Fiverr, Pivots, and Sacred Cows – DBA Small Business Show 4

Greetings, folks, and welcome to the fourth episode of the DBA podcast, giving you the business every week here in balmy by comparison. Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton.

And I'm Shannon Jean, coming to you from sunny and warm Lafayette, California, near San Francisco.

Yeah, we're going to have to come up with something other than the weather to differentiate each week because it's just not going to work out with you.

Yeah, that's pretty bad. It's pretty bad because this is pretty much it. Sunny. Mild. Sunny and mild. Sunny and mild. Maybe some rain. Rain once in a while just to get our hopes up.

Right? That's right. Yeah. Keep everything from burning too badly. Yeah.

Gosh, it's ridiculous. It is green outside, which is really nice. See, we're green in the winter.

Right?

And golden. It's not brown. It's golden in the summertime.

Golden. Okay.

Yes.

Yeah. Got it.

We're in for the upgrade around here.

Yeah, well, that's. Yeah. When I was in Jamaica and the water was not warm, they told me it's not cold. It's refreshing.

It's. It's marketing.

You got it. Absolutely.

You got it. That's good.

And that's. That's as good an intro as any. Right? I mean it.

Yeah, yeah, that sounds great.

Yeah.

We're talking about marketing, and we've been working on, you know, we came up with the name and got the site kind of roughed out, and now we're working on the logo and we thought, you know, let's. Let's chat a little bit about why we, you know, why we need the logo to start. To get. Get ourselves going and.

Yeah, that's right. We're starting a business here with this podcast. And so what. Why. Why not talk about it? In fact, it. It's the best thing to talk about.

I agree. And for me, you know, the. The logo is. Is also very important for my own sense of what are we doing. And. And as well as giving your customers something to gather around and to quickly, at least on some level, find out what it is you do and be able to look at it and. And say, oh, these guys are doing X or this kind of thing. And whether it's a techie thing or something, if you're trying to portray trust or it's something that's funny and whimsical, you know, something that, like I said, people can gather around and for me is, you know, I wanted something that portrays what we're trying to do each week here, talk about real life. Bootstrapped small businesses stuff that are the main fuel of our economy here. And we have a different, few different ways that we've done things in the past. David and work and I working together and we've used some sites elance, another site, 99designs and Fiverr and I thought we would talk about those sites and some differences and, and how we did coming up with the first run at the, at the logo.

I, I would say we failed very, very quickly.

Spectacularly.

Yeah. Yeah. But that's okay.

Yeah, it is.

That's, you know there's, there's so much in life and, and especially in business, but it's sort of in general too, that failure is, is actually a welcome thing. Right. Because you know that you've figured out what you don't want either what you don't want or don't want to do. It's sort of.

That's right.

It's, it's a freeing thing. I, I find.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And actually what I thinking about it, it was actually successful at pointing us in a, in a different direction. When we got the samples back and looking at it, it took me about two minutes to slap something together that I thought portrayed much more of what we were doing here instead of just some letters and a funny, you know, the RSS symbol design built into it type of thing. And so, so from that aspect it was taking that failure and turning it into a successful way to push us in a new direction.

Yeah, we didn't know what we wanted until we saw something that we knew we didn't want.

Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. And so in this case we used a site called Fiverr and It's fiverr with two Rs dot com. And like the name says, everything at Fiverr starts at five bucks. And that's their whole tagline, their, you know, their mantra. But five bucks is really a starting point. Yes. Stuff for five dollars. But you quickly see that there's all kinds of add ons, things that are valuable to what you want, you know, faster turnaround time, different levels, source code that so, so you wind up, you know, upgrading your gig is what they sell them as $5 gigs. And it's still incredibly economical. And I've used them for a number. Everything from stuff like this logos to T shirt designs to paying somebody in Germany to go to the Lovelock Bridge, which I can't think of the name of that bridge right now and put a lock on the bridge with my wife and my initials on it. For Valentine's Day.

That's awesome.

Yeah, it's cool. There's. I mean, the stuff on Fiverr that you can find is. Is. It's incredible, the depth and the variation on what people are up there. It's kind of like an Etsy for services, I guess. If I had an elevator pitch to do it.

