Rewards Programs, Vetting Potential Partners, and Sexual Harassment

The Small business show, episode 231 for Wednesday, July 10, 2019 folks. And welcome to the small business show here at businessshow co, the show that is, you know, BFA small business. Sponsors include textexpander.com podcast, go co SBS and thealternativeboard.com SBS we'll talk about why you wanna go to all of those places or why you've already gone. Cause you're a listener, so you know that just going to those URLs actually supports us because that's what our job is, is to point you to our sponsors and then after that it's between you and them. But you've already gone there. We'll tell you why you've already gone there in a few minutes. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And out on the shaky west coast, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you?

I'm good, man. Yeah. You, we've had thunderstorms here, but you've had far worse out there or at.

Least, you know, right? Yeah, far enough away. I was up in Tahoe last weekend, you know, a family for the, the great freedom fest that we have up there. And so we didn't of course, feel anything out there. Centered kind of Southern California and every lot of stuff. But yeah, my cousins are down there and everything was shake, shaking and moving.

So yeah, those are big earthquakes. So. Yeah, ye are.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, hey, so what are we going to talk about on today's show before we get started?

Let's see. I have actually, I have a great story to tell about rewards programs and why they even the ones that you think you should ignore, maybe you shouldn't. And then we, I, I came across a very interesting thing about vetting potential business partners. And I'll leave it at that for now.

That's great.

And we got a question in, right?

Yeah, we have a question at a very important topic that you want to stick around and listen to.

One that I hope all of us can never have to worry about except listening in this show.

Yeah, that's correct.

But first, but first, our first sponsor is Textexpander. @textexpander.com podcast, that's where you go to get 20% off of your first year five for this fantastic app service. Shannon and I both love this. We couldn't run our businesses without it. What textexpander does is, well, from a big picture, it gives your productivity a boost by taking all of those things that you type over and over again or go and copy from somewhere and paste and tweak. Textexpander takes care of that process for you. You put all your text right in there. Your snippets, your customer service responses, doesn't matter if they're long, short. Could be an. Could be an email address, a phone number. The things that you type all the time that you need to make sure you get right. You put them into text expander, and then you invoke them by either clicking or typing a short bit of text, and out they come, and boom. Now you've got it. You don't have to dig into your email to find the last time you sent that customer service response. No, no, you've got it in textexpander. It's exactly how you need it. And you've already vetted it so you don't have to proofread when you send out every email. It's awesome. And you sync these amongst your devices and all the devices of your team members. Fantastic. And like I said, you visit textexpander.com podcast to get 20% off your first year. It's awesome. Just go textexpander.com podcast Our thanks to Textexpander for sponsoring this episode. All right.

Yeah. If there's one thing you can. You want to do today to improve your business other than listening to this show is go sign up for textexpander. It'll. It'll change your life.

I agree.

Awesome.

Yeah, it's awesome.

Cool.

All right. So, you know, I had a. I go to CES every year.

Okay.

Out in Las Vegas. And I'm not a gambler. I don't.

Well, you are a gambler, but just not in the casino. I would argue that's fair.

Yeah. I take far more calculated risks than putting money on. On blackjack tables and things like that. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just don't. You know, it's funny. I don't find gambling fun because I start thinking about it like a business. And. And I suppose if I did it as my business, that would be different, but it as a source of just entertainment, I don't find it fun. So because of that, I've never thought to join the rewards program at the hotel where I normally stay, which is. The Mirage, happens to be one of the MGM hotels. So, you know, it's in that big group of. Of lots of hotels in Vegas and beyond. For whatever reason, a couple of years ago, I joined their rewards program. I thought, well, I'm here. I join every other rewards program. Why haven't I joined this one? So I joined it and put, you know, told them to put my CES rooms. It turns out that, you know, because I bought a room for one of my staffers or whatever, I also got points for their room. And then we took the kids to Vegas last summer. And I, I looked and this was only after having stayed for like four or five nights maybe. So 10 nights, right? Five nights each. So I had booked 10 nights at this room. That's the only thing I had on my rewards program. It, this is, I, like, I booked our summer rooms two weeks after I got back from ces. So it, you know, that was the only thing on there. And I saved probably 30% on our rooms for the summer, which was pretty good. Now, rooms in the summer in Vegas are cheap anyway, but I saved another 30, so that was good. And then when we got back from CES this year, I thought, you know, they haven't opened up the official CES block of hotels yet, right? So I can't book for next year, but can I. I booked my room over the summer just on the Mirages website. Can I go and do this? So I log in and in my M Life account, well, now I'm like another tier up because I've stayed several times and, and I looked and it was like, okay, well, this is interesting. When we, when we stayed over the summer, I was gonna get two hotel rooms for the kids. You know, one hotel room for the kids, one hotel room for us. The kids are too big to try and share a room and it's fine. Or the kids can share a room, but just not the share a room.

