Simplicity Sells and Creates a Cycle of Success

Well, here we are again for small business show 247. It's almost Halloween. Wednesday, October 30th, 2019, my friend.

Yeah, it is. And I'm Shannon Jean coming to you from the West Coast.

Oh, that's right. I'm Dave Hamilton coming to you from the East Coast. You know, so we have a show about simplicity that actually I'm really excited to share, but we're not sure how we're doing these intros. As longtime listeners have probably noticed, we're doing these intros a little bit differently. I have a tip to share that I figured was good for this intro. Just we'll see how we like it. And if you like this stuff, let us know. Feedbackusinessshow.co. but I was talking with a service provider this week, a new partner for us at Mac observer, somebody actually to manage all of what we call our Remnant ads, the things that we don't sell. There's inventory left over, and they have a pretty good offering. They've been courting us actually, for a long time. But, you know, we just recently sort of dug in with them and realized, oh, yeah, they would like a service like this would be a really good thing. And so they gave me their pitch and showed me how it worked. We probably spent, you know, 30, 40 minutes on a video conference call together. And I had met them too. They, you know, I was out on the west coast and met with them while I was out there and that sort of thing. And. And they kind of got to the end of the pitch and it's like, well, this, it. Quite honestly, I think we'd be stupid not to do this. Right? Like, that's the reality of all of this. You know, they have people and systems they've built that are going to actively manage stuff, manage this stuff for us on a, you know, far more frequent basis, like thousands of times more frequent than we would be able to manage it, which would be like once a quarter, you know, like this is. And because it's being actively managed, we're probably going to be able to maximize things. We'll actually be able to show our users less ads and make more money. Right? Like, it's all. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's the thing is it's like, okay. So I asked him, I'm like, you know, you guys probably pitched this to lots of different publishers. Why would someone not choose to work with you? I said, I know at this point in the game, some people definitely walk away. Why? And after I said it, it was like, what a perfect Question to ask. I'm putting this in the arsenal. I'm going to use this anytime I possibly can. Because they gave me an honest answer. They explained, okay, you know, that's a really good question. And. And they, you know, they were honest about the type of business for whom this doesn't necessarily work and why and all of that stuff. And it made perfect sense to me. Now, did they give me the whole answer? Probably not. I mean, I. I wouldn't necessarily, but you can feel out, like, how. What types of people are these? You know, how honest are they going to be? Because, you know, they've had people say, no, everyone in business.

Right. Yeah, of course.

Right. So I just thought it was a question to share. It was a good question to ask. Why would someone not work with you?

You know, that's great.

And you gotta get. You gotta get to a point where they feel like you trust them. You know, like there needs to be that mutual trust. You can't ask that necessarily in the first five minutes that you're talking to somebody about their service, like. Cause they're just gonna get. They're gonna take it the wrong way. Potentially.

Yeah. Like a little defensive.

They'll get a little defensive. Yeah, yeah. Like, it was more like, okay, seems too good to be true, which it quite frankly does. But only because we haven't addressed this problem internally, kind of with the right amount of attention. So it's like, you know, there's. There's a massive upside here, which is great, you know? Yeah. So, yeah. So anyway, I just wanted to share that little nugget, that little tidbit of wisdom.

Yeah, that's what we do here, right? We're trying to share tips and tricks, techniques, and whether they're ours or somebody else's doesn't matter. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't matter.

No, it doesn't matter. We can all learn. Yeah.

Improve the small business. Business ecosystem.

Right, There you go. There you go.

So today we're going to talk about simplicity. And I'm looking forward to it. And I think it ties in well with that story episode we recently did.

Yeah, for sure.

I'm looking forward to chatting about it.

All right, well, here we go. It's like, this is. This is who we are. Does it communicate who you are? Yes. Done. That's your. That's your goal. And that's the thing, is you have to choose the prime directive. Right. What are you trying to say? Say it. Don't worry about anything else. Just say it. And now. Did they get it? Yes. Okay, now you can talk to them more. Now they understand what your business does. Now they can ask you questions. Why are. How are you different from Netflix in your business? Ah, right now I've got you on the hook. Now we can talk. Now we're having a conversation. Yeah.

All right, Dave, I'm excited about doing the show because we're gonna. It's gonna be a really simple show. We're gonna talk all about simplicity.

