Moving from Idea to Action – Get Started Today With Your Small Business – Small Business Show 183

The Small business show episode 183 for Wednesday, August 8, 2018. Greetings folks and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co the show that is by, for and about BFA small business. Sponsors for this episode include timing where@timingapp.com smallbusiness you get both a 14 day free trial and you save 10% when you purchase this app that it's very cool. It automatically tracks what you do for billing and efficiency. We'll talk more about it in a minute. And Textexpander, we're@textexpander.com podcast. You save 20% off your first year of another app that just totally is going to improve your productivity and your efficiency. We'll talk more about both of those shortly. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

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

I'm doing well. How you doing?

I'm pretty good.

Good.

Pretty good. Good out here. We are still battling some of these fires out here in the west, but you know, hopefully they'll be making some, continue to make some progress on them.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I've been kind of watching from afar and it's, yeah, it's not good, man.

That's not good. It's getting a little better every day, so that's good. Hey, and I, I have a, of course I always have an agenda. But before we this week's topic, I wanted to follow up with you on last week's, you know, we did the, you know, the show about losing kind of a key person and how that reacts and just check in and see how things are going and see if you kind of had any epiphanies or what, you know, what was your sense of how things are going since that.

Yeah, it's been an interesting process. Right. Because today, the day that we're recording this would mark two weeks since I found out that this was happening. Right. And then of course have been through the whole transition and everything that we talked about last week and you know, I, I try to be a pretty self reflective, self aware type of person because it serves me well. And, and it's been fascinating to watch how my reaction to this and how I've been processing it and of course I'm participating in that. It's not like I'm, I'm schizophrenic but, but it's, it's just interesting like right now taking stock of where I am, like I'm totally relaxed about the whole thing. It's like, yup, another day, another dollar. You know, putting out fire is not the kind that you guys are putting out out there and you onwards and all of that stuff. It's just. It's just how it goes. And.

Yeah.

You know, and so like I said last week, you know, he really made it easy for me to work with him and transition. He didn't just leave, as I said. I made the decision not to just, you know, curtail him immediately. And thus far, like, I feel right now like that was absolutely the right decision. I don't think six months from now I'm going to feel any differently about that. So. Yeah, you know, but. But I will say, and I think we said this last week, that that is a rare scenario. Most of the time, it's best just to, you know, okay, you're going to leave. All right, You've left, cut ties, go. You know, that would agree. Yep. But in this instance, it was not what my gut told me to do. And it turns out it was a very good thing. We had a very smooth handoff. Everything's gone really well. And, you know, I. I've been through. I. You know, I mean, I've been in business for two decades plus. Maybe three, I guess. Yeah, three. Three, if you count it the right way.

Yeah.

Arguably. Y. So there are times when, either by choice or by circumstance, I am presented with the opportunity to reevaluate processes and jobs and all that stuff. And it's very like, I love doing that kind of thing, but the trick is that it's really difficult to do that when there's humans involved, because nobody likes a micromanager. Right, sure.

Yeah. It makes sense.

So you can't just, like, go in and make all the tiny little changes that you would make because you're going to. You're going to piss somebody off, you know, you're going to make somebody feel like they're not valued or whatever. Right. I mean, it's like, it's very difficult to do that. Now, you can encourage those conversations, like, and have them, you know, collectively and collaboratively, where you say, hey, let's. Let's look at what's going on. Let's identify where our efficiencies are, where our inefficiencies are, are, and fix those. And that's actually a great thing to do. And I encourage you to do that regularly with your employees, and I always do. But it is nice to let the control freak run wild every now and then.

Well, yeah, I would say that it's a little easier now. To reevaluate the way you've been doing things because you have this kind of hole in your organization. So he's like, wow, let's really look at it. And you don't have to tiptoe around.

Right.

Because there is no one there to manage.

Yeah. In that particular role there's no one to manage. Yeah, yeah. And it, it really, you know, and like I said, I've had these opportunities. One a great example was, and this was just a short term thing, it wasn't like we lost a key employee. But when we started the Mac Observer, Brian my, my business partner there, who's still my business partner there, was managing and uploading all of our content from his computer. Right now he was using a publishing system called Go Live which was.

Oh, I remember that.

