Expanding Your Brand and Increasing Revenue Streams

Well, happy new year again everybody and welcome back to the Small Business Show. Shannon, this is, it's time to get to work is what it is.

That's right. 2020, man. It's gonna be a great year. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

I see no reason why, why it wouldn't. It's, you know, it's, it's up to us. I mean there's, sir, you can always point it, external factors and all of that, but the reality is most of those don't impact you or your business nearly as much as you impact you and your business, Right?

Oh, for sure.

Like you get to decide what you're doing. Yeah. Sometimes you got to navigate some of these other things. Sometimes it impacts the way you pay your taxes and all that stuff. But the reality is you can, you can add a lot more value to your business than something else can take away. You can also take away a lot more value from your business than something else can add.

So, so that accountability is really powerful and the more you embrace it, I think the more you create this kind of self propelling concept to lead you to success sooner, I think it's great and I think it helps you if your existing business expand into other areas and just constantly thinking about how it relates to. If we take this action, this is going to happen. There's no one else in charge of it but yourself.

No, yeah, you're right. It's up to us. We can make it happen. Our competition, you know. So we're going to talk in this episode about expansion and one of the things we're going to talk about is we're going to talk a bit big picture and then, and then, you know, about what we're doing here. Our competitors are not going to negatively impact our ability to expand this at any, any meaningful level. I. Our ability to expand this is 100% up to us. Maybe 99.9 if you really want to get down to it. But effectively it's 100% up to us. Nobody else is getting in the way, but nobody else is expanding it for us either. So there you go.

That's correct.

Yeah.

That's awesome. That's going to be a good show. We have some good stuff to touch on today. It's a great way to start the year.

Yep. Well, he is Shannon Jean. I'm Dave Hamilton and this is the Small business show, episode 250 foreign.

Hey Dave, how are you?

I'm good, man, how are you?

I'm great. This is our first live. Well, live a new episode of 2020. Right?

Yeah, it's cool. I know, I know.

Brand new year, brand new podcast, all kinds of new stuff coming your way.

That's not a new podcast. It's the same podcast. Oh, it's a new episode. I see what you're saying.

Yes.

Now I'm with you.

I'll catch up. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. The past couple weeks, while we've enjoying time with our family, especially since Christmas and New Year's fell on our days that we.

Our release days. That's right, release days.

Yeah, yeah, we had best ofs, which are both great, great episodes.

I think so.

And. Yeah, yeah, it's good. So I wanted to start this year off with talking about ways to expand your business, expand your brand, increase new revenue streams, that, that type of thing. So if you know you have a successful business and you want to get, you want to increase your revenues, go out and connect with new people. And so that's what we're going to chat about today.

Yeah, and, and just so people know, we're going to put our money where our mouth is, too, both figuratively and, and literally because we're going to talk about this stuff from a high level. And then for the second half of the show, we're going to talk about what you and I are going to do for this, to expand the brand in 2020. And yeah, and so you guys, you folks can hold us to it. So.

Yeah, yeah, that'll be good. So, and we'll, we'll share along the way as we develop it and, you know, we'll talk about what we know and what we don't know and what we thought. And what we thought we knew.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So I have a few things that I'd like to, you know, share with our listeners today about what, what I think are some really great ways to focus on this year in increasing revenue, expanding your brand awareness and getting you to new things. One of the first ones is I really think if you're not doing this, it's right there, it's money on the table. It's to start educating your existing and potential customers. And what I mean by that is talking about the products you sell or the services that you offer, people want to learn about them. Whether you're selling garden equipment or servicing, you know, trailers, anything in, anything in between. Creating an educational channel either on your website via, you know, articles, photographs, take aparts, or on YouTube, Instagram, all the social media, people really want to learn. They want to see what you were doing. They're interested. I guarantee you there's somebody out there that would love to see you take apart the product you sell, walk through the service. You know, oh, I'm taking apart like recently I had to buy a new one of those funky inside rubber rings that goes on our dryer. And I was like, I'm, I'm not, I'm not hiring anybody to come do this. Like, you know, I can figure this out.

Yeah, yeah.

And so, you know, jump on YouTube and here's a bunch of parts suppliers that are showing you how to install this part. And it's pretty complex. You got to take the whole dryer thing off and do this thing. It took a few hours, but these people, these places are step by step and they've got links here. Go buy the, this big gasket thing. This is the one you need for your first. They help you identify your model so you make sure you buy the right thing.

