Our 2020 Small Business Report + 2021 Trends

The Small business show, episode 309 for Wednesday, January 6, 2021. Happy New Year, everybody. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business Show. The show by, for and about small business, where what we do here is small businessing as a verb.

Yes.

It's an action. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton. Yep.

In Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. Welcome to the first small business show experience of 2021.

2021, man. Yeah.

I hope everybody had a great holiday, all things considered. Excited to be with you for what is surely going to be a terrific year with some tremendous success for all of us.

I hope so. Yeah, I want to talk about that. I want to actually, I'd like to maybe add transparency here and, and pull back the kimono a little bit. I'd love to talk about how our businesses were, including this one, but. But not just this one. How our businesses were last year and what we're both predicting and planning for this year. Because those are two very different things. Right?

Yeah.

You know, so great. And then at some point in the middle there, I will take great pleasure in telling you about our sponsor issuu@issuu.com podcast. That's issu.com podc. We will talk about that with more detail shortly here. But in terms of the year. So you want to start, you want to bounce this back and forth. I mean, I don't know the right way to do it. I'm happy to start.

Let's talk about the show first.

Okay.

Let's talk about Small Business show. And, you know, you just so folks at home, but Dave kind of, not kind of. Dave runs the business side of the show. He manages, you know, sponsorships and different things like that. And we both work together to plan content. I typically manage interviews and come up with show topics and create notes and all that, you know, show notes, that kind of stuff. And, you know, we're. We're looking at, as we talked about on the episode two weeks ago, the last one we did as improving the show, trying to improve the metrics, make the show more useful to you, and quite frankly, more useful to us as far as getting feedback. One of the biggest challenges I face with this show is I love the show and I love the feedback I get during the show from Dave and from the guests and that kind of stuff. But what I am missing personally is the feedback offline is getting that, you know, our listeners to interact with us more. So we're going to work on that. And Dave, you know, I posted a Bunch of different ideas, just kind of brainstorming things. And, you know, I would love to in the next week, have you take a look at those, give me your tips, feedback, what do you think? And then maybe next week we could do a show all about what we'd like to try and then revisit and see what works and what doesn't.

And see what. Yeah, that's right. It. I mean, businesses, it. You know, we talk about how we love mistakes and. And it's true. Because my favorite part about making a mistake, I don't like every part of making a mistake, mind you. Sure. But my favorite part about it is that when I've. Once I've made the mistake, and it doesn't take long after I've made the mistake to be able to look back and say, oh, okay, here's what I need to do to fix this. And I love knowing what to do. One of the hardest things as an entrepreneur is knowing what to do next. Yeah.

Well, that's the hard part about this is in, unless we get feedback. Well, I guess our feedback is going to be those metrics, the number of subscribers that hopefully continues to grow, sponsors that are interested in the show. And I guess I may, I don't know, at the end of all these adjust, these changes and adjustments that we're talking about. I may just have to embrace that as the feedback. But I got to tell you, it's so different than the other business channels and things that I'm involved in because I get a lot of really direct feedback. Yeah, my sales increase, I get customer feedback, my followers talk to me on a daily basis. And that's very rewarding. And it is something that I miss from this show.

This, yeah, this show is unique for me in that regard too, as we talked about last time. So, yeah. Feedbackusinessshow.co. let us know what you think. But yeah, in terms of this business, and I want to talk about all of our businesses because I think it's important, especially because of we're in the middle of this pandemic and all of that stuff. And it certainly is affecting some of our businesses and some segments of our businesses, but not all of them. And I think it would be, you know, nobody likes to talk about when, you know, things, even ups or downs, like nobody speaks in anything that is relatable. And so we're going to change that today. And what I will say right out of the gate is last year, small business show revenues grow. You know, top line revenues were down 50%. So it's half of what it was the year prior. And, and, and so let's just leave that where it is.

Kind of feedback I don't like.

I know, but, but it is.

But, you know, I get it. I get it.

Right, right. And that's, that's 100% sponsorship revenue. Just right. So. And I have some reasons for this, which we'll get into in a minute here, but, you know, I run four other three other businesses. We have one business that I don't talk a whole lot about. It is effectively a get paid to site GPT site where people come and they do, like, things like surveys and things like that. And, and they get signed up for.

It over the weekend.

