Self-Promotion Is Your Friend – DBA Small Business Show 9

Greetings, folks, and welcome to DBA Podcast, episode number nine for Friday, April 10, 2015. DBA Podcast, the show giving that gives you the business every week here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton.

Hey. In Northern California, near San Francisco, I'm Shannon Jean. How's it going, Dave?

It goes. We're, we're, we're meeting mid travels. You just got back from some traveling and I'm just about to head off. So this is the one day that we're not. That we're both in our normal elements.

Yeah, we roll. Yeah, it's crazy. We got rolled in about 3 o' clock last night after some weather delays, and we hit the ground running this morning. So. That's always fun. It's always fun. It's good.

Yeah. Deal with it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's always, like I mentioned, there's always a tiny baby sitting near me. I'm not, I'm not sure. It seems like I should get some kind of a discount because there's always seemed to be some extra noise involved. And I did like your comment about the fitted ear pieces and may have to go down that road.

Oh, man. You know, I was, I, I mean, I've used them on stage for, for probably a decade now and they're great on stage for, you know, being able to hear and not having a monitor wedge. But when I went through that process, I wound up with several pairs of them and, And I do. I keep one pair of the fitted stuff in my travel bag. And I got on a plane one day and I had. Oh, yeah, I had to sleep on this flight. There was just no two ways about it. But it was a midday flight. It was kind of. I had a gig here in New Hampshire that morning for a. It was playing like before the. It was for the homecoming unh game or something here in New Hampshire. So we played early in the morning while people were tailgating and everything. And then I raced from that gig to the airport, flew to San Jose where a friend picked me up and took me to another friend's 45th birthday party where I then played that night. So I felt like Phil Collins when he. When he did Live Aid.

Right?

Because, you know, he played.

He played both. You just didn't drive in the Concorde.

I didn't ride in the Concord, but I did ride on a jet Blue plane. And, you know, this gig was a late gig. It went whatever, nine to midnight, nine to one Pacific time. So, you know, midnight to, you know, whatever four Eastern time, which is where my body started the day. So I knew I had to have, you know, a decent amount of sleep. And I figured I'm like, fine, I'll, you know, drink a little red wine or whatever, and when I get on the plane, I can. I can get myself to sleep. And I get there and there's this baby next to me, and I'm like, oh, man, think about this. And so I, you know, I put my earphones in or whatever, and I. I had my glass of red wine or whatever it was, and. And then I slept. And. And then at one point, I was aware of, like, some noise, and I'm like, huh, that must be, like, the captain was this very, very distant noise. And I took out my earphones and it was like. Like, oh, wow, that's much closer than I thought. I'd put it back in and back to sleep.

Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I'm definitely going that route.

You have to. You got to do something to seal it out. Yeah, yeah. And the whole noise canceling thing is actually worse for that.

Right?

Is that right? Yeah, well, like, yeah, because it cancels.

It cancels out the. The kind of. The flatline noise, the plane, and so I got it. Everything else is amplified, including conversation. And that's just not bad. That's just bad.

Yeah, that is bad. That is bad.

Anyway, but it's good to be back. That's not our. That's not what our show is usually.

That's right. That's right. That's right. You're right. Hey, I was very excited to get some user feedback comments last week and some questions. We had a couple of listeners write in, and I just want to touch base on that for a second. And then we're also going to have one of them as our topic today.

So I want to do one thing, Shannon. I should have done this. We should do this in the intro every time somebody that's new listening. Well, they certainly now know that our show is not supposed to be about custom fitted earphones, but they don't know what our show is supposed to be. So, in a nutshell, we're bringing you things that are important to the small business owner, and it's something we've found we couldn't find in a. In a podcast anywhere else. There's a lot of stuff about kind of the sexy venture capital entrepreneurship, you know, paths, but nothing about those of us that just get after it every day and get it done. And that's what the DBA podcast is for.

Yeah, it's great. And I think you touched on it really well. I mean, I love the tagline, you know, giving you the business every week. I think it's a good playing words. But really, I think a more succinct description was, you know, the small business podcast.

That's it.