Yeah.

And they walk you all the way through it. And I was like, man, it's such a great way to connect with these companies. In this case appliance parts suppliers. And now I'll always go back to these guys. And it works really well. There are definitely people searching for content. I've done it before with my tech based companies where we did take apart videos, installation videos up on YouTube and we get, you know, millions of views and it helps with your brand awareness as well as it drives customers. It's really great.

That's really smart. Yeah, yeah.

And it's not very difficult to do. You're probably already doing something like this, but you just need to point a camera at your work. Right.

And you need to be comfortable with it. I will say I, I wind up getting a lot of. And I say this as someone who should do more. I've done some video stuff for sure, but I definitely should do more. Um, and it's going to be a bigger part of what I do at Mac Observer In 2020 for sure. But I've, I've run into a lot of hesitation with people who say, oh, you know, I don't want to do video until I have my background looking perfect. And I have, you know, like it doesn't need to look like a studio. In fact, I would say think about take a step back from, from you being in the driver's seat and you being in the, to put yourself in the watcher's seat to do you care when an expert gets out there and informs you valuably about something. Do you care if they are in a perfect studio. Or if it's. If you're, you know, educating somebody about computers and you're a geek, if your environment looks like you're a geek or in, you know, when I try to look up stuff about my car and, you know, do something to the car, it's some guy in his garage or it's some. Somebody in their, you know, plumbing shop teaching me how to fix my boiler. Like, I don't need them in a studio. I don't need them to look like they've been through two hours of hair and makeup. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's.

No, it's better if they're not.

Better.

I think they're not. Yeah, More authentic. It's more authentic. Yeah. And, you know, you don't need. There's tons of them where people don't even show their face. It's just their hands.

Right? Yeah.

And that's working on something.

Yeah.

And I've really tried to take this, you know, I had to. My wife's Audi, you know, the headlight went out and, you know, they want like $600 to replace your headlight. It's like, come on. And so I jump on, you know, and it's like, okay. And I find a couple take aparts here. Same thing. Here's how to identify what type of bulb you need. Here's. And these are just hobbyists in this case. Go here. You could buy this bulb on Amazon for 20 bucks. Here's all the take apart stuff. But those are perfect opportunities to connect with your customers. And no matter what you do, whether you're in the pool service business, whether you're repairing appliances, whether you're selling parts, whether you're selling anything, there's. I know that there is. You know, we had a guest on the show. Man, her name is slipping by my right now. But she was a packaging supplier. Their cardboard boxes, different things. And this, I think it was Cahill was her last name. And she's up on LinkedIn every day, just when she's shopping, photographing displays that are built out of cardboard and commenting on them. And she's developed this huge following of, you know, she's a packaging geek. And that's what it says in her description on LinkedIn. And I'll find. I'll put her name in the show notes and link up there on LinkedIn. And it's. What. It's just a great idea and it's very authentic. It's. Oh, I'm just, I'm doing my shopping look at this.

Yep.

Look at this display. Look how creative this is. This is what you can do with cardboard here, this is what you can do with there. She's in the cardboard business. Right. She's in the packaging. Packaging design and sales. So it's really cool.

Yeah. I would say just focus on whether the content is intelligible and valuable. That's the key. Like, it needs to. It needs to be clear. Like if your camera is blurry and therefore your message doesn't get across, that's bad. Right. If your audio is garbled and sounds like you're 25ft away from the microphone and people can't really hear you, that's bad. But.

Right.

Don't worry about. At that level. Yes. Worry about the production. Don't worry about environmental stuff, is what I would say. Other than noises. I mean, you know that. That can negatively impact things, but otherwise you. And try not to have flashing lights around that are going to distract visually. But otherwise just go. So it doesn't.

Yeah, go, go watch some. I guarantee if in your industry there's some YouTube already doing this. Yeah. So go up there and search and see how they've done, see what you like, what you don't and offer something else up and then you don't have to just, you know, those videos and other content, it's not trapped on some other platform where you can feature them on your website. There can be a whole edu, you know, educational section. When people come to learn about your business, then they'll see, oh, check this out. These guys offer this and they offer that. They show how it's going to happen. You know, if you're in the rodent proofing business, well, how does a typical walkthrough go? Maybe you should show a video and just do it and keep it up there and tell. These are things to look for. When you see this kind of stuff, call me, you know, call us, you know, that kind of stuff. And there's just some great opportunities there with education that will endear you to existing and, you know, possibly new customers.

