Powering Through the Daily Grind of Running Your Small Business – Small Business Show 168

The Small business show, episode 168 for Wednesday, April 25, 2018. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co, the show that is by, for and about small business owners. Our sponsors for this episode include Textexpander from Smile@Textexpander.com podcast that gets you 20% off your first year of a service that both Shannon and I can't live without. We'll talk more about it in detail in a minute. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire.

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

I'm good. I'm good. Grinding it out like we do.

That's right. Grinding it out. We were just talking about that. That's. That's a really important part of, you know, pushing through everything is figuring out how to, you know, get through that daily grind and not letting it grind you down. Right. But pushing through your. The obstacles that are in front of you.

Yeah, yeah. It's the. It's crazy, but it's how it works. And not just the daily grind, but, you know, kind of looking at it from the weekly and even the, you know, quarterly, annually, like, just making sure it's always happening.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, one of the things, you know, we talk on this show all the time about, you know, our optimism. Optimism creating our own reality and, you know, all these kind of lofty things that you and I have embraced that have helped us. And we talk about the Charmed Life. We did our whole show last week on that.

Yeah, we got called out a little bit on the Charmed Life.

We did, we did. Yeah. So I thought it would be a great. And we love that feedback, you know, love it, hate it. You know, think we should do something different or better. We love to hear from you. And we got some flack a little bit in the small business support group, and I thought today would be great day to talk about that.

Perfect. Yeah. Because it's not always rosy.

No, no. Actually often, but maybe more often than not. And the Charmed Life concept of using your small business or multiple small businesses to enrich your life in other ways, you know, that's a really important thing to me and I think to you, Dave. And we've, like, embraced it throughout, you know, the long haul, but we've both been involved in, you know, multiple businesses that have had countless problems that we've had to grind through all the way up to, you know, closing a business down that wasn't generating enough profits to sustain Itself, having to lay people off and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, I think it's important to spend the time today to talk about, you know, we can share a few of those stories and talk about some tips that we've used to get through that grind. So when you're facing, you know, again, you read all these business articles and you listen to our show and we talk about all this positive stuff and embracing this and how it's, you know, small business is so great and it is. But there is certainly times on Sunday when, you know, you're thinking about Monday, thinking, oh, man, this, it's going to be a rough week for me, you know, or a rough day, or there's times you have to figure out new ways to inspire yourself because it does become a grind. Yeah, yeah. So we're going to talk about that today.

I want to, I want to offer a little correction. I mean, certainly there are times on Sunday when you say that Monday is going to be a tough day. There are also times on Sunday when you say, I remember that some people get to take Sundays off on a regular basis. And I am not in that club today, you know, so it happens. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The grind can happen anytime, seven days a week. Right. And you're the one that has to get up and fix things. You're the one that has to, you know, there's numerous times when, like buildings I've, we've, you know, been in have gotten broken into and you know, two or three in the morning, you're the one that has to get in the car and drive down there and meet the police, you know, that kind of stuff. And it, it comes with the territory. And I know that people can get frustrated at times with it. And so I thought we'd talk about a few stories today and then talk about some tips. Perfect. On things that, that I've used. Yeah, both of these. Let's talk about a couple stories quick. Both of these things I've shared on this show before. You know, at one time I thought it would be great to be in the flat panel TV business. And one thing I've learned about myself, but it's taken a long time, is that I get enamored with shiny objects. And this was right about the time that, you know, plasma and LCD TVs were really coming out strong. And I was like, wow, you know, I need to be in on this. And I love these big TVs and I want one for my house because I didn't have one at the time.

Yeah, of course.

And, yeah, so. And we thought it would be a natural progression from the computer business moving in. There's got to be parts in here. I mean, in effect, you know, that big LCD or big TV is really just like a big laptop screen. It's got similar parts, they're much bigger and that kind of stuff. But sure, yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. And so the way, you know, I typically would get into these businesses is I go out and I start buying that, that product. And the way you get attention is you buy everybody's garbage, really, or problems, let's say, let's not use the word garbage because there's, there's value in that.

Sure, yeah, yeah. Well, one man's trash, right, you know?

Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. And I've always done that. Try to buy things other people are.

I was just gonna say that.

Deal with.

As you say that, you say it as though it's obvious. And clearly it's obvious to you, but that is at the core of your entire business life, I would say, is just finding things that other people don't want and finding a way to.

