Overcoming and Finding Opportunities in Procrastination – The Small Business Show 222

The Small business show episode 222 for Wednesday, May 8, 2019. Greetings folks and welcome to the Small Business show here at businessshow Co. You know what I'm about to say. It's the show by, for and about small business. Sponsors for this episode include textexpander.com podcast. We'll tell you in a minute why you want to go there for. Now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm.

Dave Hamilton and out on the west coast, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you, man?

I'm good, I'm good. The east coast, at least my section of the east coast here is feeling consistently like spring. So that's nice.

Yeah, yeah, that is good. That is good. We've kind of had a cold lapse back here again last couple days, but I'm hoping that it's short lived. So.

Yeah, yeah, we had. Well, like when we were in Chicago, we were visiting some schools or whatever and for my son and it was like 70 degrees the day we arrived. It was 80 the day before we arrived. And like the day after we arrived, it snowed six inches.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah. So that was cool.

Sounds like Texas. Yeah, that's interesting.

Yeah, it was like. Yeah, it was just. The weather was all over the place.

That's crazy.

You know what? I'm gonna share a quote that I took out my phone and wrote down while we were sitting at the University of Chicag. For anyone that hasn't done college tours, the way it works is you. They assemble all the people that are there for the tour for about 45 minutes in a lecture hall. They give you their sales pitch. They don't call it their sales pitch, but that's what they give you. And then typically you go and tour the campus. So we were sitting in this lecture hall while the weather had. While the snow had not started. And then just as the lecture ended, of course that's when the snow started and we got to tour the campus in the snow. But it's a gorgeous campus if you've never been there. Truly stunning. It's the most beautiful college campus I've ever seen. Anyway, the woman that was giving the speech, actually the woman that was giving the speech blew me away. She had no slides, no notes, and no help. She stood up in front of the room, no microphone, no other people, and delivered 45 minutes of a cohesive presentation.

Wow, that's awesome.

I always try to pay attention to presentation skills and things like that because it's something that I do occasionally and I like to perfect it. You know, this woman was a natural. I mean, it was clear she had rehearsed it, but she said something in the midst of. Of her spiel there that really blew me away. She was talking about how, look, you know, we aren't looking. We aren't a cookie cutter. And most colleges will say this, like, we don't have just one mold, and if you fit into it, you're accepted, and if you don't fit in, you're not. She's like, we're looking to really build a cohesive class and a balanced class. And she said something very interesting that resonated with me. Because as a business owner, I am always. One of my faults is that I want to treat people the way I would want to be treated in their shoes.

Oh, yeah.

And what she.

We've talked about that here before.

We talk about it.

Right.

And what she said was, if we accepted a student body made up entirely of high school class presidents, nothing would ever get done on campus.

That's brilliant. It's brilliant.

It's. It's. It's brilliant because it's true. Right?

It says a lot.

Yeah, it says. It's so much packed into that. And of course, like I said, it resonated with me because I am that problem. Right. I want to treat, but I don't want to be an employee. And most of the people that work for me, in fact, I think all of them do. And. And it took me a really long time to learn that that's okay. Like, yeah, we're different. Well, it's okay.

Yeah, yeah. It's important. And to kind of unpack that a little bit more. I think that. And I know we've discussed it here, like you, you know, the idea of getting a bunch of freedom and autonomy and being able to take risk and achieve things on my own is very exciting, and that's what drives me. But if you try to push that type of thing on some employees, maybe not all, but certainly some of them, it's not going to go the way you think it is.

It's not going to fly. No, no, no.

And they're going to be.

It's going to scare the heck out of it.

Scare them. They're going to be terrified. They don't want to do it. And I can remember, you know, years ago being really shocked that they wouldn't want that same kind of autonomy. You know, I didn't want to give them direction. I was like, well, here's what we want to achieve. Figure out how to do It.

Yeah, yeah. You have the freedom. I'll give you the freedom that. No. Never gave me. Right. Like, that's, that's the mentality. It's like. No, no.

Some of them do it fine. And those people, you know, tend to get into management or that kind of thing or eventually go to open, you know, start their own business. But the folks that kind of make the trains run on time, you know, that open the doors every day, that, that handle customer service all the time. You know, a lot of people, and I have a hard time with this one, too, but a lot. Maybe most people that work for you are not going to be invested in your business like you are. Well, nobody is going to be like you are. But they're not going to think of it the same way. They're not going to. No. They want to come in, they want to do their work and go home and, and leave it, and they want to. That's okay.