Oh, well, there you go. So in that business, it might not surprise you has, is up well over 100% during, you know, in 2020. Again, I don't want to, I want to evaluate all of this, so I just want to state where things are. Our, our backbeat media business was interesting. We had a huge dip in the middle of the year, but we ended the year with sales up 3%. But cash down, cash flow down 15%. You know, like, cash in down 15%. And again, I want to, I just want to state all this and then talk about it at the Mac Observer. We're up 40% year over year. Now my music revenue is down, of course, it's down about 80% year over year. No great surprise there. Right. But family time, again, there's no dollar amount associated with it, but it could be argued as priceless. Yeah, family time, it was hard to do the math because there are no dollar amounts on it. But, you know, looking at, well, we got an extra four months together as a family that we never thought we would get again. Right. Because our kids had left for school, things were moving away, and then suddenly we were all home together again. And that was something we all appreciated as a silver lining. But, but it was, it was completely unexpected. You know, we never thought we'd have it again. And so that was up, you know, 150%, maybe even 200% over what we would have expected. And the same with personal projects, you know, up. You know, I've gotten so much done on the personal project front and on the business project front. Right. So, so that's, that's where things are. Do you have. Oh, I have a lot types of numbers.

Absolutely.

I would love to hear your numbers. And then I'd like to so to synthesize all of it and say, okay, why, what do we attribute that to? So yeah, yeah, go ahead.

So I have a, you know, like you, I have some different channels and different businesses that kind of bring into my revenue stack. And my really changed, you know, a few years ago when I sold my largest business.

Right.

So then kind of changed from, you know, an employer manager with a bunch of employees and then kind of became. Stepped back into the solopreneur. And so, you know, I have, I have a fashion, I have a couple of fashion related businesses. One is a luxury watch business that I've, that I've managed for almost over a decade. And it was a, it was a very significant part of my personal revenue stack for a long time. But it has trended downward for the last three to four years. Just in general not related to the, the pandemic, although the pandemic pushed it down about another 20%.

Okay. So that's all I want to like. Again, it's really hard not to qualify the why at the same time that we. Because we never like to deliver bad news. Right. So we always like to couch it. So. Okay, so your luxury watch is off 20 points. Okay.

Year over year. And my handbag business that I started after selling Tech Restore was up, but you know, only about 2%. So basically flat. And I have some, obviously some interesting trends about that too. The biggest hit I took was our vacation rental business, as you would imagine. And some of our properties were down as much as 40% from 2019. And I have some feedback on that too.

All right, great.

And I have one more.

Okay. Oh, all right.

So my pub, my. I started the publishing business back in the fall of 2019 that, you know, really didn't get taken off until that. My first book that I published, Poshmark Unlocked that talked about the experiment of starting a company on my phone, which I've, I've documented ad nauseam here on the show. And that really took off in the second half of 2020 up, you know, over 100%. Continues to really hustle and have some feedback on that as well. Interesting. So I, I have a lot more information to talk about and I'd love. We'll go into the whys after we hear from the good people are good sponsors today.

Yeah, well, and that's exactly it. I just wanted to take a second and just talk the numbers and then talk the why. But I'm gonna make you wait because I have this really important, this really cool thing to tell you about which is issue@isSUIS.com podcast. So look, you live to create, right? But you don't live to worry over the little nitpicky details involved in putting the final touches on content. Right? You do what you do best, and now you get to let ISSUU handle the rest. Because ISSUU is your all in one platform to create and distribute beautiful digital publications. From brochures to magazines, sales collateral and more. It's perfect for marketers, creators, educators, designers, publishers, salespeople, or really anybody who wants to make eye catching content. An ISSUU makes it easy. You just upload your PDFs and files and ISSUU transforms them, using your vision and their own customizable templates to create the content you want. So you have the content you want to make it look pretty. That's where ISSUU comes in. You create it once and distribute it everywhere. Because everything is optimized to post on your website and social platforms like Instagram and Facebook. And they can even help you make animated Instagram stories. And you can start using ISSUU today for free. Or if you sign up for a premium account, you'll get 50% off and you gotta go to issuu.com podcast and use promo code SBS. That's issu.com podcast. Use promo code SBS at checkout for your free account or 50% off your premium account. One more time, issuu.com podcast with promo code SBS. And our thanks to Issuing for sponsoring this episode. All right, Shannon, so let's talk about the why of all of these things. Right, so some of these things are obvious. The my, you know, my music revenue, your vacation rental business revenue, each off, you know, 40 to 80%. Like, I think it's pretty easy to attribute those, those are simple to, to the pandemic. But, but absolutely, But I, oh, and for me, that's absolutely true. But I, I hate to apply external excuses, although it is 100% accurate here. The other thing that's accurate for me is the reason that my music revenue is off 80% is because I played 80% less last year. Now, that could have happened if I simply chose not to play. Right? It wasn't my choice. But it is one of those things that's important to remember and the reason I put it that way is once the opportunity to play, or once for you, the opportunity to rent your homes out again comes back as a reality on a regular basis. We need to make sure we re engage with those things and we need to make sure that we stay engaged, even right now and not losing sight of what's happening in the industry. Or with me, with music still Playing, still keeping in touch with all of my musician friends and, you know, cultivating those relationships so that when the time comes, I'm ready to capitalize on that renewed opportunity. And it's just one of those important things that I, you know, that. That is. It's there. And so, yeah, it's not my choice.

