How to keep your Small Business from joining the 50% of companies that fail within 5-years. Small Business Show episode 126

The Small business show episode 126 for Wednesday, July 5, 2017. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co the show by, for and about small business owners here in Durham, New Hampshire.

I'm Dave Hamilton and in the San Francisco Bay area, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you, man?

I'm good. I would say that I had a great fourth of July, but I frankly have no idea because folks were recording this one in a bit.

That's right. That's right. One thing I know for sure, I'm loving the new intro and outro music. I think it gets me a little jacked up before we start, which is really cool. And I've even had some people seen some folks commenting in the small business support group. So tell us what you think over at BusinessShow Co Facebook. That'll redirect you right over there. So we'd love to hear your comments, folks. That's the, the I heard a comment today called your return on energy that you put into a project. And I thought that was so great because, you know, and actually it was in the podcasting group that, you know, we're in on Facebook and talk all about podcasting and, you know, people struggle to make a living podcasting and, you know, get sponsors and all this kind of stuff. It's a long haul. Yeah, but we've talked about it before here on the show. You know, what you get out of it is very different than a monetary, you know, if you're not getting a monetary turn.

Well, even in addition to that. Right. I mean, it's. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And someone made the comment, oh, you know, your return on energy should really be focused more on your, your broader, you know, what you're doing for your business or your personal brand or this kind of thing. It's just one part of the way you can market yourself or your company, that kind of thing, which I thought, you know, it's great and I just love that Roe return on energy.

Yeah, it's nice. Yeah. Because there is, there is a lot. There's something to be said for that. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

For sure.

Wednesdays, I'm always. Go ahead.

Well, no, especially as a small business owner. I mean, it, you know, a lot of times, you know, you talk about return on investment. Well, as a small business owner, especially if you're starting something out, you might be your only investor, but you might not have a lot to invest. So it might be like when we started Mac observer, that was my grand sum total Invested in that business was five grand. Okay. Yeah. And it actually turned out to be less than that because the guy we bought the company from didn't own the domain Webintosh that.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

But anyway, I mean, it's fine, you know, but whatever. So I think we lowered the purchase price because. Why not? Yeah, yeah. So. So it wasn't a huge monetary investment, but it took a huge amount of energy or as is sometimes called, sweat equity. Right, that's right.

But.

But that's really what we're talking about here is, is there is. It's a very real thing, and it can be a very valuable thing and a very quantifiable thing. So. Yeah. You want to put that effort.

Yeah. Because if you can't find. I mean, I look at my life in a couple different ways. You could say I've always been chasing. I joke that I've always been chasing $100 bills, but actually I try to flip it and say they've been chasing me because I'm always looking for stuff that has a high return on my energy. I want to do things that I enjoy and can be passionate. And if you, you know, do that and you have something going on that you can drive yourself, not always money. I found that the money typically will follow you.

Yes.

It may take a long time, but eventually it. It. It can pay off, but you got to power through it.

Yeah.

You got to be able to, you know, tell yourself, oh, this is why I'm doing this, and this is what I get out of it. So.

Yep, bullheaded persistence. That's the key, man.

You got to grind it out.

You got to grind it out. That's sometimes. Yeah, man.

Yeah.

That's how it goes.

I always. I always talk about that in my k. You know, one of the things that we talk about success here a lot, we talk about failures and mistakes. But I found this, you know, I think, really interesting article up on small business trends.com an infographic they posted, you know, all about why small businesses fail. And they did a study or a study done this past year, and I thought we'd take a few minutes and talk about it. And, you know, I'd love to get your feedback, Dave, on some of these statistics, and if you agree with them, and I think it's cool.

Cool.

Be great.

Yeah.

Good.

Yeah. The. What was the. The big takeaway, or the title of the article was, was Half of All Small Businesses fail by Year five.

Yeah. That's brutal. That's brutal.

And sounds worse than the restaurant business.

Well, and what's interesting is they mentioned the restaurant business down towards the bottom as one of the most misunderstood. It said, you know, restaurants do not fail more than other businesses. But you seem to out here anyway. We seem to see them in and out all the time. And you think. But maybe just because they're more high profile.

