Everyone is a Customer

Business brain episode 634 for Wednesday, March 26 live long and prosper day 2025 greetings, folks and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take some ideas, we crunch them, we dissect them, we discuss them, we use them to tune and tweak our business brains so that we can each keep living those charmed lives. Sponsors for this episode, easy for me to say, includes shopify.com businessbrain. You can sign up for a $1 per month trial period and then rogue Amoeba software making some great Mac audio software that can do local transcriptions. Macaudio.com brain is where you go to download free trials and save 20% with CodeBrain. We'll talk more about that in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And here in Northern California, I'm Shannon Jean. We always have an official day, but today for me is official. First time wearing shorts for 2025. Yeah.

Interesting.

It's going to be 78 degrees here today. Some early spring weather. So, yeah, I'm happy to be here.

Nice. I have not worn shorts. Did I wear shorts at home? We had a warm spell. I don't think I did. I probably could have, but I wore shorts when I was in Austin for South by Southwest.

There. There you go. Perfect. Hey, but you know, we're pretty upbeat here, pretty positive, very optimistic. But I want to talk about a horrible customer service experience and see what we can learn from it.

Okay.

I have how not to. So I had, for years I had an account and I'm just going to say who it is doesn't matter. It's account with Bluehost they were, they handled my managing domains that I use. They handled some WordPress sites that I managed. Even my own domain@shannonjean.com they handled.

Yep.

And last year, and I should say they were great for a number of years and I believe they've since been sold to some sort of private equity thing or something like that.

Probably makes sense.

Yeah, makes sense. So last year I had some problems. My site started getting hacked and it went crazy and I couldn't get it, I couldn't get fixed. And every time I tried to get help, I was just sold and upsold into some other security thing. But it always fall back on me and they couldn't help me and this and that. It was a terrible experience. So I moved a bunch of my sites off of bluehost.

Okay.

Went with a new provider, actually a great company called Eversight. They helped me out Fix some stuff in the middle of the night. It was great.

Okay. This all sounds very positive so far.

It's super, super, super. So I had just left my domains there.

Okay.

This was a mistake.

Oh, yes.

Yeah. Foreboding.

So that's what yacht. That's what yachts are for.

Yes, for boating. That's it.

That's it. That's a Rocky Horror callback. Well, it's actually a Rocky Horror callback.

Okay. It's pretty good.

And that's foreboding of an episode that we're gonna have in a week. A week from today. Yeah, I'll review the, the new Strange Journey film because it, it's. It's all about Rocky Horror and it is a fantastic business story, which I didn't realize when I first sat down to watch the movie.

But anyway, it's perfect. Anyway, so I, I had a hosting plan.

Yep.

And then I just had domains. So I had my domain set up to point to various other companies. Right. Because I had changed. I wasn't hosting with them anymore. So I thought, well, I'll just, you know, I registered the domains, I can just change the DNS, right? Yeah. And that's normal. Every ISP, every GoDaddy name, cheap, whatever.

Every registrar is what we call. Right.

The people you have access to your DNS and you could just change stuff and point say, well, when you go to Shannon Jean, or in the case that happened this last week, as a nonprofit that I helped manage, you go to their website, it redirects to, to this other place. Yeah, well, my hosting service ended.

Okay.

And Bluehost blew up every one of those DNS records.

Oh, they just. Wait, so they stopped hosting the web, your website, and then also stopped being your, your master DNS?

They didn't stop the master DNS, they reset it to their default.

Of course, because you stopped pay. Paying for their hosting service.

But I've never paid for hosting. And so maybe here's. Maybe I'm in the wrong here. So maybe. So you can, you can check me.

Maybe I could be a misunderstanding. Yeah, just some kind of freezing cold studio. So.

Yeah, that's right. I've had domains registered, you know, GoDaddy name, cheap, whatever. And I never pay for hosting, but I use the DNS. I don't have a hosting plan.

I understand.

I just, I use their DNS. So my thought. And if you're listening at home, playing along at home, you can tell me if I'm wrong at Feedback at Businessbrain show, the hosting plans are separate from your domains.

And DNS, that's generally how it is. You know, you pay.

Well, not at the most.

You pay the DNS to like to renew the domains.

Yeah. Renew your control of your DNS.