Like, we talk about work, life balance, and we could probably, you know, shred that particular phrase to bits, but it's a good way to kind of look at this is that a lot of people to your point, who are employees want to leave the office and leave 100% of it behind.

Right.

Like, for me, my brain just doesn't work that way. And that's like, both of these scenarios are okay.

It's fine.

It's fine. Yeah. In fact, it turns out it's a good thing because it's.

It's necessary.

Right. Symbiotic. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's. That's. All of that is encompassed by that phrase that, that representative, you know, University of Chicago said. All of it.

Yeah.

That's cool. That's a good. That's awesome. That's very cool. But hey, you know, I, I want to jump into today's topic and you.

Don'T want to put it off and do, like, something else in the middle.

We've been, We've been putting off for a long time. But, you know, it's time to do an episode on procrastination.

Ah, yeah. Okay. Yes, Fine.

Yes. It's something that we all share. You know, I've yet to meet someone that doesn procrastinate something, including, you know, yours truly here.

I'm.

I'm a master procrastinator when it comes to doing things I don't really want to do same. Yeah, I, I just. And it's a, It's a constant battle. But you said something earlier today when we started talking about this topic that I thought was really great. And we're going to get into. But it goes both ways. It creates problems in your small business, but it can also create opportunities.

Well, that's it. Yeah.

And it's really cool. So I think, you know, what we're going to talk about today is we're going to talk about why we procrastinate ways to manage and kind of overcome some of those things to get things done. And then as well, we're going to talk about opportunities that. That procrastination makes, which I didn't even really think of until I. I didn't.

Think of it either until we started talking about it. So we'll. We'll tease that for down the road because it is. Yeah, it's sort of where this all ends up. I. To start, I will. I agree. I am. And most people that. That encounter me in my work life would not believe the statement I'm about to say. But most people that listen to this show wouldn't believe me when I say that I'm an introvert. Right. Yeah, but. But it's true. I. With procrastination, I am the worst procrastinator I have. And because of. I also know that I don't want to live in a cardboard box like I want to. I want to have nice things in my life. I want to be comfortable. I want my family to become. And I know I need to earn money, and I know to do that. The way I figured out how to do that is by getting things done. I haven't won the lottery or any of that stuff, you know, And I am addicted to getting things done. There is something to be said for that, but not all the things. Like there are some of the things that I have to be done on a regular basis that I am. I would be happy to never be responsible for doing, but I am, you know, and as a small business owner, you can delegate some of that stuff, but again, not always and not everything. And so as we've been kind of thinking about this, and I was helping a friend with procrastination the other day, which is part of what brought this up. It seems to. It's come up several times in the last week. And I realized that I was pushing this person away because I was giving them my answers to how to solve this. And they had yet to accept that procrastination was a solvable problem. It was more. Well, I just do that because I'm a terrible procrastinator. And it's like that you can. You can get things done anyway. Though.

Yeah. Like there's some methods there.

There's some methods and it's the whole systems thing. Right. You know that never, nowhere else is the phrase goals are for losers more true than it is with the procrastinator. Right. Because a goal isn't going to be the thing that drives you there. It's the system. And just saying, okay, I know I don't want to do this thing, so I'll give myself permission not to do this thing. And I just take the first step. But I don't have to take any other steps. I'll just take the first step. And it's. You know, Scott Adams, his. His example of. Of going to the gym is brilliant. Right? Because he says he wants to make it to the gym every day, so. Or five days a week, whatever it is. But he doesn't set that as a goal because he knows he will fail. So what he does is that he says he gives himself permission to bail on this every day and at any point in the process. So there's freedom and control, at least perceived by the person, in this case him. Right. But he's just set up the rules for himself. And he says, I don't have to go to the gym, but I got to put my gym clothes on. So I put my gym clothes on and I could bail out after I do that. But you know, once you get your gym clothes on, it's like, well, it's really not that big of a deal. I'll drive to the gym and I can drive there and I can bail out at the end. You know, I bail out before I ever walk into the gym. But now I've driven myself to the gym. I might as well go inside and work out. Like, this isn't going to kill me. And you know, more often than not, the system works for him and those types of things. That's all you need is the more often than not, you know, and that will get you there, so. But it does. Overcoming our inner procrastinator. And I really want you to believe us when Shannon and I say we both have this within us in a huge way.