Yep. Yeah, it's true. Yeah.

Yeah. The second one that I. I like it. There's. My next couple are kind of related. But if you have a service business, you need to add a sales channel. You know, what products can you offer your existing customers that already trust you? They look to you for guidance. You know, you already have this relationship. Like if you're using the pool service example, can you. Can you add equipment that homeowners may need? Whether it's you know, nets, brushes, I don't know, you know, floating things, whatever you can think of. Can you add that stuff to your website and your marketing material? Because your customers really don't want to go somewhere else. They, they know who you are. And if you really are offering up something that is needed that they're going to buy anyway and you can offer it at a competitive price, maybe you don't even need to stock it. Maybe you just need to have a section up on your website with affiliate links up to Amazon or to a pool supply place or something.

That's a great. Yeah. If you know your customers are going to be buying something because of what advice you're giving them, offer like, yes, at least offer them an easy way to go get that thing and hopefully make some money from it. But at least offer that. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, it's authentic, it's real. You're not trying to push something that they don't need. But, you know, like, okay, I need, I don't know why I'm stuck in this pool idea, but it seems to work. So maybe because I'm staring at my pool right now out the windows, I'm recording. That's got to be it. So, you know, you need new filters, you need new this, you need new that. And you know, those are great. And I would buy from the people that I trust. And on the flip side, if you're selling products, think about adding a service channel.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, it just makes a lot of sense because some people are just, they want to buy the part or whatever if it's in a repair type of thing or they want to just do things on their own. But there's also, you know, another level of customers like, oh, I'd like, I want to get this. That's a good price. Or this is the product I'm looking for. But I didn't even know you could, I could select this and somebody would come install it at my house.

Yeah.

You know, and maybe, maybe you can't do it, but maybe you can partner with someone or maybe you can use TaskRabbit or something like that where you can again, build on that trust that you've developed with the customers over time that are coming to you to buy and you can create a revenue stream and right out of that. And it, I think it really lends itself well in this day and age because there's so many options to get help to find contractors that will go out and do this stuff. And I don't think it's A huge investment and you can start out small, see how it works and you know, maybe partner with some local people just even, just to send them business if look, my customers need this. Yeah, I want to try it out. I don't even want anything in return. Let's see how this could work. If you show up and you know, you could, you could do it this way. You know, I think, I think it could work really well.

Yeah, yeah, it's smart stuff, man. Yep.

Yeah, it's good, good. I enjoy this. You know, chatting about this is great and, and I've done this stuff with our businesses over time and it really works. Some, you know, some works great. Other stuff. A little bit.

Yeah, it's incremental or whatever.

Yeah, incremental. One of the things I really love, and we did, we've talked about this before, is creating a subscription, some kind of subscription service. You know, are you selling products that you can offer a discount if the customer sets up a monthly or weekly. Monthly, quarterly subscription. I mean it's great for consumable products, but it also works for just about anything else. I mean, even car companies. Dave, I was just sharing with you the Volvo subscription service there. It's a monthly service for, you know, a vehicle includes everything, insurance, registration and you get a new car every year. But just think about the brand loyalty that it builds in there and it's, it's, it's pretty compelling. It's, it's an interesting concept and I think about the products that you're selling. I was just talking to Kyle Bacchus from Casey Tool and because I see his Instagram post, they do every day this Tool of the Day thing and I thought, man, what they've done is brilliant. They've kind of created this tool as collectible concept because I don't need probably 80% of what they're showing me, but I want 80% of what they're showing me. These really nice German tools and all this kind of stuff. And I reached out to him, I said, man, you should have Tool of the Month club. A subscription service like a wine club. Really be, it could really be good because be a great gift for people to give somebody that, oh, here it's, you know, I'm going to sign you up for six months of this club or yeah, whatever it is, could be really cool. Think about your business and see if there's some way to offer that subscription even for service businesses. Okay. If you book a 12 month subscription, we're going to discount X. And again, you just know you have that recurring revenue that's going to be built in there, you know, with an annual discount. I think it could work really well.

