Helping, Not Helping

Business Brain, episode 537 for Wednesday, April 3rd. Don't go to work unless it's fun. Day 2024. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take a few you ideas, we dissect them, we analyze them, we crunch them together so that we each get to tune our Business Brains every single episode. Our sponsor for this episode is escapingemployment.com. that's where you can go to get on the wait list for Shannon's upcoming book. He'll tell you more about that in a little bit. For now here, back here in Durham, New Hampshire, after being in LA for podcast movement last week. I am Dave Hamilton and still out.

Here in Northern California. I'm Shannon Jean. How are you, man?

I'm good. Yeah. I am finished with my Q1 whirlwind of travel.

Oh, that's terrific.

Which is really good.

Yeah, that's good.

It all was really valuable. So. Well, sometimes you go to a conference and it's like these really everything that I did this quarter, all the travel was super, super valuable, super productive, which I feel good about. That's. That's. I get to control some of that, and the rest of it is left up to other people, you know, as to whether they're going to make things valuable for me. Then the part that's up to me is choosing and navigating how to approach these things. But there has to be value there to begin with. And everything that I did beat my expectations, which.

That's awesome.

But. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's fuel to get through it. Yep.

Always. Always good. There's a. There's a system to make it productive.

There is a system show. Yes, but. Yeah, but. But there needs to be a little bit of there there that you can sort of mine into a bigger thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

You can't just show up. You got to have a plan.

Oh, my gosh.

To make it work.

Yes. And maybe that's part of it. I think that's a big part.

I think so. But, hey, I wanted to. Before we get into our. The meat of our topic today, I wanted to introduce this little intro here that I found with a guy who I like on X and his name, first name is Etienne. I don't know if I can pronounce his last name. Do. I'm gonna post it here in the chat.

Okay.

But Duchesne, I think is his name probably Etienne Duchenne? Yeah, Etienne Duchenne.

Sure.

And so he. He posted a comment about not sending quotes this Guy's a remote. He owns a company doing remote work for all kinds of people all over the place. I think it's worldwide. But not sending bids out in quotes just by email. Oh, and scheduling it with, he says here, not sending quotes by email and presenting them on. Zoom has been the key to increasing our closing rate from 28% to 40%.

Wow.

Yeah. And, and we'll link this in the, in the show notes at Business Businessbrain show. But a couple of highlights and, and one that, that the main reason that really made me want to talk about this is, you know, you get the small talk, you get to make a connection with person. You get to look at them and you can read their, their reactions. You know, sure. You can kind of, you can use pacing and leading, which is a persuasion technique that if you don't know what that is, look it up.

Yep.

And you could, you know, you could address objections or answer questions as you're lead doing a presentation. You can, you know, you can have a PowerPoint that you're kind of walking through with just some minimal stuff on it to lead them down the road and see how things work.

Absolutely.

The real power and why I liked. I called this the kill shot when I reposted this is when someone comes in and says, oh, wow, that price isn't going to work. You know, that's my budget. You know, I don't have that in the budget. And Etienne's, you know, comment is, oh, perfect. I understand that that's higher than what your budget allows. And here's the, here's the cream right here. What would have been the price at which you could have immediately accepted.

Yes.

So you want to, you, maybe you still don't get the, you know, the work, but you, you, they're going to help guide you. And you can have, you know, if you're close, you can adjust and say, okay, well, I tell you what, we can handle it this way. If we don't do this or if we did this, you still have options versus sending a quote and email and then getting an email back that says, sorry, that number doesn't work for us. Then trying to get them on the phone to talk with you to talk through.

Yeah, no, this makes sense. And I think there's a lot to unpack here. The first thing that I want to shine another light on is that phrase. You know me, I'm all about the magic phrases. And I actually have, since I think the first business that I started, a magic phrases list was computer nerds. And so that would have been in 1995. Because we realized you say something to a customer or a vendor or a staff member, whatever, and you realize, oh, man, I've tried to communicate that to another. Human language is just a way of taking the thought that's in one brain and putting it in another. Right. That's. And it fails more often than it succeeds. Right. You know, you build 60% of the thought in the other person's brain, but, you know, to get 100% is rare. And. And so to me, that's what the magic phrases are. And this magic phrase, what would have been the price at which you could have immediately accepted it? It's not. What is the price that would get you to immediately accept now? Because that's loaded. Because then they have to commit like they're pre committing. If they say, oh, it's $2,000, and you say, great, I'll do it for 2,000. That's what car dealers do. Right. They get you to commit to a price, then they say they'll go back.

And you held your value. You're giving the bid based on what, you know.

Yep.

This is the quote. I know.

You're also not forcing the customer to commit to anything, even though they are. Right. This is this soft sell. What would have been and at which you could have. And so this is all what would have potentially have been in the past. And so it's a much softer landing for them.

Yes.

And then once they give you that number, $2,000, you say, well, how about if I Do this for $2,000?

Yeah.

And now they've. They've pre. Committed in their own mind without actually committing.

