Small Business Highs and Lows. Overcoming Adversity and Powering Through Problems – SBS 66

The Small Business show. Episode number 66 for Wednesday, May 11, 2016. Greetings, folks, and welcome to to the small business show at businessshow co. The show by about and for small business owners or people interested in small business here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you, Dave?

It's been half a week.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I should premise that. That, you know, folks, there's no way. I mean, we always spend a few minutes, sometimes more than a few minutes before the show starts, kind of catching up. And, you know, it's always interesting. And sometime we talk about, well, should we just do this on the show? Should we not do it on the show? And sometimes things are a little raw, but we had a good conversation in the last 15, 20 minutes.

It was therapeutic for me. I know. Yeah. We both needed it. Yeah. Things don't always go well in business, folks, is the reality. And that's okay. It's just how it is.

It is, it is. And I made a comment to you when we were talking. One of my faults that I totally recognize is I'm such an optimist. But sometimes, you know. Well, and I've said before, it helps to be somewhat delusional in small business because you can kind of create your own reality.

Right. Well, it's true. You have to be that way.

Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think so. But it's also, you know, when you have adversity and sometimes you don't want to talk about it. At least speaking in my own case, I don't want to talk about it because I'm so focused on being positive and powering through everything. So it is nice to be able to talk about it, bring it up. And I thought we would, you know, we would just chat a little bit today about adversity and, you know, powering through it.

Yeah. All right, well, you. You want to start? Which one of us is going to lay on the couch first?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, you know, as we chatted about, you know, one of my companies, we do a lot of tech stuff and. And, you know, sometimes we need some, you know, we build new pieces of equipment and things like that. And we've just gone through a massive rebuild of a part of our facility. Tremendous amount of effort, not a small expense and manpower. Got this. This area, this facility just completely dialed in to do what we needed it to do. And literally three days later, a pipe burst, a water pipe burst in the floor in the conc. And actually, it may have been burst. It must have been burst, you know, busted open. Could have been a week before. But it finally, the water started coming through the floor, percolating up through the concrete, flooding everything you could imagine. And I went. I just happened to go down on Saturday to see how the build was coming out. And as I walked into the store or into the room, I heard a splash. And I looked down and I uttered some words that we don't typically utter on the show, but I was like, what is going on? And I could see this water coming out. So we had got an emergency crew down there and literally spent the next few hours completely taking apart what we had spent weeks building. And the challenge is it's since been fixed, and we've been battling back and forth, but I can see, you know, the group of guys in our team that has built this facility, you know, really dragging this week after that happened, me included.

It's dejecting.

Oh, yeah, it is dejecting. And you have to. You know, I'm always trying to power through and be positive, and I often find it's great. Or usually what happens is it's not the whole group at once that gets down.

Sure.

It's, you know, one or the other. And there's always some, hey, we'll get through it. We'll power through it. Usually me, you know, or my, you know, guy, one of our leaders that does it, trying to get everybody going. But today, before I left, I said, man, everybody's. I'm not sure a box of donuts is going to cheer everybody up. And that's when I got here, you know, and I love the show, and I love coming on the show because it pulls me out of. Sure. You know, being so in and everything. But I was just thinking, it's like, how am I going to be positive and on this show when it's just like I, you know, all the long faces and everything. So it happens, man. It does happen. It does happen. And I think the. The. The takeaway for me is having a peer or someone, you know, like Dave, Like, I consider you. Where we can talk, commiserate with one another and, you know, you're not looking for a solution.

Nope.

Necessarily.

No. I mean, if. So listen, if I. If. If you vent to me and I happen to have it, or vice versa.

Awesome. Yeah.

Freaking awesome. Yeah.

Yes. But.

But you're not expecting that. No.

Yeah, but you can. You feel like you can talk with someone and, you know, we talked about peer groups recently and getting together with. Whether it's a Formal organization or informal or just your buddy. And I think it's very, very helpful. I already feel better. So when I go back to the office after the show today, who knows what I'll bring? Maybe I'll bring beer.

I was just going to say, yeah, you might want more alcohol than most donuts provide.

Yeah, that's right. And so just to try to pump everybody up and again, remind them, hey, we'll power through this. Worse things have happened and get back to putting things together.

We all still have jobs. You know it. Yes, this totally sucks. And you know, a year from now, even six months from now, you're gonna laugh about this.

Yes, that's right.