That's really smart. Yeah, yeah, like you said, that monthly, recurring or whatever. Quarterly, monthly. Weekly, whatever it is, recurring revenue. That is a beautiful thing to have going. You know, you're thinking about. They. I. The way we look at it here is it's up to your customers to decide when they want to stop paying you, not up to you when to ask your customers to pay you next.

Yeah, that's really good. I like that.

Right. Because there's a friction point on either of those things. Right. If your customer is happy, but you have to call them every month in order to get them. Like there are going to be times where it's like if they do nothing, they say no. Right. And it's not that with a subscription, you're forcing them to buy something they don't want. You can, I mean, you certainly could organize it such that it's, you know, in my opinion, not. Not customer friendly, a little bit customer hostile. And they're. And they are forced. But you can, you can make it so it's easy for them to cancel. And in my opinion, that's the right way to do it. But eliminating the friction and making it this automatic thing. Do you want this every month? Oh, yeah, I definitely do. Okay, great. Then when you stop wanting it every month, just let me know.

Yeah, let us know.

That's all we need. You know, and eliminating that friction change certainly changed our ad business in a huge, huge way. And it, it can work for a lot of businesses. It's not, you know, it's not just the, you know, even in the service business, you can do it as a retainer, you know, where people are buying hours of your time. If that's the kind of thing that it is, or whatever it is, you know, there's, there's different ways to, to do. To do that and, and, and, you know, keep the revenue going and keep your customers happy too. I mean, presumably, whatever product or service or whatever it is they're getting every month is something that is of value to them. That's on you to make sure that that continues. And as long as you do that, you've got customers, you're good to go.

Yeah, I like it. I think it, I think it really works. And I think you can get creative about what you're offering, what you're selling, and find some new areas that, that you could expand your revenue.

Yeah, right.

And leverage your customers that are Already doing business with you.

The easiest person to sell to is the one that's already buying from you.

Yeah, yeah, and I love that, that lack of the friction thing. I think that's really important too, how you set it up. Don't make them call you or write. I just canceled our alarm, some subscription for my house after I bought, you know, install, I had to write, send, like a certified letter. And I understand there's some liability issue with your alarm, this kind of thing.

But I thought, you know, not that much liability. That certified letter is to keep you from canceling. That's what that's for.

I said, man, I would never come back based on that. It was. It was unbelievable.

Yeah.

So a couple more on my list. One, you know, again, kind of jumping back to content. If you don't want to be on video or you don't want to worry about, you know, what things look like, start a podcast. You know, we did a show back in, I believe, July, all about, you know, using a podcast as a marketing tool for your small business. And I think it really works well. It could be in all different kinds of formats that you might talk about new products coming in. If you're selling, you know, products that are related to taking care of things. I don't know, you could say, hey, this time of year, make sure you change your whatever your filters or different things. The spring 2020 coming up, this is what you want to do. If you're an accounting business and you want to talk about. These are your checklists for the end of the year. You name it. You know, there's far more creative people out there than I am that connecting with your customers at that level, having that podcast listed up on your website when people are searching for things so they could list to listen to a little maybe 10 minute, 15 minute snippet. That's a great way to connect. They hear your voice, they. You can tell them your story. I love it because it's different and it's, you know, the video thing is good, but if you got your phone and you're sitting there and you want to hear, you know, oh, you're in your car and listening to the story. This is how we started the business. This is how we did this. That's great. And these are things you should be doing. You know what, you name it. There's lots of good ways to create a podcast for your company.

Yeah, people like a story.

Yeah.

You know, and now you're not just that company that I buy a tool from. You are that company that was started because the guy had this idea and did a thing. And like, it suddenly makes your products more. If it doesn't make them more valuable, it certainly makes them more memorable. And, and that's key, right? Because. Yeah, especially if you're selling something that people in theory, could get somewhere else.

So. Yeah, and it gets you away from competing on price. You know, just competing on price is to loser over time. It's just a grind. And you're never going to win because someone else is, you know, going to sell it for less. So creating that story around what you're doing, your team, the people your, the causes you help, maybe help support the end of the year, people love that and it creates a different kind of emotional connection with them. And I think that content and a podcast is a great way to do it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Cool. Yeah. The last one on my list, it's that I really love because it doesn't cost you anything, is to think about what you're charging and come up with ways to increase your average sale price or your average service price. You. You can see immediate increases in revenue this way. And I think, again, it's money on the table. Most people, we use a lot of service people out here. And I always comment, I mean, I have a lot of loyalty with, you know, the guy that comes and does our garden. You or the gardener guy that comes out, it's awesome. Hasn't raised his price, didn't raise his prices in like five years. And I said, hey, you know, you walked out, so you need to charge me more. I mean, people are. I don't really want to pay more, but I really respect this small business owner that's out there hustling every single day. And I'm just like, you know, 10 bucks.

