Politics in Business and the Importance of Downtime

Business Brain, the Entrepreneurs podcast, episode 392 for Wednesday, August 10, 2022. Greetings folks and welcome back to or welcome to Business Brain, the show by, for and about entrepreneurs behind because we're always using our business brains in all aspects of life, including our businesses. Sponsors for this episode include Shopify. We're@shopify.com SBS. You can get a 14 day trial and full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. And Bambi, where you can go to Bambi B A M B E.com small right now to schedule your free trial of their whole HR service. We'll talk more in depth about each of these in a minute here. It's great. Sponsors. I love these. Like, they fit so perfectly. For now here in Durham, New Hampshire.

I'm Dave Hamilton in Lafayette, California. I am Shannon Jean. How are you doing, sir?

Yeah, man, I'm good. It's one of those crazy weeks. I'm, I, you know, I'm a drummer and this week I'm doing some, what's called Tech Week for, I'm playing drums for Rocky Horror at this theater.

That's cool.

Local. Yeah, it's these, it's, we're doing Friday and Saturday midnight shows for the next three weeks. So, you know, we just got to get the show together. Yeah, it is fun. It is, yeah. Yeah. Tech week is always, it's a lot of time is what it is because it's, you know, everybody, you gotta play the show a few times before you bring the crowd in. And that's especially true with a midnight show when a lot of the cast, I think the, almost all of the cast is doing Rent as well at the same time. I am not playing drums for Rent, but, but, but most of the cast is, so they've, you know, they've got two shows in their head and like, you know, it's a lot.

Yeah, that is a lot. Hey, I have a question for you before we get into our main topic today, which I am interested in hearing your thoughts on which.

It's downtime. Yeah, downtime. We're gonna talk about it.

Yeah, Yeah, I like it.

Yeah.

But I, I've been, I've been thinking about this. You know, when I was in the thick of running, you know, various businesses, it was kind of. We didn't talk about politics in our business. But I've been thinking, I've been seeing more and more folks either leaning into talking about politics one way or another or specifically pointing out, you know, hey, we're not going to talk about it. And this is not the place. And I've thought, you know, I'd be interested in getting your thoughts about. Do you think it's a good thing to share your personal. Or maybe you have. Maybe it's part of your culture, your corporate politics with the outside world?

No comment. No. Yeah. Yeah.

That's one way to do it. Yeah.

Yeah. I. I have always chosen in my businesses to keep politics out of our corporate message.

Okay.

You know, we. And 100%. And a large part of that is that I am not one of those people. And this is going to come across sounding judgmental, and it probably is, but I really don't fault people for the hobbies they choose. I'm a drummer, so, you know, I can be faulted a lot, man. But I do not make partisan politics a hobby of mine. And it's largely because I. Well, I don't know that it's a good idea or a bad idea. Some people seem to love that hobby. I love computer stuff, and I love music, and so. And I love going to concerts, and that consumes all of my time. And so I don't make partisan politics a hobby. I do care about certain things. Of course, I almost always vote. I don't want to say I always vote because I'm sure somebody out there might find a time and say, hey, there was this one local election where, you know, I do care about things. I do get involved locally in our politics here in our town and all of those things, but my businesses are not local businesses. And so perhaps that makes life easier for me to keep my, you know, my. My personal feelings about those or my personal actions about those things separate from my business actions. But it's always worked out well for us to keep our politics out of it. And I say that with it with an asterisk. One of the businesses that I'm involved in is one of the bands I plan, Bitter Pill. And by golly, you couldn't make it through 10 minutes of a Bitter Pill show without knowing a lot about the general political views of the band. Now, whether those views are. To what degree those views are shared by each member, you may or may not be able to suss out. But the band definitely comes across as this, you know, very liberal outfit. And. And that serves the band well. It's not wrong about the band in general. And again, some of the people in the band far more strong, you know, feel strong, far more strongly than others, but it works out well for the band. But it. That's not why we do it. It's just it. Well, really, it comes from the person who put together the band, my friend Billy Butler. He's very outspoken politically. And. And he's also outspoken politically when he's on stage, which is a great surprise. Yeah. So let me.

Yeah, I'll rephrase this.

Yeah.

Is it good, Is it good for business to share your politics? You know, that's. I guess maybe. Does it depend on the business?