Yeah, they're public. They have the only way that they can bring customers in. I mean, they have to market generally to the public. Right. It's not like, oh, it can go to a segment of the public that you and I might not be aware of because we're not the target. Well, that's right. All eat. So we're all aware of restaurant failures. That's interesting.

Yeah, it is. And one of the things I really thought was timely is it last week or, you know, when we did the last show and the small business show, we had Chase and TJ on from GoPro VR or, you know, Govred, and they're talking all about VR and we were talking about what was a mistake or things, and they made the comment, you know, don't make assumptions that your customers are going to like your product. And here on this infographic, you know, they come out, 42% of small businesses fail because there's no market for their product or service.

That's just 42%.

Yeah.

Like, I've screwed some things up over the years, but I really don't think I've ever tried to sell something that people weren't interested in buying.

Well, not for long, no. Well, that's right. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. And even like these guys we just had on, they were talking about how they started in one direction but quickly pivoted into doing something different. And it seems to me that you could probably rephrase that. If 42% of small businesses fail because they didn't adapt their service or their product to what their customers wanted.

If you're not adapting, you're failing. Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Even if adapting means, okay, I'm aware of everything that's going on. And our change today is that we're not making a change. Right. Like we're going to do the same thing. Because that worked. I consider that, you know, it has to be. What do they say for. I hate to conflate these two things together, but there's a phrase that they use for men with prostate cancer now that. Well, no. A treatment that they use that they call active surveillance. Now, I don't know the difference between active and passive surveillance, but it's essentially, we're not going to treat you, but we're gonna really watch to make sure that we are routinely deciding not to treat you. And that's sort of the thing you have to do with your business. Even if the assumption is, yeah, it's all going to work well, okay, that's great. I mean, it means you've, you know, made the right choices throughout the path, but keep going with that, like keep looking and making sure that you want to choose because every day you choose the path that your business is taking.

You got it.

And, and if you do that tacitly, that's fine, but you should be aware that you are making a choice every single day.

Yeah. And that adapting is, you know, quite possibly, I mean, one of the most critical things that you have to do and look at your results and you know, what is it the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result? Well, that's exactly right. If you are seeing things going a certain way in your business and it's not the way you want it to go, you better change. Or you, you just are not going to have the business so that analyzing things, even if you're not that great. Like I'm not that great at the analytics and the real deep data dive, but what I'm really good at is my gut instinct and looking at general results and knowing that, oh, you know what, that's not a good business for us to be in anymore.

Right.

And adjusting. And you know, my main company's always been in technology, but within that realm, we've done dozens and dozens of different things over the years. As one thing stopped generating revenue, we had to adapt and, you know, find something new. And 23 years later, we are still doing that same thing all the time.

So let me, let me ask you a question about that. You know, it's, it's, I'll say it's easier to adapt when it's just you versus you and a team of employees. I don't actually know that to be true, but. And that might not be correct.

Yeah, I'm not sure that is true.

No. But I will say that adapting an entire team is non trivial. So let's, let's just separate the two.

Okay.

How do you, how do you, like, what's, what's your strategy for, for those kinds of big changes? How do you bring those up to your team? How do you convince everybody that we're going to do this? Because telling them to do it and then actually getting Them to do it and commit to it are two different things.

I think it's, it's, there's two critical parts to it. It's giving your employees or team members, however you're looking at partners, autonomy to where they never feel like they're just doing what you're telling them to do. You're empowering them. Look, this is our business. This is the work that has to get done. Go ahead, you're hired because you have certain skills. Do it. I don't want to come check. That's one part. But the other part is that from day one, it's building this culture that is always looking at new things. And with technology, you know, we've kind of forced into it. Right. You know, something becomes obsolete and. But we always talk about it. So, you know, we used to have a huge business in repairing, you know, titanium hinges on power books. I mean, it sounds kind of funny, but we did millions of dollars in hinge repairs. Thank you, Apple. Sure. And, but we always knew from, you know, the get go, okay, we have to now ride this as long as we can. We want to do the tooling and build our own hinge. That's much. You know, the hinge that Apple was using was made of pot metal and it just broke all the time. And so we built our own. It's like, okay, partner with another company and put together. But, you know, 18 months into it, you know, they're going to discontinue that laptop or build a new version that has that thing. So at some point you're already talking about changing. What's the next thing? Oh, can we do this? What else can we fix? What else is this? And so in our case, we were kind of forced to do it. And I think that your comment earlier, having your team always thinking like that actually helps you make those changes and observations that maybe you would miss if you were all by yourself. You know, if you were by yourself.

