Removing Obstacles to Your Small Business Success – Small Business Show 170

The Small business show episode 170 for Wednesday, May 9, 2018. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co buy for and about. You guessed it, small business owners. Sponsors for this episode include the folks at Smile software. We're at Textexpander. You get 20% off your first year. We'll talk more about that later in the episode. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

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

I am Dave Hamilton. That's how it goes.

That's good. We got that far.

That's good. You know, some days that's all you get, so you take it and you run with it. Yep. Some days it's not enough. That is true. You know, we were called out by. Not. Well, we were called out, but then we decided to be a little more transparent about some of the stumbles that we have made. And so I just want to start the episode right there with a whine about something. It actually turns out that it ended well. But when I put this on our list, I was really frustrated. So, you know, we take credit card payments and we talked about how we moved away from authorized Net and the service that was working with that because they were charging us a fortune in fees and all that stuff. And we moved to Stripe. But I looked the other day now, and this is the worst part about this, but it's my wife who does our accounting for us, and she does a stellar job. But I happened to look in there the other day and I opened up the reconcile window because I was testing something else, and I saw that there were two transactions from the end of 2016 that were listed as unreconciled, two deposits. And I'm like, what the heck is this? Like, that's like we are logging that we have this money in the bank and does the bank disagree?

Laugh yeah, yeah.

I've done this too, right? I mean, yeah, yeah. And it was like. And to be fair, like, I have overlooked this in the past too. I. I don't look at this. You know, she does the reconciliation and keeps everything really clean and all of that stuff. But I have seen this in the past. This is not the first time I saw it, but I finally was like, okay, wait a minute. Like this has gone on, like, usually that stuff, you know, you have some things from previous months that, that catch up or whatever, and it's, it's not a big deal. You know, somebody doesn't cash a check or whatever.

Right.

I just sort of ignored it. But it's like, wait a minute. This isn't. Somebody didn't cash a check. This is money that we say is in the account, but it's not in the. Like. Like, the bank hasn't told us it's in the account. Like, it didn't show up. So I started digging, and we. We both started digging. I was like, what is this? And we looked, and we found why we booked it. It was people that had paid not via a credit card, but via E check using that same service. So how. How that even happened, I don't know. I think we probably gave them the. With their credit card. They probably said, we don't want to give you our credit card number, so we'll just give us the link. We'll pay. And for whatever reason, they found themselves to navigate to a way where they could pay with an E check, which. Okay, fine. I mean, it's basically the same fees on our end. Like, we don't care. And so we got the confirmation that the E check was processed, but then, like, the money never came. And of course, you know, we severed ties in no uncertain terms with these people several months ago with not. Not the client, but with the processor that we used with Authorized Net. I was like, oh, crap. You know, and it was. It was, you know, a couple of grand, right? I mean, you know, like, yeah, significant. Significant, right? Yeah, yeah. And it was like, crap, I want that money. You know, like, I thought I had. That money is really what it is. So I definitely want that money. You know, I don't even get to, like, it's not a win when it shows up. It's like, we're back to even. But it was like, crap. I mean, it's two years old. What's going to happen with this? So we dug and dug and dug and realized, like, we're not showing this ever having shown up. Like, if. If it did, we, like, our. Our not reconciling. It was correct. And so I was like. So I told Lisa, like, all right, call authorized Net. See what happens. She's like, yeah, I'm on it. I. You know, she. She hates those people because they. They stole money. They stole money from us every week or every month for years. So in her mind, and then they sort of did because they charged way more than they should. Yeah, but. But we let them, so that's not really stealing. But anyway, she's like, great. And she called him up, and you know what? They were like, what are you talking about? And the Guy said, all right, let me. Let me research it, and came back on the phone, you know, five minutes later. And she said his tone completely changed. Like, evidently, we do have money from you. Yeah, yeah. It was like, it shouldn't have been this easy. Right?

That's insane. And, yeah, that's great.

And she was like. He's like, yeah, it's on an accounting hold, he says, but I don't know why. And he wouldn't confirm the number. Right. So. But.

But it was such a corporate.

But he would confirm that. That those two transactions were part of this E check thing. Like, I. You know, it was just. He probably couldn't see what accounting could see. So he didn't want to say, I know it's that number, because maybe it was more or maybe they had paid one of them, you know, whatever.

Okay.

