Should You Mix Politics with Your Business?

Business Brain, episode 567 for Wednesday, July 17, National Hot Dog Day 2024. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take a few ide. We dissect them, we analyze them, we cogitate upon them, we use them to tune our business brains every single time we get together. Oh. Our sponsor for this episode is fastmail.com businessbrain. That's where you can go to try them free for 30 days and get 10% off your order. We'll talk more about that in a little bit here on National Hot Dog Day. In Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. That was something a little different about that introduction.

It seemed to me, oh, I played the wrong song.

You know, I didn't know. I thought perhaps it was in honor of National Hot Dog Day, which. Why is that not on the 4th of July? Because that's like the hot dog. You know, that's ridiculous.

But, yeah, so I played the Mac Geek up theme song. Yeah.

Yeah. So we get a. It's like a little bonus. I like. I'm ready for new music.

Oh, we can do new music. We can't. We shouldn't do that song because that's sort of branded with.

No, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good. You got to roll with it.

Oh, we're rolling with it. You know, the funny thing is, I could see that you were like, like, yeah, but. But I'm like, well, maybe. I don't know. Whatever. I'm like. But I'm used to this song, so it doesn't dawn on me that it's wrong.

Yes. Yeah. So, hey, that's so funny, because I've had one of those days, too.

Same. Yeah.

And I. I just. Before we get into our main topic, which I think is timely, you know, how do you. I'm pretty good at this, but sometimes. And what I said to you when I started, like, 95 of my life. It's smooth. And I've spent decades dialing it in.

Yeah.

So it's just like, boom, productive. And I could do this. And this gets in. Everything works. But when that 5% starts to back up, like, through the plumbing, and then something else happens, and there was some plumbing involved in my problem today, so that's why I bring that up. And then something, a small technical thing gets in your way, that starts to. Which is why we got delayed today, because I had this problem I had to solve, and then in the middle of it, I never answer my phone. If you call me, if I don't, if your name doesn't come up.

Right.

I just, I'm not answering my phone. It's just, I, I, I must, I'm sure everybody's this way, right?

I am, I am not. I, I have, I make a, I make it a policy to answer my phone. I'm very efficient at getting people at ending the call. It usually ends with and thank you for your time.

Yeah, right.

Which is a great magic phrase. But I answer my phone because sometimes the phone rings and it's opportunity, it is opportunity.

And I, I, I have a great voicemail, so usually get people to leave messages if it's important for me. But this time I got hooked in by someone who, there's no way they would be watching this. So I can just go nuts on how they were wasting my time and I could not get them off the phone. And I'm literally dealing with the problem, you know, some physical problems and then some digital problems and I'm watching the clock. And that's when I sent you a message. I said, there's absolutely no way. There may have been some cussing involved. There's no way I'm making the one o' clock time start. And this, I blame it all on.

This time vampire that time vampires.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sucked me, sucked the, the, the minutes out of my day. And I'm trying, I can usually manage like, you know, I'm pretty good, I think, at multiple things going on.

Sure.

But I'm chatting with tech support with my, my server host at the same time that I'm trying to solve a literal plumbing backup, well system. And then another small problem and this person, I can't get off the phone all because I answered the phone and I just, it reiterates I'm not answering the phone anymore unless I recognize your number. I'm not doing it.

I really like, I highly recommend incorporating and thank you. And not, I like that. And, and, but the, the, but the trick is you don't, when you know, answer, I say, you know, this is Dave, or hello, you know, whatever, do whatever you want to do.

Yep.

I don't recommend you say this is Dave, unless that is.

No, not going to do it.

Right.

Maybe, maybe, maybe they got the wrong.

Number, our listeners whose name is Dave. Okay, so, yes, right, there's, there's that, but I, I answer the phone and I say thanks, you know, I say hello and they start in with their pitch and I give them, I'll give them 15 seconds to give me their pitch. Right. But this is me being polite.

And if it's a machine, if you know it's a machine, I hang right up.

It's totally fine.

Yeah.

But I let him get their 15 seconds or less. At 15 seconds, I cut in and I say, hey, thank you so much for your. For calling. Now is not the right time for this. It's. And if it is, like, truly, that never will be the right time for it. If I can deduce that from their pitch, I say that. I said I'm. I'm not going to be a good fit. And thank you for your time because that's the end of the call when you thank somebody for their time.

Yeah.

Not always when you've got pushy people. But once I've said, and thank you for your time, I'm hanging it up. We're done. Now I'm hanging it up.

Yeah, so I can't do it because I get too much garbage calls during the day. Now my carrier says scam likely or whatever, which is great.

But yeah, another tip on this. If I'm in the middle of something or not. And I have a feeling that this call might be a problem. What I do is I pick up the phone and I say, oh, hey, Shannon. And I know it's not you.

Yeah.

But that way this person's a little bit off guard. They're like, oh, hey, actually, I'm calling from, you know, Acme Plumbing. And I say, oh, my gosh, thank you for calling. I'm waiting for an important call from Shannon, so I've got to go now. And it ends it. But if they tell me they're super, you know, if it's somebody that I want to talk to.

