Politics and Your Small Business – Should you mix them? – Small Business Show episode 98

The Small Business show, episode number 98 for Wednesday, December 21, 2016. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business Show. As we said last week, this is the show by, for and about small business owners here in Durham, New Hampshire, Running my businesses, doing my business. I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Concord, California, I'm Shannon Jean. Running my businesses as well. Yeah, I like that.

Yeah, yeah, we do our business. I think that's a better way to say this is the. Yeah, the office is the place I go to do my business.

Do your business. That's good. Very good. Very good.

Which is good because my wife calls my office the doghouse sometimes. So, you know.

Nice.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes, it does go out there to get away from everybody and that's good. That's good. Hey, you know, we just were talking about this and I was just thinking as you were doing the intro. I've often commented that I benefit the most from doing this show. I love it and I've learned. That's what I said, learned the most with all the folks that have come on and talking with you and everything else. So today I'm here for a therapy session to find out if I'm perceiving something wrong. Wrong is kind of a strong word, but maybe I shouldn't be looking at this a certain way. And I'll warn everybody now.

The answer is yes, folks. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.

You got it. Well, if there's anybody that's going to tell me that I'm wrong, it's you and Dave. And that's what I love about that. I love that about you. And it's great because I'm always willing to. Well, I think I am anyway.

My kids may tell you people that would disagree with that statement.

Yes, yes. Probably living in my house. But, you know, one of the things that. And we're going to get political here for a little bit, and over the.

Years, you're definitely wrong.

Okay, that's right.

That's right.

Yeah. One or the other, left or right. And you know, over the years with, with my various business ventures I've been in, I've. I've really strived, worked very hard to always look at things and try to keep. Be agnostic, if you will, politically and religiously, and not to bring in politics of any sort, whether I believe them or didn't or whatever, my employees or my partners try to keep that information out of the message or the Persona, the marketing, any of that kind of stuff, whether it's blog post, whether It's a ad anywhere. And the thing I've really seen especially more and more is some of the venues or media that I've followed for years. Definitely don't agree with that, at least anymore.

Well, in practice I think that. Yes. And I'm going to guess that Jon Gruber's Daring Fireball is one of the things that you're referring to.

Absolutely, yeah. And I love the guy. I mean, I don't know him, he doesn't know me, but I have followed John at Daring Fireball forever. And I love the fact that he was kind of no BS and he would disagree with you or anybody. And he didn't just tow the party line, especially with Apple, like some other reporters and bloggers and publishers would do. And I have had a ton of respect for the guy.

He's a great guy, by the way.

Yeah, he seems like a great guy and I'm sure he is. But recently, especially after the presidential election, and I know that that was a real divisive, you know, election and the campaigns and all this kind of stuff, but normally I think people start to get over things, you know, a month or so after change and realize, okay, you know, well, it's just the way it is. Is it the right thing to do to introduce politics? Because I at this point want to remove During Fireball from my RSS feed. Not that I disagree with him.

Right.

On. On everything. Let me state that up front. It's not that I'm saying, oh, I'm a big follower of this or I disagree. I welcome those discussions, but I don't want them in my tech feed when I'm getting my morning fill of what's going on in the Apple world.

So that's an interesting thing. Right. Because certainly when you choose as a publisher, we've been very careful at TMO over the years, not just recently. We've had this conversation many times now to be fair, John is a one man show.

I understand.

Yes. But his wife is one of the smartest people I've ever met, so. And I know that he talks with her about things like this. Right. And he's also got friends that he, I'm sure talks to at some level, but it is his blog and at the end of the day he decides what goes up and what doesn't. Right?

Correct, correct.

And every single word that's ever been on Daring Fireball is his right.

So it's not his and it's free. Right. I'm not paying him anything. Yes, he sells a little advertising, you know, what's wrong there?

But you know, but I know having had this conversation internally at tmo, there is part of this that says, well, yeah, okay, we have our audience that we've attracted because of tech. But there's. And part of the reason John and Mac observer, to older, much older publications in the grand scheme of things, have our audiences is because we attracted the minority right in, in its day, the Apple user. And I know if you're under 25, this is impossible. Kids, ask your parents. It's true. Right? There was a day when Apple was like totally the underdog and to find another Mac user was, you know, I mean, it was like finding the watering hole in the desert.

It was the guy drawing the fish on the ground. Right, because you knew. Oh, another one. Another.

Oh yeah. And you had like. We had a secret handsh.

No, that's correct.