Oh, it sounds simple. Perfect.

Yeah, it's gonna be good. It's gonna be good.

Sounds easy.

I think it is. It should be very easy. Right. And I think it ties in pretty well with our. Our episode we did last week on Story and how important that is, and we got some great responses from that. And so I thought we. We just talk about simplicity. And, you know, when you read about simplicity, usually I see it kind of wrapped around marketing messages, how simple marketing messages resonate, you know, with our customers, allow you to quickly connect with the customer, promote your brand. I mean, some of the greatest ones, obviously, like, just do it, you know, from Nike, think different from Apple. You know, Verizon had that can you hear me now guy, although he's flipped now, and there's a sprint.

I always thought that was a risky one for Verizon. It's like, you know, because your customers, when we write headlines, right, you never want to ask a yes or no question because your customer might say no.

Yeah. What if they say no?

Yeah, right. Yeah.

But I think Verizon had, if, if I was going to say one thing, they have, and I'm not a Verizon customer, but they have depth of their network, penetrates really well. So I think they must have realized that and said, ok, well, we can lean on this a little bit.

Oh, yeah. I'm sure this was not a, A, you know, something they just pulled out of a hat. Like they, they felt this was a calculated risk. And in fact, here, what we're doing right here goes against simplicity because if you're trying to make a point, you don't want to start making three other points at the same time. Yeah, yeah.

Going off on a tangent.

Yeah. Tangents are bad for simplicity. And when you tell a story, you need, like, the best thing you can do with your stories is choosing what to leave out.

Yeah. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that. There you go. I think that this power of simplicity, though, you know, it goes way beyond marketing. And so a few things I want to talk about today to, I think, help our small businesses succeed. Is there's three areas that I think simplicity is really important. And on the show today, we want to talk about getting started. We want. And customer choice and keeping it simple on the inside. So we're going to start here with when we're getting started. Okay. And I think that the whole concept of your business, especially in the beginning, whether you're launching a new product, a new service, whatever you're getting into, it needs to be simplified, narrow your focus so you can get out the door, get started, and test your concept. You know, this allows you to get up and running quickly and then iterate and make quick changes. And, you know, I think it's really easy to get stuck in this first startup phase. And I believe we all know people that are perpetually just on the edge of success and getting started, adding too many new features to a product. We've talked about this, you know, tons of times on the show. Just one more thing before we can launch.

One more thing that's the same concept, right? I mean, choose what to leave out.

What to leave out. Exactly.

It's the same thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, you know, I have my notes here. You know, spend as much time saying no during the startup phase as you do saying yes.

I would. I would correct that for me, because I'm kind of crazy. I have to say no to more things than I say yes to no.

I agree. But I think what, you know, I always try to wrap this around, this power of yes. I mean, we've done shows on, hey, embrace the possibilities, say yes more. Da, da, da, da. So I always just want to point out, you also have to put as much effort and in your case, maybe more into that no. So you can narrow things down and keep it simple.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah.

And I think that what happens in. And I've seen before, and it's happened to me too, is, you know, it's often fear of the unknown, fear of failure that keeps us kind of introducing new things to keep us from getting started, you know, in our subconsciously.

Oh, for sure. Yeah. You don't. You don't want to. When you release something, you. Well, I see, I always look at. Here I am on the tangent again, but this is what we do here. Yeah. I've always looked at those two things as the same. Right. Fear of failure and fear of success, both of those lead to change. Right. If you ship your product now, you're done building it, you might iterate on it down the road or whatever, but there is a change happening. Failure is of course, another change. And so I think it's the fear of change. That's true. It is at the root of both of those. At least that's true for me. You know, I can only speak. I've only got one brain that I've ever been allowed to be inside. And arguably I'm not even allowed to be inside my own. But I've worked out a lease, so it's all good. But.

And it's true. I mean, I recently published a book up on Amazon about my, you know, experience selling on marketplaces. And I had the whole thing built. I mean, it took a long time to get it through this whole process to push it out to the Kindle app and all this stuff. And, you know, it sat in that app for a few days and I just kept tweaking, tweeting. Finally I was like, you know what? I just have to push the button. To publish was scary, you know, because like, gosh, I'm going to be judged, you know, if. What if I made a mistake? What if. I'm sure I made mistakes? What if. Grammar errors. I know I made grammar errors, but you know what? As you know, he's like, okay, I just have to do it. And, you know, you just get it out there. And. And I think that's when I realized that often just holds us back and you know, along the same side, you have to kind of avoid this perfection trap.

