Setting Business and Personal Goals – DBA Small Business Show 12

Greetings, folks, and welcome to the DBA podcast, the Small Business podcast. Episode number 12 here. Oh for Thursday, April 30, 2015, here in Durham, New Hampshire.

I'm Dave Hamilton, the emitter baker. You get that in the right order because people get really upset.

Yeah, that's right.

This is Shannon Jean coming to you from Northern California. It's, and I'm just a weather guy. It's like 90 degrees out here and it's ridiculous. But it is nice and we're loving it.

That's good. Good.

Yeah, yeah.

You're just, you're just back in town like on from your trip, which is cool.

Yeah, we bounced over to Vermont, which is a maybe a two and a half hour drive for, for us to the area of Vermont we went to just to hang out a little, couple, couple of family days away. My kids are off from school this week, so we, we knew we could hang out here at home and, and say we were going to do nothing and, and spend family time together. But if that, if we did that, I would, you know, when the kids Working. Yeah, I'd be working instead of taking a nap or just hanging out and playing a. Whatever. I, I duck over to the office here. So.

Yeah, it's the blessing and the curse of loving what you do that.

It's true. It's true. But so we ducked over there and, and had some, had some, you know, just R and R. Did some hiking.

That's great. Yeah, great. Yeah, very cool.

Nothing very special. It's mud season here in New England, so that means especially in a, in a ski town, which is where we were. We stayed at a little condo right near ski Mountain and it's, there's just nothing going on, which was perfect for what we want.

That's nice. Yeah. Yeah, that's very cool. You got to do that with your kids while they're that age because you don't have much, much time left to do that stuff. So. That's awesome.

Yep.

That's awesome.

Yep.

Very good. Very good. So if you listen to the show, last week we did our first interview with Abby Vakil. He told some great stories and I thought some really good information about starting businesses and things and I thought it was really great. We'd love to have your feedback and you know, just feedbackbapodcast.com let us know what you think.

That's it. That's right. And today we've got potentially two topics. I think we'll get to the second one too. We're going to talk a Little bit about setting and meeting goals both for ourselves and, and with. And for our employees and contractors and all of that. And then we might talk a little bit about professional development too and making sure that we and our employees stay up to date, because that's an important thing. And if we don't get to that today, we will definitely.

Yeah.

Slot that for an upcoming show.

Both. Both good topics. And as, as you and I were just talking and when we, when we, you know, connected today, it's funny. And I don't know whether it's personal, my personality or, I don't know, an entrepreneurial thing, who knows? But I'm not a huge proponent of, of setting or I just don't do it that much as far as, what's the word I'm looking for? Formally setting goals and moving down and checking off check marks and that kind of thing. I'm just not that organized. It's almost like the to do list thing. Quick ones on a piece of paper. Yeah. Reminders on my phone. Absolutely. But listing and using all these different apps to track that stuff is just doesn't work for me.

You know, it's funny you mentioned that because I saw the two until you just started talking, I saw the two as very separate things. Like you, the concept of, of running my world from, you know, one of these things like Asana or one of those tools or using something like Omnifocus, which is a, an app Mac.

Right.

That really. It's part of it. I, I think it's, it's part of that whole GTD getting things done mentality.

Right.

And I know people, in fact, I have people that work for me that use it and use it.

Yeah, yeah.

And love it. Those things don't function the way I function. However, a very, very simple bare bones to do list of here's the things I need to do today. And even, you know, like you said, kind of repetitive tasks like, you know, every three weeks I do this or whatever. I know on next Tuesday I need to do that. Not ticking things off on a to do list or the reminders thing on the phone. That's my world. Yeah.

And I wonder if that. Because, you know, before I mentioned it, I really didn't know you were the same way. And I wonder if that is inherent in the, you know, the personality type or something. But it would be very interesting to get some feedback from folks and hear if, oh, I feel the same way. And I'm so glad to hear somebody else is that way. Who knows?

