Grow Your Small Business, Executive Summaries and the Beer Test! – SBS 52

Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business Show. Episode number 52, Small Business show at businessshow.co Here for Wednesday, February 3, 2016, here in Durham, New Hampshire, USA, Earth Solar System Universe. I'm Dave Hamilton.

I don't know how to follow that, but. And I'm Shannon Jean, coming to you from Concord, California.

Well, I know we have a lot of international listeners.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. And it may be interstellar. You never know.

Well, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. So I figured, you know, saying just our city and state seemed a little presumptuous and just, I mean, not even presumptuous. I'm not presuming we don't have international listeners. I know we do. So there you go.

That's a great idea.

Yeah.

But. So how's things out there? You're doing well.

I'm doing well. Yeah. We're having a really weird weather season this year because it's like 50 degrees in February. There's no snow left on the ground. Wow. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah. Not bad weird, sure. You know, just weird. And we're getting plenty of like rain and everything. So it's, you know, it's all like, I don't know, whatever. It goes in cycles. Yeah, I think I was saying that last week. It just.

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Things are a little nutty out here. You know, we have the super bowl right down the road here on Sunday.

That's right.

And we did. I took my son to have a 14 year old. Took my son to the NFL experience on Sunday. And I pretty much got like a million hero points for, you know, taking it. I. It was great. Is that we. I really had no expectation. They do a very poor job of promoting it on the, on the website and everything. But if you're in the Bay Area and you get a chance, it's through this week, I think. And to go down, it's in Moscone. It's both sides. So it's like going to, you know, Mac World. It used to be. And it's. Yeah, it's Giant. And the key thing we got is they had this very easy to miss this little fast pass you could buy. And it was like probably the best $20 I've spent all year. Well, maybe. Maybe even all decade.

Yeah.

Because as the lines got longer, we just got to go through the exits for every event and thing. And you know, for. For young kids that are into football. Anybody is into football, but especially for younger guy, man, it was just Nuts. It was. It was crazy.

Oh, that's awesome. Wow. That's. When I saw you did that. I had no idea that this even. Even existed until just now. I, you know, I saw your post on Facebook or whatever, and so I thought it was something you had bought. Honestly, I thought it was through the Starwood thing that you mentioned. Right.

The moments, the moment maybe they might have had that. But, you know, it was real. It was like, the tickets are 25 bucks and the fast pass was like another 20. And, oh, man, we got there at about 10 in the morning, and I had to drag him out of there at, you know, about 4 o'. Clock. I had to leave for a meeting out of town on Monday, so I had to get home and I was like, we got to. Gotta go, gotta go. And they were just. He went with a buddy and it was a great experience. We had a blast.

That's awesome, man.

Yeah. Yeah. What an incredible organization, the NFL, to just. I mean, the money that they ring out and, and the marketing that they have behind it, it's just being, what, passionate.

You want to talk about a business that is. I mean, yeah, I, I think about the, the NFL. You know, everybody ask, who, who's going to win? I mean, people this week, of course, are asking, who's going to win the Super Bowl. But any given week during football season, people ask, who are gonna. Who's gonna win the big game? And the answer that rings in my head every time is the NFL. That's. Who's gonna win the game. They win every game.

Yeah. Which was a small business at one time.

Yep.

You know, and that brings up a, you know, you always hear, you know, people commenting about, oh, these giant companies, whether it's, you know, Walmart or Amazon or that kind of thing. And I always try to make a comment. It's like, well, you know, at one point, it was just a couple of people.

Yeah.

You know, getting started. You know, Sam Walton, Jeff Bezos. I mean, these. These were guys that just started this thing and they had.

Apple wasn't the only. Apple and Hewlett Packard weren't the only companies that started in garages. Right.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. And so, you know, it's. It's interesting dynamic when you bring that up and then talk about, well, why have they been successful? And, you know, whether you agree with the way they've done it or not, clearly they've filled a. A need.

They serve their customers well.

They serve their customers well. And clearly we want to use their services or they would not be successful.