I would also comment, and I don't. Yeah. And I don't know anything about performing and that. That aspect of. Or that type of business, but I would say if that was a more significant revenue stream for you, you would have focused on finding alternative ways to get that same correct. Versus. Okay, we got to put this on hold. You know, keeping in touch, keeping our. Right, you know, your gig gab, POS podcast, going, keeping connections open, ready for the rebound and like that.

Ready for the rebound. Yeah. Yeah, you got to be ready for it.

You have to be. And for us, one of the. We were actually doing okay with the. The vacation rentals because, yes, when the first kind of lockdowns came in March, February, March and April, we had to cancel some guests. And it was significant. However, once things, you know, kind of opened up again, at least for local travel or local vacations where you could drive to versus getting on a plane, sure, we had a significant uptick in business, and I was ready to report that we were going to have a, you know, a banner year. But we just have encountered a second, you know, significant lockdown here in California, where our properties are, and especially over the holidays, which are our big earners, and we. Some properties that, you know, rent out for a thousand or twelve hundred dollars a night. And so we had to cancel holiday plans, and that's our significant revenue time of the year. Yeah, that's where that 40% comes.

Yeah, that could have cut half of that 40% out if it. If it all went the right way. Yeah, exactly.

Oh, yeah, we would. We would have been up for the year had we not just in the last month or so had to, you know, cancel all these guests.

That makes sense. Yeah. Okay. So that's. Okay. So that makes sense, right? Yeah, yeah. With our. With our Get Paid to Business, the one that did really well, I can attribute about half of that to the pandemic, you know, because people are home and doing okay. Right. Like, so many people, the way that they use these sites is they're like, you know, the time that they spend otherwise idle in front of a device. And so many people, I know sit on their treadmills with an iPad or something and just do these little surveys or Whatever, you know, and, And. Or play these little games or whatever, and you just. It's. The more time you spend on the site, the more is earned and therefore the more you get. Because there's a rev share. Right. That's. That's just the way it works. So. So 50% of it is that. The other 50% is. We came into this year pretty strong and moving at a really good clip, developing new things. You know, we. They always say that luck is, you know, opportunity meets preparation. And that was certainly true for that business this year. We had been doing a lot. We were ready. Of course, we didn't know there was going to be a pandemic, but it hit at the right time and at the wrong time. We were spending a lot at the beginning of the year on growing the business. And then within about 30 days, maybe less of lockdowns happening. So March 15, ish, maybe March 20. Within about 30 days of that, our suppliers, our big suppliers, all our partners really all moved from net 30 for us to net 90. And we pay our users net zero. Right. That's the way the business works. So we suddenly had to sit and look. And I have been, you know, there are times where I feel like I don't do a whole lot with this business, and there's times when I do a whole ton, but my job there is to keep the business organized properly. Right. And of course, there's a lot of guesswork in that because there's some fundamental things that you just do. But otherwise it's like, well, how do we manage our cash? And we had stockpiled some cash because we knew that we had this exposure out there. And at times there were. It caused friction between me and my partners. I said, no, we need to stockpile more. The friction all went away when our partners moved to our. Our business partners. Not my, you know, partners in the business, but our. Yeah, the, the companies with whom we work. When they moved to net 90, it was like, hey, guess what? We have that war chest. Good news. We get to stay in business through this. Because it would have meant just shutting the doors. Like it literally would have been one or the other. There was no real in between with that because I don't think we could have gotten a loan on March 25 to bridge that over. So. Yeah, that makes sense.

So it's good foresight in thinking that, you know, you need to have. Have access to that capital, whatever form it is.

Yes.

Whether you've got your, you know, you've got it in the bank or you've got a line of credit you can use, an emergency, you know, whatever it takes, you need to be able to get, you need to have it.