Nice.

And it works great. I don't know if you've used it before or not yourself.

I knew about it. You know, the only things I'd ever heard about that people used five or four were things that, like, sketchy things, like, you can pay somebody five bucks and you'll get an extra 500 Twitter followers or something.

That's exactly right. You can do that, too.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. It's not very effective, but you can pay somebody to ask, add those things to your Facebook page, you know, those kinds of things. And. But it's. It's fascinating. And I would encourage anyone that's in, you know, anyone, really, to go up and just browse and look at the different levels of everything from. If you'd like somebody to go stand on a corner and hold up a sign with your company name on it. If you'd like somebody to go to the beach near their house and do a piece of artwork in the sand, that's for someone you love or your business or anything you can imagine, you can find it up there. It's pretty wild.

So in terms of our logo, you know, I've. We all get caught in. In. In patterns. I don't want to say ruts, but some of those patterns become ruts. But, you know, for. For logos. I have this one woman that I've been using for a long time. She understands me. I understand her. You know, I can. In. In one sentence, usually I can give her enough to get going.

Sure.

And, you know, and then in the end, I wind up with the logo that I want. Now that usually the first round from her is not what I want, but I wind up paying somewhere between maybe at the low end, 50 bucks and at the very high end, 150 bucks for any. Any given logo. Right?

Yeah.

And it's a good deal. Yeah, it works out good.

That's a good deal.

It is. So I, you know, I wouldn't have even thought about using anything like Fiverr. When you said to use it, I'm like, oh, yeah, absolutely.

Let's.

Let's do it now. I wonder. We're still not finished. We don't have a logo that we like. So it's possible we may still wind up using this woman, right?

Yeah, maybe.

Right?

Yeah.

And going to her with an idea as opposed to just, hey, go.

Yeah, yeah. And in this case, you know, what started at five bucks, and I bought a couple of upgrades, and one of them was unlimited revisions and all the source files in any flavor that you want, Illustrator, Photoshop, whatever version you needed it in, that kind of thing. So. And I think the point you made as well is variation, because I have a guy, too, a guy we found through another service that you and I have used before called 99designs and 99designs.com. And it's basically you hold a contest for your design that you want. You describe what you want, and you choose a dollar amount that you're going to award to the winner of this contest. And we. I think the first time I used it, we revamped the Tech restore logo in 2010. And I wanted. I still liked the logo, but we wanted something more dynamic and just, you know, more current. Sure. And, you know, I had literally 80 to 100 different designers from all over the world, us, and, you know, everywhere else providing samples for this contest. And it was great. And I picked a guy who. Paul, who we've used again, and he went through and finalized, you know, did everything we wanted to do. And I forget what it costs, but typically, the more dollar amount that you put up there for your contest, the more designers are going to come in and give you some samples and see if you want to pick it. You make it more enticing to them. And then we wound up using the same designer when we redesigned the Deal Brothers logo years ago. And he's a great guy, and it works out really well. But I. What I like is when you mentioned earlier is the variation and getting some different ideas. And that's often why I go out and find somebody new as well, just to get a different. Some new blood in there and do it. Because I find that I often can. I'm describing a very similar thing, and the logos, even though they're for different things, come up looking similar. Similar, maybe features or certain traits that I like and color. So I think it's great to. To try the variation and, you know, and then if we need to, you can go back to your regular person.

Yeah, no, that's right. Well, but, you know, I mean, for anywhere between, what, five and 25 bucks. Yeah, I could. Yeah, I could. I could still have my. My comfortable, you know, known quantity designer in my back pocket, but I can go out and float things around without me having to do it myself. Because two things are bad about me doing it myself. A, I'm just not a designer.

Right.

And B, the only ideas that I'm going to see are mine.

That's correct.

Right, that's right. You know, so to get somebody else involved and just stir it up a little bit like oh right, wow, that's terrible. I don't want that, you know, so I agree. Let me guide in this direction.