And that's really what we're talking about. We're both entrepreneurs that have started multiple businesses and have done everything from consulting to, you know, you know, managing employees, that kind of stuff. And we're going to talk about our experiences, but we're also hoping to, and we're starting to see it come to fruition, you know, get, getting feedback from our readers or, I'm sorry, our listeners.

And you know, I make mistakes till 10 years later. So don't, don't worry about it.

Yeah, that's right. And then we're also going to have guests on. We have our first guest, you know, lined up here in the next couple of weeks with Abby Vakil coming on and talking about his business experience. And I think it'll be really good. So, so yeah, that's, that's a real good thing to point out. And we'll, we'll come up with a little blurb each time so people know what, what the heck they're listening to.

But today's show, Today's show.

So we had David Gallant wrote in and asked about to ask us to talk about email lists and opt in newsletters, spam, that kind of thing. And I just happen to have a colleague in that industry that deals with lead generation email lists, that kind of thing. And so I've talked to him and he's going to be coming on in the coming weeks and we'll have a good chat and we'll both learn A lot of me. I've definitely used some, but I wouldn't call myself an expert in buying lists and doing things like that. And there's a lot of pitfalls that you want to be sure you avoid. And we'll all get a good education when John Goodreau comes on in a few weeks and gives us some, some info.

Nice.

And then we also had a question of feedback from Tim Barker, who started up a Mac consultancy. And similar to Dave Gallant's comment, it's like, okay, well, how do I generate leads? How do I get the business generate, you know, how do I get my customers? I don't have a ton of capital to invest in advertising and that kind of thing. So today I thought we'd really talk about one of my absolute favorite subject is marketing promotion. With no money. And so we've both had experience with that and I thought we'd roll right in and talk about Tim Sapic.

That sounds like a great idea. Yeah. We get people that call us at Backbeat Media all the time that want to do this without money, so.

Yeah, well, that's right.

But I say that tongue in cheek. There is actually. I mean, there's value in traditional advertising and even non traditional advertising, but there is also. That's not going to be the end all, be all. Even if you have all the money in the world, you can't just throw it at that and expect it to actually work. You have to do some stuff on your own to promote your business.

Right. And I would say that contacting a company like Backbeat is not where you start.

No.

They are part of your long term plan. But you need to, you know, you get to get to the point where you have some revenues and you're generating and kicking off some cash. So you can say, hey, you know, if I invest in this, what's the return on investment going to be? And maybe take the business to another level.

That's right.

You know, but when you're, when you get started, you know, I always assume that people start a business or because they have some skill at it. You know, if you've ever read the E Myth, which is a great book that I'll link to on the site it talks about we all start as technicians. Not even in. If you're, you know, you can be a chef and be a tech or whatever, a publisher, but we're the person doing the work. We're the expert, if you will. And I heard a quote this week I thought was great and it was, I'm sure I'm not paraphrasing it correctly, but it was something along the lines that, you know, when you're good at something, you need to tell everyone about it. When you're great at something, people will tell you. And then I'll add on a little bit more related to what we're doing is if you're great at something, then they're going to tell other people. And this costs you nothing financially. Just, you know, being the best at something, whatever it is, even if you're not, you know, the best technician. But if you're really powerful with customer service or if you're a really good communicator, that's what you want to focus on is, you know, look at what you're doing and what services you're offering or what products you're Offering and make a list. What are we good at and what are we not so good at and what are we great at? Things that you just crush and that, you know, you're the best at. That's what you want to really talk about. So when people, you know, listen to you and they, and then they have that experience, they'll, you know, they're going to agree with you and they're going to tell everybody out or tell everybody else. And it could be, like I said, problem solving, it could be performing whatever. Find what you're great at and push into that area and you know, going back to the word of mouth you want to. The more you talk, the more you talk about your business, what you're doing to friends, colleagues, the better it's going to be. Words going to get out there. It's the lowest priced promotional opportunity you will ever have in your life. Is talking about what you're an expert at or what your company's the best at. What is your reason? We had it, we talked a couple episodes. I think it was about what value you add. You know, what is it so you can stay in the, in the niche where the profit margins are typically higher. And you want to talk about that, you want your, you know, come up with your story. I mean, what is your story and how are you going to get that across to your potential customers? And how are you going to make it interesting enough to where, you know, they're going to listen to you. When I was starting in the, you know, repair business, I'd. We were not in the repair business. We were always in the product business. Refurbished products, selling product, moving large volume of boxes. But as the market changed, I realized that the service business was something that we needed to get in. And so I had this experience where I took a camcorder, we had little kids and we were headed to Disneyland. And of course, the night before, maybe the day before, you're ready to go, you check the camcorder. Be sure you get that. And your wife reminds you that that's your area of expertise, right? And so you turn it on and check it out to ch. Check battery. And you know, as luck would have it, it doesn't turn on. So I took it down to one of these. I think at the time it might have been Circuit City, it was still around. And went in and said, hey, you know, I need to get this fixed and what's going on? And it was just a rotten experience. Everything about it. I could tell the people that worked there weren't happy the procedures that they had to follow were just garbage. The customers all standing around in the line doing what I was trying to do were not happy. And then they told me it would take about 30 days to get this camcorder repaired. And I thought, man, this is an opportunity here because there were people bringing all kinds of products in there, and nobody was happy. Nobody, like I said, nobody at work there, nobody that did, you know, and.

