Remind Yourself of your Successes – Small Business Show 73

Small Business show episode number 73 for Wednesday, June 29, 2016. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co, the show by, for and about small business owners here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you, Dave?

I am good. I am good. I am very excited about the interview we did last week with.

Yeah, we were just talking about that before we started recording. And I think we should look, I pushed, hey, let's just do it on the air. And we had a great interview with John Moran from Via island and it really got our juices going and let's just have a little chat about it.

Well, yeah, he's, you know, I tried to explain this in the interview and then and I think this is good what we're doing here because you and I always have lots of thoughts, as you folks do, who are listening about these people we interview. But we don't want the show where we're interviewing them to turn into a show about us because that's a waste of time. But it's this little debrief we found that we were always doing them after we interviewed folks. And this is perfect. There's no reason we shouldn't just debrief with all of you in attendance. So, yeah, I think John, I said a little bit of this in the interview with him, but this is a guy that doesn't understand yet he will. How good he is at what he's done so far and how difficult it is for most people to get up and do what it is that he's already sort of done just because, well, he had to do something.

Yeah. Well, I think that's the point is how difficult he's kind of, I don't want to say overshadowed, but it's just kind of taking advantage of the fact that, oh, I've just, I've done all these things and so many people have a hard time just getting started and making that big step. And, and so, you know, a couple of the key things that I think, you know, he mentioned was one the, the kind of struggle when he was, you know, in college as a junior figuring out, oh, gee, you know, what am I going to do now? You know, I'm sure getting all kinds of pressure outside world on, oh, you're going to go get a job, you're going to do this right. And become. Yeah.

He even, even apologized to his mom and dad for dreaming up the idea for his current business.

Yeah.

In stats class, it's like that, that's actually not a bad thing. That's okay.

Yeah, it's awesome. And you know, so that right there is that first, you know, from, from prospective employee to potential employer, you know, making that, that step is, you know, as we've talked about here over and over and over. That's where most people stop.

Yeah.

And then.

Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's right.

And then they spend the next 10 years talking about what ifs, you know, if I only would have done it. And now I'm kind of behind the eight ball and I've got all these responsibilities. So at whatever stage of your life you're in, you know, taking that step and getting whatever tools that you can or support you can, I think is critical. And I think I mentioned it on the show, if I can recall is like we've been talking about lately focusing more on systems instead of goals, like Scott Adams recommends in his book, developing a system to where you can look at those successes, however small they may be. Okay, I'm going to create in John's case, what he created. A iPhone case, right? Phone case. Yeah.

At a time, I mean, remember this was a year and a half ago that he, that he did this. There were plenty of iPhone cases. It wasn't like, it wasn't like he had a novel idea, but any stretch, he said, wow, I like the way things look here in Cape Cod in the summer, which, which is, you know, like a six week period, folks. This is a really limited time, but you savor it. Right. And because that's where he grew up and I grew up not too far from there, you really savor those summer days because they aren't, they aren't ubiquitous for you. So he thought, wow, I want to savor this. Maybe everybody else does too.

Yeah, just fascinating and just humble beginnings. He said, oh, I was selling around the Cape and we kind of pushed him. Oh, who are you selling to? Oh, mostly my family in the beginning and then my friends. And that's fantastic because it's so authentic and it's not like, oh, yeah, I made a thousand of them and I shipped them to Amazon and put them up there to sell them. No, I just started selling them to people that I knew and who I thought would like it. And now it's grown, you know, to where he is today.

Yeah, yeah, he doesn't. It's great. I envy that youth. I mean, it's youthful. Perhaps only because he's young. There's no reason that you or I couldn't Be as. I don't want to say it's not ignorance, but it's just he doesn't stop to worry. He follows his own advice.

Yeah, but he did say he did worry. So he's got the same. And for guys like you and I that have been doing this for a couple of decades, we're at a certain stage of our life and I think we talked about this last week off air when we were barbecuing and stuff was with our kids getting ready to go off to college this year. In a couple of years and this kind of stuff, you'll have a little more time. And so maybe your responsibilities drop a bit to where as a prospective entrepreneur, you could roll something out and take.

Just, just take a risk. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So maybe it'll be a little easier for you to take the risk.

And so you said, you said something, Shannon, that I want to kind of tie together with a theme that we've had for a while. You said avoid avoiding the what ifs. Right. You know, by, by, by doing things now. Well, I would venture to say that if you have any what ifs and we all have them, you know, this is. Yeah, but they are almost always the result of a prior fear based decision that you made.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right.

Whether not to act.

Yeah. I'm not going to do this. I'm afraid of. I'm so. I'm going to stay away from that. And now down the road it's like, what if I hadn't been afraid? What if I hadn't, you know, I, I would think that most what ifs are indicative of. Oh yeah, I made a fear based decision. We all do it. I mean it, you know.