Correct.

And like I said, rooms are cheap anyway, so it was fine. And I was gonna book two rooms. And then I thought, well, what about a two bedroom suite? What's the difference for whatever the four nights that we were there? It turned out it was about $150 more total last summer to book a two bedroom suite instead of two separate rooms. And that, of course, gets you a living room, a much nicer setup. I mean, it's. Yeah, it's way better. So I did that and I looked at the same thing for ces and it was the same deal. It was a little bit more expensive because they know they can overprice the rooms at the beginning of January. But the, the, the sort of, the delta was the same. I could book two rooms or a two bedroom suite. And so I was, I always book four rooms for ces, even though if I don't use them all. So I booked two two bedroom Suites at ces. And again, there was some discount. Now, I figured when CES announced their room packages, they would be less, and I'd probably. We would cancel these suites that I booked and just book regular hotel rooms, whatever it was. But, you know, I had them in the bank ready to go. Well, CES's rooms came out last week, man, and they were 50% more than what I would have paid through my system.

Wow.

Yeah. And. And so I'm sticking with the sweets, obviously, because, you know.

Sure, yeah.

Why not? And. And so that's what I'm doing. And none of this would have happened if I didn't join that rewards program. And. And, you know, it's just I'm. I'm at this hotel once a year. I didn't figure I would earn enough points for it to matter. Like, I would. I figured I'd just be below whatever the number was that. That, you know, got me any discounts or mattered in any way, shape, or form. Nothing could have been further from the truth, so.

Wow, that's awesome.

Yeah. So I just. I highly recommend, even if it's your first. Especially if it's your first time staying at this, you know, at any given hotel or whatever, if there's a rewards program, if it's. Unless it's. Unless it costs you money, join it and make sure you get your credits applied. This is going to take you 10 minutes, and maybe it'll pay off, maybe it won't. But if you do it enough, the time you've spent joining all the stupid rewards programs will pay off for some of them, and that'll be enough.

Yeah, that's true. And we've done a few episodes over the years about, you know, credit card reward programs and why they're so important to getting you to that Charmed Life status that. That we're all looking for. But this is. This is a really point about private label, if you will, membership programs, like, for hotels and things. That's a great, great idea.

Yeah, man.

Makes a lot of sense.

And again, it's. It's something that I would not have, like, I mean, I did think of it to do, but it's the kind of thing I would have just ignored.

It, you know, and I've done that. And even. And I like to gamble. I mean, I like to play craps, like you. I go maybe once a year and. But I do like to play craps, but I don't have any. Anything or any illusion that I' to, you know, win a bunch of money. I'm Just kind of paying for entertainment. Right. And I don't, and I don't need to be entertained that long, so it's good.

But that's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

It's a great idea.

That is the right way to think about it. I. I've always said in Las Vegas, you can exist for free in Las Vegas. Unless you want to sit down. So if you want to eat, it's going to cost you money. If you want to gamble, it's going to cost you money. If you want to see a show, it's going to cost you money. And of course, if you want to sleep, going to cost you money. But otherwise everything's free. It's all good. Yeah. So. Yeah, yeah. So gambling, as long as you treat it like entertainment, it. It can be cheaper or far more expensive than, say, going to see a show, you know, That's.

Yeah, that's right. Oh, yeah, yeah. You just have to set your limit and say, okay, I'm going to spend this much and we'll see how far we get. And then if you leave when, you know, with some money, that's. That's even better.

