Saved by my Ego

Business Brain, episode 558 for Casual Friday, June 14 National Pop Goes the Weasel Day 2024. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take an idea or three, we dissect them, we analyze them, we use them to tune our business brains every single episode so that we can each keep living that charmed life. Our sponsor for this episode is LinkedIn.com businessbrain. That's where you're gonna go to post your first job for free. I know, it's awesome. We'll Talk more about LinkedIn jobs and how I've used it in a little bit for now here as usual in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And out here in sunny California, I'm Shannon Jean. Happy Friday, dude.

Happy National Pop Goes the Weasel Day.

I don't know what that means, but I don't either.

Well, it's about the game. Pop goes the weasel.

That's right. That's right.

Yeah.

Yes, yes, yes.

Yeah, it's good. So I want to apply our business brains to an idea that I had this past weekend about our show. Like, it's. It's the. My. The idea is, could this be a recurring segment on the show? So bear that in mind, and you may help me decide. Dave, that's insane. No way. And I'm fine with that answer, but.

All right.

So I was with my wife. We wound up picking up a foster puppy on Sunday, and this was on Saturday night when I had this idea, but I knew that we were gonna go pick up this puppy. We'd gone and visited it, and it's fine. And she works with this shelter. She works with a couple different shelters and occasionally will foster, you know, until something gets. Until a pet gets adopted. Right. And, you know, they're always, like, at their. She. She started telling me. She's like, well, you know, just know that when we go to the shelter tomorrow, it's. It's like, it kind of looks like a dump. Like, they don't have a huge budget. I'm like, yeah, like, no, I got that. You know, no problem. But I started thinking. I'm like, you know, here's this thing, because here's us, right? We are fairly financially solvent, let's say.

Yes.

And we're empty nesters. We have room in the house for another dog, but we're, like, really hesitant to add another dog to the house because, yeah, every time we travel, it's an added burden.

It's a different dynamic.

Yeah, it's a whole different thing.

We have two dogs. It's definitely a different dynamic.

Yep. And. And it's like, you know, I don't know what, but. But, like, 98% of the time, we'd be totally fine having another dog around. Right. But then there's also the. You know, there's vet costs, and there's this.

That.

The other thing. And so I started thinking about this, the animal shelters and the business model of the animal shelter. And I don't want to say it needs to be fixed, but maybe it can be evolved. Because here's all of these people that. That are involved with the shelter. There's some that actually work there. Then there's this, like, core of volunteers that donate some amount of their time. And then there's also people that donate money to the shelter, and some of them are also volunteers, and some of them not so much. And, you know, there's a whole little. Like, there's. But there's a community around each shelter. And the thing is, like, we're people that donate some money. More time than money, generally speaking. And we want to help these dogs, but we don't want to take full responsibility for one of these dogs.

Okay.

And so what if the model was instead of the. Because right now, if you go and adopt a dog from. From that shelter or most shelters, it's the. It's not. They say thank you, but then they kind of also say screw you. They don't feel that way. But that's the. Like, it's like, this is your fault now.

Yeah.

Right. You're on your own. Right. Yeah, exactly. So what if instead of the screw you model, and I realize I'm hyperbolizing a little bit, the shelters don't actually feel that way. They're very thankful that. But instead of that model, what if we had the every. It takes a village model? Right. Where there was a community of people. And when you adopt a dog from the shelter, it's still. And I don't know that this is, like, I don't have the full idea here. I just have this concept. And maybe it's when you adopt a dog, you're still part of the shelter community, and so is your dog. And let's say you also were, you know, part of the same shelter community. But the. And the deal is, yep. You adopt this dog. If you need to go on vacation, come to us.

Yeah.

And we'll place it with someone. Now, it might just be that my dog goes to your house, Shannon. Right. You know, and people do this unofficially with, like, friends and stuff, but I feel like With a shelter at the center being the gravity and the ultimate responsible party for it, that would take the stress off of people and. And there would be actually, in the end, more people being involved because they'd feel comfortable knowing that the shelter was there to have their back. Right. And maybe you even pay a little bit, like, dues or something.

And I was thinking, why could. The shelter could open a, like, dog daycare type thing. They could do that, but they could make some money.

You wouldn't even need to do that if you had enough people in the system. Right. You know, it's like, well, I'm going to go away. Okay, great. We'll coordinate that. Your dog is going to go to Shannon's house or Timmy's house or wherever. Okay, great. No problem. Sometimes while we can't go to Shannon's or Timmy's or anybody else's. So it's going to have to be boarded here for the week that you're away, like, but at least they've got you kind of covered. And the same could be done again with the shelter as sort of the central figure, coordinating like, large vet bills, things like that.

You want to get in the pet business on this show? Is that what you're.

