Listener Questions: Domains, Lawsuits and Selling Your Business – Small Business Show 195

The Small business show episode 195 for Wednesday, October 31st. Happy Halloween 2018. Greetings, folks and welcome to the small business show here at businessshow Co. The show by force and about small business. Sponsors for this episode include Square's new payroll app@square.com go SBS and a new one for us here, LinkedIn jobs@LinkedIn.com SBS where you can get 50 bucks off towards your first job post. We'll talk more about both of those here in a moment. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And out on the west coast, I'm Shannon Jean. How you doing?

I'm good. Happy Halloween, Shannon.

How you doing? Yeah, yeah, I'm doing good. Halloween a big deal for you guys out there.

Yeah, kind of is. I, you know, I'm a musician too. Right.

Ah.

And so tonight on Halloween night, we do this madhouse thing. I mean we, we do it all year long, but Halloween is sort of our national holiday with madhouse. It all sort of comes together with that. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a crazy. There's a parade in Portsmouth, New Hampshire that is not officially sanctioned, although it very much is, you know, a part of the culture of the town. And it's just people that put this whole thing together and it's a bunch of volunte. And it's crazy. It's huge, this Halloween parade. Really huge.

I love it.

Yeah. Totally irreverent. Not kid friendly. Yeah, I know. Yeah.

Kids are grown.

Right? Right, right. Yeah, exactly.

That's cool. I love, you know, we love Halloween out here. Any chance to dress up. We had a big Halloween party this past weekend. We went to and had a great time. Fun. Just, you know, get, get you out of your comfort level, pull you, you know, do different things. And I, I think it's fantastic.

It is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's very cool. So, hey, what are we doing today? We're going to talk about listener questions.

We got a bunch of questions.

One of those times it is.

Yeah, we got some questions and I have some tips to share too. So it's a tips and questions episode.

That's great. If you have questions for a future show. Feedbackusinessshow.co we would love to take a shot at answering your questions. It'd be great.

Yeah, for sure. All right, so Louie sent this in to feedbackusinessshow.co and he says, I have a business related question about my own domain name and email that goes with it. I want to try to start selling pictures online and I Read that it would be more serious or seen as being more serious if I had my own domain name instead of using, you know, contact louithephotographermail.com or whatever says. My plan is as follows. I will register my domain name. I will sign up on SmugMug and create my website using their services to sell pictures. When you do that, they give you essentially your name.smugmug.com says then I want to redirect all my traffic from my domain to, you know, mydomain.smugmug.com and then I want to set up email using, you know, usersydomain.com says so I have a few questions. Number one, where do you suggest I register a domain? Number two, should I settle for anything other than a dot com? How easy is it to do this redirect from mydomain.com or whatever to my smugmug URL and how do I set up email with my domain.com address?

So good questions.

It really is and it shows you're thinking about all the right things. Louis. So great and thanks for sending this in. And for those of you that cross listen and also listen to macgeek Gab and a different podcast I do. We also answered this question over there because it really does sort of fit in both realms and, and there's some benefit of that answer that I will share with this audience too.

So yeah, and we're going to put a little bit. I have some business spin that we're going to add to it as well.

Yeah, good, good. So in terms of the domain, it, it does and doesn't matter where you register the domain. Once you've registered a domain, it's registered everywhere so you don't have to worry about where you choose to do it. I have been using GoDaddy for a very long time and they've done well for me. I know some people hate them and so if you choose not to use them, that's also fine. What I like about them and it's worth checking out to make sure that whatever registrar you use will do this. I know a lot of folks like Namecheap as well these days. I, you know, GoDaddy answers a lot of the other questions that you already have. So once I, if you register a domain with GoDaddy, the redirect from yourdomain.com to whatever other website you want to do is just easy and automatic included in your domain when you register there. So that's a super easy thing. Email forwarding is also included over there. Usually not. Most of the time I had like one domain that didn't have it and I had to pay a dollar a year or something to add it. But otherwise it seems to be included with every domain that I have. But, but this is just forwarding, so you have to have an email address somewhere else, like your Gmail address, and then you can forward mail from your, you know, it's sent to your domain over to whatever your other email is. It does get a little tricky sending email out from your domain if you don't actually have an account there, if it's just forwarding. So you may want to also pay your registrar to host your email and most of them will do that. So that, and that gets a little tricky. So you may just want to have your registrar, you may want to pay them a little extra and have them host your domain, your email account, in its entirety so that you can both receive and send email.

Yeah, I think it's a good idea.