So. So John, like us at Mac observer, attracted his audience of, of people who supported the underdog for probably for all good reasons. As it turns out, the world finally sort of came around to our way of thinking. But so it not to say that, that his stance is to attract the political underdog. Yes, but he knows that it's important to cater to an audience with that about which he and his chosen audience are passionate.

Okay, I get that.

And I think as a publisher, certainly you have to choose your audience because if you try to be everything to everyone, you won't succeed. If his blog tried to be everything to everyone in the beginning, just like Mac observer, if we tried to be, well, we like Windows just as much as we like the Mac, it's sure everyone's welcome. No one would come. Right. People came to get away from that crap. So from that standpoint, I can see where choosing. He's clearly passionate about his political beliefs. He's not just doing it as an affectation, but I guarantee you he's intentional about what he posts and he's curating his own audience with that. Now, definitely we don't do that at Mac Observer. So I think it's kind of obvious that I don't necessarily choose to do the same thing. But I'm not saying it's bad, it's just, it's. I don't know, it's a, It's a different thing.

Yeah, it is a different thing.

And he will drive people away with that without question. Yeah.

Yes. And yeah. And it's again, even, even if I agree with it or it's not that I'm, you know, just like, oh, you're ex supporter. So I'M not coming back. It's a. Hey, you know what? I'm here to get the latest critical thinking that I respect you for about this chosen field. If you want to start a political blog because you disagree with the way certain things happened, with all due respect, that's great. And if you want to link that blog back to your successful business, more power to it. Why don't you start a new. Start a new publication and maybe you'll be wildly successful and. But I.

Maybe that's what he's doing.

Could be right.

I mean, one way to start it is to add the content and then say, ah, you know, I know many of you like what I've been doing here, but to be fair, a lot of people, even if they agree with my political views, don't want this in their tech feed. So I'm splitting the two and I'm going to tag post text tech and politics. And I promise that the only political things that will appear are like, when Tim Cook goes and meets with Donald Trump. And I'm gonna.

It's relevant to. Yeah.

Yes. There might be some crossover posts, but for the most part, I'm gonna split it. That's not a bad business move, even.

No.

Whether or not he has done it, you know, in a premeditated sense or a reactive sense, either one is fine.

Yeah. And I guess had it been going on and maybe I missed it, but I don't think so.

It has a little bit. It's gotten more frequent. I mean, there are most days. These days his blog is more politics than it is tech, to be fair. I mean, the news cycle is kind of tough to come up with other stuff.

Yeah, I understand. Yeah. I totally get that. And that's why I'm trying to think about it analytically and look at it as a thinking individual that values this guy. But. And you know what?

I want to get back to your business because you said something earlier that. And I realized we detoured into what Daring Fireball is doing.

Yeah. I don't want to make the whole show about him.

Right. But it was a good example here. But you said something that you've always strived to be politically agnostic, but there's a nuance there. Being politically agnostic or appearing politically agnostic. Those are two different things. And I'm curious which of those things you. And I'll answer the question too. Which of those things you actually are, because publicly we both certainly appear politically agnostic.

Yeah. I don't think it has a place in what it is we are trying to achieve here. And ultimately it comes down to just a few very important things to me. One, creating a culture of where your employees love coming to work every day, which in turn fuels the experiences that the customer has in a very positive way, which in turn fuels profits for your business. We've always come at it that way, not the opposite of, hey, how do we get these people to help us make some money? It's always been my selfish needs of wanting to create a cool, fun, good place to come work every day. And you surround yourself with people like that. That won't do it. And I guarantee that our belief system, you know, from me to my employees to whoever, is totally different and we just don't let it. We may have a discussion here at the office, certainly.

Sure.

But always in a. In a respectful manner. I'm a big believer that words, even when they're said jokingly or a little, that those, they really have a powerful meaning beyond what people may think because they get, they get kind of embedded in, you know, what people hear. And you know, we've had, you know, like I can recall having a warehouse group that really enjoyed giving each other a hard time and it kind of got, you know, a little bit escalated. Escalated. And so I finally started to see the negative impact that it had and made everybody sit down. I wrote this, you know, silly one page thing. I called it a contract of respect. And I just explained to them why it was important to talk respectfully to one another and how I did want to hear this because these negative things were happening. And I think that's important with politics too, is that you can certainly have the dialogue without like look at grubhub. If you followed politics, you probably read about his email out to everybody couched in a way. If you believe in these things, there's no place here for you. Well, that's a very narrow perspective on number one, it's illegal. But you know, there's that. But it also, you know, you're really narrowing if you just surround yourself with people that only believe in the things you do.

Yeah.

