One Way Contracts and the Power of Story

Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the Small Business Show. I'm here with Dave Hamilton and we're going to share some good stuff with you today. How are you doing, Dave?

I'm good. I'm here with Shannon Gene and we are going to share some good stuff with you. Yeah, I went through a weird thing with a bad deal that I wanted to sign, which seems strange to say out loud in that order. And sure enough, I learned some lessons and wanted to share a couple of the things that I learned.

There's some great takeaways from that experience too.

Yeah, just don't take away my pen, man.

Ah, that's important.

Don't take the pen.

And then after that. Yeah, then after that we're going to talk about the power of story. How to move your. Your customers away from transactional relationships with you and to emotional relationships that last a lot longer and much deeper. I'm real excited about to talk about it today.

Yeah, you've got, man, you, you've always been so good at that. So I'm glad that we're finally kind of honing in on. On something.

I enjoy talking about it.

Yeah, it's good.

Thanks.

It's good.

Good stuff.

All right, well, shall we do it?

Let's do it. Cool. So, you know, we all know the power of stories, right? We run them every day and we're listening to them every day. They connect us on a much deeper level and they create long lasting impact and it influences the way we think and our views on things. And the question I would ask you is, are you the protagonist in your small business story? And if not, why not? You know, are you the hero? Are you the one making things happen or your team? How do you wrap that, the story of your business around things to get connected to your customers. And the key, I think is to move beyond that transactional relationship where it's just dollars and cents.

All right, man. Well, I've had an interesting week, Shannon.

Sounds like it.

I had to sign a bad deal.

That's tough.

It is, right? So my daughter.

You were forced to sign it?

Well, I wasn't, no, but I had. The scenario is such that it is normal for one sided contracts to exist. Okay, great.

I'm interested now.

Yeah. Right. So which to me is a bad deal, like on the surface, a one one sided contract, you know, bad. So my daughter is in college and she has decided to live off campus. Now, anybody that knows me knows how weird all of this is because we're talking about things that are all within About a five minute drive of my home because she's going to school right here in. In the same town that we live.

Okay.

At the University of New Hampshire. So. But, you know, we. I mean, when she went to school, we decided, you know, very definitively that she should live off campus. And she's, you know, she has. She did that for her freshman year. She's doing that part of the.

Part of the college experience. Right.

Well, it's like a college is a halfway house.

Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

It totally is. Yeah. I don't pull any punches here. Yeah, it's fine. So, you know, so she. For her junior year, she's decided she wants to live off campus. She assembled some friends. She's been doing the whole, you know, finding a place and, you know, all that stuff, and they found a place things. And it's really early to me to be renting for June, but that seems to be how it goes here.

Absolutely. Are you kidding? It seems late to me.

Well, I think that's what it is. I think she is a little late. And so, like, you know, they've. They've gotten some places and seen them, you know, pulled out from underneath them. So all of this was happening with a lot of pressure. And I, you know, I told her, I'm like, look, the first thing you gotta know is that 10 years from now, whether you get or lose this particular apartment is irrelevant. You know, you have to look at this with some perspective. You have guaranteed housing on campus next year. If this falls through, you have somewhere to live. Like, this is not the end all, be all. And that's. You need to know that you can walk away. Right? Like that's important. You may not want.

It's a really important part of any negotiation.

Right. Yeah.

You can't walk away. You're really not negotiating?

No, that's right. Yes. Yeah. So you need to know if you can walk away. Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

And. And she could. She really didn't want to, which is understandable. Like, fine, okay. No problem. And they like the place that they found, like, okay, great. So I know that this is all happening, and I know that the timing of it is, you know, important to not like, drag the feet, but they. Turns out they want parents to sign co. Sign the lease.

Imagine that.

Yeah. I didn't have that when I was in college. And I. And I know. But anyway, it's a new world. So I get the lease while I'm actually on an airplane flying home from my long trip that I had to, you know, California or whatever. And it was fine. I had the Wi Fi. I pull it up. It's a DocuSign thing that comes up now, you know, immediately. Like, there's so many warning flags that I'm going to talk about here. But the very first one was that on the first page of this contract they had my daughter's information was all filled out, and then there was a place where they wanted me to fill out my information. And her Social Security number and driver's license number and date of birth were all right there.

Oh, that's really bad.

In the clear. And it was sent via DocuSign, which means anybody on the planet with that link can see that information.