That'S a business where you are. I mean, you'd have to go out of your way, like Circuit City did, to not make people happy. I mean, they're bringing in something that's broken, right?

They.

They know what they want you to do, right? It's a very specific thing. It's not even like you're a consultant and somebody brings you in and says, you know, fix this potential nebulous thing.

Right?

I mean, the customer can even tell you, here's what I expect this product to do when you're done with it, right? I mean, you have a very clear cut set, and if you meet that goal, you win. It's very simple.

And the bar. And the bar is pretty low.

Pretty low, yeah.

You have something that doesn't work. And, you know, I thought. And I sat there and as I was waiting in line, I was listening to one customer after another be disappointed. And I said, man, this is my opportunity because I'm. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff that I'm not very good at. But I could. I knew I could do this better. And I also knew that I had a bunch of people working for me that were really, you know, good people that enjoyed their work. And at the time I was concerned because we saw it was kind of about the time the dot com, you know, thing bubble burst. And I said, okay, we got to come up with a new, you know, idea here for this business. And I had all these people working for me, and I didn't, you know, I wanted to take care of them. They were people that had been with me for years, and we had to come up with a new concept. So I went back to the office and we sketched out how we would come up with this overnight repair business. And it was, you know, it was laptops at first. And, you know, we got hooked up with DHL at the time, and we got convinced them somehow, you know, to put one of our laptop boxes in the, you know, every DHL truck in the country. And so that story of me walking into Circuit City and going through that, that line, I've told that story Thousands of times. And it allows. It's a way better method of telling people what we do than saying, oh, yeah, we do repair laptops. You know, we were in the. We're in the. You know, we're more in the repair business.

Oh, right.

Oh, you're just like Circuit City. Another disappointment, Right?

Exactly.

Because that's the message you send. Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, it's interesting when what I say to our guys at Mac observer, when they write an article or put together a podcast or whatever, they're finished publishing some piece of content, and it's usually a story that they've written. My message is, okay, you're halfway done.

Right.

And halfway actually might even be a lie.

Right?

It might be. You're only 30% done. Now you have to go and shout from the rooftop about how great this thing is that you just put together. And if you feel like you can't do that or don't want to do that, then you don't feel like what you just put together was great.

Right.

And so that's a litmus test. Are you ready to go tell people how awesome this is? If the answer is no. Okay, well, then you're not finished.

Right.

You know, you got to put out a great product, and then you have to be comfortable telling people not just what you do. Like you said, you know, it's like, oh, well, I'm in the repair business. You know, you could do that and be meek about it and all that. You wouldn't still be in the repair business, though. You would have been shut out years ago.

Right?

Yeah.

You don't tell people that. You tell people how frustrated you were with Circuit City and how you solved that problem, not how you repair things. The repair part, that's actually kind of easy. Like you said, bars sort of a lot.