No, what I want to get into is the business of looking at a business model and collect it, because this is just like a starter idea. There's, you know, I just threw out like 10 facets of this idea. I bet nine of them. If we analyzed them, we'd throw away. Right. But, like, there's something here to evolve this business and. And actually, like, help solve the problem that they are solving in an even more robust way. And so is that something we could do here on this show? Maybe, you know, once every two weeks, we, you know, we do. We do four segments a week. You know, the two segments per episode. And so that. So out of maybe one out of every eight segments, we apply to whatever the, you know, topic due month is or whatever the current topic is.

I like it.

And we bring in some experts. We bring in people from. If we were going to use this model, we'd bring in people from the animal shelter business, get their thoughts on it. Because there. This is going to not land well, you know, but, like, there are businesses out there, and I think animal shelters are a good example of this that don't have the. They don't have the funds to go and hire. Yeah. They don't have a management consult or whatever. Advisor. Right. And generally the advisors are like, let's help the dogs like that that's what the people are focused on and that's great.

But my take on it would be it's kind of like our business therapy. We call it like where Dave and I, before we connect we'll wind up talking like half hour, 45 minutes trying to help each other solve problems that we have that usually we don't air that stuff, but sometimes we do. Yes, but what if we did a here does your business or do you need some business therapy? And they could email in or send us a DM and we.

But I feel like we've offered that before.

We have.

I think we need to seed the topic. We need to pick the topic and then go tell people where. Where. I don't know. I think, yeah, like that was my thought was like I love this.

I would love.

I think we need those force feed people a little.

Yeah. You're the concept of having people come on to talk about that, that's a challenge in my view of making it because time wise managing the people doing those things that that's it's work. Right. Not that am I working, but the one thing I love about this show is I just kind of walk on and start doing it right and, but.

I would love to 10x the audience for this show. I do. And I think this might be a path to doing that. I think it's because we'll wind up getting PR out of it. I mean, well, like the goal would be to help a business model. Right. You know, or a specific business. But hopefully something that the people listening could then apply to their similar, you know, business or whatever. So I don't know.

I think it's a great idea. We have to, let's fine tune it.

Yes, of course.

And come up with it. But I love that. I love trying new things, keeping things fresh. I think it's awesome. Let's, let's figure it out.

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Yeah.

Yep. And so I put together a session. I had given it a similar version of it at another conference. And it's always a good idea to find ways to reuse your sessions a because you don't have to write them from scratch.

And you were, let me just say you were explaining what a network storage device is and how to use it.

And how to use it, like going into some very specific use cases of, of how to use this. I mean, I did explain what it was. I didn't really have to for that particular crowd. It was intermediate to advanced at that point. But I certainly did explain what it was for Anybody that didn't know. And then it was like, all right, here's how you would do it to, like, run your own Google Docs thing so that you're not storing your data with Google. You get to do it here, private cloud, all that stuff. Right, Exactly. How to manage your backups on it, like, all those things. And so it was a session I'd given before. I was very confident with the timing of it, all of those things. Like, I, I, I hit the stage in great shape. And then, and I always tell people at sessions, I say, hey, look, you know, I want this to be interactive, so please, if something comes up, raise your hand, I will get to you. And we'll, you know, we'll, we'll address your question in line. And I always make a, make a little joke, like, however, I reserve the right to change my mind on this if you folks get out of hand, you know, because I got to be in charge, right? Like, you know, you got to get through to the end. And that was actually another lesson I learned at a different presentation. But, yeah, yeah, yeah, but so I start going, hand comes up. I get to a point with like, I can. Yes, your question. And it wasn't a question, it was a comment adding more detail to what I had just talked about. And it was stuff that's challenging, I didn't know. And in that moment, I, but it was valuable and it was, it was well articulated. It wasn't like this person wanted to just blow V8 and be the speaker.

He was trying to add value to what you had said, absolutely, that's cool.

And succeeded at it. However, it was the first time I'd really experienced that when I realized, wait a minute, there's no way in the world that I am the smartest person about synology in this room. I knew I wasn't the smartest person in general in the room. But, you know, you're on stage, you're the expert about a certain thing. That's at least the mindset.

That's why you're there, right?

That's why you're there.

Yeah, I've been there. Yeah.

And it was, and I had to, in that moment, it was a blow to my ego, of course, like, realizing this. And there was, this was like a split second where all of these thoughts that I'm going to take four minutes to explain, you know, sort of processed. It was like, wait, holy crap, okay, huh? That person really should be the one up here giving this, but they're not. I'm the one up here. Giving this. So we all know right now that this person knows more than me about at least this aspect of how the synology systems work. There's zero question in my mind, and I have to assume everybody else sees it too, because they're all smart people, and so why wouldn't they? And I thought, you know, that's okay, because my job is being the emcee here. I am guiding us through this. I know that there's a path to take us through that will get the majority of people in the room what they were promised when they came in. Because I wrote the session description. Right.

You know, that's nice.