Yeah. So he was, you know, working within his. His purview, but. And. And he was like, yeah. So she called him back a couple days later, and he said, yeah, you know, I'm going to. Like, he's apologetic about holding our money. I mean, like, they saw it in the same light that we did. Like, they shouldn't have been holding on to this for, you know, a year and a half or whatever. And. And they said, we're going to put a rush on it. And sure enough, this morning, the money showed up in our checking account.

You know, well, that's a good end to that story, you know, well, there's.

One more tough one. There's one more, like, shoe that's gonna drop. Because I told. I said to Lisa, I said, well, you know, we had two accounts with them, one for each of the two of the companies. I said, ask them if they have any, like, found money for us on this other one. And she did. And the guy said the same thing. Yes, I show that there is money on an accounting hold there. And, like, that money we don't. Like, we don't know exists. Right. At least this stuff we knew existed. So we could call, but she just asked, and the guy's like, yeah, I'm processing that too, but it's going to be a day behind. So tomorrow morning, the other shoe drops, and we see, you know, what found money shows up there. So. Which I don't think is going to be very much, but there you go.

Yeah, but still, your money doesn't matter.

How much it is.

It's still your money.

Yeah.

And, you know, there's a. I've done. I severed a business relationship with a group of people because they had the mentality of, like, example, refunds, let's say customer refunds and their mentality. And these folks were running the accounting for this particular business venture that I was involved in many years ago, and their mentality is, we don't issue the refunds until the customer calls us. And I'm like. I said, you guys are crazy. You know, and I didn't know. I didn't know about it until I kind of stumbled onto, I mean, you know, similar. Why does all this, you know, run in the books? And I see this refund account getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I said, what's going on with this here? And finally said, no, no, we don't. We don't issue those until we get a phone call or an email. And I said, well, that's not. I don't think that's right. I'm not even sure that's legal. And they were adamant about it, and I was a very minor, you know, partner, and I said, oh, guys, I don't want to be involved in this anymore. Let's figure something. And we did that. But I think that might be more common than you think.

I have no doubt that it is. Yeah. Yeah. Like, oh, yeah. You know, and I mean, it's one of those things, like, okay, sure. You didn't, like. I think. I truly don't know, like, where the problem was, but it sounds like it might have been. We never finished filling out, like, the form about E check to, like, fully enable it or something. Like, they knew how to send us money because they were. They were doing it for credit cards, like, daily. Right. But. But there was some procedural red tape thing that we didn't fill out because we didn't want to use this and that. But, you know, there. Yeah, it was just stuck there. But still, like, especially when we closed the account out.

Yeah.

They should have said, well, you know, like, because we told them, you reconciled. We owe you some money. You owe us some money. Like, we. Let's sort it out. They should have, like, somebody should have said, oh, hey, you know, there's actually quite a bit of money we owe you. It's not just yesterday's sales or whatever. Yeah, yeah. So I felt very good about our decision to sever our relationship with them, our previous decision to sever that relationship. But I am happy that they didn't make it difficult for us to do the right thing. Like, I don't know what.

Yeah, that's great.

What we would have done. Yeah. I mean, it. Yeah, it's crazy.

Well, they could have Said, we can't talk to you. Your account's closed. You know, that would have been a.

Nightmare, and you wouldn't have been able.

To find out what's going on.

Then we look at, you know, it's a few thousand dollars or whatever, but is it worth filing, you know, a suit or like. No, no, probably not. Sure.

Well, and it kind of comes down to, you know, I talk about it here on the show all the time. Accounting is, you know, not my favorite thing to deal with. And we talk about sometimes cutting corners and maybe not reconciling things as often as we should and looking at those numbers and filling your time up with other things. We talked about that in last week's episode. And I would say that one of the areas you just want to do everything that you can not to cut those corners is your accounting stuff, even if you're not the person to get somebody that can help you. And remember, we had. Man, I'm trying to remember the guest that we had on Brian o', Connell, and I don't remember the name of this company at this time, but he talked about hiring a CFO at some point, and the executive group that he was a member of, the, you know, he would go to get advised, they told him not to come back unless he hired one. And that forced him to hire the CFO who he thought, you know, couldn't handle. He couldn't afford this, that, and the other thing. And, you know, that was the best he could say. It was the best decision.

Oh, he said his business grew leaps and bounds. Yep. Yeah. Yep. It's true.

Because you're got somebody keeping an eye on, you know, who owes that money. And you may be the best salesperson in the world, but, you know, keeping track of every bit of that dollar that you earn, you need somebody that really can do that. And I've always tried to partner with people that were much better at that than I am.