And like, to your comment, from the outside, I would agree people would be like, what? You're always got stuff going on. Every time I talk with you, you got five different projects and this and that. But I would argue that I've structured my entire life around my procrastination.

Yes.

And because I know that I don't have the willpower to focus on just one thing, that I need lots of things. Going on around me to keep my interest. I need like right now. Okay. I've got a real estate project going on up north that I'm involved in and I dip in and out of that. And I've got our awesome podcast here, that business show co that I get to work on every week. And that gives me something back and it's great. When I'm looking for something to motivate me, I can definitely jump into this show and a few other business ventures and things. And one of the ways that I have overcome procrastination is that to mix things up is to, you know, kind of reward myself if I know, like. And I've talked on the show ad nauseam about how I don't like to do accounting. I just hate it. I'm a top level sales kind of person and I always. Well, I've been fortunate enough to drive that top sale number enough in my life that my failure at accounting has been made up for.

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Of course you can now compensate. Yeah, yeah.

I'm saying, because I always go, well, I'm not sure, but I know I can figure out how to make more money. So I'll go focus on that because that's fun and I like it. But to go sit down in the p. L and parse it all out, I hate it. I have to do it. I'm working on right now. I never. We never file our taxes at April 15. We always get extensions. Because I'm digging in, I'm putting it off.

Yeah.

And I think that one of the things on my list of why we do it, why I do it is oftentimes it's a lack of, and maybe not instant gratification, but, you know, a clear achievable part, Something that gives you gratification. You know, accounting takes tons of time. You got to slog through it and get through it. And often another thing on my list, it doesn't quite give you the answer you wanted.

Right.

It's unpleasant.

There is the possibility that you will find a piece of information you don't want to know. Yes.

Yeah. And. And I'm terrible. I'm a total, you know, eternal optimist at. To a fault. And so I overlook those kinds of things. So the way I do it is like, okay, well, I know I have to do some accounting every single day. So I'm going to do accounting for an hour and then I'm going to jump into this project which really gets me fired up. And then I'm going to do this thing and that thing. So, you know, mixing things up in, you know, the things that you don't want to do or don't give you that gratification, mix them up with things that get you excited and get you motivated and plan your day. Well, this is what I do. I plan my day around this concept.

Yes.

And then I just trick myself throughout the day. Oh, I got this done. I put it on my to did list. Right. Because I'm not a fan of to do's, but I know that well, dude, I worked on accounting for an hour. I'm. I'm awesome today. So now I can go do something that drives sales that I really like, and then, you know, and keep going and keep going and then come full circle and hit that accounting thing again. And that's, that's worked really well for me.

You know, I'm going to the to me, the to do list and the to did list. I mean, they become the same thing. But, but when we say to did list, what we're saying is give yourself permission to, when you complete a task, put it on your to do list and check it off. Like, that's, that's what's happening here. Right?

Give yourself credit.

Give yourself credit for the task even if you didn't put it on your list in advance. Right. It's done, but you can go do it. I will say, though, and you know, we've talked to a lot of business owners on this show. Many of you have heard these interviews. 100% of the time, when we ask someone who is successful and, you know, able to get things done and make things happen 100% of the time, and we ask, hey, how do you track what you're supposed to do every day? We haven't run into one of them that says, oh, I have a very complex system, like one of these GTD systems to do all that crap. Because no one that's productive wants to spend time managing their to do list. They all have a super simple list. Now, some people literally just write it down on a pad of paper. I choose to use. It's essentially Apple's reminders, but it's not. I use it in an app called busycal, but. But it is Apple's reminders. But it's just a list and it's dated. Like, I'm going to do these things today, and I will. I'll start my day by looking at the list. And I've learned that it. I am more productive when I'm realistic about my list. And I'll Put things. I'll be like, okay, I can't. I know that I won't get all this done today. And I want to feel, because again, I'm hacking my brain. I want to feel like I've been productive. So if I know I'm going to get seven things done, I might only put six on my list. I might sandbag myself a little bit occasionally and put the seventh thing on tomorrow and the eighth, ninth and tenth things on tomorrow. Right. And if I finish my list and it's three o' clock in the afternoon and I still have time at my desk, I can go pilfer from tomorrow and then feel like a rock star because I'm doing extra things. It's not extra, it's just.

