Perspective, Fraud and When to Stop - Listener Questions and Comments

Business Brain the Show for entrepreneurs episode 442 for Casual Friday, April 21, 2023. Greetings folks and welcome to Business Brain, the show by, for and about entrepreneurs where we take our business brains and we apply them to all kinds of things in our businesses, in our personal lives to help you folks. We do it all together and hopefully we each learn something and move forward. Sponsors for this episode include Headspace, where you can go to headspace.com brain30 to try Headspace for free for 30 days. We'll talk more in depth about how that all works a little bit later. For now, here I'm here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton.

And here in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Gene. How's it going, man?

It's going. Yeah, it's Casual Friday and. And the mailbag is overflowing, my friend.

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah, like that. We have, I think we have three of your letters to share. I say letters? You didn't send them his letters?

Well, it's kind of like David Letterman used to do, right? He would shake the paper and say, you know, viewer, viewer mail or viewer yeah, viewer mail. Listen, I love it. Yeah, the getting these emails and questions and comments is awesome. It drives a huge part of why we do this show. And that kind of value actually comes up in one of the questions this week.

That is true. So feedbackusbrain show is where each of these came in. Of course, you can send yours in to feedback at BusinessBrain show as well. And as an added bonus, we'll enter you into the drawing. The we're doing a drawing for a MacBook Air this year and every email that we read in the show, for whatever reason we choose to read it gets entered into the drawing. And if it's your second email or your fourth email, well then you're in two or four times. That's how it works. Robert starts us off Talking about episode 440 from last week where we were talking about changing our perspective and environment. And he says, hey guys, I believe in this methodology a thousand percent. I'm a one man show, a graphic designer with working out of my home office, hunting for my work, client deadlines and three kids in college are all tremendous pressures on me. Sometimes the stress is so overwhelming it affects my health. That said, during the winter months, when it's not too yucky outside, I do a 20 minute lunchtime walk around the block with my dog. In the springtime, through the fall months, I start my day with a one hour bike ride along the ocean. Not only is this a great way to stay fit, but it's also a huge part of my daily way of dealing with stress and anxiety. I find the exercise, I find the exercise is the best form of meditation for me. Helps me relax and center my focus. It's also the best time of day when I come up with my best ideas. Thanks for producing this episode. Well, thanks for sending in that email, Robert. Yeah, exercise. Exercise as your opportunity to change perspective is great because consumes you while. While still sort of putting you in that flow state.

So, yeah, I love it. And I think that Robert's comment points out something that I take for granted all the time, and that is, I call it time shifting. One of the biggest benefits to being a solopreneur, owning your own company, whatever it is. Yes. You're, you know, we say on the show a lot you don't have freedom, but you certainly have tons of flexibility. So being able to take off in the morning and go on a bike ride, being able to get out of the office during the middle of the day, whatever it is, that's hugely powerful. And don't underestimate, don't lock yourself in to a specific timeframe of work. And if your flow state, like Dave says, which I love that term, is better in the evening, and mine for decades was always better. From 10 to midnight, after my kids had gone to bed, everything was quiet. I spent some time with my wife in morning the. And then I could disengage and get back into this, you know, spend a really couple of pure hours. And I use that to learn new things and all that kind of stuff. So time shifting is huge, but you do have to embrace it. Well, speaking for myself, sometimes when everybody else is working and I'm taking time to go do something else, I can, often for years, I would be like, man, I'm really slacking off. But you're not. Because from 10 to midnight, those people are doing something else. They're on the couch or they're in bed or whatever it is. And. And so I tell my kids the same kind of thing. I'm like, look, you know, time shifting is a valuable tool, so you don't have to work on everyone else's schedule. You know, you have to make your schedule work to find success for you.

Just find success.

That's right.

Yeah. Yeah, it's great.

Thank you for the question, Robert.

Absolutely.

Or the comment. Yeah.

Bill. Bill brings us back to episode 435 and he says, I just listened to 435 on business. Business ethics. This was the story that Shannon, you shared about a friend who worked at a company that held money back so that they could make their bank balance.

It wasn't my friend, but it was good.

Well, yeah. Someone you knew?

Yeah.

Sorry. Friendly friend. Lee. There you go.

Yeah, yeah.

So he says he starts with when it with an admission. But it's a safe space here, Bill. We're okay with it. He says, I am a lawyer. I'm a labor and employment lawyer, so I don't claim any particular expertise when it comes to banking issues. That said, Here are my $0.02 on the scenario you described in which a business held up employees commission payments for a few days to keep its bank balance high for an upcoming meeting with the bank.

Oh yeah, it was my friend. Sorry. Of another episode.