Yeah, well, yeah, Filling the gaps. That's right. Hey, I don't know how much of this conversation you and I have even had, but we might as well do it in public. I cut some corners recently, Shannon, when I. When I opened our bank account. And so I wanted to tell that story as an example when that, like, you have to cut some corners sometimes. Like, shortcuts is really kind of the thing.

Shortcuts.

Yeah, that's right. So I want to tell that story, but I know how we are. So before we do that, I want to talk about our sponsors. Does that work for you?

Yeah, I Think it's great because it's one of my favorite products of all time.

So there you go. Cool.

It really is.

Yep. Our sponsor today is Smile Software with textexpander. Now textexpander is one. I call them Smile Software. They used to be Smile Software. My apologies. They are now smile@smilesoftware.com except you're going to visit textexpander.com podcast to get 20% off of truly one of my favorite utilities. In the last episode we talked about golden phrases, right? And I said, you know, leading by poor example, I was going to head the company down a path that actually we've started to head down now of sort of dissecting this, this one sale that I did and mining it for opportunities for golden phrases. And we've actually come up with some that, that other people use. I didn't use them because I did it wrong, but it sort of pulls out of the woodwork some of these things. And, and now we can codify them and you can take your golden phrases and put them in to textexpander and then you assign them a snippet so that when you're like, for example, for us, when we're trying to explain to someone why it makes more sense to start with, you know, to treat a trial not as one episode, but multiple episodes, then you know, we have a snippet of text that really is a good core phrase for explaining that. So we now all have it in our textexpander libraries because we can sync them because we're a company and you can do that with your textexpander subscription. And now we all have it, right? We don't need to rethink it. I can take it and tweak the language so that it matches the tone of the email I'm sending, or Jeff can tweak the language, like, no problem. But we're starting from the same core and it's huge. It's going to make a huge difference. I think it would have changed things dramatically for me on this one sale. And really, it doesn't take too many instances of success to justify having a piece of software like this. The good news is we already had it, so we didn't even need that. But textexpander is awesome, really something that I couldn't live without both personally and business wise. Any computer I work with, if it doesn't have it on it, like I say, I feel like I'm typing with Mittens on because all my shortcuts don't work. So there you Go.

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Yeah, for sure. So our thanks to smile@textexpander.com podcast for sponsoring this episode. All right, so cool.

Now let's talk about cutting corners. I love hearing these stories because I'm a natural rule breaker, and I think it's a great thing. So tell us what you did, man.

Yeah. And so I know that about you, and I know that our tolerance for that type of risk is maybe the right word, maybe the wrong word. I don't know. But it's certainly our tolerance for how much of the rules to break is very similar. So in the moment, I had to make a decision. I went to the bank, we closed out our checking account. So Shannon and I have had a corporate entity together for over almost a decade and a half. Maybe more than that. Sixteen years, I think. Something right. Yeah. Because we started deals on the web, and so we have that entity, and that's what we're using for small business show here. But we had closed the bank account because we were sick and tired of paying the monthly fee for something that for a number of years was simply doing nothing other than costing us monthly fees. So we closed that account. And then, of course, we started bringing on advertisers for the podcast here, and we now need a place to, you know, funnel the money through and so we can do it the right way. And I found a free checking account at a local or regional bank here, and I'll keep their name out of it so that. Because I don't necessarily need them to know what we just did. And. And so I went down there. We're gonna fix this, by the way.

Certainly they're listening to this right now.

I'm sure they are so happy. I'm gonna get a phone call. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. There you go. Perhaps by the time this episode's out, you folks will have had the problem fixed. That's right. Let's assume that.

There we go.