Yeah. And it is, you know, it at least it should be easier, you know, when you're young and I can remember being on the front porch of my business partner's parents house. We were in college and I was getting ready to leave and they kind of pulled me aside because I was kind of this loud, maybe surprising to you, but you know, loud talking. You know, I'm gonna, you know, we're gonna do this great thing and start this business, you know, that kind of stuff. Back then I didn't know about, you know, not talking about what you're going to do.

Right.

As much now that I, now that I preach that. But I can remember getting pulled aside by this, you know, this guy's father who I respected a lot. Very successful in a corporate world.

Sure.

And him really saying, hey, you know, we don't, we Don't. We're not really behind you guys. You know, what if you fail? What if it doesn't work? And I can remember looking at him saying, well, when are we ever going to do it? You know, if we can't do it when we're. Everything I own can go in the back of my Jeep, why wouldn't we do it now? You know? And so, you know, to John's thing, that's when you need to do it, if you have that opportunity. And if you don't, you got to be a little bit more controlled about it. And we've had folks on the show here that have kept their corporate totally. We've done it. You did it, Dave, you know, kept your corporate job and then rolled that into something that evolved into, you know, this thing that then developed into a business that you grew and did all these things. So I love hearing the different methods that. That entrepreneurs come to, you know, realizing what their dream. And I think it's great. And I think John is really on the right track, and I think he will. What you mentioned, Dave, you know, he'll look back on this in 10 years when via island is, you know, massive company, if that's what he wants for it, right? And he'll be like, oh, man, look at that. We were killing it.

Well, I mean, even just, you know, as of the moment we're recording this, he's got, what, 23,000 followers on Instagram, and. And that's his chief marketing avenue, right, for sales.

That's right.

Okay, well, I, you know, I feel like, you know, somehow somewhere he has the information to teach a masterclass in getting Instagram followers. And he. And he shared some of that with us. Right? He shared what he knows about it, you know, with us now. But I. Or what he knows that he knows about it, but I feel like there's more to that. It's like, wait a minute, you got a thousand and then someone came to you and said they wanted to be your ambassador, so we'll hold the phone. You got a thousand. That's like, all by itself. That's really good.

Sure, sure. Yeah. And just he's so into it, like many of us that are running businesses, that you don't have the benefit of looking at it from the outside, because I'm sure, go Google how to get Instagram followers. And there's probably hundreds of businesses take your money to. To show you, quote, you know, how to get Instagram followers. You know, there's. I know there's an entire industry around building Your social media and you know, Vi Island's done it in a very authentic, authentic fashion.

He just did it by himself, but, but not by himself. You know, he did it by being social in, in the right ways. And I think it's great. It's outstanding how he's, how he's pulled all that together and now has other people. You know, one could look at his ambassador program and say, wow, you know, he's really taking advantage of these people. But at the same time he's aware of that, which is good that he could be taking advantage of them. But at the same time he's also giving them a platform to build whatever it is they want to build for themselves. And you know, it all works. Everybody's happy.

Yeah. That shared success, you know, he mentioned that these folks trying to break in and become models or grow, you know, influencers and, and that, you know, coming to him and you know, that that works really well. You know, it's interesting to me the, the people that we've had on, the business owners that we've had on the show that have had the biggest depth of social media followers and exposure are both in the fashion.

Yes.

And I, and I wonder what, you know, I would love to talk with a business owner that's not in, you know, that has a completely different product line, a demographic and, and learn about how they're using it. You know, because I just, I think, okay, what lessons do these guys have that you could do if like, I don't, I don't know, you're selling anything. You know, I mean, we could have the tool guy we had on KC Tool. We could have Kyle, Kyle Baucus back on sometime and talk about how they're doing it, because I know do it. But it really is a current day guerrilla marketing, right?

Yeah, no, it is. It's totally that, that new school of, I mean, it's not really a new school. It's. You're doing the same thing. You're just pounding the pavement. It's just. There's pavement in different places now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. And allows you to drive that traffic to your online store or whatever it is that you're doing. If you're, you know, branding and selling in boutiques and things drives traffic to them or you know, if you're sell at your online store like via island, you know, driving that traffic and making those sales.

I think, you know, I think for him and it would be good to ask him this question, my guess is he thinks about driving awareness more than he thinks about driving traffic. And awareness brings him that traffic.

Sure.