Right.

It comes back to create this minimal viable product. Minimally. Yeah, minimally viable product or service to get started.

Right.

If. If you. If you're just trying to make it perfect, you're going to do it. It's going to take forever. You'll never get it out of the gate because there is no such thing.

No. Well, I mean, you know, there's a phrase that I'm sure I'll butcher, but it's, you know, perfection is the enemy of good. Right. Or good. Good is the. Perfection is the enemy of. Yeah. Good. I guess. I don't know. There's something in there. Yeah.

Yeah.

But, you know, if you're constantly chasing per. Yeah, it's. Perfection's the enemy of good or perfection's the enemy of progress. Right. Is another way to look at it.

Yeah, I think that's probably right.

Yeah. But it. That's the problem is, you know, you can tweak and tweak and tweak and it never, like, you could still be tweaking your book. And I guarantee you, if you go and re. Read it this afternoon, you will find yet Another thing where you'd be like, oh, dang it.

I just did.

Yeah.

I'm creating this course with some of the content, and I pulled out a mall. Oh, I left that out. And, you know, have this. It's just. It's just going to always be that way. And you're always our worst critic.

Yeah.

And we're hardest on ourselves, our inner judge. Right. So it's. It's important to understand that those are tools to help you, you know, get. Be better and create a better product or better service, but don't get overwhelmed with that. And.

And no, it's okay to fail. You know, when I was a. A wee lad and was playing in my first band, and, you know, we're in the basement or whatever, and we're rehearsing. We're like, okay, you know, we. We should play out, but we don't want to book a gig until we're, you know, we know we've got it together. And a friend of ours in a band that was already playing out, I think he was a few years older or whatever, you know, certainly was more experienced. And so we looked up to him, this guy John, and he was like, guys, you got to play out before you're ready. Like that. That you have to make the decision that you will play out before you're ready. It's like, because you will never be ready until you played five gigs. He's like, you need to go figure out what kind of band you are on stage. It doesn't matter what happens here in the rehearsal room.

And it was like, that's. That's a really good. That's a good metaphor.

Yeah.

You know, and I think sometimes, you know, if you're talking about messaging and, you know, with your business, is there a metaphor that you can use to describe what you do? Right. Or some, you know, some example. You know, number one, can you explain your business or what value you're bringing in a sentence or two?

Yeah. What's your elevator pitch?

Yeah. What is it? You know, you want to avoid this word salad, right. And you want to practice it when you're talking to people. So just rolls right off the tongue. And, you know, you might use it an example, like, I've been listening to this podcast called Startup, and it's all about Gimlet, which is a company that produced podcasts.

I know Gimlet.

You know, Gimlet recently bought by Spotify for a couple hundred million dollars. And so there. When. When this guy got started his thing said, oh, I want to be The HBO of podcast. Great. I get it, I get it. You want to build, you know, this kind of thing. So think about that. Is there a, an example, some kind of metaphor that you can use? You want to be the Uber of whatever you want to be. You know, I don't.

The Netflix overused. The Netflix of X has become a thing for subscription services. Like, because.

That's right.

They've got a good one. Yeah, yeah.

So that could help you and that could help describe to people what you do.

Because it's okay to compare yourself to somebody else. Like, I, I had to go through a long time. It was like, oh, yeah, no, it's just, this is, this is who we are. Does it communicate who you are? Yes. Done. That's. That's your goal. And, and that's the thing, is you have to choose the prime directive. Right. What are you trying to say? Say it. Don't worry about anything else. Just say it. And now did they get it? Yes. Okay. Now you can talk to them more. Now they understand what your business does. Now they can ask you questions. Why are you, how are you different from Netflix in your business? Ah, right now I've got you on the hook. Now we can talk. Now we're having a conversation. Yeah, it's okay.