Even better. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Awesome. That's a. It's a great bit of advice.

Yeah, absolutely. Just don't forget to join those rewards programs. The other thing you can't forget is to get a domain name for your business. And that's where our second sponsor comes in. Go co. Really GO CO sbs. Because you can register a Dot CO domain for just five bucks and get three months of website builder and hosting services for free. Again, that's GO code slash sbs. We all know about Dot CO domains because it's what we do here. Business show.

That's right.

You've heard about this before, right? So, and the cool part is there's more than 2 million domains registered across the world through Go CO. It's only two characters, so it makes it really easy to remember. And you have way better chances of getting the domain you want when you go with a dot co domain. So go co SBS. Again, that gets you $5 registration and three months of their website builder and hosting services for free. Very, very cool stuff. You know, Google uses it, G co, Campus co. Newly funded Mirror co Bird Co. And of course, business Show Co Be like us Go to GO CO SBS today. Our thanks to GO CO for sponsoring this episode. All right, man, so the next thing up, I was reading, I read this, this thing. I get it every two weeks. It's called Bottom Line Personal, sure. Yep, yep. And it's always got interesting little snippets of information. Right. And some of them are relevant to me and some of them are not. It's a very small little pamphlet kind of sized thing and it's just, it's great. I read it while I eat my lunch is what I do. And, and you know, I just, it's very bite sized stuff. Well, there was a thing in there that talked about people that were going. It was an article about sharing your home with someone and it was mostly geared towards people later in life, you know, like older folks, you know, 40 plus, which really isn't that old, let's be clear. But you know, 40 plus and going to have a roommate. So, you know, established person, you know, you're not, not in your 20s or whatever, you're not just getting going, maybe in your fort, still are getting going. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But you know, it was, it was, it was an article all about that. And one of the little sidebars talked about how to deal with making sure that these roommates that you were going to have or housemates or whatever scenario you're going to set up had the financial means to participate in a way that was going to work for everybody. And you know, if you've got a friend or whatever, maybe you don't both want to share everything with each other about your finances, but you just want to say, yes, I can, I can contribute what's necessary for this particular arrangement. You don't need to know whether I'm a millionaire or not. It's irrelevant. You just need to know, yes, do I have enough? And I need to know, yes, do you have enough? And so that the advice was you go to a financial planner, a fee based financial planner or someone that is skilled and in a, in a position where they're used to having fiduciary responsibility over, you know, people's finances and things like that.

Okay.

Right. So you each go to this person confidentially, you divulge your finances to this person. You pay them a fee to review your finances. You each tell them, you know, collectively tell this person, hey, here's what it's going to cost to live. Here's what we expect, here's what we, we are planning on contributing and here's what might happen if there's some surprises and that sort of thing. And then confidentially, you show this person, you know, this, this planner all your details and they kind of give you a yay or nay. Yep, you're both good or.

Hmm.

No, you're just not going to work, you know, and then that's it. And then nobody needs to know if anybody's a millionaire or not. Doesn't matter. Yeah, right. Everything's good. And as I read this, I thought, holy crap, I would love to go back in time and do this with business partners. And I would definitely consider doing it going forward in time with business partners. What a great idea. Because sometimes, sometimes you know the person and then it's fine. But even if you know the person, if there's going to be financial responsibility, either that you need to contribute money to the business or even more importantly, if it's a business where you are jointly deciding you don't want to take cash out. Well, okay, but I need to know that you can afford to spend the time on this business that we both have said we're going to spend without getting any cash out. Right. That happens a lot when you're starting a business, especially when, you know, later in life, right. You get yourself, you're established, and everybody says, oh, yeah, I can do it. And I've been in scenarios where that doesn't necessarily play out the way everybody says initially. I've also been in scenarios where everybody says, yeah, no, this is a cash cow. We need to take cash out. You know, the first distribution needs to happen within X number of months, otherwise I can't do this. That's fine too. There's nothing wrong.

Yeah. Just as long as you know what you're getting into.