Yeah, that's bad.

And that's all you need to steal somebody's identity, you know. Yep, yep. And so as. As I sort of learned through this whole process, you know, this contract was looked at by an attorney probably 10 years ago. And then since then, things have been added, sort of ad hoc and not vetted by anyone. And so I think this was one of the things, you know, initially, I'm sure 10 years ago it was all paper contracts and truly paper. And then they added DocuSign to make it easy for remote people sign. And they never really thought about this. So. Okay. I mean, like, not okay, but I get how we got here. Fine. It's not intentional negligence, but it's negligence nonetheless. But that sort of gave me a, you know, a more critical eye. Not that I could possibly have any more of a critical eye looking at a contract than I already do. I'm pretty crazy about it. So I'm looking through this thing and, you know, like I said, there. There are these clauses that are clearly originally written by an attorney and then modified to the point where there was something where they were saying no smoking in the apartment. And they added things like e cigarettes, vape pens, et cetera. You don't put, etc.

Etc.

Yeah, no, this becomes legal Swiss cheese at this point. You know, you can't. And so I told my. I shared with my daughter. I'm like, look, I texted her while I was on the plane. I'm like, I can't sign this here on the plane. I need to sit down and go through this thing, and I really need to sit down with them and find out who these people are. Because the hope would be that once we look through the contract and sign it, we actually never have to look at the contract again. Right. That everything goes smoothly. Like, that's the hope.

Yes, yes.

But you have the Contract in case it doesn't. And you need to, you know, you need to understand. And the other thing, so an attorney told me a long time ago, he used a phrase which has stuck with me and that is haste makes malpractice.

Nice.

And I, yeah, that, that, that rings true here. And I was like, yeah, we just need to pump the brakes a little bit. It's Friday afternoon at 4 o'. Clock. I'm on an airplane. She doesn't know that, you know, she doesn't know that I can see this or maybe she does with DocuSign, but you know, I'm on a plane, I can't sign it, you know. So I sent her an email and said, or, you know, I'll, I'll, I'd love to come meet with you. And I did eventually meet with her. And so, you know, I'm going through this thing and I'm like, okay, fine, looking through some of this stuff. There was a section about heating and electricity which is included in the price of the fixed price of the lease. So they have some, they have a clause in there that says basically if you abuse the heating or the electricity, you know, if you leave windows open in the middle of the winter and crank the heat or run a bitcoin farm, like, they didn't list the bitcoin farm. But you know, you're running a bitcoin mining operation and your electricity is through the roof. Like, if you're doing something abnormal, we're going to, we reserve the right to change the deal. Okay, fine. Okay. You know, and, but in there it talked about if you don't adhere to the heating guidelines, we, you know, can just charge you for the difference of what we expect it to be. And there was no, like, I looked through this thing four times and never once did I find anything about heating guidelines. Now when I went and spoke with this woman, which I'll talk about that process in a minute, you know, I asked her, I'm like, where are these heating guidelines? She's like, oh, well, that's in the section on electricity. I'm like, no, no, the section on electricity is where it uses the phrase heating guidelines. Like, where are those? She's like, well, that's them right here. Okay. More legal Swiss cheese. You know, again, you can tell an attorney has not vetted this version of this agreement. You know, and so. Okay, like, fine. You know, and it has things in it. Like I said, this is a very strange scenario because it's normal that these agreements are super one sided. They don't have the group of roommates sign a single lease. They have each of them sign an individual lease that gives them the rights to their room and on non exclusive rights to the common area. But what it also gives the landlord rights to is to move them to any other unit that has the same layout and to replace a roommate if one of them, you know, one of them defaults, they can just slot somebody else in there.

Wow, that's a, that's a big deal. Yeah, there could be a big deal.

That could be a huge deal. Yeah. A friend of mine is a landlord here in town, not this particular landlord. And so I, I ran a lot of this by him and he's like, yeah, man, you know, it's, it is normal for it to be one sided. It's normal for these things not to be, you know, the tightest ships you've ever, you've ever read kind of thing. You know, he's like, this is, he's like, it happens. And he told me, he's like, yeah, I had to put a clause in mind that people couldn't store furniture on the roof. He's like, yeah, I didn't think I needed to tell people that, you know. Right, yeah. So, so, you know, it's like here I am going through this process, swallowing, okay, I have a choice to make. Do I try and rewrite this thing with her to actually clean it up or do I choose to leave it how it is? And I'm again reminded of advice that an attorney gave me, which if you're an attorney out there and this is wrong or right, please let us know. Feedback, small feedback at Business show in contract law, if there is a nebulous or misinterpretable phrase clause, it is the fault of the drafter and. Right. And that means if there's something that's unclear, the person who wrote it doesn't get to define what that unclear means. It's either the person who's reading it or more likely, you know, what they call the reasonable man's interpretation of this. Right. That, you know.