Problems.

Yeah, finding problems and then capitalizing on those and selling them. Yeah, yeah.

Most people don't want to deal with it. Whether it's technology, products, whether it's handbags, real estate, whatever it is, find the thing that has the most problems. And if you're a problem solver, you can usually, usually turn that to your advantage.

Yep.

But, you know, to make a long story a little shorter, getting into the TV business was a massive mistake and a massive capital intensive program and labor intensive program that, you know, went bust within 12 months and left me with a massive debt, you know, And I can remember feeling like, wow, you know, this is one of these things where for a while everything I thought touched, I felt kind of, if not gold, maybe turned to silver. Right, sure. And that was one that really tanked. And I still have a TV to this day up in the game room of our house that was involved in that deal. And it's a reminder to me and I always tell my kids, I'm all, how much you think that TV costs now? They know, of course, and they say, oh, whatever. And I said, that's about a $200,000 television right there. Because of all the. That was with tuition to learn not to be in this business. And during the, you know, luckily we had different resources and it wasn't our main business. And, you know, I'm gonna, I'll jump ahead A little bit. But on the, on the tips is being able to adapt is, is a critical part of getting through that daily grind, in my experience, because not everything is going to work. Most things are not gonna work. And you know, all these different things that we've tried, you know, maybe 8 out of 10 of them fail, but if a couple of them work, hopefully those can offset those failures and either create an entirely new business for you or at least a new revenue stream. And it's really important to have that diverse.

I think we're still going to get called out on this because, well, Scott on Facebook said some of us haven't gotten there yet. And so I'm just going to be right up front that your answer to that was to tell a story about how you, you lost 200 grand, but it thankfully didn't kill you. But that couldn't have happened for you on day one with your small business.

That's right.

Right. So I just want to kind of make sure we.

Yeah, that's, that's important.

Yep, yep, yep.

So it is probably. And there is, unless you have a story, is probably a better story I could tell that was maybe not on day one, but on day 10 when we got, you know, we sold a bunch of product and the customer used fake cashier's checks to pay for the product. And you know, this was, we were, we were literally still working out of my spare bedroom.

This was my company early on. Yeah, okay.

Early, early on. Just got out of college, working with my business partner Chris, and just trying to figure out did we have a business, could we do this? We fell in love with the Mac and we were trying just to come up with a way to make a living using the Mac because we loved it and it had changed our lives and started buying and selling some hardware again out of the spare bedroom of up here in Pleasant Hill, California. Started doing business on aol, getting involved a little bit online. This was before the web. I'm really dating myself here. But one of the guys that we did a deal with and said, hey, you know, I want to buy these products and this Apple stuff. And we could, we could secure it. And he was going to send us. I'm sorry, he was going to pay COD, that was sometimes FedEx, COD, very prominent, used it all the time. And we shipped multiple orders to this guy in a relatively quick time frame, probably about $12,000 if I recall. And all the cashiers checks came back from FedEx, put them in our bank and it took about a week. And they all Came back as fraudulent and you know, and they just took the money out of our, you know, and I'm sure we had bought the product that we sold with credit cards because we didn't have any money.

Yeah, of course.

And, yeah. And so, you know, it was a massive, you know, we were freaking out. What are we going to do? That's, you know, more money than we had all the money in the world. And so we just started pounding on FedEx. You know, it was your responsibility to collect the money. COD to collect the money. It's your responsibility to ensure that the payment. And of course, now this would never fly because they washed their hands of any responsibility. I don't even know if they do COD cashier's checks anymore. But we kept fighting and I kept working my way up the food chain at FedEx and just explaining myself and like, look, you know, this is, this will put us out of business because this is all the money that we had. And we fought it for a couple of weeks and finally reached a person at FedEx. And I wish I could remember her name, but she just got it. Totally felt sense of responsibility for, you know, not being able to provide the service that we paid them to provide. And they, and they gave us the money.

Whoa, really?

They sent us a wire transfer and. And that was it. And it was done. And. And we were like, oh my gosh, you know, we live to fight another day. And so you're right. I mean, I always think these big numbers because I've been doing this so long, but it is those. Especially if you're just getting started and you're paying everything on a credit card or you're working out of your house or you're doing something that, you know, there's definitely been times when I've been there.