Right? Oh, no, that's true. Having people see that. Well, yeah, you're talking about building a culture of change.

Yes, it is all about change. And I always make this comment, it sounds kind of cliche, but when we ever have our staff meetings, I'd say, hey, the only constant here is change. And we the. And I would just follow and say the businesses that are generating revenue for us today will not be generating revenue for us in 18 to 24 months. So we either need to be ready to adapt into new versions of this or find, you know, other ways that we're going to make revenue on this stuff. And so from the. From everybody from customer service person to a technician to the bookkeeper, we've just always done that out of necessity. I can't take credit for. No, no, no.

It's survival.

Yeah, it is survival. And I can take you back to where we used to sell. I mean, I used to count our revenue in the number of floppy drives that we sold. I'm really dating myself. But, you know, kids, ask your parents. That's right. And you know, that that was one of the best products ever because it. It got out of alignment and it had all these wonky Rube Goldberg moving parts inside, and it was fantastic. So we built a whole division out of floppy drives, alignment, repair, replacement, all that kind of stuff. But, you know, again, it's coming, you know, then the CD drive and the superdrive and all stuff. So getting that culture of change is, I think, is really critical for your success.

Yeah. Okay. So. All right. And now I'm going to shift into what I think is. Actually, it is another thing on the list, but I'm going to do it by asking a question. On the list. It's that 23% don't have the right team. So my question is. And that is not wrong. In fact, I'm surprised that that number is as low as it is. When you have this culture of change, there will be people that don't that might have great skills to do the things you need them to do and all of that stuff, and they come with the right pedigree and perh. Even perform well for a while. But when it comes time to change, they dig in their heels. Even, you know, I mean, it's often. I've seen this with people and we've had to let them go, but, you know, my, My. I guess my question for you is how do you. I. And I assume you deal with that? The same way by letting them go. Or do you think you have. You found ways to make people loosen up?

Yeah, it's. It's tough. You know, Steve Jobs, you know, he's famously said, you know, a players hire A players.

Yeah.

And. And players hire C players.

Yes.

And I always refer to that because, you know, I'd like to think I'm an A player, but, you know, a lot of times I'm a B player. And so knowing that, I think there are places on your team for 4C players if they can just. If they're reliable.

Yeah.

And they can just. We talked about earlier grinding it out if they show up, and there's just Work in front of them and they do the work. However, if they can't make that adaptation to the next thing, you can't keep them. And in our case, we've had it. A big one for us was the microelectronics moving from desktops that were giant and printers and even monitors that we worked on and refurbished and repaired to iPads and iPhones or first to laptops and then iPads and iPhones. And I mean, unfortunately, we just, we had some texts that just couldn't do it and came up like, I can't do it. My fingers are too small or too big or I can't do this. So in the beginning, I would say, okay, we got, we have enough business that we're gonna, we'll let you focus on this part of the business that you're comfortable with. But I would say when the time comes that there's not enough of that business left, you know, we're gonna have to make some. Have to make some decisions.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, it makes sense. It's just how it goes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, you know, I would say same with, you know, you. I mean, I would ask you that question with your guys out there selling, you know, ads and different things as things have shifted away from like display ads as much and moved into other areas. Have you had the same thing where, you know, some of them adapt well and some of them don't?

Absolutely, of course. I mean, and it's true not just of salespeople, but of writers that we've had at, at tmo. And I mean, it's the whole. It's anything. It's like, yeah, this business will not be the same. And, you know, 18 to 24 months is probably a little tight for, for our businesses. It's more like in five years, you know, we kind of, we kind of have five years cycles for. But that's the key, right, Is identifying what your cycles are and then being ready for them and hopefully being proactive about them. But yeah, we've definitely had to let salespeople go. We've had to let writers go. Because if you're not.

Yeah.

If you're not cutting it in today, I don't care. I mean, I do care that you were doing great things for us ten years ago. Right. And I appreciate that, but that's not a reason, like, I can't afford to keep you on board anymore.