Yeah, yeah, kids, you can ask your parents, right.

You know, really dating ourselves.

Really. Yeah, but, but it was the only way to do it. And so the whole site was managed on his computer. And then he would just re upload the whole site every time an article was published because you know, you'd want like the, the footer of every other article to have today's article list. And so he would build all this stuff manually and that was the way he did it. And then I had our, my wife and I had our first child in December of 99 and in January of 2000 was Macworld Expo. And I decided, well, I can't leave, you know, so I'm not, I'll stay home and man the fort. You guys go. And that meant that I was the one that was going to be publishing the site. So I went to Brian's house, you know, we worked remotely. I went to his house and, and, and he showed me how all this worked. And you know, like I had this feeling of horror, like oh my God, there's so much opportunity for human error. This is massively inefficient. And I had known this for, you know, the company had been in business, let's say a year. I had seen this and I knew it. But again I couldn't like say dude, this is wrong, like tear this apart, fix it right like that. Just like we, it would have communicated an incorrect, you know, value that I placed on, on his work. You know what I mean? And so you know what, you're getting your job done. I'm getting my job done. We're building this business. That's all I can really worry about right now. Until I had to own it all for whatever a week. I went into panic mode and Like o, holy crap. And I had just started learning php. I knew how to program in other languages, but I just started learning PHP for some partner that we were working with. We had to integrate some of their stuff into the site. I was like, PHP mysql. Okay. So I spent the week between Christmas and New Year's building a content management system for Mac observer out of whole cloth. WordPress didn't exist right now. I've said many times on this show that I've squandered opportunities to take little problems we've solved for ourselves and turn them into business ventures. And I totally should have done that with the content management system I built. Did not. But it really, you know, it changed everything about what we did because I built this thing and it was very rudimentary and we hacked onto it for years and years until we finally moved to now what we're using as WordPress. But we built a business for 10 plus years on this thing that I started hacking together because I had the opportunity to control the whole widget and I can do some efficiencies. And with backbeat, the same thing happened. We were, we were very, very busy when we first started because we started before that big market crash in, you know, the early 2000s there. And I mean we were just making money hand over fist, right? And we were order fantastic. Yep. No idea what to do. We had no idea what business we were really in. We just knew that the other people that were doing it for us weren't doing it the way we wanted. And so we did it ourselves. And it was great. I mean we just. Money just pouring in. And thankfully two things happened. We didn't get cocky and we didn't spend all the money because then the market crashed and ad rates went to 10% of what they were.

Wow.

And still like, and rightfully so, still have not even come close to the rates that they were at. I mean it was just like overnight we went from, you know, what was worth $10 is now worth $1. And thankfully my partner then at the time with, with that business, Greg Snyder, he too was an efficiency freak. And so we had some free time on our hands.

Yeah, that's great.

But we didn't, we couldn't afford free time for very long. And we knew we needed to find a way to reach more people than we were reaching with our, you know, basically sitting there waiting for the phone to ring. That's, that's all we had to do. In the first year and a half that we ra. It was just we had too much work, which was great. But then we realized, oh, we need to be proactive and we need to actually do sales and tell people what we're doing and drum up business. And so we did. We built a bunch of systems and many of which at their core are still in use today. And so these things keep happening over time or somebody will leave like a scenario like this and it's like I'm not in a rush to replace them. Let me dig in, let me see what, how I would do this job in the short term. I know that most jobs, especially you know, like this with sales, I'll be great at that for, you know, six months, maybe even a year. And I mean I could do it for, for as long as I need to, but I know that I will lose interest. Right. It I, because I've got other things to do. I want to share things, but I know that I'm like already I'm really excited about, oh, let me get in there. Let me like, you know, let me do this process the way I want to do it and then come up with systems and perhaps redefine the role. Because it's a small business, the role will be redefined by whomever is in it. Right. So it will be done a certain way when I'm there and then when I bring someone else in, it will be done in a slightly different way or perhaps a remarkably different way. Right. That's just how it is with a small business. Each person, you know, has a huge impact on, on how things go. So, so actually I'm, I'm like in a, in a, in great shape in a lot of ways that's good with this particular thing. Thank you. I've got other people supporting me in other ways. And so, you know, like it's, it's not just.