And so I, I will say this, and I'm not going to necessarily ask you to share the number that, that, this, that FedEx paid you or that you would have lost here. But I guarantee you two things that a, it was less than 200 grand. And at the time it felt like way more than that 200 grand that you lost on the TVs ever felt.

It's all relative, Right?

That's what I'm saying, right?

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Because this would have put you out of business. Whereas the 200 grand you lost on the. You were able to lose that.

That's right.

I don't mean to say it didn't hurt, but. But yeah.

Oh, no, no, it all hurts. It all hurts. But those Things at first, you know, here you're just trying to prove, number one, you're trying to prove yourself. And I don't know about you, but I have a lot of my self worth, for better or worse, or, you know, better or worse, I have a tremendous amount of my own self worth wrapped around my business life. And it's part of what has driven me and continues to drive me is I want to be able to tell a good story. And if I have, I can't. Failure cannot be a part of that story unless I've turned it into something like this. Right. I couldn't have had this conversation objectively right when that happened, but I can 25 years later.

You probably couldn't have told anybody about it at the time. If you're like me. I hate telling people about failure. But there is, there are a couple of tips here, right, in, in this, our second parable of the show. And the first is that bullheaded persistence pays off, right? Because if you called FedEx, as you did, and talked to the first three people that all said, no, dude, like this is on you, you picked a bad customer, you know, not us, you could have walked away and, you know, best case scenario is you would have found a job quickly and then paid off those credit cards and you may now be, you know, employed by somebody else. Right? I mean, it could like literally life changing, right? And instead you knew that you had to get this solved and so you just beat it up the ladder until you found somebody that A, found some resonance with your story. Right. And B, also had the. Whether you knew it or not at the time, you know, as you go up the food chain, people have greater and greater budgets with which they're permitted to solve problems. Then you got to somebody that not only understood your story, but had the budget to solve your problem and solved it. Right?

Yeah, that's right. And that's right. And to Scott's comment, I think that you have to just endeavor to persevere. Right? I love that phrase. Every day it's a battle. You're fighting for your future. You're fighting for your independence and your autonomy, and that has to charge you up. And when things aren't going the way you think they should and you don't have any money and the rent's due, I mean, and we've all been there. Every single person who owns a small business and is listening to this show, I guarantee you, Scott, they, and you know us, have all been there.

I'm nodding my head yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the Fact that you're listening to the show and you're commenting in the support group, those are all great signs that you're on the way to where you get to live that charmed life. And I would argue you're living it right now because you're making the decision, not some supervisor, manager, or boss, about your own life. And that's part of the Charmed Life, not just the.

Totally is the other stuff. Yeah, no, that's it. I had something similar on my list of things to say is that, you know, you don't get to the point where you're living the Charmed Life. You decide that you're living the Charmed life. Yes, that's right. Yeah. Or you sort of realize that. Wait, wait, wait a minute. The fact that I am making these decisions is part of the Charmed life. Now. It sucks to have to make these decisions. It sucks that you're in the scenario where this decision has to be made, but the decision you're making is to push through as opposed to, forget it. I'm throwing in the towel, right? And I will say that that mindset is in whatever, five years, 10 years, even maybe a year. Like, this is the litmus test of whether or not you're gonna. You should be in business for yourself. I hate the word should, which is why I paused there. But this is the test, right? As to whether or not this is for you. And the fact that you're pushing through and you're pissed at the people, us, that are saying, oh, yeah, look how great it is. Yeah, it's really not that great. We've just. But it's simultaneously not that great and great. Right. It's that trade off of flexibility for freedom. We don't have the freedom to say it's somebody else's problem. Right. That freedom you have given up by being in business for yourself. But really, if you're working for somebody else and you feel like, oh, it's somebody else's problem, that's not really true. Right. But you sort of.

Eventually it's going to be your problem.

Eventually it's your problem.

Eventually it'll become your problem.