Yeah. And I think the best piece of advice I would give, you know, business owner that's going through this kind of Thing is, you really just need to be transparent about it to the employee with plenty of lead time. If you start seeing the writing on the wall or your. Your whole talking about, hey, you know, we're not going to do this very much longer, and you have one person or two, you know, whatever, couple of people that are really focused on this part, and that's all they want to do. You have to make that, you know, make those comments to them. It's like, hey, guys, now's the time. What do you need to be trained? What do you need this. How do you need to. What tools do you need to become comfortable with this change that is coming so that they understand that it's not just. Just you as the business owner that is, hey, this is. I'm making this decision. No, the market is making this decision. And I'm trying to give you as much lead time. You know, so in our case, when we had these, some of these guys that could not make the transition from Mac technician to iOS, and I just kept telling them, okay, no problem, because we're loaded with Mac repairs, but when the iOS repairs start, start outpacing. This was years ago. Start outpacing the number of Macs that come in.

Yeah. Again, kids, ask your parents about a time when Macs were more popular than iPhones and ipods.

And so you would just tell them, hey, okay, but eventually, if there's not enough of that work, I have nothing for you to do. And then it just came down to that, where it's like, hey, call in, because if you can't fix tablets and phones, I don't have enough work. Because these guys can do both.

Right.

They can fix laptops.

Oh, yeah.

Tablets, phones, whatever. So, you know, it's more flexible. Yeah. And again, some guys, some. Some people, the technicians got with it, and others, others didn't. So, you know, and. And I think that, you know, one of the reasons why I want to start this podcast and you and I, you know, came up with this concept, was that, you know, 99.7% of all businesses in the US are small. You know, that's less than 100 employees, you know, almost 30 million, you know, businesses. But they're kind of, you know, not treated that great. I think by.

It's not sexy.

Yeah.

I mean, it is to us.

Sure.

Yeah.

Because we've made a living at it.

Right.

And done well. But, you know, it's not the startup Silicon Valley, you know, outside investor, possibly, you know, a lot of these folks, I would argue the majority months to.

Cash out kind of thing.

Yeah, no, it's a bootstrap mentality. It's, I'm going to make it work and I really respect that. And being able to talk about it and help people through that I think is really valuable and a great ROE. Looking at this, one of the things that really saddens me is looking at this infographic which we'll post up on the businessshow. Co is out of the five places, the worst places to run a business, not just start one, but just to run it. The five worst places, four of them are in California.

I know when I saw it, I'm like, was this California businesses? And then I realized, no. Allentown, Pennsylvania? Yeah, but that's, but that's a, that's the anomaly, right? And it's because, I mean, they, they say retail sector collapsed when big area employees left. Okay, that's this classic, you know, blue collar town. Big factories left, everybody else left with it. And who, whoever remained had a problem. Yeah. There's one thing about this chart that, you know, they list the. I don't know if they're the top five, but they list five reasons that businesses fail. And those reasons are in no particular order. They run out of cash, they don't have the right team, they're out competed, no market need for products or services, or they experience cash flow problems. Now what I hear from people who have businesses that have failed is that, oh yeah, we just couldn't make it work. We were out competed. What you never hear from people is we had cash flow problems. Now, 82% of the businesses that failed failed because, not because they were out competed, but because they experienced cash flow problems. And the businesses that failed because they were out competed, 19%. Every other reason on the list don't have the team ran out of cash, no market for the product or service, and you experience cash flow problems. All four of those, I feel like are under your control. That's not someone else doing it better than you. That's you not doing enough to actually just sustain the foundation of your business. And I, I know I'm, I'm sounding a little preachy here, but it, what this, to me, this is, this is actually empowering because it means I don't have to worry about that guy over there beating me. I need to worry about me beating me. And guess what? I can control me well.

And that's often what happens in the book we often cite here, rework. But the guys from 37 Signals, one of the big things. It's fantastic. One of their big takeaways in that book is don't worry about your competition. You're going to screw it up before they are, as this report would attest to. I firmly believe that is the case. If you're just focused on, sure, you have to be competitive, but focusing on what your competition is doing, I don't believe you need to focus on yourself and making your customer experience unbelievable. That is what is going to outlast anybody. The number one thing your competitors are going to do is try to beat you on price.