Right. What you're saying is it wasn't quite so one sided.

Well, that's the thing is. Right, exactly. And it was like, you know, if I go. But if I go in there and even start like nitpicking some of this and we change it now it's arguably been mutually drafted and I lose any protections that I might otherwise have from this legal Swiss cheese.

It's a good point. Yeah.

So I really looked through it and found the things I'M like, okay, where are the. What are the ones that I really care about? And, you know, and what do I need to find out about, like, where. What are the surprises that could cost me money in the end? Because that's really what it comes down to. And one was the, you know, you get to move people around. Like, I need to talk to the person who's making that decision and feel them out. Like, that's the only thing I get to do, you know, or. And this heating guidelines thing, like, I wanted to make sure there wasn't some missing document from. From this, you know. So I had the weekend, and I had the woman's name, and so I stocked her up on Facebook and LinkedIn and everything, and I got a feel for who she was. And I remembered your advice, Shannon, about leading and pacing. And I thought, well, you have to pace before you can lead. So I. I figured out who she was. I realized, you know, she seems like, you know, she's into pets and motorcycles and things like that. And it was, you know, I kind of got a feel for, okay, this is great. So I go into the office on Monday morning. I'm very pleasant, you know, like, I wasn't looking for a fight and did not, hopefully didn't, you know, project that or anything. It was just like, hey, I just want to, you know, I have my checkbook with me to give her the deposit, like, showing that we're going to move forward. Right. You know, I just have a couple of things and figured it would just be easier to sign in person, you know, very, very sort of, you know, dismissive of anything weird going on. And I said, just have a couple questions. And knowing that she was. Based on her Facebook pictures and stuff, I took a chance and I dropped an F bomb really early in the conversation, naturally early. And then, of course, immediately apologized for it. And she's like, no, no, now you're speaking my language. Okay, perfect. Great. So the pacing is working. We're in good shape here. We're moving along, and I'm being genuine with her, but also showing the right side of me. Not a fake side, but just the right side. And we're friendly, and we go through it. And I asked about the, you know, can you move people around? And she explained why she had that. And then actually, she went through a lot of the sort of crazy clauses in the agreement to explain, like, the crazy scenarios that she wound up with that she. That, you know, drove her to put these things in there. And we had a great conversation. And I, you Know, and I, in the end it was like, okay, this is she, it, like, I think this is going to be fine. It could go sideways completely. Anything could. But, but you know, I had to get a good feel for it. And I was like, yeah, fine, you know, and, and, and here you go. So is that, that whole leading and pacing thing was, was very much on my mind while I was in there and I said something which was true. I, I, it, this was not a calculated thing I said. I, I told her which was the truth. I said, hey, you know, I asked my daughter to ask her friends that currently live in the places that you manage, you know, what you're like. And they all said that you're great, which is true. That's what they said. And she was, she lit up. She was like, oh, that's so good to hear. And I was like, okay, great. She prioritizes. Even though it's one sided, it's a seller's market, like it, that's not a universal truth. Like if she's sure if the, if the scenario, if it's a truly a bad deal in the end, word's gonna get out, like people aren't gonna wanna be here, you know.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And she took it. Really? She was like, oh, that's great. I'm like, okay, cool. Now I just need her to want to prove that to me, you know, over the course of the next 12 months or 14 months right now.

It's great though because like you said, it's important to her to have that good reputation. You could see that. And so hopefully, you know, she's going to act in good faith and to continue to, to build that. Right.

I really believe she is too. I mean, you know, we'll be doing this show for a while, so I might come back here in a year and be like, so I made a mistake. But I don't, I really don't think so. I mean, I may be saying I made a mistake, but I don't think it's gonna be this one. And at the very end of it, I, I did something that I catch myself doing all the time and have never thought to share this advice. And so I will share it. I think it's a secret weapon here. You know, when I, I don't know why, but I intentionally did not bring a pen and I knew I was going to ask her for a pen, I didn't really think it through, but I knew that much like I'm gonna ask her for a penny, you know, that way I Show that, you know, I'm not just coming in and driving the bus here, like, I need help and that sort of thing.