And that business was too young to have a line of credit that would have truly floated us across. So. Yeah, so it was. But it worked out like, you know, everything was fine.

That's cool.

Yeah, we had, we had just recovered. We had made some. No great surprise. We'd made some mistakes in our first year in business. Yeah. And we really made a bad one. We had this thing that we had set up that was a real loss leader for us. Turns out we made some miscalculations. It was a much bigger loss leader than we had planned because it was more successful than we had planned, more quickly, and so people were earning more than we had to give them. And we had to take a PR hit amongst our users and just say, okay, look, we can't, we can't do this this way. And we're going to only be able to pay you out, you know, whatever. I forget what it was, but it wasn't 100, 100 cents on the dollar. It was, you know, less than that. And we had just finished paying all that off and really, you know, maybe in December or something, and then, and then we had a couple of months to, you know, refill the war chest. And then thankfully, you know, we had that time. So. So. But that's, that's where that business came from. Back be Backbeat Media is interesting because our sales, we pushed over the top. We really worked hard in December, and we got our sales up 3% year over year. Now, that's basically flat, but when I look back and I see that basically Q2 was down 35%.

Yeah, significant.

We really raced toward the finish line and we have a great momentum here, but as I said, our cash flow is down 15%. Well, the reason for that is most of our partners pay us their ad agencies. So there's a whole flow of how the money goes from client to ad agency to us. And so There's a net 60 to net 90 that exists in that business too. Right. And so with most of our sales pushed toward the back half of the year and having missed out on that, you know, end of Q1, all of Q2 scenario, our cash flow is down because a lot of the stuff that we, that we booked, it will be paid, you know, in the first half of this year or.

Right.

You know, it's just how, it's just how that shift works. But the good news is it qualifies Us in that business for another PPP loan when that, that opportunity comes around because you have to have been, you have to have 1/2 of 20, 20 where you were down more than. I forget what it was.

10, 25.

25. Yeah, that's right. 25. Yep. And we were down 32 or something like I said. So it was like, yeah, we're gonna.

Do the same with our vacation rental businesses because they dropped. You know, I didn't do it last time because it actually picked up pretty quick but I am definitely going to do it this time because we took such a hit in Q4.

Totally.

For sure.

For sure. Now let's, let's talk. Well, let's do this show last. So let's talk about your, obviously your vacation rental business. It's your watch.

Yeah.

Reselling business. That sounds like it was declining anyway.

It was and I don't think it has anything to do with, with COVID I mean like I said, it used to be a very significant business. But I think, you know, and I've speculated over the years but fortunately I had time to see it, you know, going down and make changes and start new things. But to take its. But I think, you know, the Apple watch and other smart watches really have taken a hit. I think there's the, there's less distributors, less retailers and there's just overall less demand for these types of watches. And you know, so it's just, there's just less inventory out there and what you'll find is there's less. That means there's less opportunities. And I also. It's similar to what happened happened with, with Apple. You know, when Apple was really having lots of problems with their supply chain and distribution and all kinds of companies were selling Macs and it was kind of, kind of crazy. Yeah, those were, that was the heyday for a guy like me that could take advantage of all those inefficiencies. That's what I've done my whole life is looked at and going well. That's not a good way to do it. But let me go help these guys fix this problem. And I could do that. But as Apple got better and better and better, there were less and less opportunities. And the same I think has happened in the watch business with the manufacturers have taken more control of the supply chain because they've also seen demand diminish and they're not pushing into so many retailers that kind of do whatever they want, you know, willy nilly with pricing and returns and those kind of things. So there's, there's just less opportunities in that, in that market.

Okay.

And continues to.

Totally makes sense to me. Yeah. I'm a, I'm a mechanical watch guy. But I have not added to my collection in the last five years. And if I. It used to be that my Apple watch was my, was the watch that I wore more often than any other one watch, but it was not on my wrist 50% of the time, if that makes sense.

I see.

It was my most popular watch for me, but I would wear others because I enjoyed it. And you know, in the last year, I was thinking about this the other day. You know, I can probably count maybe 15 days where I've worn a not Apple watch.

I was like, huh, that's interesting.

Should I be selling these things? Should like, you know, I gotta.

Yeah, yeah.

So this doesn't surprise me what you're saying.

Yeah. And the other thing that happened along the way is corporations, big, big companies got tight and I mean they got more control over the customs and importation aspects of these products.

Sure.

Particularly companies like Rolex and Cartier. Well, you really cannot. I mean, you can, but if customs opens up your box and you have Rolex watches or Cartier or Omega, that kind of thing, you're going to be in a world of hurt if you cannot provide direct documentation from the manufacturer that you are authorized to import that product.