Let them.

Don't be the low price leader and make that part of your message. And don't answer answer questions solely based on price because the customer needs to be educated about why, you know, the lowest price is not the best way to go.

Yeah, it's true.

And the cash flow problems I really agree with. You know, it's cash is king. Profits are critically important, but cash is more important.

Oh, definitely, definitely.

If you run out of cash, you're done. I mean, you were just finished.

I've had businesses where I've looked back and, and you know, over 12 months, like there were maybe two months that were profitable or something. Right. But cash flow increased over those 12 months and guess what? The business survived and thrived.

That's right.

It's like, okay, because with cash flowing, you can sort of tweak things a little to eke out those profits and make it work the way you want it to work. But it, like if you have a profit margin of 50% but you only got 100 bucks coming through, well, you know, I mean, if that's all you need from your business, great. But you know that that's a place to start, but don't end there. Yeah, no, no, no.

And, and you, like you said, the, the, the P and L is this living, you know, the profit loss statement is this kind of, this living document. And you can go through and point at things each month that you'd be like, oh, there's a extraordinary expense that's not going to happen every month. We had to buy a new whatever, you know, forklift died.

Exactly.

Didn't make any money that month. But if you've got your cash flow coming in and you know, you're getting paid on time and have enough work, you'll make it through those things. But if the opposite happens and your, you know, your P and L looks fantastic, but you don't have any money to pay your bills, it doesn't matter.

You can't pay your bills with a P and L. Yeah. I mean, I guess some people can. They go to the bank and they get a loan, but banks are smarter than that nowadays, so.

Oh, yeah, banks usually don't want to loan you money when you need it. And there's a lot. There's a lot of secondary places you can go for cash nowadays. We've talked about some on the show, but you're going to pay for it. Talking about reasons they fail, this one statistic, 14% of small businesses fail because they ignore their customers. I would think that number is probably higher and could probably be combined with the 42% fail because there's no market or product, because they're not listening to their customers or communicating them and having a dialogue. Your customers definitely want to hear from you. They don't want to be sold to over and over and over. You got to use that 80, 20 rule. But that 80% of the time they just want to hear from you about what's going on. And either in your business or maybe even blend your personal life with it as well, or your team members. The guy's a small dog. Electronics, who have a ton of respect for. They always have a great newsletter. There are tens of thousands of people that subscribe and they do all kinds of stuff like costume things and Halloween and this and that. And those are great ways to connect with your customers and to build and to turn them into fans, I guess, is the best way to do it.

Yeah, yeah. Right. That's it. Yeah. Turning your customers into fans. Yeah. Yeah, man. It's crazy.

It is.

Yeah. Yep. Hey, so I had. Before we go here, I had an experience this week buying a car, and it's been one of the most bizarre things that I've gone through. It worked out. I couldn't possibly have planned it to work out this way, and I think that's why it did. But I think there's a lesson for us business owners to learn here. We have been. I'll try to make this long story as short as possible. We've been a three driver, two car household for the last 18 months, which has worked out fine because I don't really ever need to go anywhere. My office is across the driveway from the house. It's no big deal. And so for the most part, my daughter and I basically share a car. And, you know, with some minor hiccups here and there, it's been. It's really been truly fine. But we are about to become a four driver household. And so, yeah, there's just no way that that's going to cut it with two vehicles. And so I was like, okay, fine, let's go get a car. And so, you know, we, we had lots of choice because we don't need another SUV in the house. Even though we have a drummer, two drummers and a hockey player, we've got two SUVs. So it was like, great, we can get a four door car. We're all excited about getting a car. Of course that leaves way too many options open, but. Yeah, but we narrowed it down and came down to a couple models. But to cut to the chase, we basically decided that a Subaru legacy is what we wanted to get.

Oh, great.