Like, you might lose your job if you, you know, if you keep pushing, pushing off the problems on other people and they realize that you're not a problem solver. So. But then if you are the problem solver, you get sick of all the people around you that are saying, oh, it's not my problem. And then you start out the business for yourself. So, like, that frustration is the drive that is It. And I will say this. Be really scared if you ever feel like that frustration has left you, because I've been there, and it's like, oh, holy crap. What's gonna drive me through the day if I don't have that? I don't want to say that anxiety is the thing that drives me, because anxiety generally is a very negative thing. But some level of that acceptable stress is the fuel that gets me through my day. I had a doctor, at one point, I was talking about having trouble sleeping when I travel, and I used to take valerian route, and that worked right up until the day I turned 40, and then it stopped working. So I was like, okay. And somebody had given me. Somebody had given me an Ambien right, while I was traveling, because they saw me, like, three days into a trade show. They're like, you look like you haven't slept. I'm like, yeah, because it's. Because I haven't slept, you know, and I'm still, like, energetic and all that. Like, dude, like, this isn't sustainable for you. Try this. You know, like, okay. And it worked. So I went to my doctor and I got a prescription for Ambien, and for me, it works great. It's not great for everybody, but, you know, it's certainly for me, and I only use it on the road. Thankfully, I don't have any sleep problems at home and all that stuff. But my doctor, while I was having that conversation, said, well, you know, there's other things you could take. And a lot of them. I can't even remember the name of what the prescription was, but it was essentially a de stressor thing. It's the most common one, and the name is just escaping me. And I thought, oh, my God, no, I don't want that. He's like, no, you probably really like it. It just relaxes you and everything's good. And I thought, yeah, but then I'll have to live in a cardboard box. Like, if I. If I found some magic pill, which you're telling me exists, that would take the edge off. Like, I feel like that might be a really bad thing for me. Yeah, you don't want that.

I would agree.

Yeah, it scares the heck. Like, that concept scares the heck out of me. So. So, yeah, like, make sure that you're aware of that. That level. Now, obviously, if. If the anxiety gets to the point where it's causing panic and it's crippling and all that stuff, there will be days when you will have panic. I mean, like, of course, you know, for for months at a time. That's bad. And you don't want that like that. To me, I don't think that's good, but.

Yeah, well, I always want that.

Yeah.

Yeah. I tell everybody that I work with or employees that work for me or whatever. I say, hey, no problems, no business.

Right?

I mean, you're in the problem. Whatever you do, you're in the problem solving business. I don't care what it is, you know, you're, you've got to solve problems. And if you do and you're good at, you'll. You be, you'll be successful. So, you know, whether that problem is, you know, hiring the right people, finding the right stuff, I mean, whatever, you know, they're coming up with, solving other people's problems, customer service, all that kind of stuff.

Yep, yep. You, you know, earlier in the episode, you said that you find other people's problems, right? And I've all. And, and really that's like the core of, of what you do. I've, I, I have always said, and it's really the same thing with just different words. I've always said that I take other people's headaches away. Right. Every business that I've been in has been to take a specific or multiple specific headaches away from other people. Right. Like you're paying me to do something and you could do it. Like none of the things, like, I'm not a brain surgeon. Right. I don't have that particular training. But even if you needed a brain surgeon, like, you could stop and go to school for eight years or 10 years or whatever, and then go be a brain surgeon. But that's a headache, right? Better to pay somebody that already knows how to do that, you know, and so you pay them and they help you with that and whatever it is. But that's what I've always said, is it? You know, and so by nature of taking someone else's headache away, you are inheriting a headache, and that's sort of part of it. Now you might be able to, and hopefully you can leverage your skills and your business to make it easier for you to do those particular things that might be a headache to someone else. And then you'll have to contract with other people to do the things that are a headache for you and all of that stuff. But yes, you're taking someone's headache away. That's why you're being paid.

Yeah, that's the opportunity.

That's the opportunity.

That's cool.

Exactly. Yeah.

That's the whole point.

That's the whole point. That's the whole point. Yes, that's right.

Good stuff.

Let's talk about our sponsor here, shall we? Yeah, cool.

Let's do it.

As I said at the beginning, talk about problem solvers. Talk about. Yes, right. God couldn't be more perfect. So, as I said at the beginning of the episode, Textexpander from Smile is our sponsor. That's@textexpander.com podcast and that's where you get 20% off of your first year subscription to this awesome thing that does take your headaches away. At least it takes mine away. I said that I am in business taking other people's headaches away. And then I contract out for those things that cause me headaches. Textexpander is one of those things. I don't want to have to type the same things over and over again. I don't want to have to worry about making a typo, because if I make a typo and I send an email out to somebody with that typo, it makes me look bad. I don't want to look bad. Plus, I want my. Whoever's getting emails from me to get the information that I want them to get. And I want them to see it accurately. I want them to see it without typos, and I want them to feel good about it. And so to me, I can use textexpander to take that headache away by putting all those things that I send people routinely in my textexpander library. And then when I wanna send one of those things, be it an address or a little snippet of customer service, type text or my phone number or whatever, it even my signature for email. Like, I have a bunch of them that I save in textexpander so I can invoke them wherever and whenever I want and I know they're accurate and I don't have to spend the time the headache formatting and like, oh, I want like, dashes here and this here. No, that's a pain in the neck. So I put them in there. And then I have little short codes that. That I type, like, you know, for my signature for Small Business show, it's comma, sig, sbs and boom, now I get my Small Business show signature and there it is. It's exactly as I formatted it. It's just like going into a. You know, you could do this with a big, long, you know, note in stickies or something and copy and paste after you find it. You don't want to do that. That's a headache, right? So you let textexpander manage the library for you. It pulls them out and you can share them. You've done some of that, right, Shannon? Sharing all those things?