That's good. I like that.

Yeah. Well, there's one more step that you can do with it. So I took the pen and I signed. I had to sign a lot of things, and I had to fill out a check. And she went through the agreement. We're packing everything up, and the pen's still on the table. And I'm like, oh, here, I want to give this back to you. I don't want to steal your pen. She's like, thank you so much for that. And I realized, you know, everybody steals the pen. Don't steal the pen.

I like.

Yeah, right. Because now you get to demonstrate you've just told this person you're trustworthy. Now you get to demonstrate it in a way that a lot of people don't, you know? Yeah, yeah. Well.

And those. Those little things like you're talking about are so often overlooked. And when you're going in to negotiate something like that, those little. They're like, tells.

Right.

How they act, what you say, the pacing and leading, you know, asking for help as you're showing a little vulnerability when you ask for their pen.

Yeah.

And then at the end, things went well. So you're giving the pen back. Maybe if things hadn't gone well, you'd have taken the pen.

I might have kept the pen. Who knows? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

That's some good. There's some good tips there. You know, I. I happen to be on the other side of this quite often because we're a little different. We. We own vacation rentals that we rent out, and we. And my wife manages those. And so from. I get the. All the stuff you have to keep adding to con. To the contracts because, I mean, we specifically had. Because we had some problems with some gentleman bringing in some adult entertainment. We'll just say, sure. And so we. We had to add a clause that basically just said, hey, there's no outside contractors.

Right.

Keeping it.

Oh, that's brilliant.

A little vague and everything, but the. The thing that really hit me was when we gave the. Our contract to our attorney to go through, he said, well, the first thing is, you got to change this. You can't be landlords, because in California, landlords have very little rights.

Right.

But tenants have tons. You know, they're. They're very protected. He's like, what you are is innkeepers, and your people are guests because you can evict a guest within a matter of A couple of hours, you can call the sheriff and he'll get rid of a guest. But a tenant can take months to get rid of. And so, you know, just from the most fundamental basic thing, it's. It, it's great advice to get. If you are renting out things or you are, you do have a contract, you don't want that Swiss chees. You want something that's. That's tight, that protects you to the fullest extent of the law.

Yeah, look like these people are making a. For these people are making a fortune on these leases. I mean, I know what real estate costs in Durham here, and I know what, I know what we're paying them, you know, and it's like there's a delta there. That's a nice cushion. And it would cost them very little in. I mean, this lease is being used for like five or six different places.

Yeah. Like, you want to tighten it up.

Yeah. Let's say it costs you $1,000. Well, first of all, you've paid twice as much as you probably should. And secondly, it's peanuts compared to how it's going to protect you in the end. At the very least, it shows that you're responsible. Like, you know, I read this contract. I'm like, this is amateur hour. I would never write this contract. And I'm not a lawyer. Like, you know, like, I'm not. I'm not licensed to practice.

But I think it makes sense. What you say is they had somebody create a pretty decent document, but over, you know, years and years, well, I can just. I got the Microsoft Word. I can just add this in at that end and it falls apart.

Same thing. But every. Like, we do that with our, with our contract for our publishers. You know, I constantly revise it. Now I've convinced myself that I'm a pretty good hack lawyer. And that may be true, but every few years I run this, you know, the newly revised agreement by our attorney. Now, do I run every little change by them? No. Should I? Well, yeah, of course, but no, I don't. And usually when I run it by him, he's like, actually, what's the problem? But every now and then he'll point out some fundamental thing that I just don't know. Like your landlord versus innkeeper thing.

Yeah, I had no idea.

Right.

That's right.

You're not necessarily paying the attorney for being able to write legalese. That's one thing, but you might be good at that yourself. What you can't possibly be good at is researching everything. And that's what they're paid to do.

Yeah. You can download a, you know, landlord contract online, you know, for probably nothing, I'm sure. But getting that advice of someone I think is. Is. It definitely can come in handy.

Well, especially as you're evolving an agreement beyond, say, the boilerplate. And. And you're now at a point where you might have put a few clauses in that make you a landlord without even knowing it. Right. You know?

Yes.