You know, and that, that actually, I think it's that mentality that as a business owner sort of helps you power through is you've. Especially once you've been through any kind of, you know, dejecting situation. And they will vary in their intensity. Right?

Yeah, this one's.

This one pretty bad. But it's not the worst, right? You know it's not. And you know that. Well, I know that six months from now we are going to laugh about this in one way or another. I mean, we. Yeah, I don't think this particular one, but just, I'm saying in a general shirt, you might be laughing that, wow, that was really the beginning of the end, wasn't it? You know, you never know. The business never recovered after that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But you, you know that you can do that too, right? And so, you know, you kind of. For me, I have to sort of process to the. The worst possible outcome and say, okay, that's the worst. And maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm not envisioning the absolute worst, but in my mind, that's the thing I go to. So let's just pretend for 10 seconds that that's where we're. That's where we're headed. Okay, fine. We'll figure it out when we get there. But right now we're not there. And then it's easier for me to sort of rewind into the present and say, okay, I got a little perspective on this. Let's. Let's move forward.

Yeah. I think perspective is keeping your sanity while these things are going on. Recognizing that, yes, it's going to be a negative thing and not again, do what I've been known to do is just try to gloss over those things to power through, but sometimes you just can't.

Yeah. Well, and that glossing over, I think it can seem like you're glossing over, even to yourself. Right. But you know what's going to happen? You're just going to, you're going to get the problem fixed and then you're going to fix whatever else you need to fix. And then there's a zillion other things that are totally unrelated that you're going to fix and you're going to move forward.

That's right.

Right.

So that's moving forward is the key.

Right?

Yeah. Action. Action is what, is what solves most problems.

It is, yeah. You know, this, this, this and some other events that have been going on this week that we're not, that I'm not going to get into. But this reminded me of the very first. And I've only filed. Well, as of this moment in time, I think I've only filed three lawsuits. It may only be two. I can't remember if we actually filed on the third one. But yeah, I don't enjoy them. I actually do enjoy the law. But lawsuits are no fun. I mean, there's aspects of them, frankly that I do find fun because I enjoy the law. And if you can get justice, which I've always gotten, which is good, then that's really fun. But it's never. But the process getting there is never full of fun. There's always, you know, sort of difficult times. But I was reminded of the first lawsuit that I had to file and all of them have been business related and it's just been dealing with, you know, partners like, like businesses that are partners or people that are partners or that kind of thing. And just it's dealing with people that I always say it's, you know, attorneys make their money off of unreasonable people. And I say that totally self aware that you could take a look at any one of these scenarios and say I'm being the unreasonable person. Thankfully, thus far the judges haven't have not deemed it that. But it's bound to happen at some point. But the first one, we had partnered with a company early, early on in one of our businesses to develop a piece of software. They needed it. They were going to market this piece of software and we needed it internal to the business. And so we made this very quick deal where they said, fine, we'll give you a lifetime unlimited license to the software if you help us develop it. And this was going to be something that we're going to sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was like awesome. I couldn't afford hundreds of thousands of dollars at the time. You know, it was a total win, win. And we Worked together for, like, two years on this thing, really perfecting it and using it, and we still use it in our business to this day. And then a new operations guy was put in charge at this company, and, you know, all of a sudden, nobody took my calls anymore.

No. No continuity.

Yeah. And even though it wasn't like he replaced someone, although he did. He replaced the founder of the company, who was sort of moving up and eventually out, actually. The guy passed away, unfortunately. But, yeah, I mean, it had nothing to do with any of this, of course. Obviously.

Yeah, yeah.

But. But, you know, so he was bringing someone in to replace himself, and this, you know, kind of like, okay, well, the founder was a nice guy, and maybe too nice. And so we got to draw the line, and we got to run this like a business, and we got to tighten up this ship. And ours was one of the things that he saw as too loose. And. And he said to me, you know, I. I called many people there, and they're like, we can't talk to you. We've been told not to talk to you. Told not to. Okay. Whoa. All right. Wow. Yeah. Whoa. Oh, like crap.

Not a good sign.