Ah, yeah, okay. He says to prove fraud, and fraud being, you know, a specific thing, a plaintiff generally has to show that, number one, the defendant made a false statement of material fact, number two, knew that the statement was false, number three, intended the statement to induce the plaintiff to act and number four, the plaintiff relied on the truth of the statement and number five, the plaintiff was damaged as a result. So that's a, that's a long process to prove actual fraud, he says. So if the only representation that the business owners you described were to make to the bank during the meeting is that on X date the the business's bank balance was Y dollars and if that statement was true, it's not fraud. Of course, if they lie about what those numbers represent, for example, by claiming that this balance is typical when it's not, or trying to hide what they owe to employees on their balance sheet, that could very well be part of a fraud claim. He says. Again, I'm no banking expert, but it seems pretty unlikely that any bank is going to rely on just a single day snapshot of a business's bank account balance to make lending decisions. Without looking further into the company's balance sheet and historical performance, I can't see how this little gambit would make any material difference to any decision the bank might be making. However, the bigger problem I see is with the scenario is with this scenario is what you pointed out during the toward the end of the episode. You don't mess with employees pay. Many states have strict laws about when and how employers have to pay employees. In some failure to pay wages in the time required by the law is actually a criminal offense. Realistically, nobody's going to go to jail just for delaying payroll by a few days. But just because you probably won't get caught. Doesn't make it legal or ethical. Beyond that, as you pointed out, deliberately holding up payroll sends a terrible message to employees about how the business prioritizes its people and about whether employees can trust the people running the business. It also creates a really stupid risk. How hard would it be for a disgruntled employee to call up the company's banker to tip them off that the company stiffed employees just to temporarily inflate its bank balance? Anyway, great episode. He says. I enjoy hearing you guys talk about HR issues. You clearly have good heads for it.

Oh, man.

Don't. Don't say that. He says, the things I hear you say when it comes to managing employers are the same things I tell my clients on a daily basis.

Well, we learn from our mistakes.

Yes, this is true. So thank you for the email bill, and thanks for that clarification on. On what actually constitutes fraud. As you. As you spelled it out, it makes perf sense. I love the law, as I've said here on the show, and I love learning these things. So I really appreciate you.

It's good. And the key takeaway is the message, obviously, that it sends to your employees. I mean, it just is unsettling to have your business.

What?

This sounds weird, and it just is amazing.

Oh, there's that sound. That sound means it's time for me to tell you about our sponsor, and this week that is Headspace. Listen, as a small business owner, I can tell you that life gets stressful. If you ever felt that way, you're not alone. It happens to all of us. In fact, today's been sort of a crazy day. I've had, like, 14 different things to do. Everybody's transacting me with the stuff they need from me, and it gets stressful and I get anxious and I snap at people. Sometimes it happens. Well, that can change with. With Headspace, because Headspace is built to help improve mental health through guided meditations, mindfulness practices, breathing and calming exercises, and so much more. And these tools can then help reduce anxiety, boost your mood, help you sleep better, help you be easier to deal with in the office. Sometimes these are things I know. Headspace's wide range of teachers with diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise ensure that there's a teacher in Content to help you you, whether you're a first timer or if you've been practicing for years. And when you only have a few minutes to get in the right headspace, then there are programs to do on the go. When you're pressed for time You've got to check this out. I love those quick ones. Life changing Headspace has helped me and more than 100 million people worldwide. And they can help you too. Listen up. You do not want to miss this. I've arranged something special here for all of our business brain listeners. For a limited time, all of you can try headspace free for 30 days by going to headspace.com brain30. You won't find this offer anywhere else and you got to use our link h e-a--S-P-A c e.com brain30 that's brain30 to unlock all of headspace free for 30 days. This is not something they normally do. Headspace.com brain30 and our thanks to Headspace for sponsoring this episode. All right, our next question. Yeah, it's question comes from listener Jeff who says when. How do you know when it is time to unpivot with your business? What I mean is he says, I do custom programming, database design work and it's been very good. Several years ago I got into business continuity planning disaster recovery and I really like that. I got my certifications and all of it. I wrote up a number of plans and when the pandemic hit, we implemented one and it was very successful. So I thought, hey, I'm onto something. I really want to make this the focus of my business. I think there's a lot of opportunity and I can solve real problems for people that they don't even know about yet. However, now that the pandemic is waning, so has interest in disaster recovery and or business continuity planning. I get a lot of calls for design and custom programming work, but I can't find anybody that's really interested in my new venture. How do you know when it's time to hang it up and just focus on what brings in the dollars? Good question. You want to start with this one, Shannon? I have thoughts.

Yeah, yeah, so do I. Jeff, thanks for sending this question. It is a great question. And as someone who's done lots of pivots and different ventures, the first thing I always try to ask myself when I'm having these kinds of thoughts is what does the business or side hustle or whatever, what does it do for me in total? Not just dollars. Because as I mentioned to you earlier, Dave, and we were talking about this before the show, if I just measured things in dollars, I would have gotten rid of a lot of things that I'm involved in, one of which may have been this podcast because it's not about how much money we Earn it generates revenue and we have tons and tens of thousands of listeners, which is awesome. The main reason I do it is a collaboration. The collaboration with Dave, you know, getting these questions like you send in Jeff and yes, there is a revenue aspect of it. That's a great rubric that I go, hey, it's making some money. That's awesome. And once in a while I get a check and it's fantastic. But is there something else, you know, your bit this new venture brings to you besides just the money? Because that may be worth hanging onto. And the second thing is I get bored really easy, so. Or easily so. I'm always looking for new things to do, but at the same time I try to think who else can I offload what I'm doing now? So in your case, is there someone else that you could bring in to delegate some of your design and custom programming work while you continue to invest time and effort into the disaster recovery and business continuity? Because those are in my opinion very good long term business concepts that I think really could have legs wherever I think of programming and design. You know, a lot of that stuff's getting automated, so that's going to change over time. But businesses always need someone to walk them through this disaster stuff and that may be a longer term future that you have to put more time into.