No, it's just stuff. Right.

It's just stuff.

But that helps you power through that procrastination.

Because I think through this stuff I don't like.

Right, yeah, yeah. You feel like you're getting more done. And I mean, you know, we're constantly programming and kind of, and tricking our brain to really, like we've said many times, to create your own reality. And you know, you get the opportunity to, to create your own story and how you're going to say it. Are you going to at the end of the day say I failed because I didn't achieve these things or are you going to look at a list of things that you did get done and say, hey, you know what, I was pretty productive. Can I be more productive tomorrow? Perhaps, maybe, you know, maybe. But boy, there's a bunch of stuff on there that I did get done. Maybe I didn't start the day with this clear idea in my head of I'm going to get A, B, C, D and E done. And that's going to work me toward, you know, towards this big hairy, audacious goal. Because those goals, you really can set yourself up for failure. And it's the systems based process that is going to reward you with success and going to, you know, it's like orbiting the moon. It's going to launch you out again for the next day because you've made progress on your system, which you can call it whatever you want. For Dave and I, we want to live a charmed life. We want to have successful businesses that give us all kinds of other benefits well beyond the financial rewards that, that they give us as well. But each time we succeed with some small part of it, we are launched forward into the next part of the system. There isn't one giant thing like, okay, I need a million bucks. Stop. You know, whatever. It doesn't.

It's the small wins. You gotta. Yeah, it's the small. I always say, and I've said this in a lot of different forums and a lot of different and meaning a lot of different things, but I often say that I use calculus every day. And what I mean by that is I use what I learned in calculus every day, and that's that you can see an insurmountable, seemingly insurmountable problem in front of you. And what you do in calculus is you keep breaking it down until it's in a ton of tiny little parts. And you're like, wait, I can solve all these little things. And then as you solve it, they give you the answers to walk back up the ladder. And before you even know it, once you dig in and start breaking it apart, you don't even realize when you turn the corner and start solving, right, you're breaking, you're breaking, you're solving, you're solving. And suddenly the problem's done because you're so into the system that you lose sight of this insurmountable thing until suddenly the mountain is behind you and you're like, oh, wait, that wasn't that difficult. It's like, right? Yeah, yeah.

A big part of, I think, of overcoming that procrastination is to breaking things down into smaller chunks, smaller systems. It's easier to think about. They're not overwhelming. That's probably one of the reasons why I don't like to have this big list in front of me, because I often look at it and go, oh, look at that.

You know, don't have too many things on your list. No, that's true. You can. You. You can. You can systemize yourself into being overwhelmed too, for sure. Right.

And leave lots of space in between the task if you're using a piece of paper or whatever you're doing, because then you can fill in the things like, well, you know, I did not in my case, okay. I didn't get to work on accounting, but I got this done, right? So that was okay. And maybe I can plug it in somewhere else. And. And I think also for procrastinators like us, I think our sense of time is often warped and can cause disappointment because we think we can get more done in our timeframe than we really can.

So there are two things I will say, and time is one of them. Two things that are the sign of a sure procrastinator. One is being overly optimistic. If you are habitually overly Optimistic about your ability to get something done in, in a certain amount of time that that can lead very quickly, lead to procrastination. And the other thing is, if you are again, habitually, we all do this from time to time. But if you find it happening over and over habitually, overestimating your ability to remember what to do next. We humans get worse and worse at remembering things as we age. The great news, but we get better actually at seeing big picture things like this is just what happens to our minds. Scientists have studied this. It's fairly agreed upon. The great news for those of us that are aging, which I'm pretty sure is all of us, is that we have these little devices that are way better than even the best human memory. So we don't have to remember anything. We can. You can just as soon as the thought comes to your head, oh, I also need to do that. Systemize capturing that on your task list to do list, whatever it is so that you no longer have it in your mind. You're now. Your mind is now free again to do whatever you want. And, and this the same is. It's like if you can do that with time and memory, I think that solves 99% of these problems.

I like it.

That's me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's true. I think it's good.