I think it depends on how you're going to run your business, I think. I mean, we know that. And this is one of the things that I. This is the thing I really hate about partisan politics about is how divisive it is. Right. I mean. Right. I don't like dividing people. I mean, look, what we do here, we bring people together, we talk about a common interest and it. Quite frankly, it does. The rest of it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what color your skin is. It doesn't matter what you have in your pants. It doesn't matter what you believe. About other things. We talk about business here. My other shows, I talk about, you know, nerdy stuff with. With computers and music stuff. Right. Like, and it does. Again, the rest doesn't matter. And there's no judgment about any of that. And so it can work to keep it out of it, but can you can never be. We always say the riches are in the niches. Maybe this is the right way to approach this answer. And so I just talked about three niches that have nothing to do with politics, but certainly exclude people that simply aren't. Who simply aren't interested in the topics we're talking about. Right. Like, if you're not into nerdy stuff, you really aren't going to get a whole lot out of Mac Geek Gap. I mean, you might get some tips for your iPhone or whatever, but you're going to get bored pretty quickly. I would think. If you're not into using your business brain about things and applying that to your life, this show's probably not going to stick in the same. You know, it's true for a lot. So the niches are fine. If you choose to focus your niche of your business by adding a political message to it, I could see where they're certainly going to drive certain potential customers far away. And it might also cause some potential.

Customers to be more loyal to come to you.

Yeah.

Yeah. And also the same. I think you could say the same about employees.

Yes, of course.

Frac track certain employees and repel other ones. So, you know, it's kind of interesting. I'VE just been thinking about it, you know, more and more because I see a lot of it and I wonder, you know, if I would love some feedback from our listeners. If you are, you know, if you, if you talk about politics in your business or you have a policy not to, well, how do you keep your employees from not doing it, you know, or how do you handle that? How's that part of your culture? FeedbackUsBrain show. I would love to hear from you or come to businessshow. Co. I'm sorry. Here, do it again.

Businessshow.com does still work, but it is BusinessBrain Show. Yeah, yeah.

BusinessBrain show slash Facebook. Will that get you to our Facebook group?

Yes, it will. Yes. Great.

Go there and share your, share your thoughts because I don't know the right answer.

Yeah. What are your feelings on this? I mean, you have mostly kept any political messages out of your business as well, I believe, right?

I have, yeah. I don't think it's the place. I don't think people are coming to you for that. And they're coming to, you know, my experience are coming to us for a service or a product and we want to be as efficient and focus on giving them a great experience and, you know, politics be damned. Right. We don't care. It shouldn't even, in my opinion, shouldn't come up. But it's, we live in a different world now.

We do. I've had this question in my head, like, should there be more of this in my business? And I, you know, it's just such an exhausting thing to me, you know, that, that I can't, I, I, I, I can't yet anyway, bring myself to, to, to make that part of my day, if that makes sense. No, you know.

No, I agree.

Yeah.

It doesn't. The thing about it is, is one the, in my, my own selfish worldview, being invested in this, you know, partisan politics, like you said, it doesn't make you any happier. You know, it actually, I think often just does the opposite and frustrates you because you, you know, if you're like, well, I can't help. If you really want to help, get involved in local politics because that impacts your life much, much more.

Right. That's, that's where I found I can feel productive and, and that's, you know, that's my thing, right. Is I need to feel like what I'm doing is making a difference. And Yeah. I don't mean to say that you can't make a big difference on a, on a Large scale. But for me, and again, very much, you know, Dave, centric view, I've found that I can be more productive when, when, when working locally and actually talking to the people who are in power and understanding them. Because that's a huge part of it. It's like I've found so many times locally, and this is a bit of a tangent, but I'll see somebody that appears to be on the other side of an issue from me and then I'll go and sit and have a bagel with them. Oh yeah, totally different. And listen, and it's like, oh, okay, first of all, we're really not that, that different. And secondly, I actually, I understand what you're saying now, you know, and, and there can be that. And, and I like that part. Like that, that part I actually enjoy. Cause it's productive. And sometimes I, you know, sometimes I'm the one convinced and sometimes the other person is the one convinced. But it, it, you know, it's that meeting of the minds that I really enjoy.