Yeah, it's just managing expectations and getting ready on the same page. So this is one of those things that as soon as I saw this idea, it's like, you know, you'd pay somebody a couple hundred bucks at most, Right. To, you know, to review the information. Actually, it probably would be 2 or 300 bucks is what I would guess what you would pay somebody. But man, the peace of mind of that if, you know, if you're getting into business with someone that you sort of know but you know, you don't know enough about, man, that would be. Talk about savings.

Yeah, it would be good. And you know, you could, you could really kind of wrap it into like part of the working agreement that you said, okay, we both agree we're going to use. Maybe you have to have this independent. It's almost like a financial escrow service, if you will, where you're going to submit these documents and you lay it out in the working agreement. We're going to submit tax returns and a financial statement to this independent third party and they're going to be able to say yay or nay based on these conditions. You know, can this person meet this condition? Because I still think it's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's going to be a tough conversation if they come back and say no to one, one party or another. But it's, that's maybe a better conversation to have early on than later when.

That'S way easier than six months down the road or 18 months down the road. And I can say that from personal experience.

Yeah.

And I'd rather not talk about it any more than that.

Yeah, we've all been there.

Right? Exactly. Yeah. It just, I mean it, you know, these things.

Good idea.

It's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that's really cool. Yeah, that's good. So we have a listener question here today on a really important topic. Do you want to jump into that at first? You want to do our ask the question?

Yeah.

Okay, great question.

Then I'll talk about our, our, our final sponsor.

Perfect. Okay, so we got a great question during the past week from Ronnie S. And you can send in questions. Feedbackusinessshow.co. we'd love to, you know, hear and try to help you any way we can.

So Ronnie writes say feedbackusinessshow co.

I did.

Okay.

I did say that.

I'm just making sure.

Yep. Feedback. BusinessShow Co Perfect. So, so Ronnie writes first. Thanks for doing the show. Each week I've learned a lot and I put, we've put into practice many of the techniques you've discussed. That's awesome. Thank you. My question, we are a small company, less than eight employees. I'm concerned about making sure we don't have any issues with sexual harassment. Since we're small, we all work closely together and I'm worried that if we don't address the issue before it happens, it could be a big problem down the road. Any suggestions for the best way to handle this type of situation?

Okay.

That's a great question.

That's a great question. And you know, one place you could go to get an answer for this is our next sponsor which is the alternative board at thealternativeboard.com SBS the idea behind the alternative board is you're running your business, you're alone. Right. You don't necessarily have a board of directors that aren't in the day to day operations of your business. But you know there to answer questions there to guide you. That's what the alternative board is about. A group of people, what they do is they put Together up to 10 local non competing business leaders you get together each month plus you get one on one business coaching. But when you get together with these folks, you know, you can talk about things like what are you folks doing about sexual harassment? What are you folks doing about how to manage your teams or marketing your business or hiring or resources? And because they're local, they might have some, you know, geographically direct advice for you. And that's fantastic. It really makes a difference when you can go and talk to other people, talk with other people about not only your business, but their businesses. Hearing what other problems people have might help guide you, you might be able to help guide them. It's a fantastic idea. And the Alternative Board, or like they like to call it tab is a great resource. So you got to go check this out. And again there's a special URL so that they know we sent you. Go to the alternative board.comsbs today day, find out if there's a tab board seat available in your area. It's really quick to do and there's nothing to lose. The alternative board.com SBS and our thanks to the Alternative Board for sponsoring this episode. All right, man, so how do we answer this question?

Yeah, so, so Ronnie is, you know, worried about a harassment situation that might come up and you know, do they need to have some sort of policy in place? And in fact you do need to have some policy in place. Now on a federal level, it's 15 or more employees, you're required to have a formal policy. But you need to also check with your state because states like California, no surprise, you need to have a policy if you have one employee.

No.