All wheel drive, perfect. Yep. And we didn't want to buy something brand new. You know, we figured we'll get something a couple years old and we'll be fine. Sure. But in the process. So I knew that there was one at the Subaru dealer near me because my son and wife had kind of gone and looked at it. Even though they hadn't driven it. I knew there was one there. And it turned out there was one at the local Volvo dealer. It actually showed up while we were at the Volvo dealer. It was traded in while we were test driving a different car there and they knew we were going to go see the Subaru up the street. Street. And the guy said, you're not going to believe this, but this car was literally just dropped off as a trade in. We haven't even cleaned it. We haven't done anything to it. Here's the. But it's clean. I mean, it's fine. They're like, here, go drive it. You know, we'll test drive it when you come back. I think we'll have a price and we'll figure it out. So we drove it. We were like, yeah, this is the type of car we want. Great, Cool. Yep. And so we'll call it the Volvo car and the Subaru car even though they're both the same exact model of car. Because I wound up pitting these two companies against each other without ever realizing it. Oh, yeah. I just wanted to do this deal quick. I've got a lot going on. I didn't want to mess with driving people crazy and driving myself crazy negotiating, even though normally I really enjoy that process with buying. So we got back from the test drive. We're like, yep, this car is great. It had 35,000 miles on it. They said, okay, we'll do it for you for 21,500. And I said, yep, that price is fine. Fine, great, let's do it. And they said, okay, well, you know, but we don't really sure. I might be able to do better on the price. We've got to run it through the shop, you know, because it just came in. We've got to kind of recon it and all that stuff and, you know, change the oil and make sure everything's good.

Okay.

And this was Saturday that it had come in. And so they said, so we're not going to be able to really have a figure for you until Monday. I thought, okay, that's weird. Yeah, that's weird. Like, I'm ready. Like, I said, I was going to sell it, man. Right, exactly. So they said, do you want to leave it deposited deposit, it's fully refundable. And I said, sure. That gives me right of first refusal that no problem. Easy.

Sure.

Yeah. So I left him a deposit, and then we went up the street to the Subaru dealer. And the Subaru dealer's car was basically almost exactly the same car, same year, had 10,000 more miles on it, which doesn't really bother me either way. And had a dark interior. The Volvo car had a light interior, and so we prefer light interior. It's just how we've learned over the years. But it's not a deal killer, you know? Yeah, but the. The subaru people wanted $1,000 less. They wanted 20,500 for it. And I thought, you know, with 10,000 more miles and the wrong color, we'll just go with this one over here. It's a grand. It's not going to make a difference in a couple of years. Fine. And so the guy said, you know, he was a really green salesman and. And made a couple of really terrible mistakes, like turning his back to my wife and daughter and only talking to my son and I when he had the open. That's terrible. Yeah, Yeah. Y. You know, I mean, yeah.

Young guy.

Young guy. Yep. I mean, a horrible mistake. But. But, you know, it was. It was. Yeah. Anyway, so he made a bunch of those types of mistakes, but still, they had this car there that was cheaper than the one up the street. And. And he said, you know, he said to me, you know, would you, you know, what would it take to do this today?

Yeah.

And I said, well, I really want to find out what the price is going to be on this one that Volvo has. So I can't know until Monday. And he. He said, okay, well, I guess call me Monday. And, like, that seemed weird. Like, wouldn't he want to. Like, here's a guy that said he's going to buy a car exactly like this. Yeah, there is a price that will get him to buy my car. Yes, yes, there always is. But he let me go. In fact, I had to ask him for his card. He didn't even give me his card, but he had taken my phone number, which was great. Sure. So Monday comes, and the Volvo dealer calls me back and says, okay, yeah, the price is 21,005. And I said, I just asked him, I said, can you move on that? They said, no. I said, fine, I'll come get it today. Well, it's not going to be ready today. It's going to be ready tomorrow. Sure. It's taking you guys a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, fine. I'll come get it tomorrow. And so we scheduled an appointment, whatever. And. And then the. The Subaru guy called me back and said, you know, did you hear from the Volvo dealer? I said, yeah. I said, you know, we're going to go with it. He says, you know, is there a price that we would. That we're really eager to move this car? It's the end of the month. We're hitting. We're close to hitting our numbers. This car, you know, it's got to go. And he said, so is there a price? And I said, well, you know, yes. I said, I'm sure there is, but, you know, if you're asking me to offer one up, I don't want to be insulting. I'm not here to play games with you, but you'd have to knock two grand off. We're going to have to be at $18,500.

Yeah.

And that's a pretty. I mean, that's 10% of the value.

Yeah, it's a big chunk.