So yeah, same. Yeah, it's good.

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Costanza moment.

Yeah, yeah. Costanza moment. That's right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. To me, that's the result of the benefit of downtime. You know, you're the car often is the most frequent downtime many of us get if you drive where, you know, you're not really thinking about things, but you're letting your brain think about things. Because when we're hyper focused on something, we're often unable to see the big picture. You know, you talk about getting caught in the weeds. So much of our lives have to be in the weeds. We have to get things done. Action happens in the weeds. And it's good to take a step back and see that big picture. And so we need to give our business brains time to percolate in the background on things. Right. And so it's not just the rides home and it's not just specific moments. We're workaholics, right? We entrepreneurs, generally speaking. I'm certainly Speaking about myself here, I think I'm not alone. And it serves us well. Being a workaholic. It gets stuff done, but our workaholic business brains are served even better when we aren't working them nonstop. Would you agree with this, Shannon? Do you have.

Yeah, I think I don't. You know, what's funny is I look at that word downtime, and I immediately like, oh, you know, it's like I. Yeah, I recoil away from it because my story that I've built for my whole life is that I'm a hard worker and I'm the one that grinds it out and I keep powering through, and that has made a very positive difference in my life. And so I've been trying to think about just the last few moments here of what other word that I wouldn't feel. And I don't know why I feel this way, but I definitely feel threatened by that word downtime. But I really value and understand your comment about, like, on the drive somewhere, you know, as we come into the fall. I'm a duck hunter, and I love, you know, being out in the. In the wilderness during the wintertime and driving to and from where I hunt. I get a ton of that freedom to let my business brain percolate in the car, you know, on the way home or on the way to the night before. And it is really valuable. And I have solved lots of problems that way, so I do think it's an important thing. And I guess all of us certainly have different methods of finding there. It's almost like a Zen moment, if you will. It's very meditative, and you can just kind of think and let your mind wander. And oftentimes you wander up onto a solution that perhaps would have eluded you if you didn't have that free time.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's those. I think about it as putting. Putting something else in the foreground so that my mind can do what it's good at and when I'm not getting in its way. Right. You know, if I've got some problem or whatever, I just want to let it kind of percolate and then answers will start to pop up. Right. The whole idea of. Of. Of renaming this show, I think, came from one of those percolation moments. Like, this show's not named what it should be. You know, I didn't come up with the name in one of those percolation moments, mind you. I think you came up with this name. Yeah, but sure. It was like, wait, we got to change this And I knew it was a problem. That was. The thing is, I'd had conversations. I think you and I had even had conversations, but I certainly had conversations not only with friends, but with people that I tried to point to. The show and the name, the Small business show, was frustrating. And I would say, oh, you would even tell. You even taught me. You're like, oh, just tell people to search for your name in the itunes store. I'm like. Or the Apple store. I'm like, oh, right, that's smart. Okay. And then one day, literally walking out of the shower, which is one of those great sort of things where I. I sort of call it meditative. I want to talk about meditation a little bit, because I think of that differently. It is a tool here. But the shower is that, you know, let's call it a Zen moment, although that's probably also the wrong term, where you're not intentionally thinking about anything. It's like when you're driving that sh. You know, the same thing. You're just letting your mind. You're focused enough on the activity you're doing, but it's a. Generally a simple activity. Driving becomes a simple activity once we learn how to do it. Showering, I assume, was the same way. The first time we had to shower ourselves was probably a super stressful thing, trying to remember all the stuff to do. But now it's a ritual, right? And we just do our ritual, and we're focused on the ritual, and then our minds can do their work in the background, and so many good things come out of that. So maybe that's the right. Maybe that's the right word. Is. Is. Instead of a Zen, for me, I'll use the ritualistic moment, not a Zen moment. Although that probably makes me sound like some cult leader or something. And maybe. Maybe I am. I don't know. Are you guys.

No.

Cult followers? I don't know.

Could be.