And there's that, that power of association, especially with the giant successful company, right. Like Netflix. So you're, you're instantly associating your small business with, you know, success. And that's what you want to do. You're persuading people all the time. Every time you talk about it, whether it's an investor, a vendor, a customer, your employees, it's. It's all about the pitch. You're really selling. You know, you're selling yourself at dinner this last weekend with some friends. And the woman that we're. One of the women that we were with, very successful salesperson, sells incredibly complicated IT infrastructure stuff. Sure. She says, no, I'm, I, I'm the product. I, I'm, I'm, I sell myself. I'm the product. And that's how she gets. That's how she's so successful, is she makes. She understands that anybody's. All kinds of companies sell this IT stuff and this and connecting and all these things. But she is the product that she presents to her customers and builds that relationship with. And I really thought that was some great, you know, insight. It sounds, it's simple.

I am the product.

I'm the product. And I would say as a small business owner, you're the product, too.

Yeah.

And you're selling yourself all the time. Whether it's like I said to customers, vendors, suppliers, and don't forget your employees, other people that you're trying to persuade to get on this journey with you, to have the same attitude and, you know, embrace this mission that you're creating, you know, your story, if you will.

Right. Yeah.

You're, you're trying to get them on board. So you're constantly talking and, you know, coming up with a simple way to say, here's where we're going. That's not this word salad, you know, five paragraph thing.

No.

It's got, you know, one or two sentences. This is what we're going to achieve. And I think it's powerful. I think it works really well.

Yeah, that's fascinating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am the product. I'm still, I'm still sort of unpacking that. It's so true.

I didn't plan on discussing that, but as I, as we were walking through this and I was talking about this, you know, it just kind of came to me when I was at this dinner and this, this woman, you know, Tanya, that I'm good friends with and she said that and I was just like, wow, man, that is, that's why you're so successful.

That's it. And she knows it. I always say, people, every decision someone makes is an emotional decision. Right. And I get pushback on this all the time. People are like, especially buying decisions, 100% of them are emotional. If you want to argue with me about it, I love discussing this. It doesn't even have to be an argument. Feedbackusiness show co. I would love to go through it, but here's my pitch on this. You know, the, the final moment where you are making that decision to, yes, I'm going to spend my money on this or not. You have to feel good about making that decision. That is an emotional moment. Now you might use spreadsheets to make you feel better. Right. I've done my research. There's numbers to support why this is a good thing. I'm going to, I feel good about this. I'm going to do it. Right. And there might be other reasons. There could be a million reasons, but it could also be, I like the person or people that I'm dealing with. I want to continue dealing with them. So I'm going to make this purchase, you know, and it. 100% of the time it comes down to an emotional thing. If somebody has a great product and they show up at your door and they're a jerk. The way they treat you and all of that stuff. Even if, you know, your spreadsheets and everything else says that's the product you want, you're going to be hesitant and that's emotion and you might have to temper that. And, you know, you've got a, you know, a decision to make, but it's an emotional decision in the end. And knowing that you are the, you are part of, if not all of. You know, in her case, she's not the only product. I mean, she actually has a valuable product that's going to help people, but she is a part of that. And she is the tip of that spear, is the.

Well, she is the value proposition.

Right? That's it exactly.

Because those, especially in this, these massive, you know, projects that she sells into and these things she's involved for municipalities and everything else, it's just numbers, right? They are required by, oh, we have to take them. We get three bids. We have to take the lowest bid.

Right?

But she is the one that goes out and is, is the face of what she's doing. And, you know, to your point about that emotional decision, I really do agree with it. I always tell people, look, I'm personality driven. I could go buy this product or whatever it is. I recently went to a meeting or financial advisor that we use and they're making a transition and bringing in some new people and this kind of thing. And I told the new person, I said, look, I base my decisions here on your personality. I can take my financial stuff elsewhere and it'll do just as good. There's no secret, no mystery. I know what you guys are doing. It's awesome. But I can, you know, I'm with Merrill lynch, but I know I could go to MassMutual or I could go to Fidelity, whatever, You know, there's other. Plenty of things.

Right?

But if, but if you, If I feel like you are vested in my success and we have a good interaction back together and good, you know, our personalities match up, it's going to be great. And, you know, I, I think it's really, it's really important for me. Life's too short, man, to deal with people you don't enjoy hanging out with and talking to. Yeah, it sucks. I don't want to do it. I'm not doing it. No, no.