As part of that, they give you the ability to manage DNS. But not bluehost or Eversight. Which one of.

No, no, not at bluehost. Eversight saved me. Bluehost fell apart. So I battled back and forth with them. Finally, okay, I have to transfer this domain out of bluehost to get control of it again. And did you know that? And again, maybe my experience is different, but it takes three to four days for bluehost to issue you a code to transfer your domain.

I really try hard not to swear when we do this show, but. And I. And I will refrain. But that's bs, Shannon. Right. That's bs.

Should be instant.

Instantaneous. Correct.

There is no. That is a. We don't want you to leave.

Yes.

And we want you to wait and change your mind.

And we want you to. But that's not.

That's not.

We don't want you to leave. We want you to suffer because you're leaving.

And I have been suffering. Right. Because I could. I eventually. Oh, yeah, it's been. Dude, I hit the ceiling. And I had to. I had to go register another domain so I could get back control of this. It was brutal. And.

Oh, right, because you couldn't even log in because there was no way to log in because you didn't have a domain pointed at it.

Correct.

Got it. Okay.

Correct. So. And every time I reached out to bluehost to have help, their answer was, you need to buy a hosting package to manage. I said, no, no, no, no, no, I do not. And so we went round and around and around, and I will just say they used to be amazing. They were very helpful. Years, you know, maybe three years ago.

The economy has changed. Things must have. You know, I mean, obviously.

Yeah.

You know, I get it. Yep. Things are soft.

Yes. It's not this. The people that were trying to help me, it's not their fault. Not at all. They're just trying to. Hey, you know, I'm typing in your chat. I'm trying to help you, but the policies that they have where you. You're not in control of your domains unless you have a hosting package with them. That's really what it comes down to.

Right, Right. No, that's.

And that's. It's just bs.

It should be separate. So I. I have. I have a story that I want to share, but I'm not going to.

Okay.

In the interest of time and. And just keeping things positive, my rant.

Is done and I'm a very positive person.

I will offer one of the most positive things I have found for hosting domains, registering domains, and that is Cloudflare. Cloudflare, they. It's a relatively new thing for Cloudflare. Only the last few years.

Yeah. Because they're usually their domain protection thing.

Right. You can. You can manage your DNS with them for. And that's what I've been doing for a very long time. And I highly recommend that every. Unless you have a specific reason not to use Cloudflare as a default, I recommend you use Cloudflare to manage your DNS, even if you register your domain with GoDaddy or Namecheap or somebody else. Right.

I don't know how to do that. How do you.

You just go to sign up for a cloudflare account and they will walk you through making them the domain manager managers. Right.

So no charge.

Correct. And Cloudflare's whole mission is to make the Internet, like, fast, secure, private, like all that stuff. So they do a great job managing DNS. In fact, I would say probably, you know, 30% of the Internet's DNS runs through Cloudflare anyway, so they're super fast and all that stuff.

That's great.

A few years ago, they added the ability to transfer your domains to them and have them be your registrar, and they don't mark that up much, if at all.

Yeah.

So they're one of the cheapest registrars and now you can actually register new domains through them. So I've moved every one of my domains to Cloudflare and I'll leave it positive.

Yeah, that's great. Put a link in the show notes.

Absolutely.

And again, this is like if your business just went offline. Yeah, like this. And then you. You know, I got a lot going on. I'm not gonna.

Evidently over. But that's okay.

Yeah, I know. Sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm done. I did, but. So I'm just trying to say the seriousness of it is your business goes offline and it takes you three days to get control of your website.

Again, no bueno.

They're being heard of.

Yeah.

But thank you for the tip. I'm gonna.

Yeah, yeah, check out Plaza. I'll put a link in the. In the show notes.

Awesome.