I don't know. Yeah, but, you know, you. You mentioned your. Your duck hunting. The drives to and from certainly provide you with that, you know, ritualistic moment we talked about, where you're focused on something relatively simple. So brain is sort of free to move. But I would argue that you're duck hunting, like, even while you're out there doing it, you're taking an action. It's not like you're just sitting there driving yourself or being driven, but you're doing a thing that you've learned how to do that you love to do, that you're focused on doing, and that does free up your mind. From thinking about the other problems in your life. Right. And I've always said, you know, like, vacations are the same way. They're not necessarily downtime, folks. I don't know what kind of vacations you take, but the kind of vacations I take rarely. Like, every now and then I'm on a vacation where I'm, like, sitting on the beach, but that's far and few between for me. I'm usually doing something, you know, and I often come back from vacation eager to get to my desk for a sense of calm and peaceful. That's true. And that's okay. Like, that's. I don't say that to imply that I hate my vacations. I love traveling. I love my vacations because it's different. It's a change of pace. But I'm often exhausted when I come back from them. But it does. It frees me from being focused on this daily grind by doing a different daily grind. And I think that's okay.

Yeah, I think. You know what? I agree with this. And I think everybody does it in different manner, I can tell you. Like, I woke up this morning and, like, maybe all of us, or many of us, I grabbed my phone, I looked over to see what kind of messages came in overnight, and I had one that's, like, going to cause me some difficulty, and I've got to come up with a solution, and I've got to kind of power through a bit of adversity. And as I was like, oh, we're recording a little early today. So I was like, okay, I can't. I can't think about this. I got to jump into this.

Yeah.

And then I. I found myself thinking, okay, when I'm done with the show here, I'm gonna grab. I need to just detox from this for a few minutes, and I'm gonna grab a book. And for me, reading something not related to whatever it is I'm working on is another way to allow my brain to kind of percolate in the background and come up with ideas and solutions. So it's almost like you have to have this parallel active. For me, a parallel activity, whether it's focusing on driving, you know, sitting in a duck blind or reading a book. I, you know, I love to read biographies of, you know, you know, famous business people, Henry Ford, you know, Andrew Carnegie, that kind of stuff. Because I can think while I read. You know, you can kind of. I'll sit there and sit there. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, something, oh, okay. This is how to handle it, and it's kind of, it's interesting that you, that you bring that, this, this up because I think I do it all the time, but I'm just not, you know, aware of it.

It's not intentional. Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's, that's why I, I sort of pushed back a little bit on the word meditation because, yes, all of these things are meditative in their own ways. To me, meditation is an act of intention. It is an activity, even though it might appear as though you're doing nothing. In fact, when I meditate, I am very intentionally focused on thinking about nothing. And that's much more difficult for me than it sounds. You know, one, if you've never meditated before, I'll share a very simple way to get started or just a simple way, even if you don't want to get started, to understand what happens with meditation. So I often still to this day do the first thing I learned, which is breath counting meditation. And I will breathe in and out and that's one and in and out and two. And I will do that up to four and then I go back to one. And they, they, the reason they tell you to, to not just keep going above that is you'll start to get distracted by the competition of, oh, how many breaths can I do? And now instead of focusing only on your breath, you're now focusing on the number which, which is not the intention of this. And the idea is to not let thoughts get in your way. They will, right? They absolutely will. It's how our brains work. You're going to be doing your breath counting and then suddenly I'm thinking about, oh, that, you know, that te morning that's going to cause me problems. And, and the idea is to not engage with the thoughts is to just notice the thought, accept that the thought happened and let it go. And if you do this long enough a, it's good practice because that's what a meditation practice is. But.

Right.

But you know, you're teaching your brain how to not get distracted as much by things and just letting things go. But eventually your brain will stop presenting you with it will have, it will have played all of its cards right. You know, it's like, oh, I want to show you this and distract you with this and this and this and this. And finally it's like it runs out of things and so it just calms down. And those moments where I call them true moments of clear thought, that's like blissful. Rarely do I get those anywhere other than the flotation Tank, because the idea behind the flotation tank, they're called, the misnomer for them, is sensory deprivation tanks. You are not deprived of your senses. Your body still works perfectly fine the entire time you're in the tank. There's nothing wrong with you. You are deprived of sensory input in the tank. That's the point. So that really the only thing that can distract you are your own thoughts. And once that's done, you're not hearing things or seeing things in the outside world that might then also be distractions. That's the idea. That was why the tank was created initially. And so getting to that point, and it usually takes me 30 or 40 minutes to get to that point where I have like, my brain has stopped showing me things and then I get that clear thought. But then when things come back online, that drive home from the tank is filled with ideas. It's really quite something.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

So I have never done that. I have to try that.