That's right. That's the easiest part of it. And for me, what I found was that people really, they responded very positive, in a positive manner to that story. In addition, they asked lots of questions about the employees. And I realized, like, oh, well, what I assumed was just what any normal person would do. Maybe they don't all do that. So everyone liked the idea of, here you're trying to come up with a new business model because you also, you know, of course, you want to protect your own livelihood, but part of the reason for being is because you have this great group of people that work with you, and you want to create, you know, something that we can all be involved in. And. And, you know, we promoted that story on our website. We had our pr, you know, at the time, we had some, we're doing some press stuff. And, and you know, we, we talked about. I still talk about today. Like I said, I'm talking about right now.

I was just gonna say, intentionally or not, you're promoting your business.

Right? It's.

Yeah, right.

That's right. And so that's what I would encourage you to do. You know, people want to hear about you. They don't necessarily, you know, the polite thing, oh, what do you do? Da, da, da. But you do need to turn it into a story. And Dave, you reminded me of that when we just got started here. It's like, hey, this, these are all great technical details about stuff, but we need to personalize it. And that's what you, as a small business owner without a lot of capital and maybe not, you know, access to lots of different markets or you don't want to go blow a ton of money buying keywords from Google or, you know, you know, this kind of stuff. You have to fine tune your story over and over to the point where it just comes naturally to anyone you talk to. And you should be having that conversation with anybody that'll listen. Your accountant, you know, if you have one, you know, your banker, anyone that asks you, especially, oh, hey, what do you do? Oh, well, great, here's my card. And if you can get the opportunity, you know, here's my story. And they do want to hear about it. So everyone's looking for content and people want to know. And like, Dave, you always go, you have these conversations and go do presentations at the user groups.

Right, right.

And what do you generally talk about at those events? I mean, what's, what's your story when you get up there?

Well, it's, I mean, it's all kinds of different things.

Right.

Usually is training. That is what I try to do is I try to come in and train people. And it's, you know, there's usually 30 people in the audience. Somewhere between 30 and 150.

Right.

I mean, these user groups aren't huge numbers of people.

Right.

But it's a, a place to hone your, your storytelling skills because you're not gonna, you know. Yeah, you can get up there and say, okay, this, you put, you know, check, you know, check the checkbox a. And do this. And it's fine. But you've got to be entertaining.

Right?

You have to be.

Yeah, that's engaging at the very least. Yep, yep. And so it's, I try to make it training, but it's, you Know, the other thing is, is I use it as an opportunity to, to just interface with people. You know, I, if I show up with a presentation and I run through that presentation, it's worthless.

Right.

I can do that anywhere. I rather, especially when it's 100 people or less, I can manage a room of 100 people. And so I'll start and then I just want you to ask questions and I'll answer all your questions and you know, I'll identify. Okay. If I've got one guy that's just going to monopolize, okay, I got to shut him.

Right, right, right.

You know, it's fine and that's easier.

Yeah, yeah.

But yeah, it's telling stories and making it so people walk away with something in their head. Yeah, yeah.

And they, and they remember you. And so you can talk at a, you know, like, you know, Tim, starting out as a Mac consultant, you know, there are user groups all over the place and they would love to hear.

From you and do you would get business from that. I mean I walk out of those user group meetings with people saying, hey, so you know, do you consult on the side? You know, what do you do? It's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Everybody wants to meet you, offer your services.

Yeah. Especially for a Mac consultant, offer your services to every user group within probably a two hour ride of your house.

Right.

You know, maybe an hour and a half and, and offer to say, okay, what time is your meeting start? Seven o'.

Clock.

Great. I'll get there at 6:15. For anybody that wants to bring in their questions, I'll answer them for free for 45 minutes. You're doing this once a month? That's it. And look at all the business you're going to get.

And the thing is, when I first got started, I know I had some hesitancy because I was like, well, you know, I'm not really the expert yet, you know, or I don't know all of it. But I guarantee you, nine times out of ten you're going to know more than the people in that audience.

And if you don't, that's okay.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

And you can follow up, say, hey, that's a great question. I don't have this at my fingertips, but let me, I'll come over and come up after the show and after the talk and we'll look it up together and that kind of thing. And if you don't have user groups or the other thing to expand it. You know, we've made tons of contacts at trade shows and I'm not talking about, you know, for presenting at a trade show or sending a booth, which can be rather expensive, but just being on the floor and walking around. And I can remember Dave, the backbeat guys, walking around.

Yeah.