And that's what I think. Yeah, yeah. And I think that the great takeaway is if you're listening to this and this has not happened to your business yet, it will someone who you believe, oh, this is, you know, just a long time employee that's taking care of a lot of things, they're going to leave.

Yes.

From time to time. I would suggest that as soon as you possibly can, you need to start looking at it as an opportunity to either get more efficient, change roles, dig back in, maybe re. Energize yourself a little bit and maybe reconnect with an aspect of your business that you had not been involved in for a while. So I think it's an opportunity. So I'm Glad to hear that it's working out great. That's really cool. That's good.

No, it's, it's so far, so good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's probably going to be a week in September or something where it's like, oh, yeah. I mean, assuming I haven't brought somebody. And it's entirely possible I will have by the, I don't know, you know, I'm not in a panic to do that, which is the good part. Right. You know, that's cool. And things will get busy and whatever. And it's like, that's fine. You know, it's all good.

Things happen. Yeah. Things happen for a reason. You'll find the right person to take that role. That'll be cool.

Yeah.

All right, so, hey, let's talk about.

And I'll say this because I know we have a lot of listeners out there. If somebody hears me talking about this and you're interested in working together, ping me.

Yeah.

You know, like I said, I'm not in a rush. Maybe you're not in a rush. I don't know. Just ping me. Like opportunities, you know, opportunity knocks. There you go.

Yep, I like that. That's great. That's very good. You can, you know, get us. I mean, you can see all of our posts up there, but feedbackusinessshow.co will get to both of us. We'd love to have your feedback, your questions, tell us what we're doing right, tell us what we're doing wrong and give us, you know, some, some comments. So, all right, so let's move on. Let's talk about what I wanted to get to and I'm gonna stop you.

There though, because we have two sponsors I want to talk about and I know that it's going to be hard to stop you on this particular train. So our first sponsor for today is, as I mentioned, timing. We're@timingapp.com smallbusiness. You can get a 14 day free trial and then also save 10% when you decide to buy. It's this awesome app. I've used it on my Mac. It is an automatic time tracking app. So it sits there on your computer and tracks what apps you're spending your time in. So you can go, you can go about using this data in a variety of different ways. Right. If you're a consultant billing per project, you need to be able to track yourself there. Right. You also need an estimate of how long things are going to take and this allows you to stay on track with all of that. Right. It also, from an efficiency standpoint, just as we were talking about, you know, in the first segment of the show here, do you want to keep an eye on, you know, how much time did I spend on Facebook, how much time did I spend on Twitter, how much time did I spend, you know, in email and the apps that I use for my business doing the things that I need to do. Timing automatically tracks how much time you spend on each app, on each document within the app and on each website. It shows you exactly when you were working on what, when you slacked off and how productive you have been. So you know how to improve your productivity.

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Two great apps, man.

Two great apps.

Really cool. Yeah, it's very good.

All right, now, now, Shannon, now we.

Can get on to today's show.

That's right.

Awesome. Okay, so we've been talking in the, in the background a little bit, Dave and I, about rolling out a series of programs really, to, to follow along as you start your business and get things going. It's one of the most common, you know, junctures. We hear people at how do I get started? How do I have this idea or have this kind of stuff? So we're going to be implementing a little bit about that. But today, I think the first and maybe the most important step that I'd like to talk about and focus on is implementation is taking action on the idea that you have or the concept or whatever the product, whatever it is, is moving from that idea to action stage, which I think is, you know, I see it over and over again, what so many people struggle with. You know, everyone loves to toss around ideas for, you know, quote, million dollar businesses. I could have thought of that. I did this, this kind of stuff. We just did it a few minutes ago. Solving, solving problems. And we do it all the time. Yeah, and it is great fun. Nothing I like more sitting around a fire, you know, have a cup of coffee, cold drink, whatever you got, and coming up with business ideas that, you know, would just be crazy successful. But what separates the, you know, the regular person from the small business owner is who can implement that idea, you know, who can handle the logistics, the stress, the excitement, you know, anxiety, all those things that come along with creating A small business. How do you get that idea into something that's working for you, generating revenue and building, you know, something that's going to help you lead the charmed life? And that's what I think we ought to talk about, about today.