Well, now, now I Feel like we should have had this podcast. Well, actually, I should have just invited my friend Russ over for band practice early because band practice starts pretty much when we stop recording here. In fact, it's possible by the time we stop recording, he'll actually be waiting literally outside the studio door. But he is someone that is a taskmaster and totally buys into that whole world and doesn't just buy in. I mean, it works for him.

It works. Oh, and I, yeah, and I definitely think it works. And we use. Now that being said on, you know, what I do personally and that kind of thing, that doesn't mean that I don't believe in setting goals for your business and, or, you know, departments in your business and employees that work for you, that kind of thing. And we do a ton of that stuff and I think that really works and it helps guide your team towards, you know, a unified goal.

So talk to me a little bit about this because we do, we do this too. But I'm just curious to hear how, like a specific example of how you might do that.

Sure. So if we have a goal, let's say, okay, we want to, using one example like our iPad refurbishment center out here and we constantly have these goals for how many units these guys want to get out. And these are short term things. How many units want to get out and what's the acceptable level of RMAs returns? What's going to happen? And you keep it at 2% or what's it going to be? And so what we do is we set measurable goals that each technician can meet and we also, while we're setting those goals, what happens? What I really like about it even more than the goal is that it brings up a whole bunch of things about, oh, how I can't achieve that because of X, Y and Z is in my way. And so it allows you to really bring up, okay, well, what's keeping you from getting whatever an individual technician, what's keeping you from getting 30 units out every day or whatever the number is that that is acceptable to, to us. And it, it brings up a whole bunch of things and some of them are like systemic problems, like, oh, well, I don't have this piece of equipment that would allow me to do this, or this is broken or this doesn't work. And I'm always shocked that how this stuff comes up. And I said, why didn't you come tell me about this? Or why didn't you tell your supervisor about this? Because we can't. You know, my job as the owner of the Business is to try to facilitate your job and make it as easy as possible for you so you can just, you know, nail these goals and we can set these goals together. And I just went through this process today. We were trying to. Working on a big project and, you know, came up in the text and said, well, you know, all these batteries that you've been getting for these iPads, they're defective. So we usually have to swap two or three out every time before we get to go. And I looked. Yeah, yeah, before they get a good one. And I looked at Chuck, I said, well, how long has this been going on? It's like, oh, you know, about a week. I said, well, how come no one is. It doesn't bubble up. So, yeah, you know, and it's within a small group and sometimes technicians, and I love technicians and, you know, and I have tons of respect for them and I'm in awe of what they're able to do day in and day out. But they may not be the best communicators.

Well, it's more than that because I've. I've dealt with this managing programmers too. And I've dealt with this being a programmer and being a technician. It's that you, you spend your day solving problems, Right?

That's what they do. That's right.

Right.

So if you have a problem, you don't. You just deal with it, as opposed to say, I can't deal with this. We need to, in your case, you know, address this at the source. It's like, well, I've been handed the problem. I'm just going to deal with it.

And that's what they do. They move through and they' hit their goals. So they're like hustling, right?

Hustling, yeah. When in fact, what they should do in this particular case is like you said, bubble it up and say, wait a minute, I'm getting a 60% defective rate on these things. What's going on? That doesn't happen. It's important to have. And this is a thing I work on and this happens with everyone in that way. And I count myself in this group too. You need to have these regular sanity checks. Even if you're working. If someone's working alone on a project, especially perhaps if someone's working alone on a project, you need to have those sanity checks. Talk through. Tell me what you did yesterday. Oh, I did this, but I lost a couple hours because I, you know, I really went down this rat hole. It's like, oh, no, no, no, no. Okay. If you Find yourself in a rat hole, wave the flag, and let's just talk it through. It doesn't. It's not a sign of weakness. You know, you're not going to get fired for saying, I don't know how to solve this. You know, sometimes just having a different. Sometimes just the act of talk makes you realize, wait a minute. This. I got to address this a different way.