And. And we never had a booth. Never had a booth. But you were always, always the guys wearing a sport coat.

Yep.

Or a jacket. You know. That's right. And. And here they was. Guys would come up and they were. They were working the show floor. And it was as simple as I can remember. Jeff, you know, coming up and talking to me, say, hey, how's it going? What's going on? And just talking and. And, you know, making that connection with. With people is great. And we did the same thing. You'd walk around, you know, you talk to people, you run into people. It's. It's all about getting out there, you know, I'm sure you're good.

Now.

I was going to say at the trade shows that you're right. I mean, getting out there is it. We. We always used to say, and still say. I mean, it's. It. You know, the. The thing we have to do is remind people that we're human because so much of our business is handled electronically.

Right.

You know, we're sending emails back and forth to people. We're presenting new things via email. And that's great. But if you're not reminding each of those people that you're actually a human being and you have stuff going on in your life just like they have stuff going on in theirs, and all of that stuff, you're not doing that a couple of times a year, then you have no advantage.

Right.

I agree.

Just another guy looking to get their business.

Yeah. And. And you're. You're flooded with those guys. Of course.

We all are. It's okay. I mean, it's how it goes. Nobody's mad at you for it, but you can. You can take it to the next level. And I think I. You know, the. At the core of what you're talking about here, Shannon, is confidence. And if. And it's. It's one of those things. You don't have it. Fake it till you make it.

Right.

Yes.

You have to seem like you believe in what your business does, so much so that you actually don't have to, like, pitch it every time you get an opportunity. You just. Confidence.

Right.

It becomes natural. It's second nature. And then telling that story and what you'll find is it'll also. You migrate from your own personal story as you got started, which everyone wants to hear. But then you'll also be able to just tell stories about your business and experiences you had, problems that you solved, you know, nightmares that you encountered. People want to hear that stuff. And you can share that in any, you know, form you can imagine. I mean, you can, you definitely want to get a blog up there and on your, on your company website. And you want to generate content, even if only one or two people read it, because when somebody wants to come learn about you, they're going to go to your website. Okay, so, and so, you know, hey, I heard about Tim. He's a great guy. And we're going to go up and check out his site. They're going to find all this nice content and, and it's not content, in my opinion, that you're going to be able to always be trying to sell them something, but rather it's something that continues to reaffirm that your, your expertise in what you're doing. And as a Mac guy, and we do this with tech Restore, our blog rarely tries to sell you anything, but actually it's just a resource. We talk about the OS X updates, the iOS updates and this, and how to do this, how to fix your Apple id. I mean, all these little tips are very powerful. They were great for search engine optimization. And it also positions you as a resource. And that's what you want because especially if you're a consultant, your business is event driven. And what I mean by that is you can't go, hey, I'm running a special today. So it's a lower price when your printer doesn't work or you can't get the WI fi in your house to work. Well, that doesn't mean anything because unless that person has that problem, they don't need you. But what you want is you want to be positioned as that expert when they do need you.

Right?

It's critical. And you know, your blog, you can do, you know, want to start a podcast, even if you're just doing it on your own and putting it up on your site, all kinds of other groups, chamber of commerce, you can talk to the Elks and you can talk to anybody. Social media, certainly you want to be up on Facebook, try to get people likes, ask your family, you know, that kind of thing, and then link all that stuff together. Your Twitter feed, I mean, Dave, I think you're really good at doing that. And also I think what you're really good at is opening yourself up and letting people in because people really are interested. It's like reality tv, man.

Yeah.

Everybody loves everybody is a voyeur. Right? It's kind of the human condition.

It's the human condition. Yeah. And you do, you know, I get. And I have. Have people like friends, especially local friends, that aren't in the business of being in business for themselves. They're working for somebody else or whatever. They're like, you know, they, they, they, they rip me about it. They're like, oh, yeah, but, you know, we're talking about privacy and security. Security. And somebody was saying, oh, so somebody's gonna know you weren't home all day yesterday. And, you know, you were in Boston because you were with your kid. Maybe, maybe today's a good day to rob your house. It's like, yeah, yeah, okay, right, sure. So that's a risk. But, you know, the reality is this is just. I. This is what I do, and people know me, and the benefits far outweigh the negatives. But if you're gonna be in business for yourself, I guess you could be a very private person. But you need to. It's tough.