Having someone. That. Someone who is on the hook for you, look at that and, you know, spend a little time and be intentional about it. It's. It just. It. It only costs, you know, like, it's a thousand bucks or less, I would guess.

Yeah.

You know. Yeah.

That's good. It's good advice. I think you're at the point where you want to talk about our sponsors. I do, but, yeah. After the break, we're going to jump in. We're going to talk about something near and dear to my heart. How to move your small business from transactional to emotional relationships with your customers.

Oh, I like this. Okay.

It's going to be good.

All right. Well, our first sponsor is a product that I have an emotional relationship with, and that is textexpander.

Me, too, man.

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Yeah, so we talk about stories a lot on the show, about creating your own story and your own narrative to be successful. I often say, why wouldn't you want to create a positive story about yourself and kind of training yourself, if you will, to be successful? And the same goes with your business, but it has a far greater impact on your customers and on your employees. And so when I talk about that, I'm really talking about the power of your business story and how that can move you from these transactional customer connections to emotional connections where the customers are going to have a much deeper relationship with you. So I thought today we talk a little bit about the why I think it's important to do it and how with a few examples of how I've done it.

Yeah, man, let's go. Yeah, cool.

So, you know, we all know the power of stories, right? We run them every day and we're listening to them every day. They connect us on a much deeper level and they create long lasting impact and it influences the way we think and our views on things. And the question I would ask you is, are you the protagonist in your small business story? And if not, why not? You know, are you the hero? Are you the one making things happen or your team? How do you wrap that, the story of your business around things to get connected to your, to your customers? And the key, I think, is to move beyond that transactional relationship where it's just dollars and cents. You need that, obviously you got to pay the bills. We're all trying to make money, create a great life for ourselves and our employees. But the first thing I would say is with a story, and it could be as simple as this is why I started this business. This is the problem I found that I wanted to solve. Could be one aspect of it. It also could be, you know, as simple as I wanted to get out and have, be flexible so I have time with my kids or I'm trying to send business, you know, my kids to college, whatever it is, be, be very authentic and be transparent and talk about it, share it with your customers. Because chances are a lot of them would like to do the same thing you're doing. A lot of them will empathize with, with what's going on and they want to hear your backstory. Right. You want to let them in behind the scenes, you want to share what's going on because they want to know. It's like reality tv. Right. And for many years I always thought I needed to have this big kind of corporate, you know, entity. We're much bigger than we really are. But I realized at some point, like, you know what? I'm, I'm missing this big piece of the puzzle that, that it can be powerful and it allows you to connect with people on a much closer level. And we started telling our story, talking about our successes, but at the same time we also talked about are failures because again, it's something that brings you closer to people because they go, wow, look at that. They screwed up here. This happened here. This didn't work. We tried to do this. You're going to connect with customers because they've all had their own struggles and they've overcome them, right?

Yeah.

So it's important. You're just kind of, you're changing the dialogue between you and your customers. It's not just dollars and cents. And I would argue that it's going to drive dollars and cents in a, in a much deeper and much longer lasting type of relationship than just that one time thing I've always tried to get away from. You know, I mean, what is your story? You're the cheapest in town. That's not a good story.

Yeah. But if, if all people know you about is the dollar, know you for is the dollars and cents, that is all they can talk about. With your story, you're either the cheapest, the most expensive, or somewhere in between. That's all they can know about it. Yeah.

Yeah. And so we want to talk about the why. And you know, I would also say that that authenticity and what's really going on, it makes it easier for you as kind of the champion and the cheerleader of your business to tell your story because you're living it right? You don't have to remember anything, you just get to talk about it. This is why I did this. I was frustrated doing X or, you know, I wanted to start this. And I, I can tell you from, from my perspective, when I started, when I founded Tech restore back in 2004, is I had been running another company and you know, trying to go out and do, do something different. And the one thing I, the one big takeaway I got from having a bunch of previous technicians working for me is that there was this kind of perception that the, the, the techs weren't these professionals like I thought they should be thought of? I wanted the, the customer to feel like they were going to the doctor's office. When you brought your laptop in your Mac or your, you know, whatever, your iPad, it's really, you know, these, these technicians were so highly skilled and they deserve to be recognized as such. So you know, we make everybody, before they go out to a customer, you know, they had to have a lab coat on. So it was, hey, you're coming into the lab. This is an important part of your day. Yeah, you know, it's, I, I can't stress to you, you know, and so we, we came up with this kind of heroic figure concept and that our goal was to change people's lives one repair at a time. And I know, you know, it sounds kind of cheesy, but I guarantee you the people that, you know, we recovered wedding photos from their computer, fixed their kids laptop before they, you know, in time to get that report turned in at school. Oh yeah, you know, or you save some single parent, you know, thousands of dollars because you're able to repair their, their MacBook instead of having to buy a new one. They don't think it's cheesy.