That's me. All right. I. I have a lot more to say on this. But speaking of time, I want to talk about our first sponsor. Because while it's possible, in fact likely, that all of us procrastinators will underestimate the amount of time it takes to do something, there are tools that we can use to actually shorten the time it takes to do things. And textexpander, our sponsor today, is one of those tools. Because what textexpander does is it lets you take those long bits of text that you are going to type over and over again to people, customer service responses, even things like addresses and things that are going to take you time and attention to look at and make sure are correct and you don't have any errors because, you know, a typo in an address is way different than a typo in a text to, you know, your husband or your wife or whatever. It's. It's like these are things that matter and you know they matter. So you're going to spend time on them. Well, textexpander solves this problem because what you do is you take that text and you put it into textexpander. And then when you want to Use that address or that big long customer service response. Instead of digging into your sent folder and finding the last time you did it and copying it and removing all the weird formatting, you just click it in textexpander and it pastes it right in. Or you can type a short bit of text that then expands into this much larger bit of text. Hence the name Text Expander. And what's really cool is you can have other things baked into that text. Like you could have the contents of your clipboard. You can have the date. You can have actually math on the dates. You can say, and I'll follow up in two weeks on whatever and have that stuff in there. And the new version of TextExpander 6.5 for the Mac 2.0 for Windows has a visual editor for snippets, so you don't have to remember shortcodes or anything. It's all right there. You're just dragging and dropping. It's awesome. So you gotta check this out and you get a deal. 20% off your first year. When you visit textexpander.com podcast, I guarantee you start using Textexpander. The things that used to take you a long time, some of them will take you a lot less time and you'll be a lot more accurate. You got to check it out. Textexpander.com podcast for 20% off your first year. Our thanks to Smile and Textexpander for sponsoring this episode.

Yeah, that's a life changing tool right there. I can't agree more. Especially for procrastinators, because you can just take. There's a. I did some coaching or hired a, you know, business coach years and years ago and one of the first things they taught me was, hey, if you can get it done in two minutes or less, do it right now.

Just do it right now.

Well, do it.

And boy, isn't that great advice? Yeah, yeah.

And it's true. And this, you know, using an app like textexpander really allows you to do it. If you see something in your email that you need to reply to or some kind of, you know, just something you need to take care of, send out a piece of information, it really helps you.

Yeah, for sure.

That's awesome.

I wanted to share one. You mentioned that, you know, we both do a lot of different things. One of which of course is this podcast. Because. Because obviously, even with this podcast, like, to me, there's a formula for not procrastinating these episodes. I guarantee you, if you asked me 30 minutes before we were Gonna record half the time. I'd probably say, yeah, you know what, let's, let's push it till tomorrow. Like, I'm excited to do the show, but like, I, you know, we do this late in the, in the day. For me, it's late in the afternoon. It's 4:30. So I have had a full day and there's always surprises, you know, and I could, if you were to tell me, oh, yeah, I can't do it today, I'd be like, sweet, I have time to like, do that other thing that I didn't know I was gonna have to do today, but because I'm doing it with you and I have a partner. You are my accountability partner for this podcast. And when I started Mac Geek Gab, that's the reason I wanted to have a co host. I mean, there were many reasons, but that, like, as I knew, the show had to come out and if I am accountable to that guy who's carved out two hours in his, his week to do this, I can't just, I mean, if something comes up, of course, yeah, everybody understands, but if you're doing that every week, it's, you know, you're going to lose your partner very quickly. Yeah, yeah.

And I think that is a really good reason to have to. I mean, we talk about partners a lot and we often lean on, oh, there's a negative thing, but there's ways to set it up that partners or even your employees, they really help hold you accountable and eliminate a tremendous amount of procrastination. Because you don't have a choice, right?

You don't have a choice. That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's, it's important.

I, I actually had a, I have a real world example of this and it, that two weeks ago. Well, two weeks and several days ago, I, I do this little podcast mastermind thing with my friend Roberto, who is another podcaster. We used to have a third one, but he, he hasn't been able to join in a little while and we just get together and talk about, like, things that, that come up as podcasters, and we both approach things very, very differently, which is super helpful. Right. You know, and it kind of give each other perspective. And, and, and he asked me at our meeting two weeks ago, he said, hey, is there anything that, you know, what are you looking to do this year? And I'm like, I know that I need to get mailing lists off the ground. Like, I need to, like, that is a part of our monetization strategy with everything except this show, believe it or not, that we just don't do. Like, not at Mac observer, which, I mean, we're just leaving money on table. We're leaving opportunity on the table. And I said so. And I've said that 2019 is going to be my year of the mailing list. So I said, great. We get together every two weeks. I said, by the time we get together two weeks from now, I will have sent out the first mailer for the Mac Geek Gab list. Now, we finished that call. I had no idea what that was going to be. I had. I knew that I didn't want to have to create more content, but I also knew that to do a mailer, you've got to have content to send out all the time, you know? And for whatever reason, it didn't dawn on me to do exactly what we're doing here with this. Right? But it didn't matter because the next day, one of our Mackiecab listeners wrote and said, hey, have you guys ever thought about doing a mailing list where you send out all the links that you put in the show notes every week? Because that would be super helpful for those of us that don't listen in front of a computer. It was like, oh, oh, you know, the stars aligned. And then I talked to another guy who was saying how well his sponsor reads.