Yeah, man. Well, it's that, you know, it, it, it's the epitome of my favorite quote, one of my favorite quotes. There are many, but it's, you know, if you want an idea to be worth a hundred dollars, write it on a hundred dollar bill. It. Ideas aren't worth anything without action and implementation and, and you've got to drive that. That's, that's what. You don't need a million dollar idea. You just need a not terrible idea and then you can make some money with it. But you got to be able to make the money with it. That's the key. It's not just going to. Money's not just going to show up because you cooked up some idea while you were, you know, drunk on the couch or whatever. Like.

That's right.

That's not a bad place to cook up ideas. Some of the best ideas have been cooked up that way. But that you got to get off the couch after you have the idea, you got to get off the couch and go make it happen. Yeah, yeah.

You know, and that's where I see most people failing, is they, they get stuck or, you know, they, they get into this routine. And I know quite a few, you know, awesome and very, very successful people that are not small business owners but that talk about ideas all the time and how they could do this and do that. And I'm just like, that's great, man. And I get approached. And I'm sure you do as well, Dave, with ideas all the time. All the time somebody will say, look, I have this great idea and I, I will sit down and go, okay, great. Let's talk about how we move from that to step one to the next step. And more times than not, we don't make it very far before the person goes, wow, there's a lot of work, a lot of hard work involved in here.

Yeah. Overnight success usually takes about 20 years.

Yeah, exactly. So one of the first things I like to do, and this is a great exercise with if you have someone that comes with an idea or you're the idea person is really get it on paper. But, but when you do that, I think you need to remove the limits. And primarily these are limits in your head about how things could work for this idea that you have in your Wildest dreams. How could this all come together, really stretch it out? I mean, do a 10 year, whatever, just write it and just start a free flow of thoughts and ideas, no restrictions. You may be the only person that ever reads this, but it'll come in handy.

I like that. So you're taking like money out of it and resources. Just like what would it take to do this?

And just, yeah, how it's going to work. This is what's going to happen. I'm going to do this, I'm going to roll this product out, I'm going to offer this service and just again, no limits. Get rid of those things in your head that are telling you I don't have enough money, I don't have this, I don't have that. If you had access to every. To make your idea into an unbelievable success and that success is however you define it, right? So it doesn't need to be a million dollar business. It may make you, you know, maybe a hundred thousand dollar business and whatever works for you. So just dump that on the page and take a little time and think about that because you'll come back to that. And what it is, is I'm going to enter now, I'm going to start introducing some of the limitations that you're going to hit here.

Because reality does factor in at some point.

Yes, you got it. But you're going to have this document. You can always come back to number one. It's very inspiring to be able to read back and say or and see the words you put down that were flowing out of you because you're going to be excited about it and you're not going to be thinking about a lot of the stuff we talk on the show here that you need a banker and insurance, all that.

Right. Yeah, you're just going to be.

Those things kind of suck the soul out of you sometimes. So you want to have this pure document, however many pages it takes. And I would suggest if it, you know, if it feels good and you write it down, print it out, put it up in the bathroom, put it up in the refrigerator, put it up somewhere where you're gonna look at it all the time. Because that's gonna drive you, you know that, that thing that's in front of you and you're gonna look at that and going, man, look at this. This is so great. It's gonna pull you along because the next thing I'm gonna tell you to do is create an action plan. And this is not nearly as much fun, but equally maybe, maybe More important. Cause we're gonna, you know, so what, what are the steps that you need to do to make that dream? You just wrote down reality, you know, and I like to start with people who's involved. Do you have a partner? Do you need a partner? Do you need a banker? Are you going to need, you know, your spouse is involved, so put their name down or your, your significant other because they're going to be involved in some way and support whatever it is. List everybody who's, who would be involved in this or maybe who would even impact. The second thing is we have to talk about money. How much money do you think you will need to get this thing started? And I would suggest that you're probably going to need a lot more than you think. So you want to really kind of push that number out. You need to buy what you're buying is time. And if I was just going to.

Say time is the other thing you got to put on this list.

Right, Yeah, I like that.