Yeah.

That's fascinating.

Yeah. Yeah.

How about flipping this a little bit on. On its head, as in getting your employees and, you know, your team invested in this concept as well, because you want those good ideas and those flashes of brilliance and the pure ideas or solutions to come up from the people that work for you as well, Right?

Absolutely.

So making, you know, this downtime concept, whether it's, you know, however you implement it to your people, I think it would be very important and extremely beneficial to your organization. Right.

Yeah. I think there's a lot of different ways to do this. One way would, would to just be make it part of your culture that people, you know, you bake one, well, let's call it a mental health day or something into, you know, your schedule once a month or something. Or you just, you don't, you don't need to be sick. It's not a vacation day. This is just for you. Although I think vacation days are also. Can. Can also serve that purpose of mental health days, you know, but, but another way would be, I think corporate travel, like traveling for business, it provides that change. Right. I certainly don't. I'm hesitant to use the word vacation here because I don't want anyone to think that I try to convince my employees that when they get to travel for business, it's vacation. It's not, but it's that same thing as vacation where you go and you do something. Or at least my type of vacations where I go and I do something and I'm super hyper focused and it's exhausting. And it consumes all of my time and energy. And I come back and I'm happy to be back in the office. That often happens with business trips too. They can be whirlwinds, but you're focused on something different for those, you know, two to four days or whatever, you know, they usually wind up being. And then you get back to the office and in a sense you're refreshed or at least you're happy to be back. And, and that can be part of it. Doing a retreat together as a company either. You know, you always talked about your Friday cookouts that you had with, with your company. To me, I see that as prioritizing downtime in your company and, and you didn't have to like travel anywhere. You just did it at work, but you changed gears. So. Yeah, I think that's.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great.

Yeah.

Yep.

I like it. Yeah, it's, it's. Yeah, down. Maybe, maybe for anyone like you who recoils at the word downtime, maybe this segment is the importance of changing gears.

Yeah. Something along that lines getting you out of the day to day and freeing up your brain to kind of work.

It's almost like, you know, the importance of zooming out.

Yeah, something like that. You have to allow your brain to kind of flank, come around the side with, with ideas and they kind of sneak in. Because if you really try to focus all the time, you know, sometimes you miss, you miss that stuff. So I do really think it's important and I love the concept. I think it's great that we're talking about it.

No, we at our house this summer, this spring, I guess we, we wound up adding a patio to our backyard. Something that we'd never had before. And we're using space now that had, I mean, we had walked through it, but it was an area that we had pretty much done zero with for the last 17 years while we've been here. And now we spend at least an hour a day out on this patio. And one of the nice things about it is that it is, you know, I was going to call it a non technologically infused living space. I mean, I don't know that that's true. I have this, you know, wifi capable mosquito repellent system from Thermacell, which is freaking amazing. Like, if you have any problems with mosquitoes, check out Thermacell. So I will put that.

I love that. I love Thermacell, but I don't like having to buy the cartridges. I get that from a business Perspective. It's brilliant.

But, well, you gotta get.

You have to keep.

Yeah, it's. It's how. It's how it works. Yeah.

I talk about it on the show, the subscription, the recurring revenue.

That's great.

But.

Right. You know, but it's. It works. It's like where we live here. I mean, not only am I in New England, where it's humid and there's mosquitoes everywhere, but, like, especially the back of our house backs up to the woods and not too far away is a big body of water. And so mosquitoes are a huge part of our life here. And Thermacell, all of their products, and especially their new Thermacell Live, which is the sort of permanent. I'll call it permanent installation thing. It's been. It's amazing. But anyway, you know, so there's technology out there. There's also a hot tub out there. That's technology. Right. But it may be a. Someplace where screens are not a default part of the experience. Every time we go out there, we're either sitting in the hot tub, we're sitting at the fire pit. I did I have a projector because somebody sent me one, and so I bought a screen on Amazon for 60 bucks. But it's an occasional thing. Right. We will. We will probably use it to watch like maybe football games and concerts. Right. Because, you know, we like that band Phish. They live stream all their shows to put one of their shows on. Out on the patio while we have the fire pit going like that. Like that, to me, seems great. That's a great way to relax. Awesome.