Yep.

10 bucks a month. It's really nothing. It's like, oh, you have an increase in five years, ten bucks a month. Okay. But that's, you know, you get an extra 120 bucks a year if you did that across your hundred accounts.

Yeah.

Figure it out. Yeah. So everyone increases their prices. Well, most people, you know, the UPS, FedEx service companies and postal service going up 6%, you know, next week. People are prepared for that. And if they're loyal to you and, you know, and it's the same with your products. If, if, and I would argue if they're products you're selling that you cannot increase in price, maybe you shouldn't be selling those.

Yeah, maybe those aren't the right products to sell. Yeah, yeah.

Look at your product Mix and look at what could I increase my, you know, my asp. And you're going to average it across all this stuff. But, you know, if you could increase, you know, your ASP 5 or 8% per month, what would that do to your business? I mean, what kind of increase would that be? And I would say if you really drill down into it, there is money there and that could get spread across things that no one would even notice, and it would just increase the revenue that you're bringing in. It's one of the number one things I recommend. You know, I do this social commerce business that I started a few years ago and been talked on the show a lot before. Everyone always asks me, how do I get more, how do I make more money? And I always look at their, their stores. I'm with ebay or Poshmark or Tradesy, and I'd say, hey, you're, you're selling stuff that's too cheap. You know, your, your asp is $25. You know, how do you get that asp to 7,500, 150, 200? How do you work your way up the food chain? And I think it's worth thinking about.

Yeah, I like that. Yeah. And, and think about what you're selling. You might have, you might have products that are, you know, that, that you sell for 500 bucks, and you might have products that you sell for 50. Is it worth continuing? Like, do each of them cost you the same in terms of man hours and all of that, to bring a customer in, convince them to buy A or B, and then get the product out the door, whatever that means for your business, if that process is the same for a $50 product as it is a $500 product, and presumably that you're assuming that your margins increase with the same, you know, along with the price, well, then is it worth bringing people in and showing them the $50 product? If they're showing up and buying the $50 product and you don't have to do anything and the work to get it to them is, you know, incremental at best. Sure, fine. But if you're bringing people in, if you have like a sales organization, is it worth even offering the $50 product? Sure, you can sell them all day long, but for every $50 product you spend or you sell, you are therefore not spending time selling a $500 product. Does it make sense to pull that $50 product from your product list and focus on the $500 product?

Yeah, yeah, I think that's great advice. And you know, as small business owners now, if your model is just massive volume and very slim margins, and you've got an extremely efficient system created to maximize that, that's awesome.

That's great.

And come on the show and tell us. Yeah, but if you're a small business that maybe doesn't wring out all those efficiencies and you think, wow, what's better? You know, more volume or more profit?

Yeah. And sometimes, you know, bear in mind that customer service is generally. Sure, there's ways that you can make it efficient, but customer service is generally the least efficient part of your business. Right. It should be, because that's the time that you're actually doing human interaction. And we. We're about to talk about ways that you can actually make your customer service more efficient. But in general, that should be the part that takes time. And if you have to do the same amount of customer service for those little products that you do for the bigger products or even more sometimes. I was going to say yes, because people that spend lots of money generally understand the value of what they're buying versus people that are buying things that are inexpensive. So, yeah, we found that with. With Backbeat, we, you know, certainly have pulled a lot of the less expensive things off of our sales list. I always say if we had unlimited time and unlimited resources, absolutely, we would sell everything that anyone wanted to buy, no problem whatsoever. But the reality is we don't. You know, we're the. We're the size that we are, and we. We can grow, but when we grow, it's also not going to be to an unlimited point. So let's sell the things that are actually going to make us money. And it's okay to tell people we don't offer that, you know.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it's okay. It's hard. As an entrepreneur, it is hard to have a customer say, I wish I could have that for $10 instead of what you're offering me for a thousand. It's like, well, yeah, okay, cool. But we don't offer that. That's a hard thing to do. Because you want to please. Right? That's. We are natural pleasers. And at least I am.