That's it, right? Yeah, no, yeah. It's interesting when my, my dad was younger because I don't know anything about him being older yet because of the way time works. He had a roommate who played for the, the Boston Patriots at the time, you know, but this guy like had had to hold down a part time job or whatever. You know, he had a job in the off season and. And then he would go and he'd play his game and he'd get paid and. But he still had to like work because. Yeah, you know, he wasn't a bazillionaire because he played football. Yeah, yeah.

It's now, you know, my son is really into lacrosse and you know, those.

Guys, that's who it is, right? Yeah, yeah.

Same kind of thing where these major league lacrosse players, they have to have a side job or tremendous. You know, there's a few of them really at the top of the heap that do marketing and have their own brands and that kind of thing with their sports equipment sponsors. But the vast majority of them have to, you know, have another job.

I think their team, their team salaries, you, you probably know more than me. My, my son was into lacrosse for a while and then sort of, it sort of faded away for him. But we went to a couple of those MLL games and because they would have the All Star games here at Harvard or whatever and you know, they would say that these guys from lacrosse were making somewhere between like 15 and 30 grand a year.

That's right. Yeah.

And that's it. And I remember one year we saw this one guy, I don't remember his name, but he was fantastic. And because it was the All Star game or whatever, at halftime they would do this crazy show where people do these crazy trick shots and you know, all this fun stuff. And we went the next year like, wow, we want to see what that guy brings. And he wasn't there because he couldn't afford to be a lacrosse player. It's like this guy was the star and he's got to be working a day job.

It'll be interesting to see, you know, 20 years from now or whenever, however long, if it morphs into, you know, where they look back and go, yeah, one time, now they're making millions and one time they, they were making nothing.

Well, you know, I think about this because my son is into hockey now and I think about what hockey was as a business, NHL was as a business when I was a kid. Now certainly, I mean, they had arenas, it was More than lacrosse is today. But it was not nearly the spectator sport that it is now. I mean, you could always get tickets. The games happen all the time. It was never a problem. They were cheap.

Sure.

And you never watched a hockey game on tv. Nobody even talked about doing that. And they were on tv, but. And I was a mild hockey fan as a kid, but I would listen to them on the radio and. Because watching, trying to find that puck on a tiny little, you know, standard def. Maybe it was a 20 inch TV if it was, you know, the big one in the living room, but otherwise it was like a 13 inch TV. It was worthless. It was like listening to the radio with an image of hockey players on the screen, but you weren't actually watching the game, you know, and, you know, so there's, there's that watershed moment for them of hdtv, right?

Yes.

Where suddenly it was like, hey, wait, that thing that sucked now is great. And Fox tried to solve it earlier. They had that thing that highlighted the puck on the screen.

That's. I was going to ask about if there was anything, you know, that they digitally put on the. On the screen and whether that helped at all.

It was. They did. It didn't help. It was. It was. Made it worse, in fact, because it was like this. They would darken the rest of the screen and light up the area around the puck. It was this stupid. I mean, you had to try it, right?

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Like here's this problem. But it was HDTV that solved that. And now, you know, I mean, NHL teams are making tons of money.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's big out here too. I mean, the Shark tank. That's right. California hockey's hot.

You know, they sold that place out the first year it was open.

Yeah, yeah. It's crazy. I hear about, you know, all the time. And one last comment. Super bowl, we watched the NFL Network. They replayed Super Bowl 1 and it was awesome to see the players on the sideline having a cigarette in between plays. It just tells you how times have changed, you know, and they kept coming back then I said, that can't be right. Right. And they're. Yeah, no, I'm out of breath. I need to have a smoke.

I need to have a smoke. This. Yeah. I mean, wow, that just. That's so. And it makes sense. I mean.

Yeah, back then.

Times change.

Yeah, yeah, back then. So.

But yeah, it's interesting, right? I mean, if you think about that for your own business, like what, what is it like if you, if you can take your Business and then envision it being something that's even ten times the size. I mean, you know, not. It doesn't have to be a thousand times the size. Right. What would it take, and this is a good question to ask yourself, because it's not going to happen magically. Maybe it'll happen magically for you, but being a little intentional about it isn't a bad thing. Sit down and say, okay, what's it going to take to be 10 times my size? What's it going to be. Take to. What's it going to take to be double my size? What. What does that look like if I suddenly say, okay, here's my revenue number. Now it's time to back. Backfill that. How did you get there? Right. And you're gonna answer some questions about some things that you need to do in order to get there.