Yep.

Well, sometimes. Yeah, sometimes the rat hole can be very valuable. And if you. Because you'll. We'll look at, you know, we do reporting every day, and they. They entered stuff they're getting done, and then I look at those reports, and I'll. And I'll say, whoa, you know, what happened? Why. Why weren't we able to meet these things? And, you know, when they. When I. Oftentimes when you bring that up, especially to a new technician, they're here, they're thinking, oh, gosh, you know, busted. I'm gonna get. Yeah, get disciplined. And then they'll say, well, you know, I started with this, and then I figured out how to solve this new thing, and I created this new tool, and I'm just looking to go, that's awesome. You know, because now you've probably saved countless hours of these other techs that can use this new tool or this new procedure and stuff. So it's important that on the way. I think it's important on the way to the goal. Other stuff that comes out of it could be equally or even more important than the goal you're trying to hit itself.

Yeah.

And I think that's often overlooked. And maybe some of these, like, you know, getting things done app and Omnifocus and Basecamp and all, maybe some of those don't leave room for that. And maybe because you and I are a little more freewheeling, you know, go by the seat of our pants, maybe that's why we don't fit in there as well.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Well, there is something very comforting about. And I find this, too. I'm just. It's not a huge priority for me, but I definitely notice it when I can sit down and say, okay, my. I. I know what I have to do. There's something very comforting about that.

Yes.

But as a. As an entrepreneur and as the business owner, certainly there are times when you get to tell yourself, okay, this is what I'm going to do, and I know what. What finished looks like.

Right.

This picture of something that you were going to attain, and there you are. You attained it. That's great. But there are also Times as the entrepreneur and the. And the business owner and the one kind of leading the vision forward that you don't know what finished looks like. You have to make it up as you go. And because of that, those. Those goal or those GTD things can. Can get in the way, I think, or they just don't. They don't fit for what I do.

Yeah.

I think you're right. And I think that that sense of discovery of where you're going is for me, I mean, the whole half the reason I'm here, because I don't know what it's going to be like tomorrow. Yeah. And. But I know I'm going to figure it out. You know, we know we're going to do it. So I think maybe as an entrepreneur, you kind of have to cut yourself a break sometimes and sit back and recognize the value of. To use a cliche.

Right.

The journey, you know.

Yeah.

Along the way. And it makes, you know, it. Oftentimes I'll go in with. With nothing on my plate and I will just react to what's happening in. In the business. And, you know, people coming to me, they need this. I need you to do this, I need you. That. And that's a very. That can be a very productive day for me. You know, other times I have a list and I'm like, oh, man, I've got to knock these things out and got to, you know, get these things done.

Yeah.

One thing I really love and. And we use it all the time, and every office in our building has one. I mean, it's. It's just a whiteboard, you know, just an erasable, you know, whiteboard. And what we do is we whiteboard everything. Our goals, the problems we're having getting there, how come we're not achieving them? Ideas, that kind of stuff. And then we use an app called Capture Board. You take a picture of the thing and you can dump it in Google Drive or Evernote. And we, I mean, we use Evernote like in a very insane way around our business. And we can talk about that for a long time at some point. But getting it into Evernote, you know, allows us to refer back to it at the next meeting, put notes there, you know, get everybody to log in and put their comments as they're developing, you know, moving towards that stuff. And that right there has worked great for us.

Interesting.

Yeah.

You know what? Yeah, you can search the text if you're, you know, you got these things you need to come up with. Okay, who's supposed to be doing this who should be, you know, and then you can, you can develop all this stuff, action items, and, you know, what, what's going on at your. And at your meetings, you say, okay, you know, one of the comments I think you made a couple weeks ago, Dave, when we were talking about goals, was being sure to swing back around to see how you're doing and to see where you are. And for us, we pull up Evernote and we look, say, okay, what did we say we were going to do? Where do we go? And all that stuff. And that works really well for us. I would highly recommend it.

