FridAI + The 3rd Door

Business Brain, episode 643 for Casual Friday, April 25, International Financial Independence Awareness Day 2025. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take some ideas, some incidents, some stuff, we analyze it, we use it to tune our business brains so that we can each keep on living the charmed life and help each other keep on living those charmed lives. Shopify.com BusinessBrain is where you're gonna go to sign up for A$1 per month trial period and upgrade your selling today using the same engine that I use for one of my other shows and other businesses. We'll talk more about that a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And Northern California, I'm Shannon Jean.

Happy Friday. Happy Friday. Hi, my friend, how are you?

Yes, I'm good, man. I'm, as always, I'm happy to be here.

So I. You. You reminded me during our pre show that I'm not allowed to call myself an idiot, so I won't.

Correct.

I will say that I have paid certainly some time and potentially some money in tuition to learn a valuable lesson that I am going to share with everybody. And it was AI that helped me potentially get to the end of this problem that I caused for myself. And that problem is that I am the person that chose to mail a $36,000 check from the IRS to my bank to deposit.

All right, Wait, wait, what?

Yep. Yep.

Just in the regular mail.

Yep. I've mailed so many checks to deposit over the years. It's no big deal, but it's been a little while. And so I looked up to make sure that the address that I was mailing it to was the correct address. Find it on Citibank's website. I send the check in on March 3rd. You know what today's day is, right? Oh, wow. So I get back from south by Southwest and I'm like, this is odd that this ch. Check did not hit. So I call Citibank and they say, why did you use that address? Why didn't. Did you. Did you use the San Antonio address is what they asked. I said, no, I use the South Dakota address. Why did you use that address? Because it's the address on your website that's not on our website. I'm like, oh, but it is. And they said, well, we're going to have to figure out what happened here. I'm like, yes, please. They're still working on that. I'm not happy.

Yeah, yes.

Yeah, obviously.

And so check hasn't Been found yet?

Not to my knowledge. Not by Citibank. Hasn't shown up in my account. So last week, I decided I need to. I can't wait for Citibank on this anymore. I just got to call. I got to figure out what to do. I got to call the irs. So I tried calling the irs. Now, last week was.

That's always fun.

The week that started with April 14, which meant Tuesday was April 15.

This timing is impeccable here.

Oh, I'm doing great here. I'm back.

Shannon, I have a question, but I'll wait till you expand a little more.

Yeah, no problem. And so I. So I. This was Wednesday that I first tried calling the irs. Two hours on hold on Wednesday, listening to their hold music before their system just unceremoniously disconnected me.

Of course.

Right, Fine. So Thursday, I call in the morning, and this is while I'm doing things. And being productive at my desk is like, that part of it was fine. But I. 90 minutes on hold. I get to somebody, and they're like, okay, great. I'm like, thank you so much. Let me explain what's going on. The guy stops me as I'm, you know, 15 seconds into my deal and says, hey, man, you've called the collections department. Oh, you need to get to the refund department. Let me forward you. So he does, and then I'm put into a hold. Loop that or really just an avr, like, press here. Press one for this. Press two for this. It's hell. Because my check was not a refund. It was a return of funds for overpayment is what it was. This is a whole long story about how there were misapplied funds and they needed $36,000 of mine that they already had. But we're waiting to process a letter that would have applied it to the correct tax year. And in. In the meantime, it was just sitting in limbo. And then while they were waiting to process that letter, they sent me a nasty gram saying, if you don't pay this $36,000 soon, we're going to garnish whatever. So I sent him another 36K. Right. And in the meantime, they processed my letter and then sent me this check as a. As a return of all payments.

I was going to ask about why a check and not a bank deposit? Direct deposit, Correct.