Yeah. You don't have to worry about getting it back on the phone.

Right.

You know, maybe you meet in the middle, if that works for you and your business. You know, you haven't gone in and just, you know, met their price or whatever they want. There's so many good things about it. I just, I love the concept and, you know, go up and read this thing. It's like a masterclass in how to present a quote or a bid.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. So you were going to record your ad read for escaping employment. Do you want to just tell us about it live here on the show?

Sure. I mean, the escaping employment.

We can edit this part out if you don't. If you don't want to. Sure, yeah. Yeah.

Escaping employment is basically the story of my life.

All right.

And. And the lessons I learned by, you know, never working for anybody, or as I should say, not Having one boss, having thousands of bosses, which is just a better framework and a better way for me to succeed. And I just break that down into what worked for me, what lessons I learned, what didn't work, and try to capture people at different st of their life. There's a section that says, hey, if you're just starting out and you're young, this is a great route you can go your risk, you know, how, how much risk you want to take is different if you're, you know, already working for someone and doing something else. Here's some topics you can take. And this concept of, you know, breaking the chains of working for someone else, that. That's kind of what. What I did. And my goal is, you know, or this ideal customer profile is either an aspirational new business owner or someone that's working, you know, a W2 employee that's just thinking about, wow, I really would love to go out, but I don't know. I need a roadmap. And this book can help you get there.

Amazing folks. Go to escapingemployment.com and you can sign up and you'll not only be able to pre order the book when it comes available, but you will get to follow Shannon's journey in creating the book.

And you get a free chapter when you sign up and get on the wait list. And yeah, amazing. All good.

Amazing. I had an interesting experience this week. I know a lot of my stories start that way. This was with one of my kids. They found themselves not in a dire scenario, but in an unpleasant scenario financially where they realized, okay, I gotta pay my taxes and that. And I misunderstimated how much I thought I was gonna have to pay. And so.

Been there.

Yep. Same. Right. And so they said, and I'm like, well, do you have the money or do you need to like, figure that out? They're like, no, I have the money, but it means I can't if I'm responsible about this. And I don't want to like, sink myself deeper into say, you know, bad debt, like credit card debt. It means that I got to cancel this trip that I was going to take next month or two months or whatever. And I was like, okay. And that. And this was not a happy moment. Right. As you, as you might imagine.

Yeah. And especially for a young person, that.

Correct.

Is getting their head around this kind of stuff.

Yes, exactly. A 20 something human. Yeah. And we've all been there. Or if we haven't, you will be. Trust me. And you know, my, my dad instinct was why? You just write a check and solve this problem for you, you know? But I knew that that would actually not help. And my. My child also knew that that wouldn't help. They didn't even. They weren't asking for that. They weren't even beating around the bush for that, you know, that it was.

Great or good for them. Yeah.

Yes. Right. Which I considered, like, great. You know, it's the right thing. And they were like, nope, I need to make some changes. I need to figure out how to earn more. I know that I have time that I can leverage to do that, and I need to go and actually apply myself in that time. I'm not where I want to be at this point. Et cetera, et cetera. Right. And it was like. And they said, I want to feel like I'm proud of myself. And right now I feel the opposite of that. And I said, well, powerful statement right there. That is a powerful statement. And I said, I know exactly how. I don't know exactly. I have felt similarly, but I'm proud because I, like, proud's the wrong word. I'm actually excited because I know that those moments where you have to. You are faced with two options, and you have to choose, and one of them is a much harder pill to swallow in the short term than the other, and you choose the difficult one, like, that is a fundamental thing that will potentially pay dividends for the rest of your life. That feeling in, you know, it's like, remember this feeling. And. And I don't even have to say it, because when we're in those scenarios, we definitely are going to remember this feeling. It's painful.

It.

It's. It's unpleasant, and you don't want to ever be there again. And that desire to never be in that position again, you know, I was talking. How do I put that chip on my shoulder Several weeks ago. What a way to put the chip on your shoulder. Right. And that can fuel you for a very, very long time. And so I was like, oh, man, this is great. Like, they're. And they're already doing fine. It's not like they're destitute or like, things are. Things are going well. It's just not as well as they would like to lead the life that they want to lead. It's like, sure, amazing.

It's a good lesson, in a sense.

Great. Yeah.

Just your kids, but also even, like, your people that work employees and. You know, I used to joke around, and it's kind of not a joke. It's often true. Managers Most of their solutions involve hiring more people because that solves an immediate problem. Hey, we can't get this work done or our quality dropped or we're not getting the calls back. And so, you know, I can remember saying, okay, great, let's say we can't afford to hire another employee. What are the other solutions? Where are we either going to cut something out or improve a process or. It's much more difficult.

Way more difficult.

And it's. You don't get that instant gratification from taking a trip or bringing in another.

Another employee.

Take off. Yeah. Then you're like, okay, well, there's another expense that we've got to cover. And it's like. It's just like going to, you know, credit card debt. Some employees are bad debt.