Do you.

And he said, but I think it's because we put those links in our mailer where people can actually click on them, and it's.

Yeah, sure, makes sense. Makes sense.

It took me maybe two hours to take the. We had about 700 people on a mailing list that had signed up for a mailing list@macgeekab over the years that we just never sent anything to. Took me about two hours to sort of build the mailer and do it the way I wanted to do it. Obviously, I copied some of the logic that I had used with mailchimp to do the mailer here. And. And, you know, and by the way, businessshow co. You should sign up for our mailer because you actually get all these episodes when they come out. And, man, like, as soon as I finished was like, man, I wish I had done that years ago. I. Like, there was. There's no reason I. I couldn't or shouldn't have done it five years ago. And it's really great, you know, and nobody ever says to themselves, man, I wish I'd waited longer to do that. You know, like, that just doesn't happen, happen. Yeah.

And it's just a Great example of another way, another method to have someone hold you accountable to power through problems with procrastination. You know, another thing that really works for me is timing. You know, think about the time of day. When are you the most productive? And I tip. I really believe that most people fall into either, you know, two camps. They're either very productive early in the morning or very productive late at night. Right. And you know, if that's the case, you can time your stuff to that for years. I mean when we started deals on the web it was, you know, I always used to joke and say we should, I should have named it ten to midnight because that's when I worked on that business, you know, 10, 2, 12.

Yeah.

And you know, now I, you know, I get up real early, my kids are grown, all this kind of stuff. So I have, you know, time early in the morning to get things done and launches my day and I feel productive. But think about your day and you know, if 3 o' clock you're dragging and you need to get up and go for a walk, well, maybe that's not the time. Thinking you're going to not procrastinate. Maybe you do need to procrastinate for 20, 30 minutes at that time every day just to get yourself going again. And that's okay. And then we talked about tools, all the software tools that can help you too. And we were just talking. I've got a 17 year old that's battling the hey I can't get up problem. I had the same thing when I was younger and so I bought him this sonic boom alarm clock that shakes his entire bed, you know, in the morning I can hear it, you know, when I'm downstairs up and everything. So there, there's tons of tools to help you timers. We had the matter of fact, I have this little red tomato on my desk right here that I'm holding. What is that? The pump something or other method.

Oh, the pump. The. Yeah. Bob Levitis talked about it in his smarter when he was on the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Setting a 20 minute timer and not letting anything pomodoro. You set this Pomodoro tomato timer 20 minutes and you just focus on something, you know, for 20 minutes straight. That's a great way to get through things as well. And all these things too help you to form habits. And if you're, you know, if you want to start a new habit, maybe it's going to take you a month, maybe it's going to take 45 days. But small chunks Each day will get you there.

Yes.

And you can, it can really create life change, you know, life altering change by taking those little small steps and you know, using that system based approach that we just hammered home here on the show.

Yeah, yeah, it's true, it's true. Yeah, it's crazy.

Before lastly and, and certainly, perhaps most importantly is the concept that procrastination creates opportunities for all of us as small business owners. And you brought this up, Dave. And you know, you can create a business or you know, or if you or within your business create a new revenue stream around doing tasks that people don't want to do or won't do. You used your example of your advertising.