Because you will need time and you may have it, right. You might have a, you know, either a side hustle or a full time gig or something that's paying your bills. And so you're going to create time at night. Now you don't necessarily need money for that time at night because you've already got the money coming in. But like you said, you've got to involve your spouse and your family and everything else because you need to tell them, I'm no longer going to be able to, you know, after dinner every night when we all just hang out and play games or watch TV or whatever it is, because I'm going to be doing something, I'm going to be working. I have a second job now.

Yeah, that's really an important thing. I'm so glad you mentioned that because like the people aspect, you know, that is going to impact your family, friends, whatever you do, dramatically. And you've heard me say on the show before, I don't like to talk a lot about what I'm going to do. I'm much more comfortable talking about what I've done. Same. Yeah, because people get tired of hearing, oh, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. I'm sure, you know, people that talk about what they're going to do their whole life and never do it. So I've had you build your credibility, I think in a much more robust manner if you talk about what you've done versus what you're going to do. But eventually if you have that Credibility. You can say, well, I'm going to do this, and we'll see how it works. And you can do that, but not in the beginning.

So time is, you know, I'm involved in this venture that we started back in, I guess, March, officially April was our first month. Still not ready to talk about the particulars of it, but. And part of that's just that my partners don't want to necessarily make it public what we're doing. Not that we're doing anything. We're not doing anything illegal or anything like that. Right.

But just. But it's top secret.

Yeah, it's just top secret. So we'll just leave it that way. It's not really that secret. But anyway, and it's kicking off cash. It's doing really well. But even my close friends who do know what this business is didn't know right away. You know, they didn't need to know. My partners needed to know. Right. Because we're building the business together. My. My wife knew, my family knew, you know, But. But you don't, like. I don't need to come on this. I don't. I don't know whether I need to or not. That's the wrong word. I did not choose to come on this show and talk about, hey, I cooked up another idea or somebody else cooked up another idea that I'm a part of, and we're doing this thing and we're making it happen. Yeah, we've talked about aspects of it, both directly and ind. You know, getting a new bank account and all that stuff that came from that. Right. But. But yeah, it. Like, it. This thing right now, it's kicking off a ton of money, and it's great. But, yeah, we didn't know that in April. We. We thought it would, but I've had a lot of things that I thought would, and they don't. And like you said, I'm okay with that. But people that aren't in business and doing this kind of living this crazy life think, oh, my gosh, you know, he tried that venture and it failed. Like, the guy's a failure. It's like.

Or a flake or a flake or both. Because you. You're trying all these different things. And yeah, people that don't own small businesses don't understand that failure is part of the process. And trying all kinds of new things, it's part of the process. It scares them to death. Right. Well.

And it. It. It makes them think less of you, which is bizarre. I mean, but it makes. It's not bizarre. It totally makes sense. They don't have the. The perspective to see it for what it is necessarily. And so they see it for. Oh, my gosh.

Correct.

You know, the kids gonna be okay? Like, are they gonna, you know, do they have food?

Yes.

Like, you know, it's, I mean, it's, it's, it's nice that people care, but sometimes, like, can I just ask you when I need help? You know, and I'm terrible at that, so maybe I never will, but, you know, that, you know, that's just how it goes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, you know, part. That's so part of this action plan, you know, keep track, you know, list how much time it's gonna take, what's. What's gonna happen and how it's. Who's gon impact and be sure to communicate with those people and your resources overall. What other resources do you need? Are you developing a new product and you have to have connections with manufacturers or designers, or are you going to just be selling products and you got to get connected with distributors or all that. Start listing everything that it's going to take to continue taking action to make things happen. How are you going to reach your customers? What's the marketing that's going to work? Is it all going to be social? Are you local? Whatever. Whatever it is, get it down on paper and spend the time to break it out and come up with as many things as you can think of that some sort of action has to happen. The other thing that's. And it may sound weird if you're just going to do this by yourself. And we've talked about it a few times, Dave, but I would suggest you should create an org chart, an organizational chart, because. And this comes right from the E Myth book, which I really love and have recommended everybody read here numerous times. The org chart is. And you can just do it in Excel. I mean, Phil sells out in there of what roles are required to do this business and who is going to do them. And your name may be in every single box when you first get started. Or you and your partner, your spouse, however you think is structured. But the org chart, it serves multiple purposes. But the main thing is it's going to again, help you define what all the roles are that are required to run this business. And it's going to change all the time. And you're going to, oh, we didn't need this. Or we added this person. You know, I mean, if you're, you know, who's going to do sales? Who's Going to handle customer service.