Yeah. And I think it was good. You know, it did help us identify. Hey, this is what we don't want. These are just kind of too bland. And here's the, this type of imagery we're looking for. So, so that's where we left it. And you know, another site that I've used a lot for, especially for longer term kind of projects is Elance. You know, like freelance but just with the E. And you know, again it's, it's a great way to find longer term maybe relationships or projects. Projects that are going to take a longer period of time. Whether you're developing a piece of software, an app, you know, a website or you know, maybe customer service online, you know, CRM module that you're building. I've used them a number of times, found a great vendor that I love that really comes through for us when we need it. And you know, and the thing about all the, that site's probably a little more pricey but you also are getting a different caliber, you know, if you need stuff done in SQL or you know, PHP development and those. So maybe a little more technically focused. It's a great, a great resource.

I love Elance. It may very well have been you that turned me on to Elance maybe a decade ago.

Yeah, it might have been.

Yeah. And, and I've used them for many things and I, the, the people that manage are. We co locate. Well, we don't co locate anymore. We have a, we lease a server in the kind of, kind of a cloud ish sort of thing but it's self managed to a degree. I hire people through Elance that I pay far less than I'd pay people here in the US to kind of do all the little minor things that I'd want done on, on my server and it, my server servers and they do a fantastic job. I mean, yeah, you know, I, I've wound up through Elance and actually through other avenues but it seems like I always wind up with developers in the Soviet bloc right somewhere there which is great technically always very skilled. Quality control is something I Often joke. And I don't think this is true, but it certainly seems true based on all of my experience with Elance. Quality control is not a concept that translates in Russian. Right, right. It. They. They'll do things, but they don't stop and think about, wow, what's the, you know, do I need to test this now? It's fine. Just code it up, put it up and go to sleep. You know, don't even load the page after you. After you sync it up, you know, it's going to work fine. That. Yeah, that kind of thing. But, you know, when you're getting somebody that's a quarter the rate of somebody that I would pay here, well, then you absorb some of that and you. And you deal with it and it works out fine.

Yeah, yeah. And I think it's also important to note as we, you know, are talking about small businesses, and there are certainly a lot of small businesses out there, designers, programmers that are, you know, trying to build their business as well. On all these sites, there's literally companies all over the world. It's not just offshoring. And I made a note that, you know, we could probably. We should. And we will spend a whole, you know, spend some time talking about offshoring and, you know, hiring overseas contractors, pros and cons. And, you know, I think that's an important thing to dig into deeper and to all to talk about how if you're in that business, how using offshore resources for your own services and things that you can outsource is a very helpful way to grow a design business, a programming business, that type of thing. And I think we'll definitely come back and revisit that.

Yeah, yeah. For sure. Yeah. Because it. Because it's a. It's a fan. It can be a fantastic thing. You just got to know.

Yeah.

Got to know what you're going into with it.

Well, you need to embrace it because it is the way it is. And, you know, and I can have some good examples of folks that I know that have used to be in that those businesses that are no longer are because they didn't embrace it. And it'll be interesting. We'll chat about that.

Yeah, cool.

That's great. That's good. And, you know, talking about your business and. And what you're doing with it and what direction it's going into and, you know, mentioning guys that are still around versus people that aren't, you know, oftentimes what you think you're going to start out to do is completely opposite from what you Started out as maybe some related thing or maybe not. You know, there's oftentimes what's helped me is is letting your company success dictate its. Dictate its direction.

That's right.

Okay. There.

Yeah. I had something fall and I wasn't even moving. So it must have been just teetered. Perfect. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Yeah. So, you know, in the, in the high tech startup world, you know, they often call this a pivot. It's like, hey, you know, we're not making any money, so let's. This stuff we're, you know, these 142 characters we're sending back and forth in the office. Let's launch Twitter and.

Right.

You know, that kind of thing. But for a small business, you know, for. In my experience, it's identifying what's working for you and putting your usually limited resources behind that and perhaps letting some other areas that are not working that great maybe fall by the wayside and track it. Not having any sacred cows. Just because you started as an iPhone repair guy, that doesn't mean you can't become a Fortune 500 consultant related to mobile devices. If you get, you know, if as you make contacts in the industry and that could be your entire business, you know.

That's right.

Sure is a lot more higher margin than, you know, fixing phones.

Yeah, that's right. Although you can't hire people to do it for you.

