional about things because this is actually a business at the same time as it's also a thing that I like doing. So. But yeah, yeah, for sure.

It can. It can definitely, if you're not careful, it can ruin your hobby totally, so to speak. You know, but you just have to manage it, you know, correctly and realize that, oh, it's, you know, now we're doing this, and it's. That's good stuff. Some of the other things that I really enjoy, wanted to mention on the show is that when you start a small business typically, and you start hiring employees and managers and it's growing, you're creating what I call would consider a second family of people that you're going to spend countless hours achieving great things with, and you're going to be involved in their life professionally and even personally, especially if you're paying their paycheck. And that's a tremendously rewarding thing when you're able to help other people achieve things in their life and be successful and give them autonomy to run the business, maybe eventually. It's awesome. It's super rewarding in a very important part of the success cycle.

I agree. And give yourself permission to enjoy that part of it. One of the guys that works for me, and he'd worked for me for a long time at this point, got married a couple of years back, and, you know, I mean, we pay him, and obviously, you know, there's bonuses when the company does those and all that stuff. And of course, we give him time off, and we gave him time off for his honeymoon. But as he was planning his trip, he asked me because I travel more than he does. He was asking me about, you know, booking flights and that sort of thing. So I was involved a little bit in that process, and I was happy to be involved in that process. And when it came time for him to book those flights, I said. And I had made this decision a day or so before, but I said, okay, yeah, when you're booking the flights, let me pay for those for you. Nice. Yeah, that's a really. I hate to say it, but it's a selfish move, right? It made me feel good, so I did it.

That kind of selfish move is awesome. I joke around all the time. It is because you're really helping someone else, but you're doing it because it makes you feel better. Correct. And I don't think that. I think that is an awesome part of being selfish when you're helping someone else. I think it's great.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's awesome.

You know? Yeah.

We could get philosophical and say that there's no one on the planet that's not selfish. Right. You do things to make yourself feel good, and there you go. If your mind feels good after doing something nice for someone else, that's like, that's where it's awesome. And that's the kind of thing that this is. It's like, yeah. You know, he's like, really? He was shocked. It's like, oh, even better. Perfect. That's what I like.

Nice.

Great.

Yeah. And, you know, and one of the things on my list here, too is talking about. And you talked about expenses, and when you're paying lots of expenses and things with, you know, your business, oftentimes you can pay them with a credit card that may have some kind of affinity program for frequent flyer miles or travel or hotels. All kinds of different things that you can do. If you're into gift cards, you can, you know, there's all kinds of stuff. And when your business grows to a significant amount and you're paying some large bills, those numbers can get very high. I mean, we used to do a thing where we would tell an employee, look, you can book a trip anywhere in the world and we'll cover the expense, the airfare and the hotel, because we had millions of frequent flyer and hotel points.

Right.

That, you know, as long you have to re. You know, you have to live within a certain parameters. But, you know, look, go to the Starwood site and pick from these 50 hotels anywhere in the world, and we'll fly you there and do it. And it really, you know, the. The cost to you, it's not nothing because you're giving up those, you know, giving up opportunities.

Yeah.

You're giving them opportunity. But to look on someone's face, especially someone that works for you, when you can do that for them, it's dramatic. And, you know, we've. We've sent people to Hawaii, Mexico, Europe, you know, that kind of thing. That's awesome. And it's great and I love it. And, you know, not. So that's that, you know, kind of what you do, but just even using them for yourself, you know, when you can dump your whole family into first class and your kids can, you know, be Laying down on the plane as you fly somewhere, that's a big deal. Especially when you're a business person that says, you know, I did this. Didn't cost me any, any cash. Cost you something else. But, but you didn't have to kick out, you know, all that, all that cash. And, and, but you know, we've done it for Disney World and just on and on and on over the years and it's a big part of living, I think that charmed life, if you manage it correctly. And we've done a show on credit cards and affinity stuff in the past and we'll link that in the show notes, we'll dig it up.