Yeah, it just makes life a little easier. So, so that gets, that gets a couple of your questions answered. One of the. Well, go ahead. I want to come back to the dot com thing, but if you've got stuff to add.

Yeah, I have a question. Well, I have a question and you may have talked about this technical part of it, but, you know, I'm a real, I'm always very sensitive of keeping people on my website for one business or another. And I understand Smug Mug is the way to go or seems to be in the photography business and all things. I think another option to look at is if you, you know, create your, your website or register a site that can use WordPress, which is, you know, one of the most popular. We use it, Yep, we use it and I use it for a bunch of stuff. And it's hugely popular and tremendously versatile program to run your website. You know, there's a ton of SmugMug plugins that would allow you to effectively host your, those smugmug images and everything on your website so you don't have.

To forward people to SmugMug. You host your own website and then using a WordPress plugin, you're slurping your content from SmugMug to show on your website and that way people never leave your domain. I, I like this. I like this a lot.

Yeah. Now, Louis, you know, it may take a little bit more technically technical, you know, work to get this done and if you're not familiar with WordPress or whatever, but there's some great, like, I use a host provider called Bluehost.com. and they have very, you know, good packages that are inexpensive for WordPress. They do domain registry. They'll walk you through the whole thing to where you just like, okay, I want this domain name. I want to do WordPress. They'll do the install for you. I want this kind of stuff. There's a lot of options, but I like in order to again, keep more control. Because then you can have a blog where you can write maybe some news articles and that's really good for the search engines and you have content and people can come up and leave comments.

I love this.

So it would be another level. And maybe you're not ready to do that yet, but it's certainly something to think about, if not now, then in the future.

No, you're right. Because if people get redirected, I mean, it's great to be able to have your domain on your business cards, right? Yeah, but, but if people get redirected to SmugMug, if in the future you ever set up your own domain, they may have your SmugMug page bookmarked and now they're just going to go there. They're not necessarily going to come back around. So.

And when they tell people, oh, this guy's photograph, there's great. Oh, just go to SmugMug and search for. And that may be fine, you know, if that's what you want.

Totally.

But I'm, I'm kind of a control freak and I like to, I want to control the whole experience that the customer has. I want them to be able to learn more about me quickly. And if, and if you're going to run a website anyway and just redirect it, you might as well try, you know, well, think about WordPress and then it gives you just the upside to it, you know, as you move forward and get a little bit more sophisticated over time. Is tremendous.

Yeah, it's tremendous. I agree. You know, hosting your own, you want to control your own destiny. And there's something to be said for this. Yeah, yeah, it's harder.

It's harder at the beginning, no doubt about it.

Or more expensive. I mean, you can hire someone to do this stuff.

Yeah, yeah, you can certainly hire somebody. And in that case, you know, you may want to go to fiverr.com or Upwork is another place that you can hire a consultant to help you set these, your WordPress site up.

And you know, guru.com has some good stuff too. Yep.

Awesome. So let's talk about the dot com thing. You know, our, our website is businessshow co. Yeah.

So it's interesting and I will share kind of how the conversation went on macgeek because my thought was it depends on who and I still feel this way. It depends on who your audience is. Right. If you're like, you know, we do a podcast here. I realize that lots of people know what podcasts are, but the reality is if you are listening to any podcasts, you have increased your level of technical acumen at some level. Right? So like I know that when you listen to us, you know that business show co is not businessshow.com at least I hope you do. And I think it's a reasonable expectation that that sort of fits. But if you're going to weddings, you know, it's I. This is going to sound terribly generalized but you know, it doesn't need to pass the, the non technological grandm. I don't want to just say the grandmother test because there's a lots of really high tech grandmothers out there these days and but you know, you want to get someone that was not raised on technology, is not interested in technology, knows they have to deal with technology and you want them as a customer if that's someone that you are targeting, which in a photography business you might be. I don't know. Right. I don't know who your, your clientele is. But if it's those people that, that aren't steeped in technology, whatever you say to them, they're going to hear dot com. And so in that sense, yes, dot com is important, but only in that sense. Otherwise it, no, it doesn't matter. And as we had this conversation over on on Mac Geek Gab, my co host, John Braun, John F. Braun as he likes to be called, said well, what about getting a dot photo domain? It was like oh yeah, duh, right. I forget. And this is, this is my own. You know, when I started registering domains 20 years ago, there was no dot photo domain. So I don't think about that as a real good option. But it's a great option if you want to be, you know, Louis photos. Now my guess is that's already taken, but you can come up with something creative that works and represents your business and your brand. And if you can do dot photos and brand that on your business card and in your literature in a way that works really well. Well then that works really well. There's nothing wrong with. Yeah.