Wow.

Yeah. And so there are, there's a whole.

Even, even if it's used stuff or, or.

Oh, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Because you'd think. And it only like it only takes a few times to get those seized for you to go, oh, wow, that's very expensive. And now you can certainly go and fight and go to this customs court, which I have done. But it is a long, long process and it's very expensive. And so there are a, a whole group of gig workers that basically wear these watches and as they get on a plane, they fly somewhere, go through customs, take it off, get back on the plane and fly home. And so we've employed some of those people to bring watches from Hong Kong and different places. And it's, it's a shame that these big companies can control the, that especially on a used piece of.

Yeah, you know, I mean, I can see brand new stuff like that. There's. That would make more. It would, it would, yeah, sure. Yeah.

It's kind of one of these things where they just have this blanket policy and they understand nuance.

Right.

And if they just kind of have this flat thing and these big companies love it. Apple does the same thing. You cannot import anything from China into the United States that has an Apple logo on it. If, if they open your pocket, your, the container up or your packages up, it'll get seized and they'll say, oh, all you need to do is give us a letter from Apple authorizing you to import their copyrighted material. That's it. Simple.

Yeah, simple. Yeah. Let me just call all my friends at Apple. I'm sure one of them send me the letter. Yeah, you got it.

So, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but you know, yeah, that's, so that's, I was prepared for that and I continue to be prepared for that. On the handbag front, one interesting observation is that, that when the pandemic first hit our high end bags, these are like thousand dollar plus, they, they sold really well and they actually sold better. The low, the mid to low, maybe 300 to 900 bags just stopped and didn't sell. But the high end really picked it up. But what we saw then in, in the second lockdown in, in Q4 is that the low to mid really increased. The high end bags dropped about 30% and but the low to mid increased about 40, 48% in this second. So it's a different type of buyer. And so maybe I'm speculating, of course, but maybe the demographic in this second lockdown that's feeling the hit a little bit more is a higher end or higher earner or more disposable income that doesn't have access to that this time.

Right, right. Well, okay, so you brought us, you brought us into our, you know, next section here, which is the predictions and then plans right. For this. And that is one of them. Now that what you, what you just said about the handbag business. So that makes sense. All the reports are that, you know, the, the people who had, you know, well, let's call them white collar jobs. I'm oversimplifying here, but you know, the people who had jobs that could easily be turned into remote jobs weren't already their consumer goods spending is up over 6%. Right. You know, and that was true even before Q4, which is the holiday buying season, you know, but what was down almost, you know, almost 6%. So a little bit less than that. But down was all of the services. Right. Vacation rentals.

Yes.

Dining out like all of those things.

Concerts.

Concerts. Oh my gosh, don't. I know it hurts a lot.

Big part of life.

Yeah. Big part of mine too. Yeah. Yeah. I'm surprised we've never gone to a show together that now that like knowing how we both. Well, I mean, we live 3,000 miles apart. That's why.

Yes, yes.

Yeah, but, but yeah, it, like, so it doesn't surprise me that those super high end stuff did really well because it was like, well, we can't. That summer vacation just got canceled. Yes, right. The, the, the. We go out to eat four times a week. Well, that guy. No, I don't. But I'm just saying for, you know, I'm painting a picture out there. For instance, somebody goes out to eat four times a week. Okay, well now you just got 16 meals a month back in your pocket. Okay, well, you know what? Buy a handbag. It's fine. Go, you know, knock yourself out, whatever. Does it make you happy? Yes. Okay, well, we're stuck in our houses. It's the middle of a pandemic. You know, take the dopamine, hit, you're good. Right?

So yes.

So that makes sense. And then of course, the drop as the Christmas buying season comes in to the lower end stuff coming up. Okay. Like all of this can be explained and, and definitely related to the pandemic in that way.

I think so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think so. Yeah.

Go ahead, go ahead. Well, one of the trend going forward for me for this business is like the watches I know are trending out and I, there's nothing I can do with that. The bags. One thing that's happened during the pandemic is a lot of retailers that we're selling this kind of product, which is primarily where I get it from, and distributors that distribute the product. Where this comes from. Yeah, they're not dealing with it anymore, man. Maybe they're closing stores, you know, because as a retail market shifts, I. If I'm not able to find new suppliers, then what'll happen to me next year? Supply constraints, we're gonna, are gonna slow the business down. Right. So I'm constantly looking for new suppliers. One of the interesting supply sources that I recently came across are cruise lines because they're shut down and they have retail. Not only do they have retail stores on the ships, they do fashion shows.