Oh, yeah, the best. Yeah. It keeps your message on point so you can be up in the middle of the night solving problems and go, we have to. I want to communicate this in a certain way. This is a systemic issue that we have. And you write the answer out and it populates across your whole team, and everybody uses the same response, and it'll really help solve customer service issues. Perfect. That's great.

I love it. Check it out. Textexpander.com podcast. That's where you go to get 20% off. They will ask you where you heard about it. We hope you'll say small business show. Whether or not you do, that's okay. Our thanks to Smile and TexExpander.com podcast for sponsoring this episode. All right, man. Where do we go next?

So, you know, we've. We've. We've established the fact that we've both been grinding it out, you know, for. For a number of years. Decades. And still grinding it out.

Yeah.

And still every day. Every day there's another problem to solve, you know, and. And, you know, we just don't jump into, you know, this is not a commiserate type of show. We try to keep things. Well. What we usually wind up doing, folks, is Dave and I talk before and after and kind of gripe to one another about this and that, the other thing. So it's really kind of cathartic, you know, I wonder.

I want to ask you folks, would you like to hear more of that? I mean, I've always felt like the last thing you, as our listeners, would want to hear is Shannon and I coming on this episode and complaining about whatever minutia or non minutia is impacting us. Now, obviously, there are some things that impact us that we might share with each other that we wouldn't necessarily just share with the public at large. I don't think of you listeners as the public at large, but since the public at large has access to this, well, we need to be a little judicious. But there are certainly things that we could share here and complain about. We won't share our failures until they turn into successes because we're very shallow people. And as Shannon said, we don't like that. But maybe it would be good for us to do a little bit more of that. I'm not going to do that unless you folks tell us that that's what you want to hear, though? Because to me it seems like that wouldn't necessarily be entertaining to listen to.

Yeah, it's the pre show role. Right. And what we chat about that, you know, kind of getting everything going. That would be great.

Yeah. And maybe, yeah, maybe we limit it to, you know, one. One every one every two months or one every six weeks or something. You know, I mean, like, how often would you like to hear about that? Never. Or a lot of the time or somewhere in between. Let us know. Feedbackusinessshow. Co. I mean it. I really want to hear that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that'd be great.

That'd be good. So let's roll through a few things that have worked for me to keep myself going. You know, each day when I, you know, maybe I'm feeling overwhelmed or I'm just not having any success. And I certainly like to share and, you know, the first one I mentioned earlier is keep trying new things, keep adapting. You know, I often see when I talk to other people and try to help other, you know, small business owners, is the same thing done over and over and trying to expect, you know, and expecting some different result from it. It's not going to work. You have to tweak it. And it may only be a slight tweak. It may be, okay, we have all this great content and we're pushing it here and nothing happens. Let's try pushing it here. Or maybe you've got the wrong person in charge of it. Or maybe it's the. You name it, you know your business better than I do. But try new things and document those. Okay, here's plan A, plan B, plan C. And then measure them. Measure everything because you'll never know if it works. And try to tie it back as much as you can to, you know, specific results that you can really look at and say, okay, I know that that happened. I had X number of new customers or we had increased our phone calls by X percent or click throughs, whatever, whatever you're measuring, but just measure it so, you know, you know, put a code in there. Just like we mentioned with our sponsors, they put a code or a specific URL because they want to measure what podcast is generating customers for them.

That's right.

You need to do the same thing and try five different ways of doing it. Especially if you're, you know, I fall back on the digital advertising because it's so easy now to come up with different ads and push them to different demographics and measure those things. You gotta do that with your entire business it will help you come up with new ways to make maybe old things work again.