But absolutely.

But it's not just a place where every time we sit down, the screen automatically comes on. Right. And. Yeah. And. And so having this and having a place outdoors really has been hugely beneficial for that thought process thing for. For me. Although I will say, and I know I'm curious to your feelings on this, I think I know them, but I. But I think having a space where the screen is a part of the experience can be valuable for this downtime, this change of gears. However, with any of these things, if you are sitting there and basically just being on your phone the whole time while everything else is going on around you, I'm not convinced that's a change of gears. That's not a change of gears for me because I'm so engaged with the online world all the time, that detaching from that in whatever way, and I realize, you know, we watch TV and that's online, but it's. It's One way, it's not. It's different. It's passive. Yeah. Yeah. So.

Well, I always say that I'll never forgive Apple for inventing the iPhone. It's just. I'll never forgive them. I mean, I love it, and I'm addicted to it. Probably, like, you know, everybody listening here, and it's a great tool, and it's changed my life, and I built a business just using it, you know, all this kind of stuff. But on the flip side, it's when you're relaxing and we have an outdoor space like you're talking about, and we have a TV out there. Okay. And my. We put it there because my wife loves to watch the San Francisco Giants and watch the baseball game. We watch football out there during the fall, and it's awesome. I love it. And it allows you to relax and everything. But you're right. The minute you pick your phone up, it changes.

Well, you've left that. When I pick my phone up, I don't want to tell anybody else what they do, but when I pick my phone up, I have left whatever physical environment I'm in, and now I'm just in my phone, and it doesn't matter if I'm outside, inside, on an airplane, whatever. I am in the environment of my phone. I'm in cyberspace at that point. And it is a weirdly detached thing, but it's also completely distracted. I don't know. It has its purpose, obviously. And I have to say this. If Apple didn't invent the iPhone, somebody else would have.

Oh, yes, of course I say that.

Well, a good friend of mine, Andy Grignon, was One of the 10 or so people on the team of the original iPhone. He did all the radios for it. Yeah. And it worked very closely with Steve Jobs, obviously, and a lot of that work was done at his house. And there's some great stories that Andy. That are Andy's to tell. But one story I will tell is long after this, I was out to eat with him, and I saw his face just kind of go white. And I. I looked and I saw he was looking at another table, and I looked at the other table, and there was a family of four people, all four of whom were buried in their iPhones, ignoring each other. That's brutal. And he was like. I could tell he felt terrible about the role he played in allowing that to be a thing that happened. And so I had to remind him, like, Andy, you did. You actually created a great thing for the world there. You know, there are downsides to it. And that's obviously one of them. We will fix this as a society. We're just not there yet.

I think so.

Yeah. Yeah.

We're in adjustment phase.

Yeah. Yeah. Early years, man. We got to figure it out. Remember, you know, there were no four way stops. No one even understood the concept of a four way stop when the first car was invented. Yeah.

And I would say my. One of probably my biggest complaints is that your phone has destroyed many opportunities for downtime.

Yes.

It allows you to just fill space and absorb more non essential stuff or become more addicted to news or politics like we talked about during the intro. And so from that aspect, and I do believe it's learning to manage it and leaving it in another room and not having it near you the whole time.

I leave my phone inside when I go out on the patio most of the time and when I bring it out with me, it's a different experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

So that's good. What else, how else can we, you know, experience this kind of freedom and allow our brains to percolate these great ideas?

We're going to need to let everybody else tell us. Feedback at BusinessBrain show. Yeah, I don't, I don't have any other. I, I don't know. I don't know the answer.

I would love to. Yeah, I'd love to hear it as well and, and find out, you know what, what other people do to, to relax and let go and let your brain figure out new ways to solve problems.

New ways to solve problems. That's. Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah. Thanks for hanging out with us folks. Thanks for let us know though we've, we've talked about two things that I know you have thoughts about so share them with us. Feedback at business. Easy for me to. I'll get there. Feedbackusbrain Show. That's right. Make sure to check out our sponsors, Bambi.com Small and Shopify.com SBS we'll get them over to the Slashbrains at some point. Now keep living that charmed life. We'll see you next time.