Well, especially in a scenario like that. There's no reason to, because like you said, there's. This is a valuable service. It is a profitable service for someone to do if they do it well and there. So therefore there's competition in the market. You can pick a different person or company and to go. Yeah.

And most products and services are like that. I mean, really.

Yeah. If it's something that's profitable for the people that are doing it, they will have competition. And, you know, as an aside, it's good to have people that compete with you in your business because it validates what you're doing. Like, that's not a bad thing.

That's true.

It means there's a bigger market to go after. If no one's competing with you, you might have all the customers that exist. That's not so good. Like potentially, unless you're really at the forefront and other people will follow. And that happens sometimes and that's fine. But be self aware enough to identify that. Yeah, yeah.

You either have competition now or you're going to have competition if you're very successful. Right?

Yeah. Or you're going to be out of business. Yeah, it's one of the three. Yeah, that's right.

For sure. All right, so the second part of this, you know, simplicity talk here is to simplify the choices that you give your customers. If you give your customers too many options, I think they, they kind of just shut down and it's, it's too confusing for them. So you want to narrow down those choices that best serve them and your business.

Right.

It's the. We've talked about this, I think, on the show before. If you look at, if you go to a restaurant and look at menus, there's all kinds of tricks that are used on menus to highlight what they want you to order.

Right.

They're pushing you towards the most profitable meal. They sell something that's maybe easier, you know, this kind of thing.

And the specials are often the things that they need to move the fastest too.

Right, of course. So, you know, I think it's. There's some statistic like 60. Most visitors to your website, they come up and they leave like in, in a few seconds. Right. The bounce rate somewhere around 60%. So 60 out of every hundred customers that come to your website to learn about your product, your service, your company, they leave quickly because they can't find what they're looking for. It's not there in, in a simple manner. So you have this short time window here to connect with people and you just don't want to bombard them with too much stuff. You know, using that restaurant, you know, example. Again, you go to some of these places and I won't name any names, but, you know, there's some kind of cheesecake involved. The menu is so big they sell advertising in it.

Oh, I know it's nuts. It's actually kind of brilliant. But it is nuts.

They're obviously successful, but I look, it's like this is nuts, you know, but then on the flip side you look at a restaurant or out here and on the west coast we have In N Out, which is a very well known burger joint, you know, fun place and their men. Yeah, their menu has just a handful of things on. You know, it's burgers, fries and drinks. That's it. And you come up and you're quick and they're just pumping through. You know, it's a billion dollar, multi billion dollar company owned by a, you know, single person, one person and limited menu. Easy choices to make. I would say that's the way to go. You can certainly allow your customers to drill down more for those people that want to learn more. But when you first come up to them, you know, what is the menu of services that you're offering and how can you simplify it to where it's easy to digest quickly?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How can you do it right? That's it. Yeah, yeah. You have to think about and it's so hard. It's hard to do because of the whole forest from the trees, you know, too much. Right. To walk in. But it's also hard to accept that you might. The choices that you made in terms of your website or you know, in this case your menu or whatever are not the best choices and you need to kind of abandon them and make different, you know, choose different options to, to make it work better for your customers. And that can be hard, a hard pill to swallow. Especially the first time once you've gone through it a few times you're like, oh, I can't wait to change it and make it better. You. But you know that a little bit of humility, especially if you know it's a business you've created and you kind of, you know, you sweated through it and it worked. Like that's the worst part is when you know, you're like, well, but that website is the thing that brings me my customers. It's like, yeah, but if you change it, it might bring you three times as many customers. Right.

You don't know it's iterating.

Yeah.

Ab testing.

Yeah.

Trying out new things. I mean, you know, I'm not sure if Jony I've is the one that said it, you know, Apple designer, but it's you know, Design is. Is removing things.

Yeah.

Not necessarily adding things. Right. So what is the, you know, the core thing, the value? Add that for your customers and you may have. You may offer a ton of different things, but what is it when they first come to you or. And they drill down within a particular section if they need service or a certain product, how do you simplify it and get them to click that whatever button you want them to click or action you want them to take?

Yeah, yeah.

And so the last part, which is I'm pretty. I'm a zealot about this, is simplifying internally inside your business. You know, when you keep your policies, your procedures simple, you're not only going to build more customer loyalty because the interaction with your. Everybody at your company is going to be easier, but you're going to create more loyal employees and a better company culture. And the reason I say that, because I've done it both ways. I failed miserably at it when I was younger, when I thought I could be protected by terms and conditions. Hmm.