This is why. Right. So, okay, great. So I. Fine. I. You know, so I get routed into this hell that I can't get out of because I don't have a refund in order to get past this system, you have to have a refund, and then you can tell them the check is missing and you can report it online. But there was no way for me to do this because I'm living in this corner case, right? And so I'm, like, super frustrated. And I called again, and I got one of these, we'll call you back, you know, things. And so I dealt with that and that. Called me back and then hung up on me. So that was a lie. Oh, yeah, it was cool. Yeah. And so I went to Chat GPT and I was like, okay, like, I. I don't know what to do here. And Chat GBT told me about two things. It was like, great. Okay. The second thing it told me about is the IRS Taxpayer Advocate Service, which is an irs, a section of the IRS that is there to sort of evaluate your case to figure out if you really do need to talk to somebody at the irs. And then they will. Then they will force the IRS to talk with you. Right? So they're like, okay, step A doesn't work. Use step B. But what step A was, was call the IRS Practitioner priority line, even if you're not a CPA and not a practitioner. And it gave me the phone number, and it gave me some instructions, and I said, okay, but, like, is this going to be a problem for me? You know? And they said, no. And ChatGPT gave me a script, and it was like, look, it said, tell them about your problem and then explain your representing yourself. And I said, okay, but are they going to be pissed? Like, should I. And I asked ChatGPT, should I start by saying, hey, look, I'm me? They're like, no. When you're talking to IRS employees, they are buried in people all day long. And everybody wants to tell their story. If you just start with being efficient, tell them exactly what happened. And I did. I said, look, I need. And I like, almost verbatim read the IRS that read the Chat GPT script. And I said, yep, I need to get a check reissued. It was sent yada, yada, yada. Okay, great. What's the taxpayer's name? I gave them my name. Social. Gave them my social. I was in for probably three, four, maybe five minutes with this person before they asked, what's your caf number? Which of course, I don't have. And they said, what's your caf number? And I said, oh, I'm. I'm actually the taxpayer. I'm representing myself. And she laughed and helped me and started the trace that needs to happen with all of this. And ChatGPT was even saying I'm here ready for you if you need like real time assistance. Yeah, I know ChatGPT, but I never would have known about this number. Of course it exists. Like CPAs need to have a place to call and this woman that you.

Could call it on your own self representing, you know. That's huge. Yeah, that's right.

Correct. Yes.

And that qualifies as Friday AI right there.

Yeah, it was it and it was great. It like it now it's still going to be another six weeks before I see the return check, but that's fine. You know, she was like, yep, we started the thing, it's all fine. And then the chatgpt gave me answers like or questions to ask before I hung up and it was like, do I need to file this form 3911? And the woman was like, no, do not file anything. You are finished for now. If you do anything, it will reset the start date of this process. Yeah. I was like, okay.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, yeah, that's cool. But like smart. It was really good at this. Yeah, yeah it was. I was impressed. Yeah.

I have found as well that the more you interact and just do day to day questions and asking queries.

Yeah.

It, it, the more you get out of it. I think that's a big part of it is learning how to talk to.

The AI whatever you use. My first rodeo, obviously this is two and a half years of using stupid things.

Like I'm using GROK more in certain situations and I'm finding oh okay, well here's the benefit of this break down this you know, thing and especially if you're access stuff on X. So yeah, the interaction and figuring stuff out is, it's, it's crucial.

It's crucial. Yeah, it's it like, I mean it will probably be the difference between me getting this money back, you know, this year versus who knows when. Like I don't, you know. And it also told me do not write a letter about this. Like you must call. I know it's frustrating but you must call. And it was like, okay, yeah, all right.

Yeah. And I think like if you're still on the sidelines and not using like Chat GPT that much, the a quick and easy way to do it is just stop searching on Google and go to ChatGPT and search and watch how more efficient and robust and accurate the results are.

My son, last night at dinner we were talking about at Easter dinner and we had, you know, many different generations represented there and my dad was asking, like, okay, I got it, like, I need to learn more about this. And my son offered this tip. He said, oh, what I did on my phone was where I have Safari because he has an iPhone where I have the Safari browser. I replaced that with a folder that contains Safari and ChatGPT. And that way I'm not just automatically going to Safari and typing my search in. I'm forced to choose to use ChatGPT. It's like now I use it all the time because the habit has been reset. But to reset that habit. What a brilliant thing I thought, man.

Yeah, yeah, just brilliant.