You're much friendlier than I am, then.

I'm good to go. Well, because I don't know, like, and I get it. I have had life changing moments happen from answering a call that I knew who it was that called me, but I didn't know it was them calling me. Positive, life changing. Yeah, I'm sure I've also had negative life changing moments. But you don't get to. You don't get to control. Here's my other thing. We don't get to control when the bad stuff gets into our lives. That stuff is going to make it in no matter what. The good stuff is the easy stuff to keep out. And so when the good stuff shows up, I want to throw the door wide open. And it's easy enough to get them out. I don't know.

I like the framework I think it's good. But then the question is the reset like you normally, I still know why I picked it up but like I could not get rid of. I shouldn't say that I could not end this call in a. Kept going to. Oh, and one last thing.

No, no, no. And see, I've already, by that point, I've already told them that we're, we're over the time limit that they had. And if I want to hear from somebody, I'll say, this is great. I'm waiting for this call from Shannon, but I can give you 90 seconds. Go.

Crazy thing about this call, it was someone requesting me to do certain things and I said, great, send me an email and I'll make that connection for you. And then they kept going and it was like, man, I don't know, it just really. I think it was normally. Well, I wouldn't have answered the phone normally, but second, because I was juggling two other problems that had become significant and on their own they probably wouldn't have been significant. But I think that's what put me over the top. So anyway, that's my take.

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I really do.

Yeah.

Let me. We did an episode on this a few years ago.

We've done two. Episode 98 and episode 392. Yep.

Okay, great. That's good. So we're about now 560 or whatever time is.

So we're.

That's about right. So like most of us, I have opinions about politics. You know, I'm not afraid to admit it or ashamed to admit it.

Sure.

And like some of us certainly, probably, maybe most of the people listening to the show, I've owned a bunch of companies and there had been times where I felt compelled that maybe we should make some sort of statement. Sure. About a political statement.

Certainly. Like not just personally somewhere, but as a business. You want to make a political statement?

Yeah. When? Especially when, I mean, obviously, you know what, this past weekend we had an assassination attempt of a former president, which despite your politics, I, I certainly believe everyone would agree is a horrific event. It wouldn't matter who it is. Correct. And you know, I was fascinated this weekend and in Sunday and Monday watching the responses and measuring and I too felt compelled, but I did not because we've had these two episodes where I've talked about it and I've been like, you know, I've often think. But ultimately. So let's take like there was a couple of examples that came out and you know, one was a sticker company that came out and made some certain comments.

Okay.

A certain, a certain way. And I was like, that's just not the way to handle it. I didn't think because you're, it's, you know, it's often, especially right now, politics is polarizing. So here you're maybe alienated. Alienating. Half of the country, let's say of that would get angry with you and maybe attracting the other half does. That's like. Yeah, right.

Maybe, Whatever.

Yeah, maybe. Or maybe, you know, I, I don't know. The thing that keeps me from acting on this little. Maybe you should go up there. Is that I, I tell myself this. Nobody cares what I think.

Okay.

Politically, I, I believe people care what I think about a lot of things business related and my experiences and stuff that we talk about here on the show. I, I know that people care about that. And I, and I feel honored that they care and they want to listen to us.

Yes.

Here I. It's an absolute honor. I don't think they want to hear anything political from me at all. I hope they don't.

No.

And so that kept me.

But I felt that awareness. That awareness is huge. Knowing that people aren't interested in that.

And I learned they shouldn't be.

Right. Well, yes. I learned it when we at Macgeek Gab, which is the show I've been running 10 years longer than this one, people started writing into me, thanking us for not including politics, ever, ever even referring to politics in the show. They're like, it's such a breath of fresh air. And I was like, oh, well, you're welcome. This was not intentional up until that point. It wasn't intentional. Since then, of course it has been because we became aware of it. But yes, it was like, oh, look at that people, they have their own opinions.

Yes, I have mine.

But the show. This isn't a politics show.

Correct, Correct.

I'm not. Well, first of all, you're right. Nobody cares what I think about politics.

Yes.

Also, I'm not a PR expert, so if I have a. And you know, saying anything that dances into a polarizing subject is easily misconstrued.

And misinterpreted, it's dangerous.

It's dangerous. Now, I mean, that said, I do a show for Apple users, but. Right. Like there have been times when the Apple vs Windows thing is like huge. Right. But I'm okay with that because I can defend a position on that extremely well. And just in case anybody cares, I personally choose to use Apple devices. I have nothing against the other operating systems and other platforms. They all have their strengths. And I never try to convince anyone to switch. People have actually asked me, why aren't you convincing me to switch?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't need that headache matter.

No, that's right.

Yeah, yeah, but that's it. Like, that's the only realm where I. But it's, it is my area of expertise. Politics is not. So.

And then check. So then, okay, I'm self aware of that and everything. But then I found myself thinking maybe I should post about the fact that I'm not saying anything. Which I was like, wait a minute, that you know why. Right.