And what do you mean when you say that?

What I mean is if. If you want to grow, if you want to be successful, you've got to find out how your customers or what the problems are and solve them. And when problems come up after the sale, there is no term and condition that's going to, you know, cause the customer to go, oh, yeah, I clicked that button on your website and on page, you know, 13, it said that if I did this, I'm not going to be able to do this or whatever. It doesn't work. Maybe it works for huge companies that are like, we got 50 million customers.

No, you're totally right. Well, it's not a way to keep customers loyal, and it's not a fun position for an employee to have to be in. It's one thing if it's you, the business owner, and you're like, it's my business, I need to protect it. And this term is here because if I don't have it, I'll be out of business in a week.

I understand that.

That's fine. But when you ask your employees to own that and communicate that to people, that's a very different thing because they very quickly become on the side of the customer, and there should never be two sides. But, you know, in that scenario, there are. And your employees very quickly become like, yeah, I like, I empathize with these people.

Yeah. Because they've been there. We've all been there.

Right.

And you're just like, well, look at this sentence, come on, come on.

Nobody wants to say that. And I've used that against people. Like when I'm dealing with somebody on customer service, I'll say, look, I know this isn't your fault. I know that whoever wrote these policies didn't think about what you have to do right now in this moment. I know this sucks for you too. And I mean, you definitely don't want.

It's a great way to do it.

It's a great way to do it, but you definitely don't want to create a scenario where your soon to be former customers are saying that to your soon to be former employees. You want to set it up so that your employees feel proud to represent your company. Of course.

Yes, of course.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. I get what you.

That's what I'm going with.

That.

And the way we. I'm or I made the shift is I kept seeing as, oh, you know, over. Over kind of ruling those terms and conditions, like, oh, yeah, that's kind of. That kind of sucks for that customer. Oh, let's do this, let's do that. And finally I said, you know what? We're going to fix it. We are going to fix it. And if it's something, you know, where the customer's so unhappy but we keep hearing it, well, then we need to change what we're doing. It's like, oh, this happens over and over again. How do we fix it on the front end so we don't have this problem on the back end? And on the flip side of that, if there's certain customers that just are, you know, they seem, they're so unhappy and you just can't seem doing anything right. Well, maybe that's not your customer. Yeah, you know, maybe, maybe fire. Maybe you need to fire that customer or not. Not go after that type of customer. With our handbag business, we rarely get complaints from people that spend two or $3,000 on a bag versus someone that spends two or 300. You can just look at it. It's just a different type of customer. So we focus our business on that higher end and we have less problems. And I guess in a NutShell, you know, 99% of the time your customers are going to be happy. Everything's going to work great. Do you know those 1% problems? Do you really want to make 99% of your customers go through the hassle of this and see this thing before they buy to solve those problems? I don't think so. I don't think so.

Yeah, probably.

But I certainly, yeah, I mean, but I'm certainly, you know, tell me I'm wrong. I mean, send me, you know, a message feedbackus show co and tell me, oh, hey, this is where, you know, our terms and conditions really saved us and this and that. I understand when things get hot and.

Heavy and I have one scenario where I lean on them heavily, but it is a customer hostile scenario. It's this weird segment of our business where it's like, you want a thing, it should be automated, but it's not. So we're dealing with people on it. It's a weird part of the business, quite frankly. I'm not even going to go into what it is because it's not something. It's like, it's like super advanced. You shouldn't be doing this with your business. But it's actually kind of an interesting sales training tool to deal with people in a way where like, when they ask, it's this very compartmentalized part of our business. And when people ask us like, can I have a discount? It's like our answer is definitively no. Because it's practice for us when our real customers ask us that question. Right. And so with these people, we have like very strict terms and conditions and they will constantly ask to go out to color outside the lines. And we're like, no, you bought this and you read that email and this is all you get. You don't get any more than this. And it's super customer hostile. Like it's, yeah, it's backwards from everything I've ever done. But it's really been valuable for us to kind of see how that works because we're not customer hostile and we will bend, you know, we will bend over backwards for people. It's like, actually, you know, sometimes people are asking just because why shouldn't they ask if they can get a discount? Like, they don't actually need it. It's not necessary for the sale. They're just asking because they're doing their due diligence and learning to kind of suss that stuff out has been very valuable for us. But that's the only scenario in our business where we like firm to terms and conditions. It's, it's this very strange thing that we probably shouldn't be doing anyway. But it, we find this, this sort of, you know, haphazard value out of it, that it's like, okay, if we can compartmentalize it and it's like an hour a week, this is great.