So yeah, yeah, I think they're great. And I also would would consider, you know, if you're a photographer and you're local, you know, is thinking about some localized keywords that you might, you know, include in that domain.

Yes.

Because that'll really help your search. So if you're in, you know, Louisville, Kentucky, and that is the really the places that you search, maybe it's, you know, as a good name. Because her name is Louis. Yeah.

He's in Montreal, by the way. But that's Montreal.

So, you know, it's Montreal photography, boom, Whatever. Because when people are searching for those, for photographers, they're going to find, you know, I'm looking for a local photographer to come out to my wedding, my kids, whatever. Having that in your domain can be very helpful.

Yeah, very helpful.

You know, we've done SE shows about search engine optimization here. I'm sure you know a lot, Louis, about, you know, you know, your Yelp reviews and all that kind of stuff, how that helps you so much. And that would be another thing to feature on your site, all those great reviews that people, you know are leaving for you.

Yeah, cool. Yeah, cool.

Awesome.

All right, thanks, Lou. That's good. While we're in the geek realm here, I'm going to stay here for a minute, Shannon, if you don't mind, I have a couple of tips. So I recently started kind of messing around with alternative operating systems and alternative software. And one of the first things that I was led to is something I've known about for a long time, and now I've started using it. I canceled my subscription to Microsoft Office and now I use. Right. And now I use something called LibreOffice. Now I don't use Office every day. I'm a Mac user. I have pages and numbers. Right. And they come free with macOS, and they're great pieces of software. But I have to work with, you know, people that use all kinds of different computers. So I definitely need to be able to not only open, but manipulate and save Word and Excel documents in particular, and sometimes PowerPoint. Right. LibreOffice is a free Office. I guess calling it a clone is probably the right way to describe it. Although they would probably say no, no, no. You know, they get all hand wavy about the way to describe it. It's an open source project. It is Microsoft Office. It's. It was written, you know, kind of. It came from the Linux community, but. And there's lots of these. It's open Office, I think, at its core. So people have developed this thing that is feature compatible, File format compatible 100% with Microsoft Office, but it is open source. And then there are different flavors of this. And the one that really feels the most Comfortable on a Mac and also on a Windows machine is LibreOffice L I B R E Office. It's really fantastic. I started using it, I don't know, maybe a month ago. And for my purposes, it has served 100%. Like, I just don't care that I'm not launching Excel or Word. I'm just, you know, using this and it can save things back. You know, you can set it by default to save things in the Excel and Word formats. So it's just like when you open it in Excel or Word, you make your changes. You know, if you're doing track changes in Word or whatever, you do that, fine, save, send the document back to somebody else. There's no translation to do because you're actually running a thing that, that speaks Office natively. And it really is awesome. And it, and it's free. Right. So depending, there are certainly going to be scenarios where in your business it makes sense to buy or pay for a subscription to Microsoft Office. But for so many of us, I don't think that's the case. And I think you can save some money going with LibreOffice like I've done here.

So that's awesome.

I just wanted to share that.

Yeah, yeah, that's a big deal.

It is a big deal. Have you ever used any of these? Open Office we used to use before.

They, you know, Office went to this, you know, 100 bucks a year, five years or whatever. We used to use this all the time and it worked great. But as you mentioned, the interoperability is the, is the issue.

Absolutely.

None of them have. Well, I shouldn't say this, but, you know, a true round trip, like, I want to open Excel, I want to edit it in Open Office or LibreOffice and I want to save it as Excel and, and then send it back. And there's always a little step in, like, I love numbers. I think it's fantastic on the Mac.

Yeah. But you have to do a little step in there to get that.

Right. Do that, export, export this and that.

Translating to numbers and then back to Excel. So you're losing something in there. When you do it with, when I do it with numbers, there's always like it, you know, the formatting gets all effed up or whatever. And, and with LibreOffice, that doesn't happen because there is no, there's no translation. You are just opening an Office document, you are working with it and you save it. Yeah. So the round trip is, is just like it is with Excel or, or Word or, you know, whatever yeah, that's cool. Yeah, no, it's great. Yeah. 90% of the time I just have all my spreadsheets. Like my spreadsheets are in numbers because I. That's just right there and it's fine. But if, you know, I'm working, you know, we work a lot with ad agencies and we get proposals going back and forth and it might go back and forth five times in the course of an afternoon. I can't be translating that back and forth to numbers. That's when I need Excel. And I certainly can't ask this ad agency that's spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oh, hey, do you mind? You know, like that's, I'm not even going to ask the question. Right. They've chosen Excel. I'm fine with it, you know, it's how it works, but I just don't need it. LibreOffice has been fine. No one has said anything about, you know, oh, this file won't open. So, yeah, no, it's great.