Yeah, we do not use Evernote specifically that way, but as you described it, it was pretty obvious that there are some specific things we could do internally here with Evernote that. Yeah, I'm jotting my own notes down. Right. It's nice listener here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I do think with screenshots, like, if I'm up on somebody's site or, you know, we'll take screenshots like, oh, man, I love the way they say this. Or I love the way this is presented. And I just dump them in that Evernote because it keeps track of my ideas. And then the next meeting, we pull it up and I'll remember, oh, hey, this was one way. I like how this company X did this or something.

That's a great. Just a. As a catch. All that you then use in a group think kind of way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I'm all over the place.

Well, that's it.

Right, right.

I wanted to circle back to kind of the, the setting goals and working on goals with employees. The examples that you gave are not only very specific, but in most cases, although your, your example of the battery is perhaps, you know, a good one about factors outside of your control.

Right.

But, but for the most part, this is okay. You know, I'm going to fix X number of these today during a shift. And, and, and that's a, that's a goal that, that your employees, with your help perhaps, or with management's help or whatever they need, are in control of.

Right.

At some level. I mean, if you said it unreasonably well, then they can't. They just can't attain it. But otherwise, it's a con. It's a controllable thing.

It.

They. They have all of these to work on. And, and, and it. If as long as they're efficient and do things the right way, they can hit these goals. And that's, that's a very. There's an important distinction between. And I'll use your example, but I'll share some of my own between saying I'm going to fix whatever 50 of these in my shift today versus someone else's job being to make sure there are 50 of them in house to fix.

Right?

Yeah, the business development part of it. And, and for us, we have, and I think this is true of every business. We have some, we all have goals that are at the end of it all outside of our control.

Right.

I mean, I run two businesses. I mean, I run several things here, but sure. You know, at the Mac observer, part of our goal, I mean, well, our goal is to earn enough money and all of that stuff, right?

Yes, of course, you know, we're still.

At some level a traffic focused business and that's actually changing as podcasts become even more important part of it. But let's say, you know, traffic is one of our goals. That's not something that we can't, we can't just say, okay, if we do X, Y and Z, we will definitely get, you know, X amount of traffic. On this article, there's a lot of.

Things I wish that, I really wish that was true, but it's not.

Right.

You're right, you're right.

And the same is true at Backbeat in terms of sales.

Right.

I say I want to have you sell, you know, X amount per month. Well, you know, if you do nothing, you probably aren't going to sell that much. But even if you do everything right, it's still, you know, the money needs to be there in the customer's pockets or you need to find the right customers in order for that money to come in.

Right.

And in your case.

Correct.

You've got to get the word out to enough people that have broken iPhone screens in order to have them in house for your text to fix.

Right?

Correct. Correct. Yeah, that's my responsibility. That's my job. That's my goal. Right. To buy X number. If we're, if we, if our goal as a company is to, you know, move a thousand iPads this month or whatever the number may be, you have to have that many in through your refurbishment center so that you can do it. Otherwise these guys are going to look at you like, well, you said we set these goals. I can't do it.

Yeah, I'm trying, but I got nothing to touch.

Yeah, that's correct.

And so what I find is, you know, especially in sales, but certainly in, you know, the Mac observer and with our traffic goal is one of our things. There are things, there are steps that one can take to hedge your bets towards success.

Right?

And so I describe this, and I think of this by saying I use calculus every day, and I don't actually use calculus every day, but I use what I learned in calculus, which is taking what appears to be an insurmountable problem and you break it. What you do in calculus is you take this problem that you can't just solve flat out with one step, right? And you break it down into the smallest steps you can possibly find. And then you do each of those little steps and when you finish them all, whoa, look at that. The major problem is solved. Now, it's not quite that because it's still the end of it for us. Sales and traffic is still something that requires other people's buy in.

Yeah, right, right.