No, they love it. They believe it.

And then they tell your story, they share that because they know it's important to you. They see it on your website, on your email signature, on your, you know, tagline, on your invoice, everything. And even for us at Tech Restore, when we were creating, creating the new logo, the. I wanted this heroic technician to be there. And so that's what we put in the logo. This guy in a white lab coat kind of staring off into the distance in this very heroic face with this kind of circular thing around him to represent speed like that. We were quick and I love it and I got behind it and it helped propel me. It created a system where I really believed in it because it was true. And now I could get our employees believing in it too. When we hired them, we said, look, you're going to get certified if you're not already. We're going to promote that. Everybody's, you know, Apple certified or A plus certified, that kind of stuff.

Sure, yeah. Right, right.

So that became, that became part of the whole, you know, I like to say it's the myth of your business, but it's true, you know, and we kind of crafted over time and over the years we continually discuss the story with the customer in your marketing material, blog posts, notes on invoices, like I Said emails, even our auto attendant voicemail thing that answered the phone told that story when people were coming in. Because it was different. It wasn't just high press one for whatever, hi, blah, blah, blah, blah. We talked about it on the voicemail and when they were on hold and so all those things. And we constantly receive positive comments about. About it from our customers and they love to know why. Why we were doing it. And, And I think as I was kind of putting these notes together, what I realized is that the, the technicians really respected it and got into it as well. Right.

I was gonna say, you know, why, if you're going to do this every day now, whether you're, you know, working for someone else, running your own company where you've got, you know, dozens of employees, or just on your own, why wouldn't you want to be the hero?

Yeah.

In whatever way you can be. It's more fun. That's it. More fun. My, My friend Ari, he actually runs a business in the Bay Area and he calls himself the B Tech hero. Perfect. That's. Yeah, of course. Because that's what he. That's what he does now. You know, I mean, I was going to say, hopefully he delivers on that. I actually know. I know he does. But. But yeah, you got to deliver and actually be the hero. But. But that's like. Yeah, why wouldn't you? Yeah, yeah.

And Ari is setting the narrative.

Right.

Ari is telling you up front, I'm going to rescue you.

Yes.

I'm here to help you. And like our tagline for tech restore was when we first started was help is on the way. We're. We're on the. We're coming, you know, we're. We're, you know, bringing laptop. Or we'd pick at the time we were picking them all up. Picking laptops up all over the country.

Yeah.

And that was it. Help is on the way. When you saw the truck, it was there. And I, you know, and I really leaned into it. And another thing I really liked about it, it was kind of. Well, it was like. It just wasn't this kind of word salad, if you will, you know, it was speaking plainly. It was sharing this simple story, and it's much more powerful than some corporate speak about synergy. This. Or how your company is so different. You shouldn't be having to try to convince people you're so different up front. Just. Just be different.

Just actually be different. Yeah, it's true. God, you know, so I know because I've made this choice for me. It was a mistake. But I will say that it's a choice. When you're starting your business, it's really easy to say, oh, I need to appear bigger than I am. I need to appear more professional than I am. And when we started Mac observer, we really kept our personalities out of it. It was like, you know, we want it like the New York Times was the model. It was like, okay, we're just going to be like straight down the middle, like everything. And you know, it took us several years. Thankfully, we were able to survive. You know, I mean, we were putting out good content, so it wasn't like the product was bad, but it had no personality whatsoever. And once we sort of gave up on that, it took us a long time to really kind of let go of that. Once we did, it was like, oh, right now people know that we are us and we are this small group. And you know what? Like A, we weren't fooling anybody before, and B, that's actually a good thing. Like, people like knowing that it's a small group or like they like knowing that it's human wins. Yes. That's what it is. We all like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I, I think that, you know, you, you're. I come back to the system, you know, it, it really motivates me when I can talk about it. I mean, I don't know if you can just hear it in my voice. I start getting going and I'm. All of a sudden I'm like, wait, what, what did I say for the last five minutes? Because I'm into it. I. I believe it. And your employees get into it and they believe it and you recognize them and then in, then that permeates your customer relationships and then they believe it and they talk about it. You got to go to this place. These guys are awesome. And it could have been the most mundane thing you could think about, right? And I've had people tell me, it's like, well, I don't know what to tell my story. I got to make a living. You know, I'm trying to do this. I'm a, this. And I like, I use the example of like an air conditioned repair business. Right? Okay, you're an AC people, but really, you know, you're keeping small and large businesses running by keeping offices and workers cool, right?