That's cool.

Yeah, it's very cool. Yep, it's good.

Very nice.

Along those same lines, I wound up. It's a long story, but I've got this relatively old, I don't know, it's actually not that old. Maybe four years, maybe three year old Dell laptop. And I got it because we were testing some things that you couldn't test on a Mac or whatever. And I had an issue with Windows on it. And it was, I was going to need to wipe the thing clean. But then as it turned out, actually, I won't get into the gory details. I actually couldn't wipe this thing clean. Like the, the boot sector of Windows got so bad that I was going to need to format this drive without using Windows. Like I couldn't even boot to the Windows recovery USB stick. It was that bad. And I thought, well, I got to be able to, like, how do I boot this machine? Like, this is insane. I want to wipe it clean. But even Windows on a USB stick won't boot because it sees, you know, the other remnants of Windows on the drive and then it gets into this loop where it just, you know, gets stuck in a circle. So I downloaded a copy of Ubuntu Linux and I booted. I'm a geek, right? So I booted that and I formatted the drive and I was going to start reinstalling Windows on it. And because my son wanted to use this thing, actually we were waiting for Apple to make their laptop announcements. So they made yesterday. So now I Can I can buy a Mac laptop with some confidence that it's not going to change right away, but my son wanted to use this thing for, you know, for a month or two. And I saw I was going to put Windows back on it and I was like, wait a minute, this interface with Ubuntu Linux is awesome. I don't want to put Windows on this thing, I just want to put Linux on it and then I don't ever have to deal with the Windows convolution ever again. So we did, we put Ubuntu Linux on this and then I learned about a flavor of Ubuntu Linux called elementary IO. And we'll put a link to it. This is again, it's a free operating system, open source, supported, very modern, feels very normal. It's like, I know the concept of Linux sounds really scary. It's not anymore. It feels just like a Mac or a Windows machine when you boot it up. It's not. You don't have to like learn arcane terminal commands or any of that. There's a beautiful graphic interface and especially with elementary IO that is built to feel like a Mac. And it does, it's great. It looks really cool, it's fantastic. So if you have especially like an old, you know, Windows box that you want to, you know, repurpose or even an old Mac, the same software will boot both of these machines now. So if you've got a 10 year old Mac, I would strongly consider putting elementary IO on it. You can run LibreOffice, of course, you can run, you know, Chrome and Firefox and all those web browsers, browsers that you use and really turn it into a workable machine that still gets current security updates. Whereas a 10 year old Mac is now off the list. Apple's not updating those for security things anymore. And it runs really lean, it's really efficient. I'll be perfectly honest, even Apple, as much as I love them, their operating system has gotten pretty bloated. It's not the most efficient thing, especially on older hardware. Windows is even worse. Elementary or you know, Ubuntu, which is really what it's elementary is just sort of the skin on top. It's just Ubuntu Linux underneath it and it's super smooth and happy and it runs better than any other operating system on that particular piece of hardware. So yeah, so cool.

Anyway, that's another great tip.

It's a little easy, but not especially.

If you have an office in a bunch of computers and you're trying to maximize. You're like, wow, I don't want to go spend a thousand or whatever, especially on max, you know, 1500 bucks.

Yep.

Two grand on. On a. A new Mac. I think that's a. A great thing to explore. Or if you have kids and you want to hand them something to bang away on.

Exactly. Yeah.

Perfect. Yeah. Very cool.

It is cool. And I never would have thought of it if I wasn't stuck at, you know, 2:00am in this, you know, pickle of. How the hell do I reformat this stupid thing? Like, all I want to do is wipe it clean. Why is this hard? Yeah. Yeah.

So anyway, for sure, everything's hard.

Everything's hard. That's.

Yeah, you're trying to do that stuff.

Exactly. Hey, I want to talk about our two sponsors. Shannon, if I may.

Yeah. Yeah, let's do it.