Yeah.

You need to be a personality.

Right.

Especially if you're a consultant, because these people are going to invite you into your home or business.

Right.

And then they're going to pay you.

Right.

They're not just inviting you in, they're paying you to show up. And, and you've got to, you know, you've got to be that. That personable person. You have to be that personable person in advance, and you have to be that person when you get there. And, you know, in. In Texas, I. I worked with for a long time and, and helped build up a company called Computer Nerds. And sure, we did it. We did a lot of what Tim's doing here. And the best part about it, one of the best parts was the name itself.

Right.

Is that immediately. Because people are embarrassed when they can't solve their own problem and they have to turn to someone for help. Some people are, some people aren't. Some people care less. But they're either laughing about your name or appreciating that you're not taking yourself overly seriously, but you're identifying who you are.

Right.

And I still go by the moniker Dave the Nerd.

Right.

It's stuck and it's great. People say, why do you call yourself that? Well, you'd be surprised.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you've done a great job. Yeah, that's correct. And so the other thing I would say is if you're the kind of private person, you're the business guy. Maybe you have the accounting, you handle the back end, this kind of thing. Perhaps you should think about partnering with someone that wants to be that front to the business and that wants to get out there and talk and feels maybe more natural like that. And there's nothing wrong with that. I've always done better in my businesses with a partner, always. Because let me tell you, I suck at so many things. And, you know, finding someone that can offset your weaknesses, you know, quite possibly, at least in my life, has been, you know, one of the most important things that I figured out. And, you know, I'm the guy that likes to talk. I have the big mouth. You know, I'll sit there and joke around, talk about stuff, and all day long. But my partners have typically been the ones that have a little bit more accounting background or a little bit more logistics and infrastructure, and I lean on them for stuff that I'm no good at. So I would encourage you to find that if you're things that are lacking in, whatever skill set you have is also partnering with someone else because there's somebody else out there that's like, oh, gosh, I don't want to do that part. But you find this good mesh, it can be a great marriage. And that's kind of what it is. And I guess, well, that, that goes.

Back to what you were saying at the beginning, right, is you got to identify what you're good at, but at the same time, that means identifying what you're bad at or what you're not good at. You know, hopefully you're. I guess we're all bad at stuff, too. But, you know, figuring it out. And okay, either I'm not going to do those things that I'm bad at, or if my business needs those things to be done, I'm either going to partner with or hire someone.

Hire somebody.

Yeah, I'm with you, though. The, the partnership thing I have, I'm in the same boat. I much better with a partner, and I've done it both ways, and I've been involved in things both ways, and, you know, backbeat started with a partner, and now, you know, I wound up buying them out. And I think you're in the same boat, right, with. Yep, yep, yep. And it's fine. But I mean, even. Even today, there are moments where I miss having that partner. And as you have employees that have been there a while, they can fill that, that role for you, you know, the, the, the sounding board and, and Pete somebody. But it, you know, it needs to be the right person. So Yeah, I agree.

Yep.

Yeah. And then it's good. So. And that's a great topic for when we could talk a whole episode on that. So I've made a note, we'll come back and talk about partnerships.

Yeah.

Whether they're, you know, in your business or strategic or whatever. We both have some feedback on that. And so, you know, that's it. Just, you know, come back to getting the word out. And, you know, for, for us, like some of the things that we did that were really popular is, you know, we created these YouTube videos and they, they weren't. Everybody does repair videos and. Or at least now they do. And maybe back in the day, they didn't quite as much, but we took a different take on it. And I had a guy that worked for me that was really talented and got interested in doing stop motion. And so we decided, hey, let's, let's play around with this. And we would do our, our take apart video without a technician, you know, present. You know, on the video, it didn't look like there was a technician present because it all, you know, stop motion stuff. And so we just started playing around and creating these videos and it became wildly popular, you know, and I think we've had over, you know, 10 million views on videos over the years on these take apart things. And was there a message at the end to, hey, check us out, this kind of thing? Yes, but it wasn't like, hey, this is how you do it now, come buy this from me. Because at the time, we weren't even in the, in the parts business. We were really just in the repair business. So it was like, hey, here's some, here's some information. And you know, in an entertaining way, there's some music and here, watch this, you know, iPhone take itself apart, if you will. Another thing we did is we put cameras in the business. You know, talk about opening yourself up. And we would. People love to see what's going on behind the scenes. You know, it's like the car wash with the big glass window.