Backbeat Media is exactly that. I mean what we're doing isn't, it's not rocket science. There's no secret. Right. Well, I'm happy to tell you exactly how we do what we do every day. It's not a problem. I mean certainly we have some intellectual property. I don't want this show to be used against me in court when. But the methods and the general practice of what we do is something a lot of people do. We are a middleman right at the core of it. And we do something that our publishers don't want to do for themselves. Could they. Sure. They would rather be productive doing the things they are good at and enjoy doing and would rather outsource. And to say outsource seems really weird because we work so closely with our just partners. But, but technically it's outsourced. Right. You know, and, and that's just how it goes. But we've taken, and I always had said, you know, and I still say this when we, you know, when we're talking to people. What we do at Backbeat Media is we take publishers headaches away. That's what we do. We also take the headaches away of brand buyers and agency buyers because a lot of them don't want to have to deal with, you know, 15 different publishers. They'd rather deal with us. And again, you know, we're providing that service in between these two, these two groups. And it works out really, really well. But you know, it's hard work. There is not insignificant amount of grunt work. It's sales. A lot of people don't like sales and that's okay. Like that's what makes the world go round.

Yeah, right. There's no one saying that it's going to be easy. No, we're all looking for opportunities. So there are opportunities here. In my case, I've spent, spent A lot of my time and effort over the years building businesses and creating wealth out of other people's problems. And the way I would get attention to, or get their attention as I go into their business and say, hey, where's all your junk? Where's the death pile? And because all these big companies, when you walk into a Best Buy or, you know, some other large retailer and they all have pallets and pallets of, quote, junk, and. And that's what I would say, hey, let me. Let me buy your junk. I know you don't want to deal with it. I know you could go through it, test it, you know, refurb it, do whatever, but that's what we specialize in. And, you know, I've taken that concept all the way, you know, all the.

Way to the bank.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. In any kind of product vertical you can imagine, there are those opportunities because it, you know, they don't want to deal with it, and it piles up in the corner and, you know, know you're not going to get their attention if you walk in and say, hey, I want to buy all your good stuff and I want to smoke and deal on it. But when you go in and say, let me solve this problem for you that you've been ignoring and that's building up on your books, you know, we always used to save our capital for. Right before these large public companies reported their earnings, because we knew we were going to get a call 30 days, two weeks in advance of these earnings calls, and they would say, hey, look, we've got, you know, $500,000 worth of this stuff. Can you, can you buy it? And I have to get it out of my warehouse by day. And if you have the cash, I'll, you know, I'll give it to you at what, X discount? And that's when we always made our best, you know, biggest buys. So.

Smart, man.

Yeah, there's definitely opportunities out there to take advantage of what other people don't want to do. You know, solve those. Solve those problems.

Yeah, just solve the problems. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Solve people's problems. And. And again, you know, it's easy. I guess the point is, if you procrastinate something and then figure out a system to get past it for your own business, that then is an easy one to go and target with other people. Right? Because you're like, I know what that's like. I feel your pain. And they will sense that you feel their pain and you are the right person to solve this problem. Right. Backbeat Media, frankly, exists not because I recognized that we had solved a pain point for publishers, but that other publishers recognized it and came to us 20 years ago and said, hey, you guys at Mac observer, you have your stuff together. You're doing all this stuff, stuff that we don't want to do. Can you do this for us? And. And when I say we, like, they said it individually, but it was in the course of maybe six weeks, it was five different publishers came to us and said exactly the same. It was like they were reading from a script. It was really weird. It was. I was like, oh, universe has smiled. Okay. Yeah, this is. We should do something here.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, it's good.

Yeah. So. So look at that. You know, look at your things. You're procrastinating. Think about chunking them up into smaller things that you. And then, you know, know, maybe mixing things up that are going to help motivate you through them. Those are the things that are really the most powerful for me that get me through days when I'm, you know, having a hard time getting things done. And then look at those. Look at them on the flip side as opportunities for ways to grow your business.

Yeah, for sure.

Good stuff. Thank you for listening.

Yeah. Hey, Feedback.

You're going to say something else?

Well, I was. I was going to. On our way out the door here, I did want to note that it's national Small Business Week this week. Right.

You brought it up. I almost forgot. It is. And we've got some links up on the site. It'll take you over to the Small Business Administration website, tell you what things they have going on there. And it's also for PayPal. They're doing the entire month of May, Small Business Month. And you'll see some comments from your hosts fromusinessshow Co up on their Twitter feed through the month. And we'll link that in the show notes.

Look at that.

That's cool. In our own. In our own minds.

Well, yeah, that's right.

Yeah. Got it. But, yeah, but thank you for listening. We'd love to talk with you feedback@businessshow co or comment and ask questions. And the small business support group Business Show Co Facebook.

That's right. Thanks for listening, folks. Send us. Say hi. We love it. See you next time. Keep living that charm life.