So, yeah, makes sense.

Yeah. I promised that I would talk about a way to make your customer service more efficient while still providing your preferred level of service. And our sponsor textexpander@textexpander.com podcast lets you do exactly that. Because with Textexpander, all those things that you type repetitively. Right. Customer service replies. But it could be phone Numbers, it could be email addresses, all of those things. Textexpander is going to take care of them for you and make sure they are accurate and exactly as you want them to be without you having to spend your time proofreading everything every single time. Because textexpander, you store all of these things in it and then you pull them out when you want to do that. Customer service email or send that phone number or send that address. And textexpander works everywhere. You type inside word processors, inside your email or messaging apps, also in online forms, in your browsers. Right. And you get to customize these snippets. You can even add fill in fields or pop up lists. When you start to invoke one of these snippets, let's say it's customer service reply. You can choose to have it prompt you and say, put the customer's name in here, put the product name in here, put their last order date there. Those kinds of things can be super handy to personalize those responses. And that way you can only focus on the parts that matter and you don't have to worry about the bulk of this, the shell of it, because textexpander takes care of all of that for you and you can share it with your entire team. And Textexpander is available for macOS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. I mentioned textexpander.com podcast. That's where you can go, because you're a small business show Listener, to get 20% off your first year of Textexpander. So go check it out. Textexpander.com podcast and of course, our thanks to Textexpander for sponsoring this episode. All right, so it's time for part two. Man, we gotta put our money where our mouth is. Shannon here.

That's right. Yeah. Textexpander is another great, you know, example of moving to a subscription model that allows you to support the product over time, to keep developing it and add all kinds of new features. I mean, that. That product has expanded incredibly.

No pun intended. Yes, the expansion of text expand. Yeah, that's right.

And you know, and so they looked at their model and said, no, we need to be doing this and this will make a better customer. Yes. There was some customers that probably like, I don't want to do this subscription. Okay, no problem. But then as you grow and develop into a more robust platform, if you will, I think they've done a great job.

I agree. I agree. Yeah, for sure. So cool, man.

Yeah. So, you know, you're listening at home or in your car, wherever you're at. Dave and I always talk about ways to expand and I'm always pushing ideas and trying to come up with new things. And, you know, we want to increase the brand awareness of the small business show and we'd like to increase our revenue as well, you know. And so after looking long and hard at this, we realized we've got over 250 episodes from the last five years. Kind of trapped in your podcast app, Trapped on the web. Trapped on our website. So we decided that we are going to take that content and pull out specific topics and create what we hope will be a great resource for you.

Yeah, yeah. So we're going to do it in a series of short form books, Topic guides. Guides. Yeah, exactly. Topically focused, very targeted at a certain specific thing that you might need for, or anyone might need for their small business. And like you said, extract the knowledge that we've put out here in these shows and hone it down, focus it on these various topics and put out a series of these guides. The goal is we're going to get it to one a month. Do we have a first month of release? I don't know that you and I have talked about that yet.

No, I think we need this first month here to get the process going. We've got our editor lined up that's.

Going to be working with someone. That's right. Yeah.

It's going to be working with us to pull out this content, get things transcribed in a format that's, you know, in this guide. And really the concept would be not a book all about business that you read once and put away on your shelf, but more a guide that sits on your desk. And when you want to, for example, you need help with a partnership question, you know, we would be able to quickly give you not just our take on how things work, but hundreds of guests that we've had on the show that if they've talked about partnerships, to be able to share that information before you start one. Also maybe how to maintain a healthy partnership and maybe more really important if you've got a problem with one, what to do if things have gone wrong. So these are things that you could tap and over time build a library. You know, they'll be available on all the publishing platforms and we'll have this content to, you know, give away as well when we see fit that it makes sense to do so.

Yeah, yeah, right. I am too. No, this is when you came up. We've so the idea of doing a book and I'M going to use that term as sort of a generic term. But the idea of doing a book is something that we've toyed with and sort of, you know, poked and prodded at several different ways over the years that we've been doing this show. And when you. And it always is sort of. Well, not sort of, it has died on the vine or at least it has not matured yet on the vine.

Right.