It's true. Yeah, it's true. I didn't say this, I forget who did. But there's that common phrase or that popular phrase, that which is measured is managed. And it's true. Right. Just by paying attention to something, intentionally paying attention to something will help you, like, you will see that part of your business grow. Whatever that is, it will get better, it will get more efficient. Whatever it is that needs to happen, you will make it happen if you just pay attention to it. Now it's really easy to sort of follow human nature and not pay attention to those things that aren't going well. Frankly, those are the things you need to pay the most attention to. Right?

Yeah, that's definitely been a problem for me during my career is, you know, I'm such an optimist that forcing myself to look at what's not working, it's hard, you know, and, and it's easy to just kind of slough it off. But you know, if you don't pay attention to things, they, it can get very expensive and you're just, you could be putting good money after bad thinking that, well, if I just pay a little more or if we do this or that, it will work and it'll sort itself out.

Don't worry about it.

It doesn't.

No, you have to work. If you, if you catch yourself thinking or, or saying that, don't worry about it, it'll sort itself out. Like, stop, because it won't. I mean, it's. Sometimes you get lucky. And, and I will say this. You know, every successful, long term, successful business person that I know has had some element of luck factor in at a relatively early stage. Now, I don't mean they were just sitting there and suddenly cash fell on their lap or something like that. You know, luck is, is preparation meets opportunity. And that's the type of luck I'm talking about. But, but you do, like, that will happen and that's great for you. Like it has to all it all, like, it's really difficult, especially if you're bootstrapping a business. You just need to have a couple of good breaks, lucky breaks, well prepared, you know, good preparation for the opportunity that came along. Whatever you want to call it, you need a, you need at least one of those, I think. And a couple certainly don't hurt. Don't count on that. Just because it happened the first time, it's like, okay, cool, great, I got a little bit of Runway now. Now you need to. Now is when you need to be really smart, you know, and don't think that you're a genius because something fell on your lap, even if it happens again.

Yeah, that's true. And I think, you know, I'm not a big fan of the word luck, but I love the word fortunate.

Right.

You are fortunate to be like, in my case, I fell in love with the Mac, and I live in the Bay Area, and I'm very close to, you know, the mothership. And there's a lot of tech stuff going on here in the Bay Area. And I definitely recognize that had I lived in, you know, somewhere in the mountains or maybe in the Midwest, it would have been more difficult for me to get my hands on some of the product that we built the foundation of our business on. Yep, no doubt about it.

Yeah. So accept good fortune. Absolutely. Like I always say, when the good stuff shows up, let it in, because the bad stuff's definitely going to get in. Right. So don't come in, don't question it. Let it in open arms, like, let the good stuff in, but don't count on it. Right. You, you have to, you know, you got to work, you got to make it happen. And occasionally, you know, the, the gravy just shows up. It's like, okay, cool, great, nice. Squirrel that away. Do something smart with it, whatever it is, but don't just expect the next round of gravy to show up. You know, you gotta go be disappointed or out of. Or bankrupt. Yeah, one or the other.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And, you know, we're gonna run a little long here because I have a couple more points I want to make that I think are really important. And it really helped me when I was going through some very, very tough times. And one of those things is being conscious of keeping yourself mentally strong, especially during times of adversity. And, And I think you have to work at it. Just like everything else. You have to be self aware that you have to be mentally strong. It may not come naturally, and it's kind of like the frog in the boiling water thing. Small businesses, I talk these big numbers because over 25, 30 years, those numbers just kept increasing. They didn't start that way. So it sounds like it's no big deal, but. But to me, after this long. But in the beginning it was. But you know that being mentally strong is the same thing as you solve smaller problems. Over time, you're going to get comfortable solving bigger ones and bigger ones. And a key part for me of being Mentally strong was surrounding myself with support. Whether it was, I mean, the people, your peers, your colleagues, your employees, your family members. Cutting people out of my life that were kind of dragging me down or they didn't support my vision and my. I don't know how you want to phrase it, but maybe my capacity for risk. And you have to be mean about it, but you maybe just don't. You're not around them as much anymore, or you don't share the details of your life as much because they're going to kind of swat it down. And it may be another family member, an extended family member, whatever. Hopefully it's not your spouse. I mean.