Some employees are bad debt. Yeah. Yeah.

And so that is a. It's a hard lesson. But the fact that they're thinking along those lines and you, you know, help.

Them just by really just coaching.

Yeah. Trying to figure it out. It is real. It's, you know, good for them and.

Letting them know it's okay, you know, and letting all of us know, you, us, like, it's okay to not always be in the best position. Like. Yeah. It's because it's gonna happen. And so when you find yourself there all the time.

All the time.

Right.

Yeah. The choices that you make that are gonna have repercussions because let's face it, it's not one or two decisions that we make that make us successful. It's thousands and thousands of decisions that you make every single day that, you know, should I go here? Should I spend this money? Should I hire this person? Do I buy this new piece of equipment? Do we rent this bigger, you know, location that we need? How we handle, you know, those situations, they have repercussions for years down the road.

For years. Yeah. I was reminded, in going through this with them, I was reminded of your story about how, you know, in one afternoon, essentially, you made a decision that cost you a million dollars.

It did.

And. And in that moment, in. In. In that moment, you said, this won't define me. Of course, we've unpacked that over the years on this show. And of course, it. In a sense, it is part of what defines you because it helped fuel you to. In a positive way to succeed beyond.

That mistake and to be able to talk about it. It took me, you know, it took me five years to pay back the million dollars.

Right.

But well, beyond, it probably took me another five years to be able to talk about it and not have, you know, shame and psd.

Ptsd. Yeah.

I was totally ashamed of it.

Yes.

But I. I was. I was fueled and I had great support by my spouse and everything, so. And I. And I'm a story guy, so I knew I couldn't just go bankrupt. I had to pay it back. I made a mistake and bad decision and go. So at the time, like I said, I can talk about it in a calm manner. At the time, it was panic. But as I bought myself more time and went through it, I realized this is going to have. Yes. It can't be. My defining moment of failure. What it had to become was my defining moment of success. And how once I actually paid the money back, I was like, dude, I'm unstoppable now.

You have an extra 200k a year to spend. You already got this. Like, you've had to build the machine.

Yeah.

That was bigger than you needed it to be.

Correct. I had to grind all that much harder, and I kept doing that, and it paid off. And. And just the. The lessons that you learned about, you know, about yourself. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So I was very much reminded of you yesterday when. When I was sort of coaching them through this. I'm like, well, this is. And we've all had those moments. You don't necessarily need to lose or cost yourself a million dollars to find that fuel.

Don't do that.

Don't. Yeah. Don't. Certainly don't intentionally do that. And don't intentionally do any of this. You'll do it anyway. It'll happen anyway.

You know, some people spend their life building wealth, and other people spend their life building debt.

Yeah.

And to make it look like they have wealth. And you, if you can understand that and. And give up that quick gratification that all of us as humans want. I want it just as much as. Oh, but yes.

It's, you know, it's more fundamental to our nature.

Yes. Yes. So if you can. Like, I just used an approach that I wanted all these things. How do I get a company, build a business that could kick back that revenue so you could have those things.

I have built. A big part of my fuel is delayed, instant gratification. Like, I know that in this moment where, you know, wherever I was at any point, like, I couldn't just go out and buy a new drum set if I wanted it or buy a new computer if I wanted it. Okay. I want to solve that so that I get to a point where I can do that. And there's value in this delayed instant gratification.

And the more you go through it, I would say oftentimes when you get to that point where you can make the decision.

You don't.

You don't. Of course not, because you've thought about.

It because you've already been there.

And I would say one of the things, one of the tricks we've used in building wealth is that to get the money or the appearance of money away from us at arms length. So if we had some thing happen, we sold a company or we did some significant, you know, revenue event. Yeah, we, we, we would invest that, those funds so that our bank account per se didn't change much. It didn't look any different because I don't know about you, but when I look in there and I'm like, oh, wow, I could get a new truck. Versus okay, it's just another day. We're pushing out. You know, we're, we're, we're saving doing these things. Or we bought another piece of property and invested all, all this there. That worked really well for us. Instead of having it just right in front because I'm, you know, I like.

Oh, if it's right in front, I'll spend it too.

I like to buy stuff too much.

Yeah, same. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know ourselves. Yeah. Yeah.

Awesome.

Thanks for hanging out with us, folks. If you have a story about delayed instant gratification or helping by not helping or how you were helped by not being helped, let us know. Feedback at BusinessBrain Show. The mailbag is overflowing. Shannon, we're gonna have to address this. We spent the first quarter not addressing the mailbag, and that's a mistake.

And I think we need another giveaway too. I think that's always like it, give something away.

Okay.

Figure out a piece of, piece of tech that we can talk. Start talking about next week.

Yeah. Delayed instant gratification for you, our listeners. Yeah. Thanks for hanging out with us again. Feedback, BusinessBrain show. I think that's what I said earlier. Make sure to go check out escapingemployment.com and do us a favor, keep living that charmed life. We'll see you on Friday.