Yeah. Remember when we talked about the book that I love the E. Myth, and they. We also talked, we talked about delegating and creating that spreadsheet and setting all your, you know, everything you do out there and then assigning people to help you delegate stuff. And then you quickly, as a small business owner, you start to see yourself, oh, wait, I do this, I do that. I. And then. But just think if you took that and you said, okay, well, how would. What would it look like if it was twice or ten times the size? What a great exercise that would help you, you know, think beyond, you know, the next two weeks and making payroll or whatever it is that getting outside your. The day to day things that you have to do to, you know, survive and grow your business just out of sheer hard work. But you also have to be able to get outside that and think like what you're saying, the what if. Yeah, just.

Just paint the picture. You're not hurting anyone. No one even has to know that you've done it. Right. You mean it just.

Yeah, of course.

You know, just. This is in the privacy of your own cone of silence. Right. You just do this and then, okay, what does that look like, huh? And maybe paint the picture of 10 times. Right. So that.

Sure.

You learn some things and you're like, okay, I don't know that that's realistic, but there are some things I learned. And I bet I could double the size of my business. And imagine that you could. If you could double the size of your business.

Yeah. Is it. And you kind of learn, is it scalable or how. What would have to happen to make it scalable? Yeah. You know, it's a great way to guide your business. It's kind of similar. One of the things I heard somewhere along the lines, I don't know who said it, but I certainly didn't come up with it, was that you should always be running your business like you're, you're preparing to sell it, even if you never have any intention of selling it. In order to sell your business, you know, you really have to have things tight. Your, your accounting needs to be tight. Your, you know, everything, all your procedures or things. If you have procedures, you know, all the systemic parts of your business that happen every day, you know, documentation, employee handbooks, manual, all those things that, that's what you need. I mean, that's how you present your business to sell it. And we're working on having a business broker on that's going to talk about, you know, getting your business ready to sell. But the comment was just by doing the exercise, it's going to make your business better. And you know, very similar to that. You know, putting down what it would take to be 10 times the size. All those things you need to put in place. How much capital would you need?

Yeah.

How many employees would you need? You know, and that kind of thing. But I like that. That's a, that's a great idea.

Yeah, I got to do that. I've never done that.

You know, I wish I could say I have too, but I have not either. And you know, it's just kind of one of the reasons why we wanted to start this show is that talk about planning and so stuff doesn't just happen but you know, happenstance to be ready for it. And you know, startups with a lot of backing and venture money, in addition to that money, they usually get fantastic advisors.

Yes.

And how to plan, how to prepare, how to do hr, all those kinds of things. And typical small business doesn't have that. And so thinking along those lines and being, putting those procedures in place and getting everything out of your head, I think is, is critically important. And both those steps are.

I've always said and just known that the only reason my business doesn't grow faster than it does is because of me.

Yep.

You know, and I'm, I'm in my own way all the time.

Oh, oh yeah, me too. Yeah, for sure.

All the time. And it's frustrating but you know, I mean, it is, it is what it is, right? Yeah, yeah. But it doesn't mean it's not true. And so there's these types of things where you start envisioning different scenarios and it does allow you to get out of your own way a little bit. You know, if you can put yourself, you know, three years down the road, well, now you're not standing in your way from getting there.

Yeah, go. Yeah, really? And you can, you know, spin off some goals from that exercise and say, okay, well, 10, 10 times is really, you know, wow, okay, how long would it take me? But what can we do next year? You know, if I'm going to be 10 times the size in X number of years, what, what would I. Where would I start? You know, and really kind of lay out that plan and the thing that is great with that plan. You know, one thing that I do every year is this executive summary. And I was forced to do it the first time when I was working with a bank. And they kind of wanted to know, okay, what, what went on this year, what was good, what was bad, what'd you, you know, successes and failures. And it was actually very good for me to just really look back and this is, you know, 10 or 15 years ago. So I typically do it every. And I kind of have this layout that I use, but it really works well and it helps you to plan for the next year and beyond that and then really to look back, to go back. And I can go back to 2002, I believe, maybe when I first started doing it. And look. And go, oh, I didn't know what the heck I was talking about. Look at this. This is ridiculous. And then other times going, wow, this really happened, you know, so it's really nice to look back and look at that business log as well as to give it, you know, to someone you're talking about trying to learn about your business, whether it's a banker, a prospective partner, some sort of executive, anybody you're looking for, an advisor, you could say, oh, let me give you our executive summary. You can see how it was this last year.