But I think that's a really important distinction. And maybe, maybe that's just me coming from my, you know, decades of in the advertising sales business, where it's like, man, if you forget about branding and awareness, all the traffic in the world isn't going to help sell your products. Because if people get to your website and it's the first time they've been there, they're probably not going to buy. You know, they need to hear about you before they land on your doorstep. And oftentimes, if they haven't, then they might never buy. Right. It's really important they know who you are before they get there. And he does a great job of, you know, I mean, he. If I could say one thing about that interview with him, throughout the entire thing, he oozed the essence of who his company is, which is also who he is. I mean, it just every answer had that, well, it's, you know, the endless summer and this whole concept of, you know, enjoy your life, and every aspect of it came back to that. Being on the Cape. Right. Yep. This is. I like this vibe and I want everyone to experience it.

Yeah. It's very authentic. And I think that is what. I agree with you. You got to put that before your sales. You're trying to build this ecosystem and this kind of foundation to where your brand is out there kind of in the muck, if you will, as people are stumbling onto it. So I think it's great.

It's crazy. I like it.

Very, very, very cool. I like it as well. What else are we going to talk about here? Yes, you're very, very persistent guy, you know, not. Not being influenced by everyone else that maybe thinks you should be doing something else. I think we've, we've talked about that and I think that's very. Yeah, it's critically important, especially at a young age, you know.

Yeah. You got to believe in yourself. And I know that sounds, you know, all. All hippie dippy, but it's true. It is true. Yeah. It, you know, it's. If you don't, who else. If you can't believe in what you're doing, who else is going to believe it?

And, and yet when you're. Yeah. As you move through your career, you know, there's going to be times when you absolutely are going to be the only one that believes, that believes. And you have to look at the successes that you've had and not maybe focus on the mistakes that you made or the stuff that didn't work. I mean, I can tell you there's times in my career when it seemed like you could do. I mean, it was just so easy to make everything work. And other times where it just seems like nothing you did would work, you know, and, and if, if you don't remind yourself of those successes, it can. You can really find yourself kind of in a very negative space, which is not good for you.

So that you answered the question I was going to ask before I even got a chance to ask it, you. I mean, essentially talking about ignoring your mistakes at the right level. And, and the question is, okay, how do we, or anybody that's now been at their business for whatever, five years, 20 years, it doesn't matter. You have enough experience to be jaded. Right. And you also have enough experience to totally paralyze yourself because you've probably seen everything you've tried fail. You've seen things succeed, but you could easily say, well, that thing succeeded that time, but this other time it failed. Okay, great, so how do you do that? And you answered it is remind yourself of your successes. And maybe that's even. Make a list and go back to the beginning. If you're having trouble moving forward, just go back to the beginning. Start, literally write down a list of all the things that you've done that have worked. And just for the sake of this exercise, ignore the things that haven't. There's a reason. Time to come back and be aware of those. But just to energize yourself, do that.

Yeah, it's a great idea. And that keeping your energy level high is critically important. And I think what you'll find is when you make that success list, which is going to be your fuel, it's like getting up. And I know you don't think this, Dave, but eating a good breakfast. We've talked about breakfast.

Oh, no, it must have been somebody else. I like somebody else.

Yeah, me too. Me too. I like that. Whatever it is. But having that success list, I don't care if you, you know, fold it up and keep it in your pocket or you keep it on your phone to where you can always, you know, refer to it.

Make it your lock screen.

Yeah, yeah.

If you need it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, you know, as the, as the owner of the business and the, you know, the founder, the person, you know in charge, it's hard to. You're not going to get the kind of praise that you are going to be expected to give everyone else. Yeah, it's not going to happen. You have to find that feedback loop and build it, that system, if you will. And I think that when you make that list and you sit down and you start to look at it, you will think of the mistakes you made, and some of them will be tucked in there. Of course, that helped you lead or led you to another level of success. I think that's a great idea. I really like that we're gonna. We're gonna do some more of that on the site. And maybe.

Well, it's like. It's like you. You do. We. We talked about this, you know, at the end of every year, you. You put together your year in review. You called it something. I forget what you.

Executive summary. Executive summary makes me feel far more important than I actually am.

Right, but that's the point of it, right? Is to make you feel important, to give you that fuel to keep going.

Yeah, yeah, because like you said, you know what I said, you know, you're so in to the business that you may not realize that, oh, this part was a success, and we did this and we did that. And you really do have to remind yourself, and I think putting it in writing is very important.