Yeah, and I would actually suggest that having a policy, I mean this is a good thing to have as kind of part of your employee manual if it's not already in there. And if you do, if you don't have an employee manual, there's some great resources. You can just, you know, search online for that. You know, there's some free resources and there's some paid ones but you know, you're, you're better off just having some kind of policy. But you know, I would say the first thing you need to do is learn yourself about exactly what constitutes harassment. And you know, up on the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on their website, they have a really nice, very succinct, which is surprising to me for a government agency that they just have some bullet points. This is harassment. This is this, you know, and gives you some, some really good guidelines if you Will, on what constitutes harassment, I would, I would take a look at that and we'll put the link to the EOC website in that page in our show notes. And the other thing they have up there on the EOC website is a great, like a Q and A, if you will, to help you learn more about it, how to, you know what to look for and different things. And I would suggest you take a look at that once you've educated yourself a little bit. You do need to implement some kind of anti harassment policy. And so you want to establish one and you can, we'll link to. There's some great templates online that you can fill out based on your business. Most of them are free. Again, there's some fancier ones as part of manuals that you can pay for, but you're required to establish a policy, distribute it, and enforcement and enforce it at your business. And I think it, you know, it's great to have on the books. I don't think you need to, you know, it's not something you talk about every day, but it does need to be there as a resource for your employees. And I think as I was looking in and doing some research for Ronnie's question, one of the things that really stuck out to me is that perhaps the most important aspect of it is you have to set up a procedure for how to make a complaint so that someone would be comfortable. Right. It's not enough. You just have this policy and this and this. But what do you do? Who do you talk to? You know, where do you go and to know that, oh, this is really going to be taken seriously and I can go here and I can feel protected, you know. And again, props to the, to the eoc. They, they really point out a lot of interesting things. You know, it's like it doesn't necessarily have to be between opposite sexes to have, you know, that harassment, it could, I mean, there's just so many little nuances to it that it's, it's, it's definitely worth your time reading.

It's, it's true. Have you ever had to deal with anything like this?

You know, I have had to deal with things like this. We had a, a UPS driver that it was, it wasn't any one of my own employees, but it was a UPS driver that was harassing, you know, one of our warehouse workers. And it was interesting to see how quickly and serious it was taken by ups. And you know, needless to say, we never saw that driver again.

Right. I had this issue, thankfully, I Caught it before a complaint was ever lodged, which.

That's great.

Yeah. But. But to your point, it was a very strange thing. It took me a little while to realize there was a recurring thing that was happening, and it made me uncomfortable each time, but I couldn't put my finger on why, you know, right away. It was just like, well, you know, people are weird. And I'm in the tech business, and we have people that are, you know, their social graces aren't. I hold, like, say, a person's would. Right, of course. You know, it's just how it is, and it's totally fine. We're all weird.

Yes.

Great. And, you know, you work with people for a long time. We tend to keep our employees for a very long time. So, you know, you learn more about people as time goes by, just in a normal way. And. And there was this one person, a guy who would often, at our staff meetings, say things to other guys. Now, he. The guy who would say things is, at least on the surface, you know, a straight guy.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know more details than that, but, you know, based on the things that he shared it. One would assume he was straight, you know, but whatever, fine. He would say things to other guys like, oh, that shirt looks really nice on you, or, I like the way you have your hair today, or, you know, that beard looks. Makes you look good. And I started, like, it never. It just rubbed me the wrong way. And it wasn't. I mean, he would say these things to me sometimes.

Okay.

But other people as well. And every time it was like, huh. And then I stopped and thought about it, and I thought, you know, if he said to a woman here, that shirt looks really good on you today. Same thing that he said to a guy. He would never have said that to a woman, you know, because he would. He would have seen that as potentially, you know, crossing the line into sexual harassment. Right. You know, whatever. For whatever reason. Yeah. And I. It hit me. I was like, wait a minute. This. There's no reason that this is gender specific. Right. It doesn't exactly matter.

Doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. And so I. I took him aside and I'm like, hey, I think this might be. Like, no one's reported it. I just want to head it off at the past. So I'm telling you, I think this might cross into that area, and I need you to stop, you know? And as soon as I said it to him, he was like, oh, you're totally right. Like, I. I never thought about it that way and it's like, no, I get it. It took me a while to think about it, you know.

Yeah.