So what do you put. I'm curious about this. This is interesting. What do you put in your executive. I mean, is this like a one pager with a mission statement and your earnings from the previous year or.

Yeah, it's more the. So, you know, you get, you have your, your P and L, you hopefully spit out from your accounting software that you're hopefully running and your, your balance sheet, and you give them that, your accountant, and they're going to help clean it up and everything. And you always give that to who? Whoever you're talking to about money. They want to see that.

They always do, right?

They always do. So what the executive summary does Is, is it's your narrative, it's your story. And whether it's over a longer period of time, it certainly could be. Or even a shorter period of time. I typically do it annually, and I'm doing it well. Actually, I did it a little earlier this year because we're working on some new banking relationships, so talking about 2015. But I usually wait until January, February, as we start to really wrap up all the paperwork for the previous year. And I just talk about what we did, where we invested money, new things, because we're always trying to, you know, spend a portion of our money on new ventures, what worked, what didn't, you know, and I would, more often than not, there's a huge chunk of them that, well, that didn't work, you know, and this is, this is how what we allocated to do that. And that's really helpful.

Yeah.

If you're talking. Go ahead.

No, well, I'm excited about this idea. I've never thought about this, but this is one of the things that I feel like as a small business owner that's bootstrapped, I've missed out on in so much as without having investors, there's no one I have to answer to. So while I certainly know all of the stuff that I would put in this executive summary, I've never written it down. Right. Because I didn't have to. No one asked to read it, so it wasn't necessary. But the act of writing it is the same kind of thing as this, you know, envisioning where you are, any of that stuff.

This is huge.

Yeah.

And thinking back a little bit more, we used to do, you know, when we have a board of advisors, you know, and we've talked about this here on the show, whether they're formal or informal. And typically my, you know, they're kind of informal. It's my attorney, my banker, typically my accountant, maybe an insurance or investment guy, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. And at the end of the year, you should invite them all to lunch together and have that conversation. And I, looking back, I'm sure that I started jotting notes down because I was like, well, what the heck am I going to talk to, you know, about these guys? You know, what's going on. So it's really nice to have whether you do a one pager or whether you, you know, now it's, it's longer than one page. I never can get it. But as you probably know by now, I'm a little verbose. And so, you know, writing it down, what you did where you invested money, what worked, what significant events happened with your business, your employees. Did you hire new, you know, in new areas? Did you let people go? Did you open new locations or new divisions? And what happened? And it's just this, it's your narrative and what you think is going to happen, because they don't know, especially banks. You know, you have a banking relationship with a relationship manager, but he's not. He or she is not the person that's going to make the decision of whether the bank is going to, you know, give you some cash.

Right.

It just doesn't happen. So you have to educate that person very well and tell them your story so they can pitch it.

They've got to plead your case for you.

Yeah, they got plead. And you want your attorney to know because he knows all kinds of people and, you know, probably a lot more than you that, you know, they're now networking guys, that kind of thing. And same with accountants. They, they can help introduce you to other people. And to me, a sign of success is when you can kind of overhear someone like that telling your story. You know, they're not going to tell it with as much passion and, you know, like, like you do, but if they get it, you know, it can really help you out.

Oh, absolutely. Of course. Yeah. What a great. Oh, man. Now I want to go do this. Well, it's a great idea. It really, man. Yeah, I think it.

I think it brings up a good point too, because, you know, we were not planning on talking about this, and it just kind of rolled into it. It's not underestimating the stuff you do and how valuable it could be to someone else.

Yeah.