It is, yeah, because you read it, and therefore it's true. But you said, making you sound more important to yourself than you actually are. I've always had this theory, and I attribute a lot of my success in business to the fact that one of my earliest. Well, my earliest business was mowing lawns, right? And then after that, I had a kind of a solopreneur business where I was doing computer consulting, and then sort of grew that. And, you know, the rest of the story you can hear on a different episode. But when I was mowing people's lawns, I was regularly visiting houses that were much nicer than the one that I lived in. And because I was mowing these people's lawns, I had to rise to their standards, right? You know, and so it was like, oh, yeah, we got to get this right at home. I might cut that little corner. It doesn't matter in our neighborhood, but in this neighborhood, it matters, right? And. And the same thing, you know, visiting those same homes or, you know, similarly equipped homes. When I was fixing people's computers, it's like, okay, you know, I'm now hanging out with these people that are, you know, living at a higher standard of living than I do. And I really feel like that opens some doors for me just experiencing that. Like, I mean, some people were, you know, lived modest lives, perhaps more. Even more modest than I lived, and then some people lived in these, you know, twenty million dollar homes that I would go and fix their computers and it's like, oh, wait a minute, you know, they're no different than me as people. They just don't have the same upper ceiling in their own head that I have for how far I can go. And I feel like being immersed in that was my way of sort of breaking through that own upper ceiling, or at least one of them. I feel like it's always easy to find the next one and you hit that comfort level. Like, oh, look, I'm here. Great. No, no, no, you can go there too, buddy. You know, nobody's stopping you. Except, you know, so again, it's one of those things making yourself feel more important than you are and, and, and any way you can do that will help open those doors as long as you don't let it get to you. Like, wow, look at this guy's got a $20 million home. And, you know, I can't get out of my, my little apartment. I'm doomed. Right? Don't, don't do that. Sure. You know, stop that.

And on the, on the flip side, you know, you want to, you want to feel important to me. Kind of comes at that old saying, you know, fake it till you make it. Right. Yeah, I've always done that as well. But at the same time, you know, you can't take it too far. You don't want to. Another phrase I've heard before is you don't want to believe your own movie poster. You know, act. Some actor said that. It's like, well, yeah, you don't want to believe this stuff. This is all marketing and a lot of it. So you got to kind of got to look at it, look at it with a critical eye. But I will say, you know, as a repeat offender, you know, serial business starter, you know, entrepreneur, it's awesome when you talk with someone and they actually, because I'm a question guy, that's kind of how I get through everything. When I meet new people, I just start asking them questions. And when you get that back, when you meet somebody that's worked some company forever or whatever, and they start asking you questions and you start answering, oh, we do this. And then I did this and then I came up with this and then, oh, I just developed this and I hired somebody to do this and on and on and on, and you start to realize, oh, wow, that is, we have done all that.

I'm that guy.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's Right. And you know, your day to day, you may not remind yourself of that. So it's. So you want to get out there, talk about your business, you know, keep your success list handy so you can look at it and keep adding to it.

Don't share this around in, in too many places because that'll make you.

No, no, no. This is for yourself.

This is just for you. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

Nobody wants to see your checkbook because there's always someone in the room who has something bigger, you know, just how it's going to work. Yeah.

Or smaller. And you don't want to.

Well, that too, actually.

That's right.

Yeah.

It can really backfire on you. You want to keep that stuff, you know, close to vest. And so this is, this is a tool that, you know, you want to talk about when you're looking in the mirror or in your car. It's one of those. I mean, we did a retreat years ago and we had a wonderful lady come and meet everybody and talk about, you know, what you're working on, what your strengths are, where you were having trouble in the business. We had employees and everybody there and this woman made like a self affirmation tape back when we made cassette tapes for everyone. And it was individually kind of recorded to talk about what you've achieved in your life. And here's help with getting to where you want to be. And I can remember listening to that going, wow, this is so great. I used to listen to it in the car all the time. But you don't want to listen to that with anybody else in the car.

Right, Right.

Yeah. You don't do that. So that's your. It's your own list of things. And it could be anything, however small you really want to look at those things and things you take for granted. I mean, it could be negotiating your first lease on a commercial space, could be hiring your first employee. It could be something you did for an employee that change their life in a great manner. I often talk with my wife Renee, and was like, man, I feel really good that we've employed. I think the last time when I did this, kind of off the top of my head, it was like 300 people over the lifespan of these companies that we've had. And some of these companies are no longer around.

Sure.

Because they have lifespans sometimes. But, but all the positive things that you've done, you really need to recognize them to help you build into the next generation of positive things that you're going to do.

Yeah, it's totally true. It's good stuff. This is good. We got to make sure we do this after every interview.

We'll do an experiment, right? We'll do a couple of shows and we'll see how it works because we ease into the change like we talked about here and we'll see how everybody likes it. If you like it, let us know at, you know, feedbackusinessshow. Co you know, we'd love to hear from you. You can also use our text line. What's that text number? Dave?

The text number is 401-472-4249. That's 401-472-4249. You can text us or call us there. Either way.

Yeah. Light up. Light up the phones, people. We'd love to hear from you.

That's right. Light them up.

Awesome. Light them up.

Light them up. Folks, enjoy your charmed lives for this week and we will see you next week.

Yeah. Take care, everybody.