All right. The first sponsor for today is the new Square Payroll app. Everything that you can do on a desktop, you can do in the app. This is cool, right? You're running payroll. You have a business. You don't need the headaches accompanied with doing that by hand, certainly, but sometimes you're out and about. You don't necessarily run your business from your desk all day, every day. And this is where Square Payroll, with their new Square Payroll app, totally shines because they let you do everything in the app. It's super cool. And I've tested this out. It's really amazing. You can set it up, like, totally from scratch. You can set it up. You can pay your team. You can do time cards for your W2 employees. You can even manage your contractors in here. It calculates your tax withholdings, your payments, and your filings at no extra cost. Right? So it's very cool. It's 29 bucks a month, plus $5 per employee per month. And I've used this thing. It feels. It feels like a mobile app because it is a mobile app, but it's got so many features in it. It's crazy how just how well this works. I'm just blown away by. By how smooth they've done this. So you got to check it out. If you're always on the go like me, check out the new payroll app from Square. You can pay your team from anywhere and never miss payroll again. Search for Square payroll in the Apple or Google app. You know, Google Play app stores. Or you can visit square.comgosbs and we'll have that link in our show. Notes our sincere thanks to Square and the new Square Payroll app for sponsoring this episode. Our next sponsor is LinkedIn jobs. Here's the thing, as a small business owner, you know that the right hire can make a huge impact on your business. I don't know about you, Shannon, but I have hired the wrong person at times. And man, it like, I. I have almost cratered a business because of that. It just.

I think we've done a show. A show about that.

I think we did. Yeah, absolutely. So we always say, you gotta hire, you know, hire slowly, hire smartly. Well, here's the thing. Sometimes the best person for the job you need to fill is not actively looking for a job. They might already be in a job, but if they knew about the job that you wanted to offer them, they might just take it. So do you go to the regular job boards to find those people? No, because they're not on them. But where are they? They're on LinkedIn, right? 70% of the US workforce is on LinkedIn. Even if they're not looking for a job, especially if they're not looking for a job, it's still a place where you go to keep your stuff updated, check in on what your friends and colleagues are doing. You can read posts. It's got, you know, a social network component. People are there all the time, and that's why a new hire is made every 10 seconds using LinkedIn. I always like to say, you know, we talk about unfair competitive advantage. That's what LinkedIn Jobs has, because they've got the workforce there even if they're not looking for a job. And they say that nine out of 10 members on LinkedIn are open to new opportunities and even if they haven't recently visited the top job boards. So you got to check this out. Hurry to LinkedIn.com/SBS and you get 50 bucks off your first job post. I have used this. You might find your candidate within that first $50 of your spend, and then it costs you nothing. So this isn't like there's no hidden cost here. If you, if you can find your candidate in that first 50 bucks, it's like, this is a huge value. So that again, it's LinkedIn.com SBS to get 50 bucks off first job post. Let me do it one more time. LinkedIn.com SBS terms and conditions apply, as always, but go check them out. And our thanks to LinkedIn jobs for sponsoring this episode.

That's cool. Very useful Sponsors, we always try to do that, you know, keep, keep things real and stuff that you can really use right away. And everybody's on LinkedIn, so it's such a great use of their. Their network and their infrastructure.

Absolutely. Yeah. It's cool. It's cool.

Very cool.

What's next, man?

Let's talk about a question. We have a couple of questions. We'll see if we can get to them both or how long we talk. We'll certainly get to one. Let's talk about a question from Carol.

Okay.

Carol writes, I run a dog boarding business, and recently a dog that we were boarding was injured. I thought I had handled everything correctly. I paid all the bills, etc. But I just received a notice in the mail that I am being sued. I am not sure what I should do first. So it sounds like you've probably never been through this before.

I think the thing she should do first is proudly be welcomed into the club. It happens to the best of us.

Yeah. And we did a show. It's episode 145. We'll put a link in the show notes for it, Carol, that we recommend you listen to. It's what to do when your small business gets sued. But we'll talk about a couple of things here. I mean, generally speaking, I think, you know, correct me if you have another idea, Dave, but I think you need to have a discussion with an attorney.

Oh, yeah.

Even if, even if it's just a small claims lawsuit, you need to get some tips and things on how to respond and, you know, with the timeline and how that kind of stuff. And one of the things that I just want to revisit and hopefully and maybe Carol can, you know, this, this works for you, or you've done this already or not. But we always suggest that you find a good attorney before you need them, just like your accountant, you know, as part of your board of advisors. And we've, we've discussed that ad nauseam here on the show, but you want to be surrounded by these folks that you may need in the future, so they already know who you are. Because it's a different conversation when you call up and say, hey, Bob, I need some help. This guy. You know this. And they already know your business. They know who you are, that you've already paid them.