Yeah. All right. You know, selling merch for my other podcasts and even my other businesses used to feel like trying to juggle flaming swords, blindfolded but then I started using our sponsor, Shopify, and now it's so smooth, it almost seems like Shopify is secretly reading my mind. They're not. But it's so good. Nobody does selling better. Shopify powers the number one checkout on the planet. And with shop pay boosting conversions up to 50%, it's like having a virtual salesperson working 24 7. Except this one doesn't take coffee breaks or demand stock options. And hey, if Shopify could run my whole life, I probably let it. Maybe it could handle that secret underground moon base I've been planning. Anyway, upgrade your business and get the same checkout that I use with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com businessbrain all lowercase go to shopify.com businessbrain to upgrade your selling today. That's shopify.com businessbrain and our thanks to Shopify for sponsoring this episode. You know, sometimes we get emails asking us how and why this show sounds so good. It's not magic, it's our sponsor, Rogue Amoeba. Their powerful Mac audio tools make producing this podcast possible and really helps us sound delicious. It's enjoyable. I use audio hijack to record and process every single episode. If I can hear it, Audio Hijack can record it. And now with their new Whisper AI powered transcribe block, it even creates transcripts faster, more efficient, and all locally on my Mac. No cloud nonsense. Then there's Farrago, which runs our theme music and sound effects with the press of a button. Because nothing says pro podcast like hitting a jingle at just the right time, right? You know, you got to be able to do that. And loopback. It's my secret weapon. Routing audio between all apps like some kind of virtual switchboard operator from the 1940s, only way faster. And then off the mic on my non podcast Mac, I'm using sound source to control the volume of every app and control the volume of those speakers that the Mac can't control the volume for. It makes it work. Look, if Rogue Amoeba made kitchen appliances, I'd probably have them running my blender by now. But until then, they've got your audio and mine covered. Visit MacAudio.comBrain to grab free trials of everything and save 20% with code Brain through May. That's MacAudio.comBrain. level up your audio and start living that charmed life, folks. And our thanks to Rogue Amoeba for sponsoring this episode. You know Shannon, you you reminded me earlier that of a thing I say all the time, which is that every business is in the customer service business. We were talking about a pre show and we were talking about it pre show because you have something to add to that about everyone being, treating everyone, thinking of everyone as a customer.

Yeah. If you're an entrepreneur or if you're the business owner, your customer isn't just your people that pay you money for stuff. You're. This concept is that, that I believe is everyone is a customer. Your employees, first of all. Right. You're constantly, oh for sure trying to attract the best talent. You know, and I remember we had tech defenders on years ago, the, the CEO or whoever and they talked about all the effort they put into their social media and stuff to attract good talent. Right. So your customer, your, your, your employees are definitely your customer. It's your job, part of your job to create a place that they can thrive and be productive and do great things. But they're your customer. And I also think your suppliers are your customer.

Right? Yes.

You, you, by inverting the concept, the framework of this buyer or supplier client relationship really opens up opportunities for you. It saves you money because you get better deals. Right. Because your relationships you have with these people, you treat them better. You just get. There's that law of reciprocity. You get more back if I guarantee, if you have a great relationship with the supplier and things are constrained and you needed to get some, you're going.

To have a time. Yeah, yeah.

The person who's like cool and talk to and they, they like you and they like to hear your least. That's who's going to get, you know.

Yeah.

Get good. And I, I think it's the same with your, the people that you hire like your accountant, your bank, you know, if you have banker, your insurance guy, whoever, your attorney, they're your customers too, if you help. Well, I'm going to phrase this. You should be thinking of ways to, to help them. You should be thinking of ways that you can make their lives better because when you do that, it automatically makes them want to make your life better.

Right.

They'll go the extra mile for you, you know.

Yes. First of all. Yes. And thank you.

That's our show today, folks.

That's it. Well, another way to think about this is yes, they're all your customers, but what you're really, one of the things you're really talking about here is attention. Right. This is, it's all an attention game. Right. We want our customers attention. Right. For, for good reason. They're the people who spend money with our businesses. And in some ways, it's easy to make our customers feel loved. Right. We give them.

That's the whole focus.

That's the whole focus. Right. We give them products.

Yes.

Or services that are valuable to them. You create things so that it's not a zero sum game. Right. That you can both win together, all of that stuff. That your business is organ. Hopefully your business is organized to do that. That's the focus. So.

Correct.

It's easy. I say it's easy. It's not always. It's not always. It's not always easy. It's simple to come up with a way of running your business that's focused on the people that will call your actual customers, the people that spend money with you.

It's the default.

It's the default. But what's not the default is what you're talking about here, and that is getting vendors to give you their attention. To choose to give you their attention. Maybe best said to want to give you their attention.

Yeah, yeah.