But it, it is something that couldn't. It made me feel uncomfortable. I, I can only assume that it could make someone else feel uncomfortable too. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, as a manager, supervisor, business owner, if you pick up on those things, you know, you may need to have that discussion and you know, you don't want to create an environment where everybody's so paranoid they can't even say, hey, I love. I like that shirt. Like, that's cool. Nice shirt. You know, whatever.

That's very different than that shirt. Good on.

Looks good on you. That is very different.

Even though the sentiment may be exactly the same.

One is creepy and one is not.

Correct? Correct.

A little. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, one of the things again, that I was shocked to see up on the, the Equal Employment Opportunity website is that in order for it to be considered harassment, I mean, it seems very basic, but it says the harassers conduct must be unwelcome.

Yeah. Oh, isn't that interesting? Oh my God, yes. Why do they have that on there?

I don't know.

That seems the worst thing in today's climate.

I would agree. And I saw this, I said, well, I guess it kind of makes sense, right, because you're, you're, you're trying to set some standards to where people can still be, you know, humans and friendly and yes, over time you kind of create this tight knit culture, hopefully that is focused on succeeding and people enjoy it and that kind of stuff. And being able to say, hey, today is a good idea.

Hey, Shannon, your mic just cut out in a real.

Yeah, I noticed that.

Okay.

I noticed everything. We're back though, right? Yeah, I think everything's good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all good.

So I, I always struggle with, I want, I'm very complimentary. And it is on how, in the framing of how you say it.

Yes.

And I like to. I like your new haircut. You know, something like that. Great. You know, and we should be able to complement each other. But if you say I like your new haircut and you see somebody kind of cringe or look uncomfortable or someone mentions to you, hey, man, I wouldn't say that to that person. Do you need to stop then?

You just need to stop. Yeah, right. And don't, don't take it personally. Don't get defensive about it. And, and you as the manager, owner, you know, employer, when you deliver these things to people, especially if it like in the scenario I had, if you notice it before, you know, a problem is on the table. But even if a problem is on the T, you know, it's best if you can deliver this correction in a way that is not adversarial. Right?

Yeah, that's really important.

I need you. And it's that whole. That concept of, you know, are you across the desk from each other or are you next to each other? And I don't necessarily mean that physically, but that can. That, like, body language means a lot here. It's. But you're just like, hey, there's a thing, you know, that we have to be really hypersensitive to this sexual harassment thing these days. And I'm in agreement with that. I think you are, too. Yes. So, look, I need you to look at this from. In that light. I need you to look at a comment like this. And. And, you know, as I explained in my scenarios, I explained this to this guy, was like, now let's replace, you know, Tim with Tina. Would you say the same thing? And he's like, oh, no. And I didn't have to go any further. He's like, whoa, I never thought about it that way.

Yeah, it's a great example.

Great. No problem. And it was. I mean, I was bringing it to him, but he decided on his own that this was the right course of action, you know, to. To curb this. And it was like, great. Awesome.

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah, it's way better.

I think the. The real important takeaway here for all of this is having a very open and. And strong communication system in place in your company.

That's true.

And that is going to be critically important for both. Both sides, where if you have to mention something to somebody, like you were just describing Dave, or if someone's uncomfortable about the way they're being treated or things are being said, they need to have that clear, concise channel to mention it. Because often I think that people like, well, I don't want to get this person in trouble.

Right.

And whatever it is. But if you have this clear policy, you've talked about it, and be like, hey, you know, if anybody's uncomfortable, this is how you do it. You know, just come talk about it. We're going to get to the bottom of it. And I would say that it would also be beneficial if you had some sexual harassment training. And we'll put some links in the show notes and there are some online courses you can take and you can have your employees take. It's. They're like, you Know, I found some from 20, 30 bucks. Could be the best money you'll ever spend. But check them out. You know, we don't recommend them because we don't have a lot, you know, further details about them. But they're available online and we will link to the EOC website some other articles that talk about how to create a policy and the things that need to have in there and some templates and things. But you know that communication is crucial for every aspect of it. And you know, that is very important, the conduit to where somebody can come to and also that you can reach out and speak to someone if you, you see a potential problem.