I have a better way of going about that because I've kind of done some of that. But for one of my existing businesses, when we lost this guy this week, it was like, okay, let me write down just all the things that need to be done. I didn't worry about assigning them on first pass. Just start with a list. All the things like you said, who's going to do sales, who's going to do marketing, who's going to set up the email server, who's going to write all of those tiny little things. As small as you want to get. But don't just get granular. Also look at the ongoing stuff is really what matters. But when you're starting, everything matters. It all needs to get done, even the one time things and just make a list. Then it's really easy to, well, it's easier to go back and look at the list and say, okay, we have one person, two people, three people, five people, however many people are involved and oh yeah, I can put this on me, I can put that task on them. And suddenly now you're building this chart. Now if it's just you, you'll put them all under you. But start to think about compartmentalizing. And I think that's where the concept of the org chart comes in, even for a solopreneur. Right. You know, compartmentalizing things like, oh, you know, at some point one person could do these four things that really I'm doing in addition to these other 12 right now, but I could carve that off. And the sooner you start thinking about things that way, the easier it will be to swallow the idea of hiring someone to do this with you if you don't have a partner to start or whatever.

Yeah. And I think it helps you identify as you get things going, you're taking these action steps, it helps you to identify areas that you need help in. Because if you're getting inundated with customer service and people are upset and they're not getting responded to timely, well then you look and say, oh yeah, there's this whole customer service department, I need to get help here. Or whatever it is, it just kind of helps you with things are broken down. But I like that idea of listing everything out first.

Just list it out, don't worry about it, you know, and I use Evernote. But even, you know, your phone has a notes app or whatever, like something that you have with you everywhere. So that when you know, you're walking down the street or you know, you just get out of the, like, the shower is where I think a lot, man. And you know, it's like, okay, yeah, just like, you know, type that. Hopefully your phone's waterproof so when your hands are dripping wet out, you have to get out of the shower. You're not destroying your phone or whatever, but just like write this stuff down and collect it. Capture, capture, capture. Yeah, it doesn't need to be.

Yeah, and it does not when I'm talking about this stuff. It doesn't. Doesn't have to be really formal.

No, lose the formality.

Just get it somewhere. Get it down wherever you keep it and so you have it. Something that I do believe strongly needs to be a little more formal. If you have a partner that you're working with, now's the time to start creating the working agreement that we've talked to about a bunch of times on the show. And that working agreement should list the details of, you know, here's the concept. Here's what the business is going to do. Second, here's how our partnership is broken down. The ownership. Third, here's what each person is responsible for. You know, there may be, you know, multiple employees eventually that are doing these things, but someone isn't. You know, this is what you're going to be held accountable for. So what I'm going to get held accountable for.

Yeah.

Third, you know, and then how you're going to get compensated. What, what. How's the money split and all that kind of stuff, all those details. You're not writing a contract, and there's a big difference. You know, I don't think the contracts are great because unless you're willing to spend a lot of money with an attorney, enforcing them is a nightmare. And. But a working agreement allows you to hash out a lot of stuff, and you, you get to know someone quickly when you're trying to come up with a written document that they can agree on and you can agree on, and you. You get a sense this is a. This guy's really giving and really wants to make this work, or, you know, this person is. I can't even. You may not even be able to get through the working agreement process, which is definitely, definitely happened to me.

And that's a great litmus test right there. I agree with you. This is the. This is the only thing that needs to feel formal. And it needs to feel formal because it's not just you capturing it. It's not just your partner capturing it. It's something that all of you, and it might just be two of you or, you know, however many partners you have, it's something you all need to be able to look at and understand collectively. So it is helpful to formalize it in that sense. Yeah, a bulleted list is great.

Yeah, yeah, right. And the working agreement is kind of a living document. You know, you're going to go back and revisit it from time to time. You may add partners, you may change structures, this kind of stuff. But it is a great framework. And if you can't even agree on the details in the framework, that's the last thing you want to do is start a business with that person.

Yep. It's time to. Time to walk. Yep.

Yeah.

And that's okay. Yeah.