And man, a lot of it is, well, to take everything, everything and put it together in one book. Okay, well, now we've got to deal with all these chapters and tie it all together and have a voice to it. And that's a big project and this is a side project for both of us. So, you know, the idea of, oh, crap, okay, like, wow, this is, this. Now that we've got to have a lot of scope to this and, and we're probably. Certainly in my head, I was making more out of it than it likely would have realistically been. But, you know, it's a big, it's a big project to get it to the end. And now, okay, now we can ship it and deliver it. When you came up with the idea of doing these guides and sort of essentially extracting out each chapter that would have been in this larger book and doing it more piecemeal and more targeted, that resonated. It was like, right, this is what we do every week on the show.

That's right. You take a deep dive on a specific topic.

That's it.

And real world advice that is like, well, this is what we've done. These, this is how our, some of our guests that are successful small business owners have solved this problem that you may be having right now. And, and here are some resources to dig even further if you need, if you need help. And you know what, whether it's hiring and firing partnerships, like I mentioned, you know, facilities or trade shows, you know, creating content out on social media, all these things that we've talked about over and over throughout the years, you'll be able to have it a quick, you know, right at your fingertips and be able to jump into it. And I think it'd be a great starting point when you need some help.

Yeah. But certainly within the next few months, the first guide should.

You'll see it.

Yeah, you'll see. Absolutely. And you know, let us know if you have an idea. We've, we've got a long list of type of topics for guides. We, I mean, we have a plan here, but, you know, you are, if you're not you specifically aren't going to be a customer of these guides. And of course, we hope that, that you are. But even if you're not, you are a listener to this show. So, you know the kind of content that folks like you would like to get, so just let us know. And if you suggest one, maybe, you know, a free guide is, you know, it's gonna, it's gonna make it, make it into your inbox or, or some, or, you know, something.

Yeah, yeah, that's great.

Yeah.

And what I want to try to create is this system because again, we're big, we're. We're system focused here is to be able to put out one of these new guides each month and make it available to everybody to where it can just, you know, be really a nice resource that you can dive into quickly to get your questions answered.

Yeah, yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah.

Yeah. This is going to be fun, man. Yeah, it is. You've published, you've published a book before. I have not. I have been published in books, but not my own. Yeah, yeah, it's.

I mean, and that whole thing, you know, we could do a whole show on that. I learned a lot when I did it because, like, you, when I, when you think about it and you're like, wow, I gotta create, you know, two to 300 pages and it's this. And, man, how long it's gonna take. But when you flip it on its side, you know, I, I started creating content on a weekly basis just to grow this other business I'm involved in. And over time, you know, you kind of create this library of content and you start thinking, wow, you know, maybe I could repurpose this. It's, you know, you post these on your blog, but then I, you know, bring them in, edit them, and over a year's time, all of a sudden you've got, you know, 275 pages of content that you can put together and offer up in a different format. And it's, again, it's a great way to increase your revenue, expand your brand, just like we're talking about today.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's good. I'm looking forward to it.

So we'd Love your feedback. Feedbackusshow.co. let us know what you think of the concept or if there are some particular topics that you'd love for us to be sure we cover. Yeah, we want to be sure to take that into.

Yeah, yeah. Help guide us here. Guide the guides. There you go.

That's right.

Yeah.

So we hope your new Year's off to a great start. And as always, we appreciate your, your listenership.

We. Oh yeah. Yeah. Man, it like I, I always think about it's not just the new year. I, I'm constantly thinking about the things that I'm thankful for and, and this show is it. I mean, it's fantastic. And you folks are what make this possible because otherwise it's just me and Shannon talking to each other, which we would probably do anyway. But, but, but you know, you know, you and I always compete friendly competition for who gets the most out of these episodes. I certainly feel like I, in, in aggregate, I feel like I have won so much by being able to just, just focus every week and talk about business and not.

It's powerful.

Pull myself out of the weeds of, of working in my business and think about maybe if we're not talking about thinking specifically about what I've got going on or what you've got going on, but even if it just, just zooming out a little bit and talking about it makes a huge difference, that perspective has really helped me. I mean, I can, I can point to some very specific things that are like, yep, that's for sure. I, I've learned from that. Yeah.

So same here.

Yeah.

It's great.

It's great. Thank you, folks. As he said. Feedbackusinessshow.co. check out textexpander.com podcast and check out everything@businessshow.co Facebook and our small business support group. Keep living that charm life together.