Yeah, I, that I. That last bit definitely resonates with me here. It's like, have you given it long enough? Because I've, you know, there's that. The phrase one of the phrase I loves loves. One of the phrases I love. There we go. We'll put the S in the right spot. It was just a typo, folks. Don't worry about it. It's just. I made a typo in the AI.

Get it out in the transcript.

Yeah, when the AI that's speaking for me, you know, just took it liter and did it. One of the phrases I love and it was actually a phrase that we almost went with or considered going with a version of it for the name of the show is overnight success takes 20 years. And you know, you started this, you see the spark of it, right. You know that there is value in this business continuity planning. Right now I can see why people might be focused on other things as, as we're sort of navigating out of the pandemic and or at least the business impact of it and the lockdowns of it and all of that stuff. So it makes sense that you're not seeing a lot of interest there. But a year from now you know, people aren't going to forget about the lockdowns and the business impacts of the pandemic. Right now we're just sort of scrambling to figure out, you know, what this means with the new economy changes and all of that. But, you know, I think a year from now there's probably more businesses that are going to be into that. I don't know. This is, you know, Dave in his studio without even being able to see the sun because I have walls, you know, so I could be very wrong, but it seems like that would be a valuable business. Maybe it's worth holding on to it. But cash flow is king. And so if what you need to do is worry about cash, then is there a reason that you would have to shut down one, you know, the, the business continuity planning aspect of what you do entirely in order to do custom programming, database design, or could you just do that? Take those clients. I mean, it, it. If you don't, if you aren't spending your time working at the business continuity planning, I know you're also not spending your time then marketing that. But if you've got clients coming in without even marketing the database stuff, well, then maybe you've got, maybe you can do both. I don't know. I like.

And yeah, I think that's a, that's a good point. And as long as one doesn't suffer like, like you said, from lack of attention. And also I think this disaster recovery business continuity, I think you may need more time to kind of build out your expertise and credibility. So when someone, and I don't know if you're just localized or if you're doing it everywhere, but when someone searches for this kind of thing, is your company coming up? Is your name coming up? Is, is your LinkedIn profile built up in this? And are you posting, are you posting articles about disaster recovery, continuity planning? Are you posting on, on LinkedIn? Are you posting in your blog? Are you using AI to help you create, you know, ChatGPT can help you create articles very, very quick that you can edit down and make relevant to your business. So it, I don't, I don't think that I would let the lack of response impact me if I felt that I hadn't built out this kind of robust credibility engine, if you will, and, and get people coming to you, if they're coming to you and turning you down because of something else, then you can address those things. But maybe people just don't know enough to find you yet.

Yeah, yeah, there you go. Yeah, I like, I, yeah, I would, I would. You know, if you have to treat this as a side hustle for a little while, okay, fine. You know, you do your, your database and stuff during the day and then your 10 to 12 time, whatever your flex time winds up being. But to use Shannon's example From earlier, that 10pm to 12am time was where you would create the next thing and work on the new thing. And so maybe that's what you do and hopefully that gets you somewhere, Jeff. I hope, I hope.

Yeah. And thanks for the question and keep us posted. Please do let us know how it goes, what you decide, and maybe at some point you can come on the show and tell us how you built that into your main revenue stream, if it works out for you. But you're going to learn something along the way, for sure.

Absolutely. Yeah. And if you can share that with us, then we all get to learn. And you know, that's sort of what we like doing here with the show is all learning together. The business Brain family, if you will. Feedbackusinessbrain show is where everybody sent their stuff in. And you can send it in too. As I said in the intro to the episode, if your email's featured in one of our upcoming episodes, you're entered to win a MacBook Air this year. So go ahead and do it. Send it in. Keep living that charmed life and we'll see you next week. Howdy, fellow control freak entrepreneurs. If you're like me and you have trouble giving up control, I've got an episode for you to listen to. Gary Von Meer joined us in episode two 3:36 to talk about a lot of things. But one of them was growing our businesses and adding employees and how to bring our control freak selves to the conclusion that it's okay to bring someone else in, even though in our minds we believe that they couldn't possibly do whatever job we're going to hire them for better than we can do it. Of course, in the end, they generally do it better than us, obviously, but we got to get over that hump and Gary's got the 80% rule to change our minds to hack our brains to get us there. Go listen to episode 236. I'll put a link in the show notes for you and thanks for listening and keep on living that charmed life.