Maybe a little bit here and there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe a little bit.

And, and so, and it's just less stressful. You'll, you know, you'll have more time to find the right one for. It's all about personality. I mean, you got to meet some minimum requirements. But if, if, if you pass the beard, the beer test, and I would actually enjoy having a beer, a cup of coffee with you. You're the person that I'd like to, you know, to, to do business with. You know, you should. If you don't have this yet, Carol, you typically have about 30 days to respond. But that click, that clock is, you know, it moves faster than you might think. So you need to start looking for an attorney. If you don't, and maybe reaching out to your other peers, small business owners that you, you know, that, you know, and say, hey, have you used anybody? You know, this kind of thing? I think the referrals are the way to go.

Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah, you got, yeah, you gotta find. I, I always. If you oftentimes as a small business owner, you might be serving other people who own small businesses, either directly at their business or if you're serving, you know, like, like people at their homes. Most of those people have to work for a living. And some of them are going to be small business people. Oftentimes people who are attorneys, you know, I mean, that's a, it can be a lucrative profession. Oftentimes they will hire other small business people to do things for them. And so you might already know some attorneys who are your clients becoming a client of theirs. Man, you've already got trust there. They're going to like you. They've already been paying you, so they, you know, like, there's already like a huge relationship there that you can, I don't want to say leverage, but I mean, that's true. I mean, it's leverage from both sides, right? You're like, oh, yeah, I know this person. I know that if you've been sued, like, you served me really well. That's crazy. Okay, well, let's take a look. You know, and you're not, like, this person isn't suspect of you and your business when you're walking and saying, that's right, help me, I just got sued. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So, no, I think that's a really good point. You know, always look to your client list to see who first place business you can use. Yeah, that's really cool.

For, I mean, for everything. Not just attorneys, accountants, everything. You know, why not? And you know, their business too. You know that they paid you on time, like you've already vetted them as well. You know, it's. Yeah, it's good. Yep.

That's really cool. That would be a great, you know, a discussion to have about when people register, sign up for your service, how much data can you ask them for? Like, oh, what business are you in? You know, and maybe that's the way to do it. We, we love to use the services of our clients.

Yeah.

Yeah. Just be honest, you know, if you'd like to share what business you are in, we would love to have you as a resource. So if you're a carpenter or a contractor of some sort, electrical contractor, when we have problems, we would certainly like to use first. That's. I love that concept.

Yep.

Yeah, that's really smart.

Yeah. And who wouldn't be? I mean, well, some people wouldn't, but. But most people would be happy to fill that out. Like, oh, you want to patronize me? Great. Awesome. Yeah.

Yeah. And then I. So, you know, Carol, go back, listen to that episode. And I think it's also, from my perspective, the most important thing to remember about, you know, when being involved in a lawsuit or anything like that is that it can really wreak havoc on your business and your personal life. And it's incredibly distracting. And, and I think from my perspective, and having been involved in a few of these over the years, the focus should be on getting through it as soon as possible and, you know, as quick as you can. And you certainly want to do the right thing. But you'll hear us say this on this. You know, the episode where we. I mentioned is you need to leave your sense of justice at home. You know, and in my case, my ego, because I get frustrated and I'm like, I'm right. You know, I know this.

Yeah.

Right.

Righteousness and justice are. Are valiant pursuits for disposable time and money.

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah. Very expensive.

But that's the thing is it has to be disposable time and money. Otherwise you just need to get to brass tacks and figure out a way out.

That's right. That's right. I think so. And again, if a good attorney will kind of advise you like that, I think, and say, look, okay, what are we trying to achieve here? Do we want to make this go away as quick as we can? And do you have insurance? This kind of thing. And hopefully you're talking to your insurance provider as well if you're running the. A dog boarding type place. But you want to try to move through it as quick because it can really distract from the rest of your business and cause a lot of other harm.

That's true. In this scenario, it's worth making a phone call, perhaps even the first phone call to your insurance company to find out if they are going to be able to represent you. Like if you're being sued for something against which you are insured. I E, you've been paying premiums, then basically what you do is forward this lawsuit to your insurance company. You gotta make sure they handle it because it's you on the hook at the end. But sometimes that will be exactly what happens. Yeah.

And they, depending upon the type of suit, I've had this happen, you know, both ways, they will either provide an attorney or they'll say, hey, what's your attorney? Who's your attorney? If you have one, we'd like to just contract with them to do this and they can bill us directly. Yeah, both ways. And it probably maybe depends on the seriousness of it or the dollar amount involved. But, you know, go listen to that episod episode back there, you know, at episode 145 from earlier this year, and, you know, let us know how it works out. Keep. Keep us posted.