Right.

I guess I didn't really know much about this because I'm not a cruise person. Yeah.

I've seen fashion shows on cruise ships.

Yeah. So like, you know, I just landed, you know, pretty significant 500 piece, you know, deal through a cruise line distributor and I'm kicked and. Yeah. And I'm just like, okay. Just at first I couldn't figure out where they were coming from and then I kept looking, looking okay, great. I. I get it. And I was like, fascinating.

Yeah. Once you understand it, then it doesn't seem so sketchy anymore, right?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So finding, you know, these new suppliers going to be real important for me, and also my interest in this business is going to depend, you know, really impact how it does. It's. It's great. I love it. I love the followers I've been able to create. You know, we've got about a half a million followers now.

Wow.

And.

Yeah.

And. And it's cool. But there are some aspects of it I really just. I don't enjoy as much anymore because I've done it for the last three or four or, you know, three, four years, and I'm gonna have to make a decisions like, okay, offload this.

Yeah, yeah.

Do I bring somebody else in? Although I vowed never to hire another employee again, I could certainly get a contract person to come, you know, do this. The aspects of it that I'm not as excited about, which I think I'll probably wind up happening.

Yeah, that makes sense. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, looking at 20, 21, which is where we are here, I think it's probably going to be April before we start to see enough of sort of trend downward in the negative impacts of the pandemic that things will start to really begin. That reopening, I don't think it will be the end of that. I think that's the beginning of that. Right. I think with the vaccinations and. And. And stuff that's happening now. I mean, we just had the holidays, which was, you know, we knew was going to be a mess for. For cases and all that stuff. So. Fine. You know, I say fine. I don't mean to be flippant about it. It's just there's not much more to say about it is really what it is.

Right.

Just. Yep. And. And then we, you know, we've got these vaccinations happening. Yeah. Everybody's complaining they're not happening fast enough. Nothing would be fast enough to be fair.

But we're fortunate to have a vaccine right now.

The fact that I know about a dozen people, including my neighbor right across the street who have had the shot already tells me that we know how to get it from the lab into someone's arm. Now all we need to do is make that process more efficient and scale it. It. And guess what? We're really good. Like, not me. I mean, I'm okay with it, but not for that, you know, don't give me any credit. But we're as a people, we're really good at figuring out how to scale things. And so I'm, I'm really curious to see where we are at the first week of February, you know, in terms of that vaccination rate. But the other thing is we are being smart about who we're vaccinating in a general sense. And it's the people that have the most exposure and therefore the people that are more likely to get infected. And so I think this, Even this first 10% is going to have a massive impact, you know, a month later in the numbers because we're, we're hitting the spots that are hit the hardest. So that's why I think by April we're gonna see these transmission numbers much lower. Even though it's possible you or me hasn't been vaccinated by April. Right. You know, hasn't even had the opportunity to be vaccinated by, by April.

Yeah, I think that's a really important thing to benchmark is to, is because, and, and we can experiment.

Right.

Because we have some states that are just like, hey, first come, first served. If you're in you, you want to obviously we're going to do all the healthcare workers first. Totally makes sense. It seems like to be a blanket concept which is obviously smart makes really. And then they're just like come get in line, we're going to give it to whoever. And then we have other states that are making decisions based on, on different priorities of who gets it and using terms like equity and this different things about who should get. And, and so you now you'll be able to look and say okay, we'll have data. Yeah. Which state has been more successful? Is there delays or is this, is it more efficient just to get in line? So I think it's great. And I think that a B testing is just a huge part of the success of our country in general of anything.

Yeah, it, it is our first pandemic. We don't know the answer. You know, we can, we can guess, we have, we can have gut feelings, we can even have data driven feelings about the answer, but we don't have data.

No, we don't.

So. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I'm curious.

Me too. And one of the things like I, I, I have some, some thoughts. You know, 2020 was really a tremendous learning year for me and I think a lot of us and that is, you know, I really learned that you can find an expert to confirm your own cognitive biases for Just about any subject.

Yes.

And so can everyone else, you know. And so I think it's really one of the things I learned about like we were talking about testing and stuff is that is being able to look beyond experts, so called experts and dig and find the data and not be, you know, with blinders on just to, you know, find out what you, what you think you want to hear.

Yeah, well, you know, the problem is it would be far more efficient, efficient to be able to find an expert that was just going to tell you the right information as opposed to what you want to hear. But that's not the world we currently live in, right?