But, well, people will interpret their own version of why and still screwed.

You're into it. You're into it. So I, I just, you know, was quiet, but I did not, you know, like, I post every day on X, you know, I'M trying to, you know, grow that business, everything. I didn't post anything because I was like, well, today's probably not the day, at least Sunday, right. To be trying to tell people about, you know, getting good deals and auctions and business and entrepreneurship. I was like, you know, I'll just take it down, chill out today. And. Right.

I think that's. I think that's smart. I. I mean, I don't know, though, because as I, as I've said, I'm not a PR expert.

Me neither.

You know, there were various things, especially like during, like, Covid itself and then the other things that happened during COVID the Black Lives Matter stuff, and various other important things. And my kids were like, you know, you have a, you have a platform, you have a voice. Yeah, you're not saying anything. You're not using your platform. And I said, no, you're right. And I hadn't even thought about it that way because I'm so far away from using my current platform that was not built because of my political opinions. And this is the important part, right?

Yeah, that's it right there.

My platform's built because of my knowledge and expertise and willingness, eagerness to help people with other subject matter. And so I said to my kids, I'm like, you know, people. And we thought about, like, we had a long conversation because it turns out we had a lot of time at the dinner table. And where I landed on it was, people, as always, need an oasis. They need their entertainment. They need to go somewhere where that's not being talked about all the time.

I like it.

And so, so, like, other than we talked about COVID more regularly on this show than on my Mac Geek Gab podcast.

Well, yeah, because it impacted businesses.

Correct. And we talked about it applicable every week on Gig Gab, the show I did for performing musicians. Like, if we didn't, that would have been weird and off topic.

Yes.

Right.

But correct.

You know, just like when we, you know, when Apple announces something, it's like, well, we, we. We're going to talk about this on MacGeek because it's relevant simply because Apple did it. It impacts our world whether it's something that we're interested in or not. You know, so.

Yeah. And for me, I also, it's kind of a new experience and you've probably had, I'm sure, I know you've had this for much longer, but as my, like, followers and fans, whatever you want to call them, have grown now, weird stuff happens. Like if I mention a product on a Post. All of a sudden I get DMs from the company.

Yes.

That says, hey, we can fix that. Or, hey, where did you see that? Or would you like an account that you can play around with and, you know, we'll help you solve that problem. It's a. With great power comes great responsibility.

But that's true. Like, that's the thing. And, you know, I look at my favorite example, and this is the closest I will get to dancing into politics.

Yeah.

Is what J.K. rowling did to her reputation. She. Very popular author. Beloved by pretty much the entire world. Like. Yeah. I don't. Like. Very, very, very popular author of the Harry Potter series. And then she had some. I suppose they could be classified as political beliefs, but they were beliefs just about people in general.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And unrelated to Harry Potter in its entirety. And I'm presuming she. Whatever viewpoint she shared, she had carried all the way through. I don't, I don't think it was a new thing.

No, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

She'd.

The way she framed it.

Yeah.

You know, was you could. You could. But it begs the question. Well, she felt it was important enough.

To use her platform.

Yeah.

To use her spread this message. And it backfired on her. And it was like, nobody wants.

Yeah.

Nobody cares what you think about politics. And perhaps I have something to add to your. Because that's what I mean. You said nobody cares what I think, and I agree with that as well. But perhaps a better way to say it is add on something to that. Nobody cares what I think about politics until I share what I think about politics.

That's it. And I don't, you know, it's like, it's very, you know, I respect the, the position and I love, you know, the interactions with everybody. And I just think it would, you know, muddy the water, if you will, or taint that experience because it's better not to know.

I am perfectly. Even if I know what your political. And I'm not just talking to you, I'm talking to our audience here. Even if I know what your political leanings are, and it happens that they are not exactly in line with mine. And I will say. And this is the most. I'll say I don't think my political leanings align with anyone else other than me. I don't expect them to. And it's okay that they don't. That's part of why I have no interest in sharing them. It's like, I don't want to try to convert you to Windows And I'm not going to do this, so.

Exactly.

I am happy to have you as a listener, regardless of your political opinions or leanings or whether you use Mac or Android. Now, listen, if you use Emacs as a text editor and not vi, we can't talk to each other anymore. That's where I got to draw the line.

Yeah. So it's interesting and I, like I said, I'd love to hear, you know, stories that, you know, comments from other business owners, feedback at BusinessBrain show. Let us know. You know, we. Did you feel compelled to say something this weekend or. Or. Yeah.

Do we have this wrong?

I mean, I'm curious. My take on it is I'm just going to stay quiet because it's not relevant to my audience, but I'd love to hear, you know, let us know what you think and. Yeah, it'll be helpful.

Yeah. Just make sure you. If you're going to email us feedbackusbrain show and if you're using a text editor to do it, use vi, because we're going to filter out everything that comes from Emacs.

I don't even know what that means.

I know, it's awesome. Yep.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We'll see you next time.