That's right.

So there's a trade off there, Shannon.

Yeah, yeah, that, that's true. That's true. Yeah. But I mean, you can, and maybe I'm interpreting this wrong, but you can certainly hire. Grow that business and hire people to work under you that can go out then grow that consulting business. And so, you know, you're sending techs out and you absolutely have to get away. If you're talking about consulting from your. You being the primary billable person.

Yeah.

You know, you are like we talked about before, you are migrating to becoming a manager. In most of these scenarios, you're, you know, the butterfly that's, you know, converting or you know, metamorphosizing into something else. And it's a critical part of moving from being self employed to becoming a business owner.

Yeah.

Which can be real difficult. And one of the things.

Difficult. Yeah, Very, very hard.

And to take years and some people never do it, especially lots of contractors, you know, the building trades and those kinds of things. You see lots of guys in a pickup truck that are working on their own. Great guys, you know, but they're limited by the Number of times, you know, they can swing their hammer per day or that kind of thing. So until you start paying, so you start bringing in other people, you're really severely limited on where you're going to go.

Yeah. Now it's, it's true. But of course, bringing in other people. And we've kind of had this conversation. My guess is clearly we'll have it many times. But you know, that, that bringing in other people is a, it's a frustrating thing when you're used to everything coming out the way it would if you had done it.

Yeah. I have a little note here. Future show notes. You know, how you, how you deal with things not getting done and making air quotes in there as good as you would do them. Correct. Or differently than, maybe is a better way to say it, differently than you would do them. And we'll spend some time talking about that many, many times, I'm sure.

Yeah, no, I look forward to having that conversation. Actually.

One of the things that spurred me into this topic of trying to identify what's working in your business and pushing that way and letting go of what you may have thought you were going to do. I was reading an article this week. I think it was on the Verve Major League Baseball. You know, these guys just originally they needed a way to stream their content, to stream these baseball games online. And every service and provider they tried, they couldn't get anything to work right for them and be reliable enough. So they built their own. And you know, here we are. And I don't have how many years they've been doing it, but they've created this unbelievably robust streaming platform that they are now selling. And from a software as a service, I'm sure, to other content providers. I know HBO is using it for their HBO Go platform. And now, you know, Major League Baseball is going to spin off this digital content creation and streaming business as their own. It's. And it's there they got a valuation of like over a billion dollars. And it was just something that, hey guys, can you put something together in order, you know, hire some programmers or wherever we're going to get them and come up with a way that we can have a platform that's not going to crash and it's going to stream this, these games to people that want to pay a monthly fee, you know, for this. So that's a great success at doing something brand new that you never even, you know, thought of that could be. I'm sure when they were going over that there was somebody Going, well, this is an incredible expense versus looking at it as well. This is an incredible opportunity. Yeah. To build. To build what could be, you know, the future of, you know, television streaming. If, you know, that is a huge market that's coming out as people pull the plug and, you know, don't want to subscribe or buy 100, and some odd channels that they don't watch.

Right. No. And I would say, you know, as you're, as you're building your business, there will be these things, these, these pain points that you have that you need to solve on your own. Right. You know, it's great if you can find something that, that solves your problem and you just solve it and plug and play and move on. And that's awesome. Right. You know, and accounting software or, you know, payroll software is one of those things. Right. There's no reason to develop your own payroll software today. There's, you know, plenty of options. You just pick one, pay them the monthly fee and let it be done. And that way, you know, you're good to go. But there will be those things that you have to create from time to time. And as someone who has done that many times and has failed in the moment or even slightly after the moment to identify the fact that, wow, you just created something that other people want, you know. Yeah. And I mean, we, and to be fair, but we didn't fail with that in every sense. Right. Backbeat Media exists because we created something, you know, a sales engine that did this and our competitors wanted it. Right?

That's right.

Yeah. So we did okay with it, but we also developed a content management system before that was even a thing, because it wasn't a thing. Right. So it was. Well, it was. There was one company that had called. Oh, they began with a V, they were down in Austin. I met with them. They wanted a hundred grand. A hundred thousand dollars for something that does maybe a quarter of what WordPress does for free today. Right.