How boring is that? And how nobody wants that. Well, I shouldn't say nobody. I certainly don't want that. So we, I think we've walked the walk and it's not just we'll appear to be politically we, it's just not in our. You could probably search over the last 20 some odd years and I've published a ton of content and been out and I don't think we've ever made a political statement Post of any sort of manner that. And I don't know that it ever would have helped us.

Right.

You know.

Right. No, I don't think it was. So certainly as a company, you're politically agnostic. As a person, I would also. You certainly come across as mostly politically agnostic. It's certainly not overly passionate. You don't prioritize politics as the first thing you want to talk about.

No, but I would. I enjoy talking about it. But that's. There's a time and A time and a place.

Right.

You, you and I talk politics often, but we do it before the show starts.

Before the show, yeah, but it's not. I don't get the feeling that you would necessarily like dismiss someone if they had completely opposing you.

Oh, absolutely not.

It seems like it's a low priority for it's.

Yeah. I often tell my, you know, I often tell people that work for me that have very different views. I say, hey, I don't agree with your view, but I really respect that you have one and that you are willing to stand up and discuss it and defend it. That's what you should be able to do is whatever your view is, let's talk about it. And I'm a pragmatist and I think a lot of times what's happened not to make this show totally political is that the extremes are in charge. Not the Supremes, the extremes. And it's the left and the right. The extremes. When you have a beer with somebody and sit around, talk or whatever. Most people I run into are very.

Much more centrist, much closer to the middle than.

Much closer to the middle of the.

Extremes we hear about. That's right.

That's correct. And the extremes are, I think, driven in many ways by people trying to benefit from them. Whether it's politically gaining power from dividing us or by the, and I hate to use the word the media, but by, by media businesses benefiting from pushing divisiveness. Right.

Well, they have to push something because, you know, the 24 hour news cycle requires that you have you come up with something that attracts people to you as opposed to. I am going to watch insert network of choice here at 6:00pm tonight. Right.

Yeah, yeah.

That day is. I mean it's still here, but. But it's gone.

Right, Right. Yeah, Those, those media, those outlets are. There's, I don't think there's any argument that you can make that would say they are not filtering the news. Right.

Well, they're. Yeah. Curating. Might be a curator.

Okay. Yeah. Curated just like we.

About what Gruber does, you know, he's curating his content, which therefore curates his audience. And people do that too. It's. You have to, you know, just like, we don't talk at here, we don't talk about, you know, music very much.

Yeah, I understand. Yeah. It's not the venue.

I love music. It's a huge part of who I am. But it's just not like there's a better place to do that. Yeah. I always say when it comes to politics, and I see people getting very passionate and very emotional about it. I mean, like you. I think it's great that people have their convictions and they believe in them, where I really start to have a problem with it. And this is why, as a business owner, we just don't engage in this kind of stuff. And sometimes we have to cover things that are political. Right. In nature.

Oh, sure.

I mean, we didn't have to cover the fact that Tim Cook was going to meet with Trump or whatever with all these other people, but it was relevant for us to cover.

It is relevant.

Right. And we always make sure that, like, okay, like, let's not let, you know, snarky commentary bleed in if, in fact the author of the piece wanted to be snarky. I mean, I guess you could be snarky either way. I mean, you've got.

Yeah.

Anyway, I'm not even gonna.

Yeah, you're not.

Your belief.

That's right. Your beliefs should not enter into that article if you're just reporting some facts.

Right. But your beliefs do enter in when you're reporting something here at Mac observer about Apple vs Samsung or, you know.

That kind of thing.

So we allow for that. It's not like we have a hard line, but it's like there's boxes and it's like in this box, you can be biased, you know, and in that box, it's just better if we're not, is really what it comes down to.

That's right. That's right.

And in terms of politics, my. My big issue is this. I get that you're either really happy or really upset or somewhere in the middle about who was elected either as president or as your local representative or someone in between. It's easy to attach yourself to that. But the reality is, every single day when you wake up, there is one person that can impact your life far more than any other, and that's you.

That's right.

You know, and I've gotten yelled at for saying this, like, oh, you know, you're a white American guy. You have privilege and all that. Yeah, totally. I am born with this. There's nothing I can do about the fact that I'm a white American guy. That's something that happened. Just like there's nothing that my wife can do about being born a white American woman or my buddy can do about being born a black American man. These are things that happen to us. So, yes, we just acknowledge that this is how we started in life. Some of us started the game of life on easy mode. Some of us started it on advanced. No, seriously. And we need to be aware of that. And I think with all of the political correctness movement, I mean, that's a pendulum that swings. Right. And it is swung very far in one direction. And hopefully the outcome of that is just awareness. I don't think anyone should be blamed for the way they were born regardless. Right, right. But that's about as far as that should go. I think we are all different, but each of us is more in control of the outcome of our day than anyone else is about our day. So it's just like, that's where I get into it. It's like, yeah, the priorities, man. Just set your priorities. Don't let that distraction. The news media works so hard to distract us with all of this stuff. And it's like, just focus on what you're. Let the rest of the people. Here's your secret. Right. Let the rest of the world be distracted. It makes it easier for you if you're not. Unless your business is talking about politics, in which case, by all means, giddy up.