So anyway, I went down there and, you know, I said, I want to open actually two business checking accounts. One for this and then one for the. That I'm not really talking about. And the woman was like, great. And she said, I had called in advance, and I said, what do I need to bring? And they said, you need to bring your tax ID number. Okay, great. You need to bring your articles of incorporation. Great. And you need to bring a Photo id. Awesome. No problem. Like, great. So I show up, and I have these three things for each company. Good to go. And as we're going through it, she said, well, we're going to need a copy of your operating agreement. I'm like, okay, well, that's cool. And then she says, and we're also. Yeah, we're also going to need a resolution signed by the powers that be at your company that, you know, indicates that you as a company, have resolved to open a checking account with our bank. It's like, okay, okay. Now, I am no attorney in my head. I'm perhaps incorrectly taking the liberty of convenience to think that or inconvenience to think that it would almost certainly need to be Shannon and me signing this resolution, signing this, you know, this thing. But. But the woman at the bank kept saying things like, you're going to need your operating agreement, but if you don't have one, we have a boilerplate one here that, you know, you can just sign. Like, okay. And she said, and for a resolution, if you don't have them with you, we have a boilerplate one here that you can just sign. I said, okay, you know, I. Like, I didn't necessarily offer any in. If she had asked me, is there anyone, you know, like, are you the sole signer of the company? I would have had to answer truthfully. Right. And no. Right, right. But she never did. And so I am assuming we cut some corners here. But who knows? I'm not an attorney. So, anyway, she pulled out the operating agreement, the thing. I've signed it knowing full well that I can't bind Shannon to an operating agreement that he's not seeing nor signing. And the same with the resolution. And. And then she started asking these. She said something about, well, if there's an individual, I guess there's a new thing, man, like, for nine. Ever since nine, 11, maybe related to the Patriot act, where if there's a person, an individual that owns more than 25% of the shares, then they need all kinds of information. It's not difficult information, but it's like this whole other form. And really, with all of these things that she was asking for, I sort of did the math in my head and I thought, okay, so I have a choice to make here. I can stop the presses and tell her, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, we can't do this stuff today. This is not how this is gonna work. I would need at least one other person here with me, potentially several other people, in order to fill out these forms on the Spot and so that can't happen. So I thought, well, I have two choices. One or I have one choice. I have two options. One is that I can see how far her momentum will get us and then come back two weeks later and fix it with all the right forms. Or I can tell her, let's stop the presses. I'll come back in two weeks with the right forms and we can start this process anew. I chose plan A and it seems to have worked.

Good choice.

Yeah, it was like, it's either way, in two weeks or three weeks, whatever, it's going to be that things are going to be right with the bank. And really where it matters is if something happens to me, you need to be able to show up at the bank and let them have them, let you get the money. Right.

But I also would say I have two comments on this one probably something you would not do with a brand new business relationship that you don't know the people that great or if it's. You've never done business with them before. But since we have this history of, you know, and you just fired me off a quick slack message and I'm like, of course, set it up.

Yep.

So that's one thing, it's a, it's in the right context. But the other thing is in the, you know, now with, you know, for the last decade, with everything online, you know, and as long as you have and get online access, you can sweep those funds out in an instant. And so a lot of this stuff isn't. I mean, sure, legally we need to get both on there and all that kind of stuff that's important, but not enough to stop the process. And that's what can be frustrating, all that stuff.

Yeah. And that's sort of my M.O. and like I said, I know it's yours. That just get it done. And to use the audio term, we'll fix it in post. Right. We'll clean it up later. It's going to be fine. I'm not, I, I'm in spirit. I wasn't doing anything that would violate something that you or I would like. I wasn't creating a bank account that you were totally against. I mean, we were actually all for this. Yeah. It was just like, okay, there's this procedure that, whoa, this is difficult. So let's just get it done. And so then, you know, of course I got the accounts opened and then the two days later, you know, the woman calls me and says compliance has some real questions about the, this whole thinking.

Yeah, no client just that word right there.

Yeah. I'm thinking, oh, here we go. Like, how am I gonna weasel my way out of this, you know, without looking like a total heel? And. And she said, well, she led you.

Down the primrose path, man. She told you everything to say.

Yeah, she told me what to say, so I said it. That's exactly right. But, but really the only problem they had, and it was for both businesses, they're like, we, we have everything, but we don't have any paperwork that relates me to the business. You know, there's like, there's nothing. She's like, the operating agreement doesn't really count because you sign that right here. Like. Yeah, correct. Now we're on the same page. Yeah, it's BS but so I had some paperwork or whatever that, you know, tied my name to each business because we've gotten mail for them and other things, you know, other things or whatever. So I sent those off and she's like, oh, yeah, compliance is happy. Now, it's possible that in the next day or two we might hear otherwise, but I think.

But in the meantime, you. Yeah, in the meantime, you've opened the bank account, we start pushing, you know, funds in there, and so you're getting the job done, you're moving forward.

Right.

And I would, I always would suggest that, you know, you do whatever you need to do to move forward. Making sure everything's legal, of course, but waiting around to ask permission, I think is, is the worst thing to do when it comes to your small business. Just take some action and you can always clean it up later. And you know, especially for small things like this, we're talking about, we're not talking about you went and, you know, rented a building or whatever and didn't talk to your partners or this kind of stuff.

No, don't worry, it's only a 15 year lease, man. It's fine.