And. And, you know, we. On Monday, I sat on a small business panel for the PayPal Asia Pacific division that was here. These guys are. They're based out of Singapore and they were down in Half Moon Bay having their annual conference. And I know a lot of folks there, we use PayPal. Like it's really in our DNA. And so there was four other business owners and some brilliant, much smarter than me people, you know, some great stories, and I'm hoping to have each of them on for an interview. And there was one of the people that were there sharing their story and how they use PayPal, and it's such a great, compelling story. And all the other three folks that, you know, were listening was like, wow, you really need to promote your own story, let alone your business, you know, and get the, get it out there and share it, because people love that stuff. You know, it's really authentic. And, you know, they. The buy in you get from, you know, customers or potential customers that can attach a far greater feeling than. And especially like this, this woman, her business that she imports from Asia, it was all businesses, small businesses that use PayPal a lot to bring product information. Okay. Primarily. Primarily China. And she brings in human hair, and she's in the hair extension business. And, you know, first you're like, oh, that's kind of. It's kind of cool. But listening to her story and the impact that this product has, an individual, you know, looking in the mirror and how they feel about themselves and this kind of thing, what a powerful story, you know, and she. She's like, oh, you think so? You know, you think we really should. I was like, oh, yeah. Just what a great thing to talk about and your narrative and getting it out there and, you know, writing this stuff, I think is really, really important.

Yeah, I'm in. Yeah. What a great idea.

Never even thought of doing one. I'm gonna send you a bill.

Awesome. That's great. Yeah, thanks.

Consulting. Consulting.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's cool. But yeah, if you have questions about, you know, writing an executive summary or any of this kind of stuff, we'd love to hear, you know, from you. We're starting to get some great feedback, and that's just how you reach us. Feedback. Business Show Co. Or Facebook. Slash business. What is it? What is our Facebook business show?

I think it's still DBA podcast, because we, we. Yeah, I don't know that we can. But. Well, I guess we could just start a new Facebook thing and.

And we'll talk about that. Yeah, yeah. But on Twitter at. What are we going to?

Business Show Co. That's right, Show Co.

Yeah, so that's right. Feedback@businessshow.co will get it to us. And talking about bankers, you know, this morning I had a breakfast with a new banking relationship that we're talking to. And I was thinking on the way, as I was driving, there is. I have this little thing, I call it the beer test. And, you know, will this person pass the beer test and probably figure it out, but, you know, would you want to have a beer with this person? And it could equally. You could say a cup of coffee if you. If you're not a beer drinker. But, you know, would you want to have sort of spend time with them outside of what you do with your. With your business? And for me, and I told the guy this, I sat down, you know, we were talking back and forth and some real personable guy. And I said, well, you know, you pass a beer test and yes, you would want to hang out, chat, talk with them, because if they're an important part of your business or, you know, are you going to ask them to be on your advisory board, you really, in my opinion, you want to trust your gut instinct about the people that you do business with. You know, is this one of these persons you're going to do business with people that you're not super friendly with? That's just gonna happen. And maybe, probably more than not, you know, you're like, okay, and you may not even know enough about them to see if they pass that rigid, rigid test. But somebody that you're bringing in that you're going to be, you know, opening the kimono, so to speak, or drawing back the velvet rope to let them know everything about your business, I would suggest that you really want to be comfortable with that person and be able to hang out and have a cup of coffee or drink a couple of beers, go on the golf course, whatever. It is your thing, and hang out with them.

That's always been, always been a litmus test for me, you know, and, and, and I, I mean, I mentioned this in terms of hiring people, but in this sense you're, you're hiring someone in a way, you know, I mean, as.

A partner or whatever.

But, but yeah, go out to eat with them and feel, feel them out and, you know, and, and again, specifically when I'm looking to hire an employee, but with anybody, I always, I'm watching how anybody I'm out with treats waitstaff, you know.

Yeah, you've mentioned that. And I thought about that this morning when I was at breakfast and that, that is a really great way to observe somebody, isn't it?

It is. But, but now I can't not do it right. So, I mean, like anything, you know, ignorance is bliss, right?

Yeah, sure.

And if it's somebody you really want to work with and you realize, wow, they're treating that person like crap, you know, it's like, oh, no, I got a decision to make. Sure. But it's, you know, what the right decision is in those situations because you probably don't want to go have a beer with them because they make you feel uncomfortable with the way they treat people, you know.