Very cool. Good advice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do we have time to take this last question, you think?

Yeah. Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, man. Yeah, go.

Awesome. Awesome. Okay, so Jacob writes, I'm interested in selling my business. I've been approached by a business broker that says they can get us top dollar based on their connections. Unfortunately, they want about $40,000 up front to represent us. My partner wants to do it. I am a little suspicious. What do you guys think? Thanks for your show, by the way. We listen each week. So again, we've done a few episodes about selling your business all the way Back from episode 61 a few years ago. But we'll link those in the show notes and you can hear from other business owners that have sold their companies up there. And then we Also, on episode 61, we interviewed Bob Gruel, Seapoint Business Advisors, and I thought he was great, an independent voice on important parts of selling your business. You know, I'm not a big fan of paying big chunks of money up front for promises, and I've done it. And sometimes it's worked out great and other times it hasn't. I would be much more.

Have you. Have you successfully worked with a business broker, I mean, specifically one of these that wants you to pay 30 to 50 grand up front for them to put your, you know, go to market plan together and all that stuff? No.

So after talking to my board of advisors a couple of times, I've ran from these kind of guys as fast as I could.

Same. I. They, they're nice. They'll feed you lunch if you go to a seminar for a day.

You got it.

They'll feed you lunch and. And tell you all about this great stuff, and you can learn A lot like you can with everything. There's always lessons to be learned. But I went to one of these, I don't know, five, six years ago or whatever. Maybe actually more than that, now that I think about it. But, you know, and it was. They wanted whatever $38,000 to, you know, put together this thing to market my business to folks. And my question to them was, well, why do you need that? Like, if you're so confident you can sell it, why do you need me to pay you up front? Of course, people don't like to hear that. That's, you know, but that's. The small business mentality is like, yeah, and they tried to sell me, oh, no, you want this put together right way. I'm like, well, maybe you want it put together the right way. This sounds like a you problem, not a me problem. And. And if you want to cut a commission of my sale, which. Which of course they do, that's how they make their big money. It's like, don't ask me to pay you to then allow you to earn a commission. That's crazy. That was my.

Yeah, I agree. And I've been to a few of those kind of seminars and got, you know, everything. And one of the red flags that I often notice is when they. They spend a lot of time explaining why your advisors, your peers, will tell you it's not a good idea to use their service. And I would say that if you really pay attention, you start to hear that, oh, don't bother what your attorney says because they. They're interested in X. Don't bother with this. You know, And. And I'm always like, well, what? That doesn't make any sense, you know, So I, I would ask your advisors what they think you can do. Some certainly, you may probably already. Already did it, Jacob, you know, some online research from these kind of companies, I would listen to, you know, back at least to episode 61 from Sea Point Business Advisors. Those guys don't take a huge chunk of money up front. And, you know, I have not used their services, but I was. I met him through another business owner who's been on this show that sold their company and was very happy with the way that they. They represented them. So, yeah, I would do a little more due diligence and try to get your partner on board. Make sure that, you know, because that can cause a lot of friction if they think they're, you know, being. Not being listened to and they think you're missing out on a big opportunity, you know, that kind of Thing, but I think you're smart to be questioning it, and I would stay away from those kind of guys.

Yeah. The problem is it.

It.

There is the allure of, oh, you've been, you know, grinding it out on this in this business. And you, you know, there's. In the. In the back of your mind, there's this thought of, oh, yes, someday, you know, I can just collect millions and walk away. Yeah, pot of gold. Right. And. And that may well be there, like, there. But here's the thing. If you haven't already had other businesses coming to you and saying, hey, I want to buy, that might not be the right deal. But if that hasn't happened, there might be something that you do need to change about your business. Right. You might be in cash flow mode, not growth mode, or you might be in growth mode and not cash flow mode. So it is helpful to get the advice of someone. But, you know, and along those lines, I would go to, like, if you're really looking for this, honestly, go set up an appointment with score, right. And bring your business partner with you and talk through this. Those guys or women, I mean, I don't know, you know, which mentors you'd be assigned to. Right. But those people at SCORE have some experience here, especially often in your local market, if that matters to your business, and might really be able to kind of give you some guidance on. On how to do that. So if you. If both, certainly before you go and spend the 40 grand, I. I would definitely, you know, go visit with.