No, to me, that was one of the first perks I was able to give myself, you know, that I even noticed that I had like, once we'd started the businesses, it was like, yeah, if you're smart and you just dump everything at those affinity cards, like suddenly it's like, oh, hey, wa. I can like, cool, I can do this. And, and then you can, you know, it expands to your family. And, and then, you know, like we said, you can expand it to your employees too. But yeah, that was one of the first ones that I noticed was like, oh, hey, wait a minute, I can do this. And you know, it works, it's easy. It really, truly doesn't cost you money you were going to use. It's money you already spent and would have spent anyway. It's found. Found bonus is what I, the way I looked at it, non.

And it's also, I always, it's really non. It non taxable form of income.

It is. I'm waiting for the day when they try to figure out how to get us for that. But yeah, it is. You're right, it's non taxable income. Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

You know, and for me, you know, the last thing on my list is really all about laughter. You know, one of the greatest parts of my life is being able to laugh with friends, family, whatever, joke around. And you know, when you create a business and you've got all these people around, typically there's more laughter. You get to joke around. You hire usually like minded people and you create a good environment and a great culture and you hear laughter in the office, even if you're not involved in it or out in the shop or in the warehouse and you hear guys joking around, laughing. And man, that really gets to me. And it's probably very selfish, but makes me feel good about, wow, you created something here and brought these people Together and they're having a good time laughing while they're working very hard. I always used to say we have a great time working very hard and in, you know, grinding it out and you know, that diligence. But you know, there's also sometimes more tears. But typically you're going to have more opportunities for fun, more opportunities to laugh with the people that you surround yourself. And it's a big part, has been a big part and continues to be a big part of my charmed life.

Yeah, me too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like you, when you can really truly look forward to interacting with the people that, that you work with and generally, you know, if you're the business owner, they're the people you've hired, but if you can really, truly do that, you're doing it right. And if you can't, unless there's some other benefit, usually financial, that makes up for it. Change that, just enjoy. Like that's the, to me, that's the most important part of it is I just, I don't want to hate every day and I decided that a long time ago and I don't. There's some days that aren't fun, of course. Right. But, but by and large it's like, oh, I get to talk with the guys. Like I look forward to our staff meetings when we can all just chit chat and I mean we're chit chatting about the work things but as I said before, my work stuff is an extension of my hobbies, so I don't mind it. It's good, you know.

Yeah, it's great stuff you enjoy. Yeah, hopefully you enjoy it.

It's. Yeah. And you know, I mean, I hear this from other folks too. I've got a lot of friends around here that are pilots that love flying and say similar things like, I can't believe they pay me to do this. You know, it's like, it's like, that's awesome. That's how it should. Like that's really. I really feel like that's what makes the world a better place. It truly is. If you just.

I agree.

If you can do something every day that you really enjoy, man, the money almost doesn't matter. Like, the money's certainly secondary.

Oh, the money is totally second. The money is totally secondary. I've always said that, you know, I've felt wealthy my entire life. Even when I didn't have anything right. I didn't run out the door at 5 o', clock, you know, because I hated my job.

And you couldn't Wait to get out of there. Right.

Yeah. And, you know, there's sometimes when you know things aren't going well, you're like, oh, I got to get out of here. But maybe you do that at 2pm you know, go see that movie.

Yeah.

To take, take your, your mind off of things so you can get some perspective on stuff. And, but you know, I, I really encourage, you know, you guys to focus on that charmed life and how to get these benefits because I think it'll also make you a better business owner, a better boss when you can think along the lines of these extra benefits that are sometimes often overlooked. And now that Dave and I have had many years, we get some perspective on it and we get to talk about it every week, so maybe it's a little easier for us to recognize those things.

Doing this show has certainly made it easier for me to recognize these things. Absolutely. I've been, I'm so much more self aware and I'm somebody that, like, I'm crazy about prioritizing self awareness, you know, but, but doing this has made me realize, well, you know, you're better now because you're paying attention, which is good. Yeah, that was that. Which is monitored, is managed. Right. So.

Yep, yep, you got it. So tell us your story. You know, come to the, the small business support group on Facebook. Excuse me. @businessshow.co Facebook, or email us at feedbackusinessshow. Co. Thank you for joining us today. We would love to hear from you.

Yeah, absolutely. It's. We love doing the show too. It's like, I look forward to it every week. Keep living the charm life. Tell us what you're doing to live the charm life. See you next week.