So, yeah, and, and I do, I understand there's outliers and situations, for sure, you're gonna have to do that. And, you know, and I'd be glad to dig down deeper so, you know, let us know. I'd love some other examples of things that really help people, but I still come back to this. You know, your customer service policies should be brief, simple, and easy to convey to both your customers and your employees.

Right.

Because then they're going to embrace them and they're going to feel better. Like we talked about, you know, how they present it to the customer, and both parties, customers and employees, they're going to trust you more. When you have these kind of simple policies of what we do, what we don't do. And it's better to be upfront. I mean, when we were in the, you know, business of repairing, you know, thousands of phones and hundreds of them were coming in the door every single day, there was often times where we would kind of push the phone back across the counter, we would call it. We had this kind of little symbol where you moved your hand across, say, oh, hey, we can't help you with this one, because you, you learn to, to kind of pre qualify the customer up front.

Yeah.

So if they have some crazy expectations that we're going to perform, you know, magic on this thing that's been, you know, dumped in a toilet back then, you know, when phones weren't waterproof. Yeah, waterproof. You know, that kind of thing just not going to happen. Or the, you can't let the customer set the terms. And I'm not saying that, you know, you still have to protect your business and things, but it's, it's all how you go about to do it and how you get things. But I would say it's better to head it off and you look at your, your customers and see how to approach where you're facing, you know, brand or pushing your marketing towards. And maybe that's a different demographic, but overall, you know, my take on things is that by keeping things simple, you get your business up and running faster. If you're at that stage, and that's critically important just to get started, you know, I hear it over and over and over again. You know, people say, oh, we've been working on this for years or this, and, you know, just get out there and get something going that you can see if you can make any money.

Right.

And, you know, then to get out there and get, make more sales, build more customer loyalty, you know, narrow down the choices to really focus on what's going to deliver a great experience to your Customer, then put more cash in your pocket, and then, you know, keep things simple to build a great company culture that your customer is going to have a great experience with, and you'll build this kind of virtuous cycle of success, and you're going to have to constantly iterate on each aspect of that. But you want to build this wheel, and as you test and keep going, you want to see that, okay, we're doing better, things are easier, we're making more money, and if somewhere along the way that stops, you want to be able to identify these simple things and make adjustments and just deal.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I love that concept of pushing the phone back across the counter. Like, what a brilliant.

It works.

Yeah. Wait a minute. We're not the right place for you. You really have the right customer for us, but.

Yes. Yeah, in a good way. It's the. Hey, it's. It's me, not you.

It's me, not you. Yeah, exactly.

It's me. When you're breaking up, you know, hey, it's us, you know, so. Yeah, and you do it in a friendly way. And. And we had a list of people that we would refer to. Oh, go down the street and try these guys. They, you know, they're miracle workers. And. And, you know, so you can kind of get that.

Yeah.

I would love to hear, you know, examples of how you. You have simplified your business. And we'd love to talk about on the show. Feedbackusinessshow.co would be awesome to hear from you.

Yeah, yeah. Please argue with us. It's good. It's good for us.

It is.

No, and it's good for everybody. We love to hear from you folks. We love to be able to interact together. It's. It's what we. It's what we do. And we love to be able to help. And we, you know, it's just, we're a big community here. All of us here at the BusinessShow Co family. So. Yeah, man.

And speaking of help, you want to help us out? Please go, leave us. A review really helps on all these podcast directories. Go to BusinessShow Co Review. And once you've done that, if you own a small business, send us an email. Let us know you left us a reviews, and we're gonna pull some names out of the hat and give away some free advertising on the small business show.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's all we got. Right?

That's it. Thanks for hanging out, Dave.

Yeah, thank you, man. This is. It's always good stuff. I love when we get to get together. So thanks, everybody, for allowing us to make this happen. Keep on living that charmed life, and we will see you next week.