But there are things you can do and with sales it's okay, you know, it's a business of rejection, you know, that you've got to make. If you make, you know, 20 out, you know, 20 either emails or phone calls or whatever it is per day, you know you're going to get one, you know that? Okay, one, one person saying, yes, I'm interested is actually a good day.

Right.

But it's 19 nos. And you've got to know this going in. Even if you are a seasoned salesperson, you have to know and have to consciously think about the math and know that. Okay, well, I just had 15 people tell me. No, don't stop.

Right.

You've got five more to do. Yeah, yeah. We could talk. We could. I'm gonna add it to our few, our future show notes. You know, cold calling and motivating, very, very important thing to do. And I think you just, you know, talked or hit on it.

But you've gotta, you know, you break down these, these net. They're not nebulous goals, but they're, they're goals that are at some level outside of your control and break them down into the things that are within your control.

Right.

Can you decide to or not to make 20 phone calls today? Yes, you totally can.

Right?

Okay, great. You know, and, and then after those 20 cold calls, you know you're going to do 20 follow ups. You can decide whether or not to do those in any given day. Okay, great. You know, if you do all this stuff at the end of the month, what do your sales look like versus a month where you only did 10 of each a day? Okay, well, hey, look at that. It actually impacts it or it doesn't impact it. And we need to reevaluate and okay, what are you doing on those calls? Or is there something else that we found in here that actually makes that work? And constantly, like you said, you know, revisiting, did we hit our goals? But also how did we hit them? What were the things we felt were the, the. The indicators towards success? And let's focus on those and eject the others and.

Yeah, and then adjust as you get going because, you know, you got to be careful. One thing, based on your outside sales comment, you're making that kind of stuff we've always historically had used inside salespeople, meaning it's kind of a mix between a customer service person and a true salesperson. But it's worked fantastic for us. And really, a relationship management person is kind of what they're at. And I've always struggled with coming up with what I would consider adequate or fair compensation, you know, commission structures and that kind of thing. Because to your point, so much of the business is out of their control.

That's right.

They can manage. Awesome. I mean, do a great job with anything that comes in the door, but getting it in the door is so, you know, the myriad of things that have to happen, you know, the advertising, buying the product, I mean, doing this, doing that, you know, so many things beyond it. So we. Even to this day, I constantly look, okay, well, you know, what's. What were they able to do? I mean, can they achieve that goal given, you know, the, the all these other things that rely on them hitting that today that they're not in control of?

And see, I think that this is going to sound terrible to say, except that I haven't. I am not able to be this person that I'm going to describe, but I feel like, because I look at it the same way, like, okay, well, you know, he didn't hit his goal last month, but let me look at why that could be right. And then you start breaking it down. You're like, okay, well, we could tweak this or tweak that. And that's who I am.

Right.

I'm a problem solver. I want to go in and tweak it all. I wonder how much more effective my team would be if I was just an unreasonable jerk.

Dude, I'm the same exact way.

Do you ask yourself the same question?

Yes. I'm like, you know, I want them to achieve the goal. I mean, I really do. I want them. I want to pay them more. Because then hopefully that means we're earning more, right?

If goals are aligned, yes.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that but if you have these goals and they never hit them, they're not going to stick around. You know, I always feel like, okay, well, yeah, I do the exact same thing. I start looking at going, okay, well, maybe we have to adjust this guy's commission structure because now he's spending a bunch of time doing X, which inevitably happens in my organization. You start out as doing this, doing this, and then you think, hey, you're kind of good at this. Why don't you do that? And then it's just normal. And then come down to it and you're like, well, he didn't have time to do these things that he's going to supposedly being compensated for.

You could change that and just be a totally unreasonable jerk and say, it doesn't matter. You got to get this done. It's the only way. You've got to earn the money and then walk away and let them figure it out for themselves.

I wonder if I. And I don't know what the right way is. Somebody, you know, somebody speak up out there and send us an email and tell us, Tell us your way.

I feel like I would probably be 10 times more successful if I could just be that jerk, but I'm not. It's not going to happen.