Yes. Yeah. But what you find is small things can just clog up the gears of your business. And you, someone and you, and hopefully the people that you've empowered that work for you can take those actions. And I use this phrase a lot. I say, look, I always want you to make a decision, but I reserve the right to critique that decision. I'm never going to go and say you blew it, you made the wrong decision. But I'd say, look, maybe I would have done it this way and trying to empower those people because I don't want them to come ask me if they're in the position that they're in. And I'm confident. Confident enough that, you know, they've hopefully risen up in your organization and are doing something right. They should be able to make those decisions or you get the wrong person in there.

Yeah.

You know, so it's a good story. I like that. I like that.

Cool. Well, I'm glad you like it because it's, it's actually true. So, you know, it's done and it's done. Right. And, you know, even before we get all the right paperwork in place, you already have online access to the account.

That's right. That's the most important thing to me. Yeah.

Right. Which I knew it was because we had had that convers. It was like, okay, cool. So as soon as I can get the, you know, the ATM card and the PIN number, which I had to wait for mail because of the red tape process, but that once that showed up, it was like within hours, you had the access just like I did and we're good to go. So. Yep.

Yes. It's perfect.

Yeah. The problem is, like, I don't want, like sometimes you cut the corner at the start and, and then, you know, you realize as time goes by, you're like, you know, I don't need to go back and fix that. Like, things are totally fine. Yes. With this one, I don't, I don't know that that's really necessarily the best decision. And in the process, I think we need to clean it up. But also I realized we still have the Mac observer on our, on our deals on the web company because Mac observer was a stakeholder in that site. But since that doesn't exist, we need to remove Mac observer from that.

Correct.

And I already talked with the folks at Mac observer just to make sure that nobody felt like they had any ownership to something that I didn't think we had ownership to. And there's no problem there. It's like, it's not going to be an issue, but we should clean that part up too. And so this is sort of a nice time that it's like, oh, yeah, now that we're looking at this. Huh. This is all kind of wrong anyway, so we might as well just clean it up and fix it it. So.

No, it's great.

Yep.

That's perfect. Perfect. Hey, before we skip out today. Yeah. One thing I do want to talk about is I want to talk about the small business support group and try to get some feedback from the members. You know, we have about 400 maybe, you know, maybe 450, you know, members, typically small business owners or folks that are interested in small business. And our number of people joining the group is growing quickly. And I think I want to get some guidance or some feedback from the people that are using the group on what is an acceptable post because I've been deleting some lately that perhaps a new member would sign up, which could be maybe kind of a spammy post where trying to recruit business or generate business for their company or something like that. And I don't know, maybe people don't mind seeing those things. And so if you're listening and you're number one, if you're not a member of the small business support group, go to businessshow co Facebook and sign up because it's a great place. There's some great, really, really smart people in the group that'll answer your questions about your business or you know, and, and we want to hear from you. So then secondly, we'll post in the, in the group and ask them, ask us questions.

We'll take a poll. Yeah, right, yeah.

To see, you know, what do you want to see in here? Does he just want it back and forth feedback and have it non commercialized or do care if, if occasionally a business, a member of the group pitches their services to the group at large? Because I have my thoughts on it. But I felt that we want to hear your feedback as well.

Yeah, yeah. Let us know what you think and then we'll kind of mix it all together. We'll make a decision and, and, and we will institute policy. And while we're at it, here we go. And we'll ask this in the group too. Actually, maybe we won't ask this in the group. Sometimes we, sometimes people will rise up. Rise to. The challenge, I should say is we may want to enlist some of you who are interested to help us moderate the group. So if you are listening here and you're interested, shoot us a note feedbackusinessshow co that you want to. Or shoot us notes on Facebook or something. But I want it to be people that listen to the show that want to moderate the group, not necessarily just people because there are some people in the group I'm sure that really have no idea about the show and so probably better to say it here. So there you go. And if you're not a member of the group, BusinessShow Co Facebook. So there you go.

Perfect. And we talked about saying no in last week's episode, but this is one of those cases where you should definitely say yes.

Yes, that's right. Yes, that's right. Don't say no to this, folks.

Actually, do you have time, people?

Yeah. Make sure you have time. That's right. There you go. You got it. All right, well, I want to thank the folks at Smile for sponsoring this episode. I want to thank all of you for listening to this episode. I want to thank you for volunteering to moderate our Facebook group with us. Thanks, Shannon.

Hey, thank you, Dave. Have a great week.

Thanks. Keep living that charmed life, man. See you next time.