You know. Oh, yeah. I've been on the other side of those pitches.

And, and so I told them, like, you have to understand, there's a, there's a zillion businesses like me, and this is like 1998, 99. Right. So very early on in the grand scheme of web things. And I told him, like, there's no way my. I don't even, I don't know if my business is ever going to earn $100,000 in total at that point.

Right. At that point, that's a huge investment.

Let alone be able to spend it on something like this. And I told him, I said, you know, I could write something that does this. I just figured if you, you know, they're like, well, our customers are like the New York Times or whatever. I'm like, yeah, but still, that's. You're screwing them. So I went home and wrote a content management system. Now, if I was really smart, what I would have done is identified the fact that I had just told someone there are plenty of other companies that want what I had just built. And I should have, I should have spun that into a business, Right?

Well, yeah, you know, hindsight's 20, 2020 and, you know, I, I would say that it's also could have. And yeah, yeah, I heard somebody make a comment to me when I was talking about I should have, I should have. And they said, hey, don't, should all, don't. Should all over yourself.

Yeah, well, that, yeah, I don't make myself up over this.

Yeah. And it's, it's, it's also a matter of how much bandwidth, you know, you as a small business owner have.

Right.

And could do it. And I've done the exact same thing. I mean, I spent, you know, years working on CRM modules, online stuff, inventory management systems, all these things that could be piecemealed out and, you know, sold as a service or that kind of stuff. You have to look and say, okay, can I put that together? And, and that's where I always, you know, finding the right people. Because if you could just, just think how great it would be if you could plug someone into that and say, hey, hey, look at this opportunity here, and I'm going to give this to you and we're going to set this up and we'll do this kind of revenue share and go out and sell this.

Make it happen.

Yeah, Very, very difficult.

Yeah. Yeah. I guess instead of what I wish I had done was at least in the moment, identify that this is a different direction I could choose to take. And I don't always do that. It's always, well after the fact, you know, I look at something like WordPress that comes out. I'm like, oh, who needs that? You just build your own. Right. And then I realized, well, because most people, even if you have the wherewithal to build your own, you don't actually want to. You have another business that, that you're.

Trying to do, and that's important to identify that and to also say no.

Right.

And, you know, to move on. And another good example of this kind of thing is, you know, when Facebook was growing. They basically wanted to get rid of email because it was very ineffective at communicating and managing projects and this kind of thing. So they developed this platform in house and eventually the guys that built it got permission to spin it off. And it's, you know, now they sell. It's a software as a service. It's Asana. Asana. And, you know, it's a great platform but, you know, incredibly complicated. But again, they had a whole group of people that left Facebook and are focused on growing this as its own. Own business, which I think it's important to get some muscle behind it and that kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's. I actually didn't realize until just now that Asana came from Facebook.

But, yeah, that was your thing. And I love that app. It's great.

Yeah, yeah, no, it is great. But that's. That's fascinating. Yeah. See that. That's the thing is you got to. You can't do. I mean, we, we can't all be, especially as small business owners, we can't expect to be mitSubishi on day one. Right.

Yes.

Have. That's right, a zillion different business units that are all operating, you know, at, At. At some level of efficiency. I won't say peak efficiency, but.

Yeah. And I think, you know, yeah, mitSubishi is like 100 and some odd years old. Right, Right.

Yeah. So that.

Yeah, it takes time.

It takes time. Yeah. Yeah. So you gotta pick your. You gotta pick your things. But the thing is, if you stumble on something or if you create something that's better than what you're already doing, don't. Like you said, you know, there are no sacred cows here. Don't be afraid to just jump and go. I mean, if you jump every three weeks, it's probably not going to be successful. Probably not.

Yeah. Consistency is very important. Correct. And I think this also kind of. My last comment on this is it's also very important to use this concept about steering the business into new directions. As you see traditional revenue streams that maybe you've had for years start to drop out.

Yes.