But how do you measure that success? What is the.

Well, that's true.

Right.

You know, that to me, it's. I know at the end of the day when I have a connection with, you know, the, the people that work for me, it's a positive connection and they're every day, you know. Yeah. And they're there. And yeah. You know, you're never. I always use the word or the, the comment to when I'm bringing people up into management. I said, look, you know, you're going to be a manager now or supervisor. I want. You can be friendly and you really need to be friendly, but you're truly not going to be these, this. Your team's their. You're going to directly be involved in their compensation and their, you know, performance reviews and all these things that they're direct.

Involved in whether or not that person gets to come to work next month.

Yes. And that changes the whole dynamic. So. Yeah. And, you know, I don't, I just don't think I'd want to be that. That person. And, you know, at the same time, I've always made the come. I think I could probably, at certain points of my life, certainly have often felt that, well, I'm really here because I need to support this whole team. Yeah. And this whole Infrastructure that I've built. You know, you've built this engine, if you will, and over the years you have to keep putting the fuel in and even if that means that during a rough time you don't get a paycheck.

Yeah, totally.

And there's, there's been plenty of time like that. You know, there's this philosophy, hey, always pay yourself first. Well, that works good with, you know, if you have like, I don't know, big and big faceless entities that you have to pay each time that maybe or each month and you can put them off so you can get paid or whatever.

Yeah, that's. There's a difference between paying your company first versus paying suppliers.

Right.

But when it comes to inside the company, I pay myself last.

Of course. So do I. Yeah. And I mean, I pay my employees. You know, you have to make sure they're taken care of because if you don't, they're not going to be there, you know, and that. So, you know, I, I see your point about, you know, wow. I think your company may be much more. May have been more successful if you were like that, but I'm not sure personally you would consider yourself more successful.

That's a very good point.

Yeah.

Would I, would I be comfortable going to sleep every night?

Would I?

You know, we're in the process of setting up a off site. I was telling you this, you know, in the pre show that we're going to get the TMO staff together and, and just hang out for a weekend somewhere and go through some things and we'll, we'll probably have a whiteboard, you know, there, just like you said, because that's a valuable thing.

Right.

You know, we'll do this stuff. But everybody, when I talk to him about this, you know, and I made sure that the date that I want to do it is workable. You know, I had to sort out some logistics with the whole team. Every single person was excited about doing this. That's what they want. That would not be the case if I was that jerk. That's right. I wouldn't be excited either because I wouldn't want to spend a weekend in a house with these people. I'd been a jerk too.

Absolutely not. And to me that is a huge measure of your success.

I agree.

And you know, so it's just, and maybe that's the reason why, you know, with my companies we tend to, to tend to have historically more of a customer relationship inside sales positions versus hardcore cold calling, you know, and, and, and it's probably Just because, you know, I'm, I just, I can't stand cold calling. That's just not my thing.

Yeah, and that's how we do it here too. I mean we're a backbeat's a sales company but, but we're not, we are a customer service company. And yes, we do go out and we do some cold calling. I mean it's part of what we do. But the goal is not to, to just sell that person and forget about them. The goal is to sell them and, and actually do something that's valuable for them so that they, so that we can work with them for you know, a decade. And we have many clients with whom we have worked non stop for 10 years for sure.

Yeah, that's right.

And I'm happy about that. That's great.