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I do. I want to talk about. You might have heard me talk about it here before, but someone gave me a term for it. So I want to either revisit or if you haven't heard it, you know, dive into it and then apply this term, which I think is really, really app. Really good. The concept is, in any industry you're in, you need to make contacts with people that run that industry or, you know, things. And especially I'm a. You know, I'm a reseller. I've been selling products my whole life. I sell on marketplaces my whole life. But one of the things that I've done that has helped me avoid problems is that I use sites like LinkedIn to go connect with the people that run those marketplaces. Okay.

Yes.

So when I wanted to. When I first started selling, after I sold Tech Restore, I started. I wanted to sell handbags. That's a whole nother story we don't have time for. But why? I wanted to do it, but I knew that I had no credibility in that space whatsoever.

Okay.

And that if I just started dumping or posting, you know, these expensive bags on ebay, they were going to be like, what's. Who is this guy? What's going on?

Oh, yeah. They'd bounce you right away. They think you're a counterfeiter until you proved otherwise.

You're a. You're a part. Yes. You've sold millions of dollars worth of stuff, but it's all been, like, computer parts. What is this? And. And that matters. So what I did was I went on LinkedIn and I met and connected with everybody who was in that category, who managed that category for ebay.

Yeah.

I went on LinkedIn when I started selling on Poshmark, and I connected with people on Poshmark and all I did was get in their conversation flow. I commented on their posts, I congratulated when they achieved something. I just got. I didn't ask them for anything. I just got my name out there because I wanted them to know me, because I knew at some point I would need them, but I also wanted to add value to them. So, for example, as I got, you know, ramped up ebay in a different way that I had done ebay before, I reached out to their head of community and said, hey, you know, if. If you'd ever like anybody to talk about what it's like selling on ebay for the last, you know, 25 years and the ups and downs, and she was like, yeah, that'd be great. We have a training thing. It's called becoming ebay. Do you want to come speak? Like, of course I want to come speak. So then you leverage.

This was. This was not the first contact you made with this person. You had been commenting on their post and building up trust and all of that over time. Yep.

Because I just wanted to.

Just wanted to shine a light on that.

Thank you. Yeah, yeah, she saw my name in her flow and commenting on other people's comment. Oh, that's really, really cool, man. I love ebay. It changed my life. Yada, yada, yada.

Yep.

When I. When I got going up on Poshmark and I went up and I sold my first million, I went to the CEO in Poshmark who I had already connected with. I'd already, you know, like, got connected somehow.

Yeah.

Months, Year. A year before. And I just said, manish, I'm so excited. Just sold my first million on Poshmark. And he was like, what? You know, what do you mean, your first million? You know, because mostly hobby sellers up there, that kind of thing. And I was like, yeah. And so he was like, okay, wait, I need you to talk to this person. I want you to do this. We're gonna do this. And so they're ready for you. Then down the road when you have a problem. Because you will always have a problem.

Right.

No matter what, no matter. It's all about problems. But when you need them, it's not your first introduction. It's like, hey, do you remember I came and spoke and I met you at this event.

Yes.

And. And we connected here. And I was at ebay live, or I came to Poshmark headquarters. You've seen me in your thing. I have this issue. Can you help me? And the answer is yes, of course.

Well, let me. Let me see what I can do at the very least. Right. Like, that's usually what it is.

Or I can't help you, but let me give you the phone number to somebody else.

Right.

Okay. So I was a guest on a podcast about a week ago, and I mentioned this. This idea and how I used it.

Yeah.

And the host said, you know, I had another person on recently who was trying to make a connection with someone, a CEO or some kind of C suite person. Couldn't connect on LinkedIn, couldn't get wound up connecting with them on Strava. You know, Strawberries.

Oh, my gosh. The cycling app.

It's like a cycling app, but you can, like, track people and you could do. And then he mentioned another one, like a guy connected on Venmo because, you know, some weird thing that's going on. And the person who told him about the Strava thing had this phrase for this concept. It's called finding the third door.

Yep. And I story in my life.

Yes.

If you don't get invited to industry parties, host your own party.