And that's the best time to do it. Because then you're like, well, look, we could remain friends. I mean, I've gone to business with friends and I always put a friend paragraph in the working agreement said, look, if everything goes to hell and this doesn't work, you know, we, I'm, you know, our friendship is, is paramount here and we're not going to lose that. And it's just a great way to get that out in the open and show the value of it and be like, look, I don't want to have to. If things go sideways, which sometimes they do in business, I want to be able to sit around and have a beer with you and not, you know, feel uncomfortable.

Yeah, that is, that is a. Will seem perfunctory at the time, but that clause has saved quite a few important friendships for me. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Yep.

So, all that being said, I want to. I want to, you know, kind of have a confession to make. You know, I know that these steps work, and I've done them numerous, numerous times. But I will tell you, I've also started a number of businesses without doing any of it.

Of course we have.

Right. The key is to get started. You know, sometimes you just are holding the tiger by the tail. You don't have time to write this stuff down to create this action plan, to build your org chart. That's okay. You can always come back and fill in the blanks later. You know, the most important steps of this whole thing are to take the steps, take the action, make. Make it different than everybody else you hear talking about this, these ideas and do something. You know, action is the most critical part of your success. And it's what most people miss. You. You see everybody on. Not everybody, but a lot of people on selling courses and how this. Ideas and this kind of stuff and you know what? It's hard work. It's sweat equity. That's how you create your charmed life. You know, the average person will talk about their ideas for their entire life without taking any action. The small business owner, the maker, the creator, they use action to propel themselves forward, create their charmed life, and they don't let anything get in their way. Criticism, you know, lack of funds. There's always a way to make it work. If you want to make it work. Yeah, you will get through.

You got to wrap your head around, like, you just have to decide that it's gonna happen. And this is why, you know, I started the last episode explaining that, you know, you folks tell us that something, and it's true, that we don't always talk about. We don't ever sit here and say, poor me, right? Because it's just not part of how things are gonna work. Like, you're not gonna get anything done. And here's the thing. By listening, by the sheer nature of the fact that you're listening to this show, it means that you are one of these doers. You are one of these makers. You are a creator. So just do it. Do what you know you can do. None of this stuff is rocket surgery, right? It's not difficult starting a business, except that you have to be willing to do the work. And you need a little bit of bullheaded persistence and maybe a lot of bullheaded persistence. And you need to sometimes put the blinders on. And even if you write to, like, you're welcome to write to us, and, you know, if you ask us to keep it, you know, confidential, not shared on the air, of course we won't. But if you have an idea or something, you want to run something by us, people do this all the time. Feedbackusinessshow. Co Like Shannon said, and, you know, we'll give you honest thoughts about things. Most of the time, we try to be positive, but even if something negative comes out and you don't like that, you know what? Put the blinders on. You don't even have to listen to us. Just. Just get it done. Go do it. Prove anyone who tells you it can't be done, just prove them wrong. Let that fuel your fire as opposed to right. You know, that's. I've. I've relied on that more than a few times where people, you know, I hear somebody say, oh, it's. No, it's never going to happen. Awesome.

Ditto.

Thank you so much for saying that. That's what I needed. Now Screw you. I got work to do.

Yeah, that's correct. Get out of my way.

Get out of my way.

Yeah, it's the people is the world is full of people that say it can't be done. It couldn't be done. You can't make that work out. And most of them are working for people that said, okay, I'm gonna go do it.

I'll do it anyway.

Yeah, I'll do anyway. That's who you. Those people are employees and you need those people. Not to disparage them at all, but they're not.

It's a symbiotic relationship. That's right.

You got it. Yeah, you got it.

So.

So employ those folks. So anyway, that's my take on it. You're going to hear about a few more things on the get started trail here as we roll out and we would love your feedback. Or come chat with us up on the small business support group BusinessShow Co Facebook. Be sure to go visit our sponsors. Those are two fantastic apps. I can't tell you enough how great they are. And now they'll help you all along this path towards leading your charmed life.

Man, it's good stuff. Timing, app.com, small business and textexpander.com podcast. That is where all the magic is going to happen for you this week. Thanks so much for listening, everyone. We'll see you again next time.

See you next week.

Keep living that charm life.