Well, that's right. And eventually you may be on the other end of that once the honeymoon is over.

Well, that's it. Yeah. You know, they're pitching you. That's right. Yeah. So, yeah, I am hyper aware of it and, but Again, you know, it becomes a liability sometimes if I'm out with, you know, friends or whatever and somebody's not, for whatever reason, not treating, you know, didn't say please or didn't say thank you. It's like these alarms are going off in my head. It's like, no, no, they usually do. It must be something, you know, I mean, we all have those. Laughs oh sure.

So yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting and you know, on that trend with, you know, bankers and relationship managers, you know, the front end, the person you're going to be interacting with at that bank, one of the things that I found over time is to ask them, you know, what's their long term plan? Where do they see themselves in a few years or five years? Because you don't want to put, or at least I don't want to. You may, somebody may, but I don't want to put a ton of time into onboarding someone and really getting them, you know, fluent in how your business works and all that. It's not a slow process. I mean, it is a slow process. And if that person is planning on, you know, jumping ship or moving on or changing positions in the next maybe six months, I would suggest you should ask them to introduce you to somebody else because the longer you can have that relationship with them, it's going to be better. And I would also look at their, not to age discriminate, but you need to think about their age. Where are they in their, in their lifespan of their business career, you know, and the good ones will be totally honest with you this morning. You know, this guy, he was totally straightforward and you know, I felt like, okay, great, we can get a couple years out of this guy and that's enough for me. That's fine. And I think that's really important and I'm a victim of it from other service providers, UPS, FedEx, those guys. I mean, the churn on those account reps is so quick. And we always kind of complain around the office like, oh, we got another rep. And just when you're getting the other one trained, kind of how to, how to handle certain issues that come up in our businesses and then you got to start all over. It can take a lot of time.

Yeah. Oh, it's, it's a huge thing. Yeah, there's that whole concept of institutional knowledge and the new person probably doesn't have any knowledge of your institution, you know.

Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And my last comment on banks, and this is probably just from my way I've always thought or Think about it. I always have to remind myself that I'm the customer the bank needs to be impressing me for me to bring my certain, my business to them.

Yes.

And when I was younger, I always had a hard time with that because I was like, well, these guys, they have like the keys to the kingdom. Right. And there were times when the bank will treat you like, you know, you're not the customer, unfortunately, many times. But you always want to keep that in mind, I think. And when you start feeling like you're not the customer that the bank is requiring, you're constantly trying to impress your bank. Maybe it's time to look for another relationship.

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I learned that lesson early on when I got. And it had nothing to do with business, but it was when I got my first mortgage.

Oh yeah.

And you know, I went through the process and they ask you for every bit of paperwork about your life that could possibly exist. Right.

You know, it's lovely. Yeah.

And so you give them all this stuff and you know, whatever. We put an offer in on a house, we got it accepted. We had, I don't know, 30 or 40 days between then and when, you know, it was going to close. And we were pre approved for more than we were going to spend. So everything was good. And it was actually a friend's wife who was our mortgage broker and all that. And. But it was like every week there was a phone call where it was like, I'm going to need this or I'm going to need that. And at first it was like, okay, yeah, of course, you know, like you said, you're, you're in the mode of I just need to impress this person so they write the check because otherwise I'm doomed. Right. You know, that's right. And finally we got down to like a day before the closing and they're still asking me for information or two days, but it was two days before the closing, they're still asking me for information. And I called them and I said, we have to be done. Like you have to tell me if you don't get anything else.

Right.

You know, that's it. I love that we're done. And, and, and, and I, and the woman didn't call me back and she was, we were in Austin at the time. So I drove down to San Antonio, which is where her office was. Never do business with, you know, friends, spouses. It's just always a disaster.

Yeah.

I mean it sometimes works out, but this was one of those things where it was like, okay, now I gotta go and play hardball with this person, you know, And I showed up at her office, I was waiting there for her when she walked in that morning. And she's like, what are you doing here? I'm like, you didn't call me back and we're closing in 24 hours. She's like, oh, it'll all be fine. You know, it's gonna be fine. And it hit me, it was like, they're just asking for this information because they can.