Yeah, it's good. Yeah. People need to feel comfortable talking no matter what.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, I will, I will share a story. You know, you mentioned that if you've ever had this happen before, and I had a business partner very early on in my career, great guy, super smart, but not very smart when it came to this kind of thing, and used to send around inappropriate emails that, you know, he thought it was okay just because he was sending it to the guys.

Sure, right.

And even though I talked to him and said, listen, you know, you can't do it, he just didn't see it, didn't see a problem with it. So I went and I talked to our attorney because, you know, this business was growing very fast and I didn't want to have any problems. So not only did we implement some kind of procedure, sat this guy down, especially as an owner, you don't have to pull any punches. Right?

No, you shouldn't have to. That's right. Yeah.

Yeah, you can't do it. But we also, you know, because he didn't quite even, you know, grok what was going on. Yeah, we, we got a sexual harassment insurance policy which was surprisingly not that expensive because my attorney said, hey, if you get a claim over this, you're going to pay a hundred thousand dollars, like no matter what, instantly it's going to cost you 100 grand because, you know some other attorney's going to sue you, you're going to have to either settle or we're going to fight it and this kind of thing. And he's like, you know, you might as well get, get, get this policy. And it wasn't that. It was actually through Lloyd's of London. Yeah, yeah, it was not that expensive compared to everything I think it may have been. I don't know. I, I think it was less than a thousand bucks a year. And so I thought it was a good investment at the time. And you know, I'm no longer business partners with that guy. But. And I don't know if he's still doing that, but it was just, it was really interesting to me that when I described why it was a bad thing, he, he's like, well, I'm only sending it to the dudes. And you know, we were like in our early 20s.

Yeah.

And fast growing. I was like, no, no. And email, I mean, you know, I'm an old man now, so email was like. Everybody had email at their desk. It was kind of new. And I said, hey, you know, we're, we're responsible for this stuff. He's like, well, it's no big deal. It is a big deal. So anyway, nothing.

It is. That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and you could easily have that case, a sexual harassment claim filed against you by one of the so called dudes that you're sending it out to to that guy.

You know, if they're offended by some offensive thing that somebody. Yeah, yeah.

It's like, hey man, this is not funny. You don't laugh about this in your private life or joke around. You can't send these kind of things out.

I, I committed that indiscretion when I was actually at Citibank back in the. Must have been the early 90s. I, you know, again, email was new. I was the tech guy, you know, but, but had people that were older than me that I worked for and work and all this stuff. And for whatever reason, I thought it was a good idea. That whole John Wayne Bobbitt thing was going around and the pizza came out. For whatever reason, I thought it was a good idea to share these young.

Oh yeah.

Oh my gosh, what a terrible idea it was. Now, thankfully, I sent it to the three or four people, maybe it was five or six that I worked with. And one woman came to me and she was like, this is not okay. You cannot send this to me now. She was cool about it. It.

Right.

She was older than me, like by probably 20 years. You know, she had seen it all. She had been in business. She was tough as nails and she loved the work that I did. Like, definitely we had respect for each other. But she was like, this is not who you want to be. And I was like, good for her.

Yeah, you are educating you.

Yeah, she, she schooled me for sure. In fact, even telling the story hurts a little bit. But that, like, it was a, it was a good lesson. It was a, it's a good scar to have. It was like, oh, yes, right. She was totally right. I couldn't say, no, it's fine. Because it wasn't fine. It was just a stupid thing that I did. I was like, okay, yes. Yep. All right.

Yeah, for sure. So, yeah. So, you know, Ronnie, we really appreciate you sharing that because it gives a great topic to discuss here. And these kind of things are really important. You want everybody to feel comfortable. You want to have great communication in your company. That's how you build a great culture. And you know, those people are. They're a critical part of your business. They make everything happens. So you want to keep an eye out for them. And we again, we'll put some really good links in the show notes and you know, we really appreciate you listening this week. Thank you for listening to our sponsors. We try to pick out people that we think you'll find useful and that we use oursel. If you'd like to help the show out, go to BusinessShow Co Review and click the link up there and go. Leave us a review review that helps other people learn about us and we would appreciate it.

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Awesome.

Yeah, that's it. I guess we'll see you. See you next time.

See you next week. Thanks, everybody.