And. Because if you don't make that, you know, I'm not a huge fan of this pivot. It's a little trendy word, but let's just say pivot to something, to the other thing. The next thing for you, you'll wind up, you won't have that revenue to continue. And that's kind of the case for deal brothers and deals on the web, where for us, as that market shifted and coupon sites and deal sites and Everything exploded into different areas. We watched that revenue stream drop and drop and drop. And since it wasn't, our core business was like, okay, well, you know, this is the way we'll manage it. But eventually we just said, hey, it's not worth doing anymore. What is the next thing we can do? And here we are. It's taken us a few years, but we've come back to the. To the next thing, so.

That's Right.

Being able to make that shift.

Yeah. And it is, you know, it's. It's very easy for any of us, even, even those of us, or especially perhaps those of us that have been through it, to say, don't get emotional about it. These things happen. It's going to happen. Your business very likely won't, you know, succeed forever doing exactly what it's doing today. Make. Your business may not succeed forever, period. Right. But it's far more likely to say that your business won't succeed forever doing exactly what you're doing today. You are going to have to adapt and do different things. And it's very easy to say that. And when you hear that, it rings very true, because it is true. But in the moment, it's very difficult to not get emotional about it, because not only is it something that you created, but at some level it's this thing that provides you with, you know, your ability to make a living and take care of your family and all of that. And there is some, you know, anytime risk is involved and especially you're saying, well, this has worked for 10 years and now I'm going to change it. That's kind of a crazy thing. Now.

It's.

But it's not a crazy thing, right?

Well, yeah. And then wait till you have, you know, a dozen employees that are working in that, you know, business unit that you see getting lower and lower and lower. Well, they have to be on board to embrace that change as well. And, you know, I spend a lot of my time, you know, managing by walking around, but, you know, I spent a lot of my time talking to these guys that work for us and say, okay, hey, you know, and what's the next thing? What do you want to be doing in a couple of years trying to get them primed and ready that the thing you are working on today or the problem you are solving today more than likely won't be around in a couple of years, especially in our, in our industry. So they're ready. And, you know, we, we always have. The only constant in, in our, our business is change. And it's oh, we try to embrace that kind of thing. And I, I think it's critically important and it's been very, very important to our success is looking at what's coming down the road. Because, you know, this product you're working on today is not going to be worth working on or refurbishing or buying and selling, you know, 18 to 24 months from now.

Yeah, that's right. You have a specific example of that that you could share. I'm putting you on the spot. I know, but these are the things that are interesting to hear, right?

Yeah, yeah. So we've made a drag. I mean, we've made these technology shifts and forever our business was laptops. And, you know, our concept was when there wasn't a lot of places to get your Mac laptop repaired is, you know, we cut a deal with DHL at the time and we had a box in every DHL truck in the U.S. so if you called us by 2pm we could pick up your laptop, your, you know, your at that, your power book at that time.

Right.

Or your Mac or your MacBook, and we would bring it in overnight and do a repair same day or within 24 hours and we would overnight it back to you. It was a huge success. I mean, it was crazy how many, you know, we're committed. So we had a lot of guys and women that were technicians doing these repairs on laptops. We built up this big infrastructure on that. And just as, you know, we see in the world today with mobile products, that that market started to shift and, you know, Apple laptops got more powerful and maybe the replacement rate and slowed down and there were less things to break. Now, you know, everything's on one board. But we had power boards, super drives, hard drives, I mean, on and on and on, all kinds of things that broke that needed to be repaired. And it just doesn't happen as much anymore. And a number of those technicians, as I was walking around saying, hey, guys, look at this. Check this phone out. Take this thing apart. They looked at me with, you know, like a deer in headlights. How am I going to take that little thing apart? Look at this thing. And we had a shift where some people adapted very well to the iPad business and phones and other things that we work on. But there was a definite group of people that did not adapt very well to the coming change. And we worked very, very hard to, you know, keep them going and keep them involved. But as the refurbishment of laptops got less and less and because those opportunities just didn't come along as much as they did. And the repair business got less and less on the laptops and more and more on these mobile products. A lot of these guys that had not and made the change found themselves really struggling to. To prove they have their value in. In, you know, every day when they came into work. And it's. It's tough as a business owner where you love, you know, these people work for you for a decade or more, and you just keep trying to find, okay, how can we shift this. How do we shift this person to do this? But eventually you run out. If they don't adapt with you, you. You run. You hit a wall with them. And it's. It's the worst part, in my opinion of being a, you know, a business owner. You don't have an HR department. You're gonna go, hey, get rid of employee number 5,000, 559, whatever.