Yeah, if it's your, if it's your partner, that can be a real problem. Either your, your. Your spouse type of partner or business partner. Like, like, either way, that's not. That's a bad scenario. Yeah.

It doesn't make you mentally strong. It wears you down. But, but when you're, when you're mentally strong, you're prepared when the inevitable set of bad things comes rolling over you, which is. Will happen if you're, if you're going to be successful.

Yep.

You're prepared and you're like, okay, this is another problem that I can solve, especially for your team of people around you, whether it's suppliers that want to see how confident you are, your banker, your employees, whatever it is, you have to be the one that's mentally strong. And, and you have to work on it over time and, and build up that mental strength. And, And I think it takes conscious effort.

Yeah, it takes. Yes. Conscious effort. I. And I think, think, you know, I know some people that. And I don't do this, but I've thought about, actually lately, been thinking about it because it's like, oh, I have to keep myself mentally strong. And the reality is my mind is different than it was 20 years ago. Right. I don't want to say that it's weaker or stronger because it is both of those things. Right. Our brains change. And so it's like, okay, well, some of those things that I was better at when I was younger, I still need to be good at now while simultaneously leveraging kind of these things that wisdom has brought me. And it's like, okay, great. And I know a lot of people that have their daily recitation lists where they go through them. Ryan Stuman, who was on this show, the hardcore closer guy, he just recently posted his. And there's things on there that are like this. Keep yourself. I keep myself mentally strong. Like these affirmations or whatever you want to call it, that it's like, oh.

Yeah, whatever you want to call it.

Yeah, whatever you want to call it. But it's just remind yourself that, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do these things. And whatever it takes to remind yourself or to remember that you are capable of all these things will then allow you to do those things. Right. Because you're capable of a lot. But it's easy to forget that when you're kind of in the thick of it. So to take a minute and stop and say, no, no, no, no, no. I pay attention to details. I focus. No distractions. Right. Oh, right. I do that. If you tell yourself that every day, you will remember that you actually will do those things, and then you can trust yourself and all of that stuff. Yeah, yeah.

And I think it leads in good to my next point of embracing small successes. This has been a key thing for me because I've been involved in a lot of successful things, but they may not have. I mean, success is. We all have different definition of it. But, you know, looking at each small thing that is success. Like, I have a project I'm involved in right now, and it's taken a ton of time. It hasn't made any money, but I met a new partner that I've done some business with that I would have never had an opportunity to meet, and that is my small success. Maybe it could be a very big success down the road, but right now I know, wow, you know, I work well with this person and, you know, we could do some more business together. This business is not going to work, but we could do some other stuff. So for me, looking at every single thing you do and when something works, no matter how small it is, recognize it as a success and do the same for the people that around you. Don't wait for big accomplishments and things. Use the small ones to propel your success cycle forward and move beyond that daily grind. Whether you've got, oh, I connected with this guy on the phone today, and this is going to happen and put it on your list or whatever it is. It's those small successes.

Do you actually keep a list, you know, like, of things like that?

Terrible. I'm terrible at lists. But I will say one of the reasons I love doing this show is because it reminds me of my success and my small successes. And it reminds me that, oh, I know how to do this stuff. You know what I mean? I know that sounds. May sound weird, and we talked about being selfish before and how we defined it as a Positive thing. But after I do this show and I talk for a half an hour or whatever, I'm like, wow, that's cool. I have some value.

Yeah. Because it's. Right.

It's easy to take it for granted.

You just have to remind yourself of your own values. So you, you have always kind of proselytized about this concept of a success list. So I started keeping one just to see how this would go. And, and it's really been interesting because, you know, I, I told you I started this new venture and so I had to go and create an LLC and get the tax ID and all that stuff. And I put that on the list. It's like, oh, yeah, like, I've done this a million times, but it's been a while and you got it. It's super easy. And yes, I can do it. And, and what it reminds me of is that I, like, I don't need to progress. These aren't. These things aren't difficult. Right. And even the things that I haven't done yet, they're just not difficult. Just go do them. And for example, you know, we closed our bank account for the business that you and I have to get the entity that we have together, the deals on the web entity. And then we realized, whoa, wait a minute, we got a little bit of sponsor dollars flowing and we need a bank account. And it's a pain in the neck opening a business bank account. But you know what? It's really not that much of a pain in the neck because I went and opened two of them on Friday. I opened one for us and one for this other venture, and it was cake. I actually want to tell that story. We'll do that next week or whenever we do because there's some interesting things that, that we had to do and I should tell you about too, because, you know, we're in this boat together, but. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, it, like, it's like, oh, yeah, you just go do it, you know, and you just go do it, keeping that success list, reminding, whatever you do to remind yourself that you. You can be productive and you can get these things done. Helps you with the next thing, like, in a huge way.