Yeah.

Buildings don't work without ac. Business doesn't work. Build from that.

Let's keep your business cool.

You got it. You and your techs are rock stars. You keep the economy moving on and on and on. You can build from there, get some outside help if you need it. Brainstorm, talk about it.

So if you don't have this, use the classic Tom Cruise Ray Bans in your. Your. In your logo image, right? Because you're the cool ones. You're the ones that keeps everybody else cool. Yeah. And you could drop off, with every service call, you could drop off a cheap pair of those sunglasses with your logo on it. Right. I mean, like, why not?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this stuff is really important.

Yeah. That's how you lean into it. Is you just like. Yeah, okay, here we are. Yep. Yeah.

And. And you want to just, you know, we talked about the why and we talked about, you know, how to do it. And it should touch every. It can touch every aspect of your business from your logo, your tagline, your shirts, your website. You should be sharing that story. There should be a notes from the founder. You should write an article up there. If, if, if you not confident in your writing, go subscribe to a service like Grammarly, which I love. They help tremendously, make me feel much more confident about my writing. And, you know, get your. Your team to write content and produce it and, and get your customers share customer experiences. Ask your customer if you can do a quick interview in the lobby of how happy they were that you. They fixed your kid's laptop for 300 bucks instead of buying a new one for, you know, 2,000 or whatever.

Right, right.

And so there's all kinds of opportunities to come up with how. And you will stick out. Your business will be different because a lot of small businesses don't do this, and I know they would be the better for it if they did.

It's true. It's true. Yeah. Yep. I like it, man.

Yeah, it's good stuff. And, you know, one of the things that we do here on the show is, you know, we're trying to tell our story.

Right.

Dave and I. And one way you can help us is by leaving a review for the small Business show. And Dave and I have been talking about ways to motivate people. It seems like a simple thing. It's a little clunky sometimes up on the podcast directories, but if you go to businessshow, code slash, review, it'll redirect you, and you can kind of poke around and leave a review. But what we thought we would do, if you're a small business owner and you leave us a review, we're going to put all the names in a hat each month, and we're going to feature one business here on the show. Right, Dave?

Yeah, that's it. Yeah, absolutely. But you here, like, we know it's a pain in the neck and you have to tell us that you're the one that left the review. Yes. Like it, like, because otherwise we don't. We have no way of getting in touch with you. But we do want to do this and this actually really does matter to us. Like, these reviews really, really help. So if you don't mind, go to giggab. Sorry, I'm thinking about the wrong one. I've been doing too many podcasts.

Too many podcasts.

Yeah, man. This is my third recording of the day. Go to BusinessShow Co reviews and that will get you there. If you go to BusinessShow Co review, that will also get you there. But it, you know, it takes a little bit and you got to go through, but you know, then just shoot us a note anywhere you want, you know, but Facebook, hey, I left you review.

Let us know@feedbackusinessshow.co. we're gonna gather those up and we'll run an ad for you and feature your business and try to send some customers your way, get you some good search engine optimization content.

Yeah, yeah, we will. We'll put it up like a, you know. Yeah, it's fully SEO optimized. There you go. Perfect.

You got it?

Yeah.

Awesome. It's good stuff. So if you have questions about the show too, please let us know. Reach out to that same email address. We'd be love to help you.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, take us up on our offer to do some, like, coaching or business therapy for you too, because that's something we love to do and we do it for each other all the time, but we want to do it for you as well. And we can either do it, you know, anonymously or not. Like, that's your call, 100%. And we're, you know, hopefully we're trustworthy guys. We'll give you your pen back. Even so. There you go.

That's good. I like it.

All right, folks, thanks so much for listening. Thanks to our sponsors, of course. Textexpander.com podcast lino.com SBS we'll see you next week. Keep living that charmed life, will you?