Same with us. So I think that's, that's good. But you know, so it's kind of this fine line you, I think have to ride between. Okay, we're going to set these goals, we're going to make them measurable, we're going to make them date specific. Because if you don't do those two things, you know, surely not a goal, you're going to work together to achieve what it is. And now certainly if you have set the goals in a, seems to be attainable and you know, somebody's just not hitting it well, you know, sometimes you just have to be that, that, you know, hard ass, if you will, that, that says look man, you know, you got to do this or I can't. You know, and we've had all kinds of transitions in our business, you know, technically and, and you know, some of the toughest things that I've had to do is try to coach technicians to moving to different platforms. You know, there was a time when we worked on thousands of monitors, printers, you know, anything Apple was in, we were in. And then we shifted to, you know, to laptops. And that was a whole another skill set. But most of the techs were really able to, you know, the vast majority were able to migrate to that no problem. But before we were really a repair company, we were primarily just a refurbishment company. And you had a little more leeway because you were just fixing things for the company and then migrating to a customer focused, customer front facing repair business. You know, there was a lot of fallout where people that didn't have that skill set to talk to a customer, you know, and then, and then going again to a real mobile, you know, model with, with phones and, and iPads and all that kind of stuff. I mean, it, it's very, very tough when these guys go, well, I can't beat my goal because my fingers aren't small enough.

Yeah.

How do you answer that? You know, you sit there and do, oh, no, man. So, you know, you try to figure things out and move guys to do this and all that kind of stuff, but eventually, you know, you have the, you kind of have to be a very, A realist.

You do. Yeah.

And say, you know, and I had guys that would not work. I'm only working on X. And I would say, okay, well, great. Well, okay, well, let's keep going. Let's keep going. But as the market shifts, you know, then you have to go, hey, you know, we don't have X, so unless there's something else you can do, it's time to go home.

Yeah, yeah, I, I, yeah, I'm with you. And we, we can have an episode. Probably should have an episode about both hiring and, and firing people.

It's a great idea.

Yeah. Because it's not, it's not easy. I'm like you. I probably, and I will say this because I feel it's important to say I don't feel this is true about anyone that I currently have working for me, but I have held on to people, in retrospect, longer than I should have, and I've tried to help them stick around. Yeah. And I know that that's not good.

Right.

And when I finally let somebody go, I know that, oh, yeah, gosh, man. Six months ago, I should have done that. Maybe not six months, but two or three months, you know.

Sure.

Yeah.

Well, there is no HR department to send an email to and say, hey, let go of employee number 1495.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It's, it's you. And you have to sit in that room with this person and you know their background and you've been friendly with them and you know about their kids and you know this and you know the situation, and you have to make those decisions that are, that are just unpleasant to, to make.

Yeah, it happens. I mean, we, you and I have both done it. For me, it's the, I mean, without question, it is the least favorite part of my job, and it's probably the hardest part, certainly for me. But let's talk, let's talk about that. Another show.

Yeah, great idea. And, and, you know, I think, you know, our goal today was try to get to the professional development. But, you know, like I said, I think today, not gonna happen. I think we had a great, a great conversation about Setting goals and talking about that, what works for us versus, you know, everybody else. And, and we really would love to hear, you know, your feedback.

Revisit this. I'm going to get my friend Russ in.

Okay.

I work with him on a. I mean, he and I played in a band together for years. He's. He's a fantastic taskmaster, both in the band as well as with. With his business stuff. And he and I are working on a. Another venture separately together now. Yeah. And. And he's great with this. He keeps everything on task and it's. It's great, but it's just weird.

Well, that's good. It's just weird.

It's just weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But.

But it works. I mean, I'm not. I have no problem with the outcome. I even have no problem with the process. It's just not how I would do things by default. But that doesn't make it bad.

No, no, no.

It's very different.

Yeah.

Yeah. It might be very good. And especially if they're. If they're flexible on how it's done, where you can kind of move things around as you move towards that goal, then. I agree. If you have someone, I think that's a. You know, I'd love to have him on to talk to him and. And, you know, give us some more feedback on that.

Yeah. Like I said, he's probably standing right outside the door, which is a good opportunity to wrap up.

Yeah.

Again, dbapodcast.com you can leave comments on the website. We do see those and try to respond to them too. But feedbackbapodcast.com is the place to email us, and Shannon and I both get that. So.

Yep, up.

Thanks for hanging out, folks. And we will see you for LUCKY Episode number 13.

There you go.

Next week.

Have a great weekend, everybody.