Yeah, yeah. And we. And there's an article up on BusinessShow Co about creating a success list.

Yeah.

And you know, we'll put a link in the show notes, but, you know, you really, like Scott Adams says, you know, from the Dilbert guy, says, hey, we're just moist robots and we have to constantly program ourselves. Well, this is. All you're doing, is you're just constantly programming yourself. I'm a success. I'm a success. Look at this. Look at these things I accomplished today, even if they're little micro things. But you did it. Oh, I got this. I got that. I got that. And, you know, I made it to this appointment on time. I talked with this person. We agreed to do X. I did this, I did that. You know, whatever it is, those small things, and there's some examples up there on the BusinessShow Co site that I put up there. But it works. I'm telling you. I see it all the time.

I already works. It does. You're reprogramming your brain. That's totally what it is. It's crazy, but it works.

My last thing. Yeah, it does work. My last tip that has been profoundly beneficial to myself when I was grinding, especially when I was grinding it out. It's really easy to look in the mirror at yourself when things are going great and you're killing it. You're like, wow, it's great. But I think it's equally important to look yourself in the eye in the mirror when things are really going bad, because it's harder. But again, it's that confidence thing that, you know, and I've made some huge mistakes in my life and I've talked about them here on the show, you know, and I don't want to throw big numbers around, but there was a time when I owed, you know, owed way, way more money than I ever thought I was going to be able to make, maybe in my whole life. And in the beginning, after that happened, I just couldn't even look at myself in the mirror because I felt like such a failure. And my story had gone completely off the rails, you know, if you will. But eventually, looking myself in the mirror and kind of pounding myself in the chest and reminding myself that this would not be the defining moment of my business care. It got easier and easier, and it were. And it really worked because you program yourself and it just becomes your reality. You know, it sounds maybe cheesy or whatever, and I'm not pitching a book, you know, the Secret or whatever, but I'm just telling you.

No, there's a reason that people pitch that same thing over and over again in a million different ways because it works, you know, Scott Adams.

And people forget, right?

Scott Adams does it with his daily affirmations that he says have changed his life. Life, you know, Oprah's Got a Secret or whatever. It's literally the same Thing. It's all of this just telling yourself what you've done and what you can do and programming your brain that you're a successful person. And it, you're right. It sounds all woo, woo and daytime talk show stuff, but yeah, whatever.

Yeah, it works. It definitely works. And, and I highly recommend you do it.

And Stuart Smalley, right? I'm a. By God.

That'S right. Just going to say that. So. But anyway, I hope that, you know, after listening to some of our stories and some of these tips, you know, you know that we're in this, we're still in this journey together because Dave and I still have all kinds of ventures, some that are just getting started, others that you know are not in business anymore. And it's definitely a journey and we love doing it, whether we, you know, when we succeed and we often fail. But, you know, we're going to be here every week talking about it and we want to hear your stories. You know, go to the support group at BusinessShow Co Facebook and speak up. Tell us what's going on in your life, what you need help with. There's been some great feedback there lately about with, you know, folks asking questions for resources and stuff, and we'd love to have you a part of the conversation.

I'm going to apologize about our group because I didn't have notifications turned on the way I thought I did. So I thought every post that came in I would get notified for. And I thought, man, there's just not a lot of traffic there. And then you mentioned something to me. You're like, like, oh, did you see that post? Like, no. So I screwed up my Facebook notifications for that and it's fixed. So now I will see them and can react. So there you go. Yeah.

Well, let's talk about next week. Let's talk about the support group a little more and get some feedback from subscribers about what they want to see in there because we've been having some posts that I'm not sure folks want to see, but I want to ask your opinion first. So we'll check in with them next week on that.

Okay. Yeah. Cool, cool, cool. Right on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.

Good, Good stuff, people.

Good stuff. Yeah. Thanks for. Thanks for listening. Thanks to our sponsor textexpander.com podcast. Go check that out. You can keep living the charmed life. Just decide you're living it. That's how it works. We will see you next time. Take it easy, Shannon.

Take it easy.