I don't want to be involved. That's right.

Yeah, that's right. Or lay off 20 of the workforce. Well, you know, as a business owner, small business, you know, with less than 50 employees, you're gonna go sit. Yeah. You're gonna sit down with this person and have to explain to them. So you better have backed it up with, you know, some history of, like, look, you know, we've met six times over the last 18 months trying to find new things for you to do or trying to do, you know, that kind of thing. And the other flip side is it's awesome when you have people that adapt with you and don't freak out when, you know, 20,000 iPhones come in your warehouse. Those are great. And it's like, it makes you really love what you do because you can look around, it just goes, wow, this is insane. And you can. You embrace it and adapt to it, and, you know, it's. It's awesome. But. But you have to teach yourself, and you have. You have to coach your. Your employees and your partners and all these people that work with you and for you, that this is coming, especially in the technology business. But I can imagine it's. It's got to be that way for every business, any business, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

It's got to be. It's gotta be.

So, I mean, look at General Electric, right? They do. They don't even. Look at Ford. They do things radically differently than they did, you know, when they started.

That's right.

You know, but they still do the same core thing to us. But I'm sure internally they don't do the same core thing.

Very different. Yeah. Their procedures and the frameworks that they use are just got to be phenomenally different. And the people that really succeed are the ones that have adapted. And I guess that's a rule for whether you're a business owner doing it, you're, you know, self employed, whether you're a business owner or an employee. If you're thinking like that, that is what's going to help you succeed and that's what's going to help you move up and have, you know, new, new careers and new challenges that keep things interesting.

Well, you, you stump, I mean, you didn't stumble on you, you mentioned in passing several times, I think, a key management tip, and that is asking your employees, what do you expect to be doing in three years? What do you want to be doing in three years? And it's not, you know, when, when your boss comes to you and asks you that question, they're not asking you that question, what do you expect to be doing somewhere else in three years? Right. I mean, it may be. And that's okay. Of course, as an employer, I totally understand that the law of averages says that, you know, any given employee won't still be with me in five years.

Sure.

Right. I mean, I hope that's not true with most because, you know, you spend time and you, you develop and all of that stuff and you want it, you want that to pay off. But there's no, you know, there's no, unless you have one, there's no contract that says you have to stay there. Right.

That's right. And, and if you're part of that, asking them what they want to do is trying to head that off, that's what they don't because to me, it's boredom and repetition. And you mentioned earlier being in a rut, that's what makes, you know, people want to leave. And it's, it's giving them opportunities. And it's hard as a small business because there's not a corporate ladder, so to speak, that you're going to move up in. But I, I still walk around and I say, hey, you should be training someone to do your job. And they, and oftentimes, you know, people look at me like, well, that's crazy. Then what do I do? And then my answer is always, I don't know. What do you want to do?

Right.

You know, let's do it together. And let's do it together.

Yeah, yeah.

What is the opportunity? And how do we, how do we do it? So, you know, so that stuff is really important and ultimately it helps Me as a business owner, because as you move through your own career, you want your team. Like, right now, I'm really, you know, have. We have a great team that's been with us, some people, like I said, some people for over a decade. Some, you know, 13, 14, 15 years. And you can definitely feel the synergy. Like you mentioned earlier, when you talk to your designer with one sentence, you kind of get it across. Well, it's the same with us. We, we. A couple of comments and somebody will say, yeah, I know what you want.

Yeah, that's right. Because you work, you know each other. Yeah.

Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Great. And that's a great thing. Yeah. You want that?

Yeah. It's priceless. And it'll make your own career better because just like you're asking them to train someone you really want to be training some of them to take your job.

Yeah.

So you can do something new because you. It's very easy to get in a rut and to come, you know, just show up and phone it in. And that's another way that things start to kind of slip. So coming up with this new. New ways to do things, either it's efficiency or brand new revenue streams and, and getting those people to challenge you back your. Your employees and partners is I, I think a. A huge success. You know, huge way. A huge way to do it.