And. And so it was at that point that, like I said, my ego saved me from itself. I. It was a huge blow to realize, wait a minute. Like, oh, I. I might have already said something that was wrong. And this person knows it, you know, and changing from being like, wait, that's okay. This is great. In fact, as long as I can manage them well, we can make this a very interactive conversation, perhaps more interactive than I had intended, and get the right information out for everyone in the room. But I gotta be the one holding the reins.

Yes.

And that's the only thing that I need to do the rest of it.

Framework, man.

Right. But, like, I did not walk on stage ever, having even thought about that. And it was this. I don't know how long it would have taken me to think of that if it weren't an emergency moment, like.

You had to make decisions. I got to.

I. Because I need to figure out a way to get through the next 35 minutes.

Dealing with a heckler.

Exactly. But they were the heckler, like, to be clear.

Correct, Correct. But thankfully. But, yeah, that. That framework is powerful in so many different areas. I would say it's just like us doing this podcast.

Oh. You know, I use it all the time. And it came up. I mean, this was 10 years ago that this happened for me, probably longer. And, like, it has become so much a part of how I present information, how I am on stage, that I. It's rare that I even think about that moment, although that moment is crystallized in my memory, like, it will. I will never forget what it felt like in that. All of it, but it was just like it. I've adopted it as part of the way to do things because it's a good. For me, it's a good way to do things.

Yep. Absolutely. And I think that, you know, I. Sitting here listening to you and applying it to kind of where I'm at If you like, even posting on social media as something where you're make. Oftentimes to get attention, you have to make a definitive statement, right?

Yes.

Even to the point where maybe it's a little bit of hyperbole and then you're walking it back. Well, there's all kinds of people that come into the comments that are, quote, experts in this and probably do know more than you, but if they make a comment or a question or a contradiction in a. In a decent manner, let's say you can lean into that and go, dude, that's so great, or thank you. Thank you.

Yep.

Yeah. Be positive. And I think it's terrific because it is adding that, you know, we're all trying to learn here.

Well, that's it. That's great. I love that idea. My macgeek Gab podcast, we say at the beginning of every episode, you know, we organize things into an agenda so that we can each learn five new things every single time we get together. You can hear. It rolls off my tongue. I've said it hundreds of times. And I have to think that that moment at Mac Stock may. Well. Sorry. At mactec, Max Stock is a show that's coming up soon. That moment at MacTech might have been part of that sort of redefinition or evolution of.

That stood out for you.

You know, maybe because it's like, well, wait, we're all just here to learn. And guess what if I show you my audience that I am just as willing to learn as I am asking you. I'm now modeling the behavior I want from you, and we all can learn together. And it's not manipulative in a. In a Machiavellian way. I mean, it's. It's sincere. Like, I have to actually model that behavior, not fake it. Right.

Yeah. And. Well, I. I commend you for. I mean, obviously that crystallized at that moment.

Yeah.

And because it could have gone the exact opposite, where you got defensive sweating and. Right. I could totally see it.

Oh, yeah. It could have gone south, man.

Y. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And that's the challenge. Sometimes, you know, when you're speaking in front of people and sit, whether you're sitting on a panel or hosting it, in. In your case, that is the way to go where you. You got to manage that ego in the sense that, hey, I'm here because I've been asked to be here, so I have some kind of credibility and experience or authority, let's say.

Yep.

But. But if you can then, you know, adjust things to where you're open to these different ideas. And not just that I'm here to teach. You're going to listen to me, right? It's, hey, what? We're going to talk about this topic. I'm going to share what I know. But you never know. We may get somebody out. And you could even say that at the beginning you say, I'm hoping there's people in the audience that know even more than I do about this. And then that's fair.

Yeah. You got to be careful. You got to know your audience. Right. But that's okay.

Yeah, yeah. Or ensure, like I always say, people always talk seco. You know, you've achieved all these things, whatever. And I said, you know, I just sound smarter because I'm telling my story in reverse. And it's not that I know anything. You know, these guys are in their 30s. I said, you guys are killing it. And by the time you get to my age, you're going to be, you know, probably way farther than I am. So you're trying to connect and not, you know, you want to have some authority, so you have credibility, but you also want to be a, you know, decent human being. So that's a great story.

And yeah. Yeah.

Thank you for sharing it. I think it's terrific.

No, it was a. It was a pivotal moment for me, for sure.

Sounds like it.

Yeah. And it has paid dividends for a decade and I forget about it again. I don't forget about it. I just don't think about sharing it because it's so obvious to me now.

Part of who you are.

It's part of who I am. Yeah, it totally is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's great. Have a great weekend, everybody. Thanks for listening, watching the stream, all that great stuff. We appreciate your support.

Yeah. Feedback@businessbrain.show. share your ideas. Share your thoughts on our initial conversation too, about our codifying of business therapy. And thanks. Keep living that charm life. See you next week.