It was not, I don't know, never again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not so sure. I, I think we were more trusting and didn't quite, I think we've, we've been made aware of these, cut these, our own biases much more in the last, you know, know, four or five years and I think in the long run it will serve us better. But it's, it's certainly painful to have to go through it right now, right?

Yes, yes, very much so. Yeah.

Yeah.

But I, I think, I think the, I think it's going to be Q4 of, of this year 21. Yeah, that's that where things are like going to be back to rocking again.

I, I, I, I would agree.

You know, and I think we will, it, you know, we will look back on this 10 years from now as 2022 being the year where things were just like wide open again. And even though I think it's going to start in different ways in different places this year, I think it's going to be, it will be seen as widespread next year. The comfort level. Right. Because it's, it's not just are we logistically and medically and all of that ready. It's okay. There's gonna be a lag time between when we are actually ready versus when we feel like we're ready. And it's gonna take, some people are already like screw it, forget it. Right?

Oh yeah.

But the lion's share of people are gonna want to see some proof, right? Like does this vaccine actually work? Do the numbers go down? Right. And so there will be a lot of this, hey, you canaries go into the coal mine for me.

Yes.

Let me know how it is and then, then I'll come back and let you know, you know. And, and so I think it's going to take a little time. But I also think that 2022 will be seen as the beginning of our version of the Roaring twenties. Nobody's going to want to be home.

I would agree.

Right?

Yes.

Everybody's going to want to be out. The value of being in the presence of other people is something that I think we were losing. Like we were all getting sick of each other and now it's like, okay, you know, wait, I'm not that sick of you people. I don't mind. I want to be around you people. You know, Like, I think those things are there.

That's right.

Yeah, I agree. And I think bitcoin will double by the end of the year. That's my final prediction. Wow, that's good.

Yeah, I would like to hear. That's. That's good. I would agree with you on the bitcoin thing. I, I am a believer in the million dollar coin. Yeah. I really am. I do want to talk about our, our publishing business, mine and ours combined, and just talk about those trends.

Sure.

I mentioned that second half of 2020. You know, my Poshmark Unlocked book just took off and I think people were looking for ways to make extra income and finding it up on Amazon and those in those categories. I mean, that book continues to rank high in the small business and entrepreneurship categories. It's typically floats between 125 and 500, which are. It may sound like that's a high number, but considering there's 4 million books on Amazon and we've learned the hard way how tough it is to get. Although our mistakes book got to number six.

Yeah.

And I think that's great. We had mixed results with that. We made some good mistakes. We learned a lot about publishing and marketing, primarily what not to do.

We made it into the Amazon top 10.

We did.

We can see.

Which is great.

Yeah.

Yeah. Our partnership guide, kind of a non starter. Didn't do much with it. We have our employee guide that has the content sort of curated. There's a lot of it. It needs to be edited and formatted for publication date. Steve, you're going to take that one on so you can publish as the author. So I'll be the co author on that one. Due to some kind of limitations on the way the, the Amazon publishing stuff works.

Yeah.

What I'd love is next week is to pick a publishing date and a pre order date for that book that we could talk about on the show.

Yeah.

Based on, Based on your schedule. Yeah. I'm. I'm getting ready to publish my second book in this unlocked series that I'm starting. The Poshmark one did great. I'm doing ebay Unlock that just went on pre sale. It's going to publish in February. So for me, I think the publishing is going to continue to grow and become a success.

Publishing.

Book publishing.

Yes. I just want to. Because that's. We are currently publishing a podcast. Right. You have websites that we publish. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But book.

The book publishing. Yeah, yeah. I think it's going to continue to grow and be a significant part of my revenue Stack back for a long time to come. I think it's a great.

You didn't mention your books in the, in the. How was your year section here? Like, how are those doing?

Yeah. So Poshmark Unlocked is up over 100 since, you know, I, I published in September.

Oh, you did say. You said your publishing business. That's. That's your book. Sorry, you did say that's that.

Yeah, sorry. You got it. And so with, you know, I have a bunch of ideas for, you know, in this Unlock series related to small business and other things that I've done. I love the positive feedback that you get. I think it's a great way to build followers and I hope to bring that into the, you know, our small business guide, you know, stack as well. So, yeah, the hard part about that business is, is building habits to be successful. And I think it'd be a great topic for a future show is how to mitigate the negative habits that we all have. Fussy me. And how to promote those positive habits by coupling them with rewards and different systems that I've been working on. So we'll definitely be revisiting that.