And yes, you're spending money with them, but presumably they are not. You are not their only client. Right. And so, like, you know, it was as you were talking about attorneys, I was like, oh, wait a minute, this is it. Because sometimes I'm fighting to get my attorney's attention.

That's right.

And I understand why I'm not always their biggest client. In fact, I kind of don't ever want to.

You don't want to be. You don't want to be your attorney's biggest client? No, let's get that out there.

But, yeah, but like, but then, even though I'm, you know, hopefully a small fish to my attorney, when I call him or text him, I want attention quickly. And how do you do that? Well, the day that you need the attention, it's too late. Right? It's too late. So it's paving that path, being kind. And there's nothing in here that's maliciously manipulative. Right. Manipulation gets, as a word, gets a bad rap. Right. Because persuasion, it's persuasion. It's just being kind to them and understanding that they're humans and, and you're a human and relating with them and all of those things. And if you can do that on a regular basis, then, you know, like, there are times. The nice part is that, and I say this is the nice part. It's really not. If you need attention from one of your suppliers, like an attorney or something like that, and they're not giving it to you at some point you do get the opportunity to have the. What people call the come to Jesus conversation. Like, hey, right, I need you. I understand I'm not your only client, but I am one of your clients. Right. You can do that, and you can guilt them a little bit into getting back on track, and that's fine. And that is a card to play at times. But if that's the only card you're ever playing, that's exhausting, and it's not gonna work.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's not that you want to do this stuff, because you should enjoy it, too.

Yes.

You have some vendor, supplier, accountant, attorney. That's a jerk. I don't want to do business with them, so I won't. I'm going to move.

Right.

And I'm going to find somebody that meshes with who I am.

Yes.

And who values the. The time I put into the relationship. And you. You want them to think of, oh, I'm going to call Dave. I got to call Dave back. Not. Who's this guy? What business are we talking about? Oh, I got to call this guy. That. That doesn't work.

No.

So, you know, you want them to miss you when. Yes.

When you're. When you don't have business for them. Yeah.

Yes. You should call these people or email them. I don't know, whatever. Some sort of. Of regular basis. You know, it'd be. It's great to talk to your attorney, to your accountant when you don't need.

Anything, when you're not on the clock. Yeah.

I just wanted to check. Hey, I just want to check in. Thank you. So. And so I. I do this with my accountant after. You know, it's like, hey, Shin is my. She manages our. Our account with my accountant, and he's maxed out, doesn't have time. But I like, you know, we. When we get together, it's great. But I always follow up and say, man, you know, she did a great job. She helped me out with this question. She took care of this. I'm not an easy client. I have, like, yeah. 50 plates spinning in the air and paperwork dropping, like, you know, snowflakes that are too late and not enough time. And she always comes through for us. And I always just email my accounts, like, hey, thank you so much. She did it.

Yeah.

I'm paying for the service, but obviously, just recognize. You recognize that. So. So flip the script. And I would say you should teach your employees this concept, too. Is that the UPS driver when they roll up to your warehouse? If you have that kind of business, you want them to know you. You want them to know your warehouse guys. You want them to talk about the football game. Yes, that from the last weekend. Because you know what, if a package shows up or something happens, you want that guy's phone number, not the UPS 800 number. No, you want to call Larry in the big brown truck and say, larry, I was supposed to have this package and it says it's this, but it doesn't. And Larry says, hey, you know what? I saw it. It's sitting. I'm going to go drive back and pick it up, guys, I'll, I'll see you at three o'.

Clock.

And because Larry knows if he shows up Fridays at 1 o', clock, you're going to feed him, right? Because you're barbecuing in the parking lot or whatever, whatever. You make those people's lives better all around you. Whoever interacts with your business, their lives should be impacted in a positive manner. Not just your clients, not just your customers that are paying you money, but everybody around you. And when you do that, you can come back and send us an email at feedback and businessbrain show and tell us, because I know the results because I did it. I've done it. I do it and it works.

Way to do it. Yeah.

And everybody thinks highly of you and they value your relationship more. So check it out, let us know how it works for you.

Thanks, folks. Like he said, feedbackusinessbrain show and yeah, keep living that charmed life, would you? And if you're not subscribed, subscribe to the show.

It's good.

We got more episodes. We'll have another one Friday. Yep.