There are few days. There are no days. There are a few moments where I actually feel like the boss and that I'm in charge of. And most of the time I feel like I work for my employees and that's. That. Yeah, that's not a complaint. That's. That's how it should be. Right. Yeah.

I think it makes you support the.

Things that I need you to do. Yeah.

Correct.

Yeah.

I think it makes you a good leader as well. And it, you know, because. Yeah, you want to empathize with your employees or stuff, but I always tell them it's, you know, my job is really to give you the tools and the infrastructure to do your job, but that's it. As long as you do it right. You don't want me up in your grill, you know, telling you what to do. You know how to do it.

Right. Right.

You know.

Right. And if you don't, actually, I expect you to ask before I identify that you're. That you're floundering.

You got it.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because that's the guys that, that don't make it. You know, we have a very flexible environment and have a lot of fun. You know, we got ping Pong tables, basketball things there, you know, foosball, all that stuff. And I expect them all to self regulate, get your work done, you know, what has to be done, you know, what our benchmarks are, how we measure productivity and quality and things. Other than that, you don't want me, like I said, you don't want me over there in your department saying, hey, what's going on? What are you working on?

Right.

I don't want that either. So if you do that and you can do it on your own, you'll have lots of success working, you know, for me. But if you're constantly sitting around or taking advantage or, you know, this is your eighth game of ping pong you've played today. Well, that's going to be a problem.

Yeah, well, maybe. I mean, it depends, it depends on, you know, how you're doing. But yeah, if you're playing eight games of ping pong a day, even if you're succeeding in the job description that you have, you're going to get a new job description from me.

That's correct. I can hear the ball. It's loud.

Absolutely. Yep. We can fix this.

You got it.

Yeah, but you know, you know, to that point, I would much rather have an employee that asks me questions or tells me I'm stuck. What do you think? As opposed to one that feels like they have to figure it out themselves and, and no one is there to help. Now that if you have employees that in the latter group, that may be your fault as a manager. Right?

Yeah.

Because you're not encouraging and you're not, you're not creating the environment. We're asking questions and admitting fail is okay. But, but if I have somebody that, that continually will not ask me or stop, I just, I don't even want you to ask me necessarily. I just want you to stop when you're stuck. Don't just keep trying. Right. Try a, try a little bit. But, but there's, you know, you're not alone in this. No one is. Right. It's a company.

You're, you're part of your team, user resources that you have either another employee or this kind of thing. Like to your point of, you know, being responsible, I tell our managers, you know, when we have to let someone go, which is, you know, like I said, it's the worst, I meet with them first. And I said, you know, this is our failure as well. We either hired the wrong person who didn't have the personality for the job, or we didn't give them the tools they needed to Succeed, you know. Yes. Some, you know, depending upon the situation, maybe responsibility on their side as well. Of course. Of course.

Right.

But as, as managers that have been hiring people for, you know, a long, long time, you should try to identify, you know, those traits that you're looking for. And, but it's, it's hard. Even though you think you've got them identified. It's, it's, it's always interesting, but it's hard.

And you're right. It's the worst to have to let somebody go. That is the worst. Yeah.

Because, you know, the repercussions, you know, we've, you know, you empathize, you feel for these people and you just say, wow, you know, I'm really, you know, and you really can't say, you know, you're sorry. Yes. You're sorry. But as you got to keep it on a business level. Yeah. And, you know, you got to lay the reasons out and you've got to have a good foundation built of where this is where we're at today. This is how we got here.

Yeah.

And, and this is why we're making this, the decision that we are today.

That's a, that's a discussion we should save for another show, too.

I agree.

Revisit in another show.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you got it. So, you know, we talked about the logo and creative development. We kind of dipped into offshore stuff today, which we're going to revisit at a later date. I'm going to put all these links and things up on the dbapodcast.com website. We'll start some show notes area up there and I'll put a link to the Major League Baseball article. I thought that was pretty fascinating. And move some of this other content that we're going to chat about till next week.

Awesome. Shannon. Cool. It's been a blast, man.

Hey, it's always a good time, Dave. I'm enjoyed it.

Yeah. Thanks, folks. And we'll, we'll give you the business next week.