Well, you're going to find at score, you'll find some of those. The mentors that have just been through, you know, they've been through this process and they can tell you. And I can recall, you know, Bob from Seapoint talking about, oh, you should be approaching your competitors and let's figure out the market and let's look at this. And he will poke holes into, you know, your business, which is what he's supposed to do, and say, well, this works great and this doesn't, and this is valuable and this is not right. And the other folks are telling. Are kind of pump you up, right? Oh, we're going to get this for you. We're going to do this. You guys are awesome. But write us a check first.

Yeah, but write us a check first. No.

Yeah, I think you're on the right track, you know, doing that. That due diligence. I think it's great. Hey, before we go, because I know we're getting ready to wrap up, and I forgot. I Wanted to make a comment about domain ownership back on Lewis's. Yeah, first comment. And I think it's really important if you're, especially if you're in a partnership or any kind of joint venture, you know, you need to keep control of that domain. And it's kind of like a prenup. Nobody ever wants to talk about when things go bad. But things do go bad sometimes. And just like accounting, I vowed many years ago that I would never turn over accounting to someone else after I got screwed royally in a bad way when I was much younger. And I'm not a great accounting guy, so I always have a good partner with me, but I keep control of the money. It's just my thing. And the same, I think, with domains now, you can start an entity. You know, if you have a partnership, you're doing an llc, you're doing an S Corp or a C corp, whatever you're doing, the entity ultimately will own that domain. But it's just one little thing that you can do to help, help keep control, I think, is to, you know, go register that domain that you guys decide on, you know, And I think it's an important, important tip.

Yeah, yeah, no, I, I have, I have been on both sides of that. When we bought what now is Mac observer, it was not Mac Observer. Right. And the reason the name changed is because the person from whom we were buying it did not own the domain. Webintosh.com it was, you know, some dude that. This was a young guy when he started it. He was, of course, even younger and he didn't have a credit card, but his buddy Bob had one. And so Bob registered the domain. And Bob was a little dickish, you know.

Yeah.

And Bob wouldn't transfer it. So, I mean, thankfully it all worked out for us and really worked out because we paid less because he was selling us less.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I think it's an important thing to have a discussion because a lot of times what happens, new small businesses, you know, it's. You're just flying by the CC to your pants and maybe you didn't start the LLC yet or didn't do whatever, and somebody's got a, oh, I set up a GoDaddy and I went ahead and registered this. I, I would just say if. Because obviously, you know, you're the reasonable one. We're going to make that. We're going to presume that right now.

Of course. Yes.

So you're going to be reasonable if things don't go right. So you're not going to hold it over their head. You're going to say, okay, we're going to split the business up. Here's the value, here's what happens. Here's the domain versus coming into work one day and having that domain routed to someone else's company.

Absolutely.

And I've been there and it's not pleasant. That's a bad conversation.

Yeah, yeah. So anyway, and I will say this. Once you do create, because 99% of the time, you're going to need to register the domain long before you need to have a business entity. Right. And so it often does happen in that order. Once you have the business entity, make transferring the domain into that entity one of your first steps that you do. Yeah. Because that way, you know, that way it's also off of your shoulders. Right. If you're the reasonable one. But you also want to show good faith to your business partners. I agree. You know, and this is a good way to do it. And then, you know, if things do go sideways, well, now you have an entity. And so that it's not quite as simple for someone to say, I'm going to take control. Yes. Usernames and passwords do that. But, you know, it's not. Not as easy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. And I think that should be in your working agreement. You know, I just recently started a new. A new business a few months ago. And in the working agreement, you know, we always put in there, here's some benchmarks, and when we hit this, you know, this is an experiment right now, you know, the next six months or so we're trying to do this, see if we can get this up and running. But once it does get up and running, these things are going to happen. You know, we're going to create this, we're going to do an S corp, we're going to, you know, manage it. And you could put that domain, you know, he. All domains and emails and hosting will all be under the ownership of the LLC or whatever the entity is.

Yep.

I like that.

Yep, that's good.

Great.

Cool.

Good stuff.

Cool.

Very cool.

Very good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like it.

Well, we'd love to. Yeah, and we'd love to hear from you folks, like you said, feedback at businessshow Co. Or come chat in the small business support group Facebook. Oh, here, I'm doing it backwards. BusinessShow Co Facebook Book will redirect you over there. And thank you so much for listening. We always enjoy having.

Yeah. Thanks to our sponsors, of course, square. Com, go SBS and LinkedIn. Got LinkedIn. Com. SBS. Check them out. Keep living that charmed life. We'll see you next week.