Yeah, cool. Yeah, one of my. And I've had this on the back burner through most of Q4 because I just didn't have the bandwidth to go through the hiring process. But new hires are a big thing for me here in 2021. We've already brought somebody onto the GPT business. In fact, we're adding another one that'll really help expand what we're doing on the sort of the social media front there for us at Backbeat, but very much related and including what we do here at the Small Business show. I mentioned it on the show once that we're going to be hiring somebody to do podcast promotion, marketing. Yes. Some social media, but just taking all the content that exists in this show and other shows that we have and getting it out there in ways that new listeners will be able to find and sort of chew into without having to listen to an entire episode. Right. Like, I think there's ways to attract New listeners. And we're not doing any of them, which is great in that it makes it easy to go start doing them.

It's gonna be some big numbers.

Yeah, yeah. Big percentages. Yeah. Because it starts at basically zero.

Zero.

Yeah. So. So, like, I'm really excited about that. And then I. I have. I have not really ever gone out of my way to present myself as an expert in any of the things that I'm an expert in. Any of the speaking gigs and. And, you know, various other promotion stuff that has happened to me is exactly that. It has happened to me. Right. I. People find me and I mean, I do. We do this show. I do my macgeekab show. I mean, so in that sense, I am a practicing expert, but I am not doing any of the PR work to put myself out there. And I have, again, just because good fortune I will be. I mean, I have the. I have the. I'm the right person for the job, but I didn't seek out this job. I will be teaching a class at the University of New Hampshire starting in February called the Business Podcasting. Yeah, it's going to be a blast. But I'm going to take that as sort of the stepping stone and really kind of cement myself out there as a podcasting business expert and very likely leveraging the new hire that I just mentioned, and that. That will be able to sort of, you know, help with that and keep me on track with that. Doing our. Our pr.

That's awesome.

Yeah. Because there's no reason not to sort of leverage that. I, you know, I. I get frustrated when I see other. Other people getting credit for things, and it's like, you know what? I should be getting credit for that. And it's like, well, but I need to be out there. Like, I. I need to throw my hat in the ring, and I don't. And so do.

Yeah, it's. It's another. But yeah, it's just. It's one more thing that you have the skill set. But like, you say you're not a. You gotta get somebody to maybe help you promote it. Right. And get out there.

That's it. Yeah, exactly. So. And then. And you know, and then I'm really excited for what we're. What we're doing with this show. We don't. We don't have that plan yet. We have plans, we have ideas, but we haven't put anything into place. And honestly, part of the reason for that is certainly for me, and I think I can speak for you. We're sitting here Hoping that we will hear from some of you@feedbacksinessshow.co to tell us what you like about this show, what you don't like, what you would want out of this show instead of what you're already getting or in addition to what you're already getting. So tell us that we're right, that we're wrong, that you have a good idea, or that we already have a good idea. Let us know. Feedbackusinessshow.co.

That'S good. Hey, and we have a brand new website. You should go to businessshow.co to check it out. It looks awesome. I think it looks great. And we're. We're continually tweaking with it and I love it. It's simple and right to find each episode. It's got a great search.

Makes life easier for us too. Yep.

Yeah, it's gonna be awesome.

Cool.

Excellent, man. Well, I've always enjoyed getting together. It's a great first show. I'm looking forward to exploring new ways to make the show better and.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like there's. Well, I know that there's opportunity for this show. It's that, you know, nearly unlimited upside.

Yep.

So, yeah, so let us know what you think. But even if you don't, just keep listening, you know, the second, like, the really. The order should be reversed, but I'm gonna go with it. My first request of all of you would be send us a note. Let us know what you think. My second request would be tell somebody else about the show. Now, really? I should be telling. Asking you to tell everybody else about the show first because that actually spreads the. The love a little bit more. But we want to see some of the love come inside here. So. So let us know what you think about this show.

Yes. That would be awesome.

Yeah. Yeah.

Great.

Well, that's what I got, man. You got anything else I got too.

All right, that's it. Have a. Have a great week. Thank you for your time, for listening, for your feedback. Feedback. Back at Business Show Co, if you do like the show, we'd love to have you leave a review for us at. Wherever you listen to your podcast, go up there and tell the. Tell the other listeners why they should be here with us each week.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Make. Making sure everybody knows about what we're doing here is huge. So. Yeah. All right, well, thank you very kindly, folks, for your time today, and we'll see you next week. Make sure you keep living that charm life.