Of course. Of course. Yeah. And. And so it would be great. What I really would love to hear, because, number one, it's. It's great you couched that. You know, hey, maybe. Maybe Gruber is, you know, maybe he is going to push out to a political thing. That's awesome.

Maybe he's testing the waters. Who knows what happened? Right.

And what a great way because. Because I. I feel compelled to reach out with this guy because I've had this relationship with him again, he doesn't know who I am.

One sided relationship, of course.

Of course.

Very real. Yeah.

Yeah, it is real. Every day he's in my feed and I'm looking, I go, oh, what's. What's he got to say?

Great.

I know he's going to disagree about this. Yeah. And I. And I respect that. But now I can go back to him and say, hey, it sounds like you're launching a new publication. Fantastic.

You can even nudge him in the Right direction.

Yeah. You sound like, this is great. And I'm very happy for you. You're a very intelligent guy who's got a great voice, and I would love to just focus on the tech side of it at this time of my day. Let me know if there's a way to split that up in the RSS feed because as a publisher, especially loan guy running your blog, that's a great message versus some snarky.

What are you doing?

I don't want to read your political tripe. You know, da, da, da, da. And. Which is exactly what I'm going to do.

Yeah.

And you have to.

Yeah. No, and here's something I will tell you about John Gruber is. Well, that I'll tell you about the public side of John Gruber.

Yes.

Because he really is a private guy. And I'll be honest with you, if you meet him, he's a really shy guy. So, you know.

Yeah. I've seen him talk a few times where he. He really does come across. He's like, you know, this is not my thing, you know. Yeah.

So, yeah, he's a great guy. But. But in very, like, you know, he get. He gets. I don't want to say overwhelmed, but he prefers, you know, small circles of friends. Sure. But he also doesn't allow comments on his blog.

That's right. So I agree with that.

There's a benefit there. But the price that he paid is his email box. Because people want to reply to him and they do. Right. And he just doesn't give them a platform.

Public forum.

Public forum. But his email is. I'm sure. I know because he's told me he's buried in email every day and he said it publicly. So sending something like that, thinking about what do all the rest of the emails look like, especially the ones about politics. Right. It's these very emotional things, either agreeing with him or disagreeing with him. Right. Probably both. And having a very reasoned sort of thing slide in that stream. He'll probably really be appreciative of it.

That's what I would want to see. He'd be like, oh, I didn't really think about that.

Or you have thought about it and hey, there's another smart guy like me.

Yeah, that's correct. That's correct. And he's certainly not alone and not to just. And I'm not necessarily saying it's a negative thing. I'm asking the question, is it, am I behind the times or am I missing out on this thing? And are there people. So if you're running your business with a certain political bent. And there must. I know there is. Whether it's very patriotic and anti this and pro this. We would love to hear some examples of that. To show me why I'm wrong or show me a different perspective, actually, on the. Oh, you've missed this opportunity to curate your audience. And I will tell you one of the issues we've had in the Apple space. We mentioned earlier, people, if you're under 25, you can't realize or believe that every day. People used to ask me, how can you be in the Apple business? I thought Apple was going out of business. Those were some of the greatest times for our company because it was a niche and it was ignored. And. And as a small business, you want to be way over on the edge where people kind of ignore you because that's usually where the profits are. But now in the Apple space, it's very different.

Too much competition.

It's too much competition.

Oh, yes. No. We had a much easier time making each dollar when Apple was beleaguered and going under and all that. It was just like cake because we had the platform. There was only a few places people could go to reach that audience, and we were one of them.

It's awesome.

That's how we met, in fact.

That's correct. That's how we met.

Pay dividends down the road.

Yeah, you got it. And so I would love to hear someone else's story. And you can send us a message@feedbackusinessshow.co. you can also jump over to the small business support group businessshow.co Facebook. We'll dump you right over there. And let's get a dialogue going. Educate me. Be fantastic.

I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, good stuff. Thanks for listening, folks. We will. We will see you next week. Lead that charmed life. Make that charmed life.

Yeah, that's right. Take care, everybody.