Right.

That everybody stares through and see what's goes on inside. It was the same for us. We would have a camera right down to the tech table and, and people could log in on the website and watch their stuff being worked on or anybody's stuff being worked on. And it was very, very powerful. So don't underestimate that stuff that you might look at and say, well, you know, nobody's really interested in that stuff. Yes, they are.

They are.

Absolutely.

They want to know what's going On.

Yeah.

And you can send, you know, you can send the message about your business everywhere without being that pushy, desperate seeming business owner that, you know, is totally reliant on the next sale that's going to make or break her business, his or her business. And that may well be the case.

Right?

I mean.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

It's, you know, we both started businesses, we know what it's like to be in those moments. You think back and you're like, wow, if, if we didn't get that one order, I wonder where things would have gone.

Right.

I mean, this happens. It's totally normal. And I firmly believe that every business has that moment. Well, I was going to say has that moment. Has those moments.

Those moments. It's not going to be just, you're the only one. Yeah, but you're the guy or your team should be the only one that knows that because. And it's that, hey, it's that. Fake it till you make it. You're very confident. You know, you're a problem solver. No. Nobody wants to hear about your struggles to meet payroll. Nobody wants to hear about your struggles to pay rent on your building or.

Whatever they do after you've, you've, like years later. I mean, one of my favorite stories is fred Smith at FedEx. Do you know this one?

Right.

I know. So, yeah, the gambling thing.

Yeah. So he was on his way back to Memphis, which is where FedEx was based, and. And he had, I think they had enough money for one more round of payroll.

That's right.

And he was, he was connecting through Chicago and thought, why in the heck am I going back to Memphis just to wrap up my business? And he looked at the flight board and saw a flight to veg. And so he took, he went to Vegas and he took the entire payroll budget, you know, and put it on red, I think, on the roulette wheel and let her go.

So, yeah, so you're right. That is a great. FedEx wouldn't make.

FedEx wouldn't be here today. So this is a killer story. But yes, Fred didn't tell it at the time.

That's right. Now it's part of their myth, right?

That's right.

And. And you're right. So you want to go back and. Yeah, that's tell. That's a very good point to make is going back and telling. Because everyone likes to hear about the struggle. They want to hear about how you succeeded and got through it. Because it also gives them hope that, oh, hey, you know, I'M not the only one that's going through this stuff. And, you know, so I, I, you know, people want to know that they're connected with other folks that have gone through the same thing.

That's it.

Yeah.

Misery Loves Company. And, and whatever you've gone through. Well, I was gonna say whatever you've gone through or going through, Shannon and I have been through, that may or may not be true. You may be going through something at a much higher level that we have yet to attain.

But.

Yes, you know, but it, and that's the other thing. At every level. You know, if you've got a, if you've got a business where you've got 10 or 15 employees, you may get to a point where the next order is the thing that makes or breaks your ability to either stay at 10 or 15 employees or grow to the next, you know, add the next five. Or if you don't get that order, you've got to ratchet everything down to five. You yourself are still going to be okay, and you're going to be in business, but, you know, you want to take care of your people and you want your business to grow. I mean, if your business is slowly shrinking because you're getting less and less business, well, that's probably not a good direction for most things, but, yeah, and tell those stories, you know, and that's the thing is, like you said it earlier, Shannon, people are always looking for content. And that's not just us as readers or consumers of content. It's for people that tell that story. Reporters want to tell those stories. So if you can get to them and if you can tell your story to that person, find the echoers, right? And this is something we do at tmo. It's like, okay, you just wrote this article. Who cares about this? Not who cares, but who actually is going to care and target that group or find the person that is their mouthpiece, right? Who speaks to them. Go make friends with that person and do it sincerely. Tell them why you're doing it. Look, I've got some stuff that's interesting to your audience, and without saying it, or maybe you do say it, you're doing their job for them. You read an article in the newspaper, right? The first two paragraphs in the article are actually what's going on with whatever it is. And then the end of it is full of quotes from people that are either involved in the story or maybe not even involved, but just tangentially related to this, whatever topic it is. You can be that person that gets Those what we call fluff quotes at the end of a piece. But let me tell you, those fluff quotes are good for two people. They're not good for the readers. Rarely are they good for the readers, but a lot of people use them, so it's still a thing. They're good for the reporter because they get to fill up, you know, their, their word quota.