Yep. And he said, huh, okay, well, you know, let me check with my manager. Called me back five minutes later. He says, we'll do 19 out the door. No fees, no nothing. All baked in.

That's really good.

I thought, okay. So I said, yeah, all right, I'll call you. You know, I'll be there in the morning. So I called the Volvo dealer and said, hey, look, I really wasn't intending to play this game, but here I am in the middle. Like I. Like the one time I choose not to be, you know, Dave the hard negotiator, I find myself in the best negotiating position I've ever been in in my life.

They should have sold you the car Friday.

Whatever day I was there.

They blew it, whatever it was.

Yep. Because we were happy with it. We were happy with the price. And we would have driven it off the lot and been happy. Yep.

Yeah.

But so, you know, they said, all right, let me check with the manager. And they came back. They're like, we can drop the price $300.

Oh.

I'm like, dude, no. Yeah. And they were pissed. They're like, wait, you're not going to buy it? I'm like, there's a $3,000 difference between these two vehicles that are essentially the same. Yeah, there's 10,000 miles difference, but everything I know about Subarus, they all run to 200,000 miles anyway. Or more.

That's right.

So I don't really think this matters.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's.

That's great.

So I don't know what the lesson is from this story, but I guess the power. The power of being able to. Truly being willing to walk away is huge when negotiating.

And I think they weren't. They failed because they weren't listening to you. You wanted to buy the car. They could have said, okay, let's go ahead and get it all ready written up. We need it for a couple of days to get it clean, tested, smogged, whatever. You can pick it up on Tuesday or whatever the day was.

Yeah.

You know, it would have been a done deal and you wouldn't have gone and looked anywhere else. No, that's what they should have done, in my opinion.

Yeah. And they should have been. Yeah, I'd like why. He said, but I don't know. The price might get better on Monday. I bet we can make this. You guys sell cars on Saturdays. I bet we can make this decision here.

Yeah, that's crazy. If, you know, obviously they don't have a hardcore closer on the staff there.

No, not. Neither company did, to be perfectly honest with you.

Yeah. Yeah. So that was, you know, that it's definitely, definitely lacking. You know, if Ryan Stuman had been there, he would have been screaming at the guys, all of them.

Yes. Yeah. Here's a guy that clearly is buying a car. Like, there's no question. And both of them knew because they asked. They said, you know, is your credit good? And I told them both because. Because I have a.

Your credit is perfect.

My credit is right. My credit is 850. So I have to tell everyone that asks because it will change, and it will only change by going down. So I need to capitalize on this brief moment in time, you know, so anybody that asks, I tell them my credit's 850. Like, that should make you start drooling as a car salesman.

Yep, yep. Yep. That is so funny, man.

I know, man.

Man, that's classic.

Yeah. So we got this car for, you know, basically probably what we would have paid for if we bought it direct from a. You know, from. From person to person or whatever. I mean, that's basically the price that we wound up paying for it. And we get the lifetime powertrain warranty from the Subaru. Subaru dealer and all that stuff, which is great.

That's great.

Yeah, man.

That's awesome.

I know.

That's awesome.

Yeah. It's crazy, though.

Very cool. Yeah. Good story.

Yeah. Like I said.

Yeah, there is. I have a recent car story, too. That's poor customer service, but I'll save it until next time or the time after. Yeah, it's good. Cars are. Cars are like the last, you know, frontier of where you can get just treated like garbage.

Yeah. Yeah. It's true.

So bizarre. And lots of people have tried to disrupt it, but I don't. I'm not sure they've even done it even. This was even a supposedly flat rate. No negotiation needed, and I still got fried.

Of course you did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We should. We should have the discussion about. We should get somebody on that can really, like, go deep on the discussion of how to negotiate a car sale. Yeah. Because there's a lot of interesting things. There is. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool.

It's good stuff, man. Enjoy the rest of your week, folks. Come out and talk and spend some time with us at the Facebook small business support support group. Just go to businessshow, co forward slash Facebook. You get redirected. We'd love to have your feedback. Whether you love it or hate it or want to comment and help us make it better. Come talk with us and with all the other business owners up there. I think there's almost 400 people up there.

It's a big. It's. It's doing well. Yeah, there's good people.

That's great.

All right, folks. Keep living that charmed life. Have a good week. See ya.

See ya.