Yeah, they don't need it. Yeah, that's right.

And, right. And, and so now. And from that point forward, every mortgage I've ever gotten and including like, you know, when you refinance the house or even a loan for the business, anything, I always tell them, okay, look, you're going to ask me for a bunch of stuff. I have a, I have a two week window and you can ask me for whatever you want in that two week window and I'll do my darndest to provide it for you and then we're done. And if you need another piece of paper after that two week window is closed, what you're going to do is call me and tell me you can't write my loan. Because that's the only, that's the only conversation we're allowed to have after that two week window closes.

And I think that's great.

Yep. And I've had people call me and say, so, yeah, we're going to need your, another copy of a pay or your more recent pay stub. And I said, oh, nope, the window closed. So you can't do the loan without it. Right. And I just need to go to another bank. Right. Oh, oh, I forgot. That's right. Never mind, never mind, never mind. You know, and then that's it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're just trying to fatten up their files and you can't blame them for it. But you, you can blame yourself for playing into it beyond a reasonable degree. I mean, they do need some information about you and that's okay. But, but yeah, you gotta, you gotta put the, you, it's up to you to, to draw the line because they won't. There's no reason for them, they're not incentivized to.

And remember again, the person that you're interacting with, your, you know, the person that you want to have a beer with or would at least it's not them that they're a middle, They're a.

Middleman or middle woman. That's right.

Yeah, yeah. They're just moving. Okay. Okay. Okay. And I think that, you know, you just have to remember there's another bank down the street.

That's it.

And, you know, there's always someone that wants your business. And I think we should get some shirts printed up. David just says, I'm the client. Client. And, you know, because it's really important, I think, and it changes the dynamic on the relationship. Once you tell them that, it'd be nice. Everything. It's like, look, I'm the client, and, you know, you're supposed to be earning my business, and if you don't want to be in that business relationship, have the, you know, respect me enough to tell me that. So we don't waste. So we don't waste each other's time. Of course. And there's nothing wrong with that, because you don't. I get it. You know, it's like, oh, hey, you know, what your requirements are, what you want, we're not able to do. No problem. We tell our clients that all the time. We've always talked on the show here about, you know, sometimes you have to fire customers. You know, you want it to be a profitable relationship for you as well as for them, but not running you through the ringer over and over and over like that.

Over and over. Oh, gosh. It's just, you know, and I've told friends this story just like I told it here, and, you know, sometimes you see people's eyes open wide, but then they're like, you know what? You're right. I don't need to do any of this. I'm like, no, you don't have to. So it's all good. And, you know, the thing is, you can push it further than you think you can, because, you know, I could say to them, well, so you called, and so that means you can't write the loan. Right. And they have the right to say, well, actually, yeah. I mean, you know, I really want your business, but there's no way I can get it through without this one more piece of paper, you know, and it. You. You still get to decide, you know.

That's right.

But do I want to just give them the piece of paper and I'm done, or do I walk away and stand on my. On my principles? Yeah, and you get to decide. It's fine. You know, either one is okay.

Yeah, you're. You're the decider.

Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's right. And it's okay to, you know, to let your.

Your.

Your two week window, you know, be a little flexible. I mean, you know, but you just keep that. That frivolous stuff out of the way by doing that.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Well, it's good. We've covered some good stuff. Sometimes the best shows, I think, are when things just kind of percolate up. And I think this has been a good one and enjoyed hanging out once again, always.

I'm glad you went to the NFL experience, because otherwise we wouldn't be here. I mean, like, here topic wise. Right? You know?

Yeah.

That's where it all steps. Yeah.

Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. And enjoy the big game, everybody. And. Because I think we have to get some sort of permission to say super something or other.

I don't know.

I remember when Colbert did it and he was calling it the superb owl because they didn't have. They didn't have permission. So he was. He's like, okay, you know, it was awesome. I love that guy.

That's great. Yeah, he's brilliant with that stuff.

That's awesome.

All right, folks, thanks again. Again. Feedbackus show co. We'd love to hear from you and those itunes reviews, really, some of you have been doing them and it's awesome. We'll read some next week. It's great stuff.

Cool. Take care, everybody.

See ya.