Right.

If they have one, which I think is stupid, but it's fine. It's a thing. So they get to fill up their word quota and you get to promote yourself by saying something that sounds intelligent. And they're not going to print something that doesn't sound intelligent because that's not in their best interest.

Right, sure. Yeah. And the thing too, to think about is to really broaden what you could be, what you could talk about. Meaning, yes, I've always been in the technical business, but some of the best exposure that we ever received was talking about logistics. And what I've realized over the years is that, you know, we were really a logistics business because, you know, we figured out how to bring this stuff in overnight. We figured out how to pick it up, you know, if you called us by 2pm Anywhere in most, you know, urban areas in the U.S. well, I started talking about that because it was interesting to me. And then, you know, I got a call from a very obscure, small, little publication related to logistics and got an interview there because I had talked about it at a, I think at a Mac World and somebody, you know, picked it up from there and the Mac World Expo. And then after that, somebody called me from the San Francisco Business Times again, kind of a smaller, not a huge publication, but a great stepping stone to start to get your word out or your story out expertise, you know, developing that, you know, you're the expert in this thing or you have expertise in this field. So it's not always directly related to your business, but it could be anything. I tell guys, you know, we have a lot of customers now that run repair shops out of their vehicles. And it's awesome. Some of these guys have big, those big Sprinter, you know, vans, and it's like a tech lab on wheels. And I talk to these guys like, man, you ought to be submitting an article to an auto magazine, you know, and the guys, well, why would I do that? It's like, because this is awesome, you know, look how you've outfitted this truck. And this is your business where, you know, I've got this big building that, you know, I've got to maintain. But look, how you built this whole thing, and you could put two technicians in here doing repairs all day long. Somebody would love to feature an article about this vehicle and the decisions that went in and what works and what doesn't. So broaden your horizons about what you. You know, what you could talk about related to your business. It could be. It could be anything.

Yeah. No, that's it. That's it. Yeah. And just talk about it. That's it. You know, Scott Jordan, who is the guy who started Scotty Vest, actually, we should try and get him on. He would be a great. Oh, yeah. He's crazy, but in a good way, right?

Yeah.

And I've known him for. For years. He is. I mean, he makes interesting clothing. I mean, it's a great clothing.

Right?

I mean, it's. They do a really good job with the way they make it all balanced, all of that.

Right.

Their product niche. Their product is. Is awesome, and it is a great niche. But their success is, you know, they could do all of that and be unknowns, or they could have Scott out there as the passionate self promoter.

Right.

Pushing himself and his business and his brand constantly. And that's where you turn it in. From a, you know, small little operation to a $50 million business.

You got it.

That's it.

Right? That's it.

And that's the difference, you know? Yeah. You got to be good at logistics and all of the things that you need to be good at. But. But if people don't know what you do, and in today's world, it's up to you to tell them, and it won't happen.

And we want to hear about it, too. You know, we. We want to hear your stories. We love to share your stories here. We want to hear about the struggles and how you overcame them, things that. That you agree with us on, you love and things that you're like, oh, hey, I have a different take on it. Guys, you missed this whole thing.

You got it wrong. Tell us.

Yeah, tell us. You know, feedbackbapodcast.com dba podcast on Twitter. Jump on the Facebook page. We want to hear from you. Having the feedback is awesome. This is what we're here for. Dave and I love the collaboration and this is why we're doing this thing. And we want to have a good time and hearing your stories and getting feedback from Tim and Dave Gallant. Those are great. That's awesome.

Thanks for listening, folks. Shannon, have a great week. We will. I don't. We don't know when we're recording next week, but we will we will. And we'll put it out there.

All right?

Yep. We'll be back here. We'll let everybody know. Have a great weekend, everybody.

Thanks.