Yes. And invite them if you want to meet people.

Right. And invite them. Don't exclude them. Right.

I do the same thing with some of my. My coaching clients. I'm like, hey, you want to meet all these people? You don't know how you ever thought about starting a podcast? Because those people would love to come on your podcast and talk to you about their business. Yes. So why don't you start that? And then. And it look at me like, why would I do that? I said, because it's going to change your life and it's real and authentic. Because you want to have a conversation with these people, do it in public and publish it. It costs you nothing but your time. So finding this third door to get access to a broader network. And the key part is doing it early. You can't want something.

You got to start now. I always say to my team here, and I'll say it to everybody listening, of course, the time to connect with someone on LinkedIn is the day you meet them. It, like, via email. I. I don't mean meet them in person, although if you do, that's. It's fine. That's fine as well. But where they are happy about the future of this relationship. Right.

That's right.

Early. There's no history.

There's front of mind.

It's front of mind. It's like, oh, Dave, I just. We just did an order together. We just did a thing. Of course he wants to connect. Well, yes, but then you're going to change three jobs, and soon. And I mean soon. By like 18 to 36 months from now, I might want something from you, but in the meantime, I'm going to be congratulating you on the three jobs, changes you've had in the middle and helping you legitimately helping in any way I can. And it's the law of reciprocity. You get to pick where that starts. And I tell everybody here, yeah, connect with people before you ever need anything from them. Because the worst thing is, I mean, I know we all see this. The moment you go on LinkedIn, you're like, oh, I have 14 invites. Okay, I guess I know this person. You say yes, right? And within five minutes, they're in your inbox pitching ridiculous. Please, please, please. It's like, oh, my gosh, please. How do you think this is going to work?

Like, we had a call last week in my Mastermind. One of our biggest vendors, Marketplace, is like, hey, I want to come talk to your. Your members. I'm like, great, we'll set it up. We had this phone call. It was awesome. They talked for an hour, answered a bunch of questions, and there was, like, about 30 of my members in on the call.

Okay.

The minute we were done, I went up in the mastermind. That was a great call. Here's a link to the recording. You should go to LinkedIn right now and connect with each of those people. Each of those people, immediately, right away, thank them for coming on the call.

And for helping you and walk away. That's it. Yeah, that's it.

And yeah, and that's a great thing.

Even if they don't reply to that in their LinkedIn inbox, it doesn't matter, because when you come to them, you know, a year later and you're like, hey, who is this? Oh, yeah, I remember that. Oh, look at that. They thanked me. What a nice.

Got it. When they search their inbox, your name's going to come up. And you didn't ask them for anything.

Nope.

You thanked them for something. Yes, man, this works. And it's.

It costs this and coopetition the keys to my life right here.

Yep. And, yeah, this costs you nothing but a little bit of effort. And, you know, I keep coming back to this. This other phrase is sticking to my head lately. If you want more, do more.

Oh, right.

You just have to, because there's too many people that think it's just gonna happen. So if you just, if you want more, if you, if you just do it, you know you have to do more. And part of that doing more is making these connections and getting out. So I'd love to hear, you know, about your third door ideas, places that you've connected, random stuff. FeedbackUsBrain Show Share it with us. Cause it's so important and people miss it all the time.

People miss it. Yes, it's in. And that's what makes it even more valuable is most people, people that aren't listening to this show are less likely to do these things and it's okay. Please share with the, with the ones you know because you got it. This helps everybody. But, and it's still going to be a small percentage of the people doing this, of course.

And who, who are the two people? You should go connect on LinkedIn right.

Now, right in the show notes at BusinessBrain show is Shannon's profile and mine on LinkedIn. Connect with us right now. You don't need anything from us. Today's the day. And guess what? We don't need anything from you today. Not yet, but someday maybe, who knows, we can help each other. It's wonderful. Love it.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Thanks for hanging out, folks. Thank you for sending in all your stuff, feedback businessbrain show and go leave us a review. Businessbrain show review. Keep on living that charmed life and have a great weekend, folks. See you next week.

See ya.