No, I didn't have, like, a contract with him, but I did have an email. And the email. And then we had years of performance that both companies had, you know, had done based on this email. So the email is enough as a. As an aside for folks, you know, an email agreement, especially any agreement, email, whatever, with performance by both sides that cements the agreement is. Is how that works in the court. In most court size, obviously. You know, I'm not sure. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't guarantee in every. Every case, but, you know, in this one. So I went back and found this email. Thank. I saved everything, and I showed it to him. And I'm like, well, here's the thing. And he's like, well, it's just an email. You don't have a contract. Like, well, and I didn't know about this whole performance clause or anything, and I'm just trying to appeal to his good reason and, you know, his goodwill, and there was no having it. And I, you know, I felt like I was, like, being backed further and further into a corner. And I did have a business partner at the time. I've since bought him out. But, you know, we were partners in the business, and it was just the two of us. And, you know, I mean, he and I were talking about it, so I had him in my corner, but it started to, you know, and this was. But this was sort of my thing, you know, he was doing other parts of the business, which is a good way to chop things up when you have partners. And so he was just like, well, you know, tell me what you need. This sucks. But, you know, we gotta make. We gotta figure it out, man. Like. Yeah, I know. I know. So I felt all this pressure on me, and I felt like I had no one on my side, you know, because all the people that I knew that were involved in this suddenly were either detached or aligning with this guy. Most of them were detached, to be honest, because they were like, this isn't cool. But we can't say that it isn't cool because we work for that guy now, you know, and. Right. And so I didn't. I literally didn't know what to do. But I remember the feeling. And it's the same feeling I've had before as I've gotten to the point where I filed, you know, the other two lawsuits since then. And I'll never forget I had this feeling. And I'm just. I can envision exactly where I was. I mean, it's so burned into my memory. And I'll never forget the guy said to me on the phone, well, I said, you gotta. You gotta honor this deal. You know, I was just like.

It was trying to be reasonable.

Yeah. But it was a Hail Mary. I mean, I'd said this to him many times. It was insanity to think that I would change his mind on this particular phone call. Right. But it was like, I don't know what to do. And I even said to him. I said. I think I even said, I don't know what to do. And he's like, well, it's a free country. Sue me. And it was like a lightning bolt hit me. I was like, oh, okay. Right. You can do that.

Yeah.

And it just. I mean, it was as though I'd been given permission to do the unfathomable. You know, it was like, this was not a thing that you did. Except, you know, what else? What else?

You're backed against the wall.

I was backed against the wall. So I did. I. You know, I reached out to an attorney. I mean, we had an attorney that kind of took care of our corporate books, but that. That wasn't the right guy. But I had. I had had friends who were attorneys. And I reached out to this guy, and he's like, yeah. You know, and I explained everything, and he's like, it sounds like you got a pretty good case here. I'm like, oh, what's it going to cost me? And he told me a number, and I had to pick myself up off the floor. And, you know, all of that. Yeah. Because you're going to spend some money. You might get it back.

Yeah, sure.

But you only get it back if you win, you know, because I found in that one, we got what we wanted. I felt like justice was served. But we settled before it went to a judge. And a judge basically told us, if you can't figure this out on your own, I'll figure it out for you.

Yeah, well, I think. I think so.

We paid our attorney's fees, but then. Then we got everything else, so.

Yeah, well, that's good. And I think an important part, you know, when you're dealing with things because, you know, oftentimes you may get angry enough to be like, oh, you know, we've got to sue this guy, or whatever, but it does need to be your last resort.

Yes.

Because it can be, number one, expensive. But also, you know, just your time. The. The time suck away from your business is. Is Dr. Is dramatic, and it can have dramatic impact on the performance of your company.

Yes.

And I think a good attorney will spend a lot of time trying to dissuade you or at least pointing out, you know, the pros and cons of what versus, hey, go back and let's hit this guy again with something else.

Right, right.

And as a younger person, I never wanted to hear that.

No, you don't want to hear it. No. But you have to listen to your attorney. I mean, you have to. You know, and you need somebody that's going to call you out on your bs. I mean, you're. The whole reason you're talking to them is like, well, that what they're doing isn't fair and it isn't right. But you have to not only be willing to listen to them when they tell you, okay, but here's the things you did. Let's look at this the other way. And it's their job to do that. Not only do you have to do that, but you have to be honest with them about everything that you did. You can't cherry everything.

That's right.

Because the other side knows.

Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah. You never want to hide anything from them. You have to be completely open and transparent so they can say, oh, well, you screwed up right here, or, oh, this could be a good case. And I would argue that if, you know, if you're talking to an attorney that's just Hot to file a lawsuit that may not be. You may want to get a second opinion.

Because that's a good point. Yeah.

You know, even though, like I said, the 25 year old version of myself was never happy hearing that. Well, look, this is what could happen, Shannon, and this is what it's going to cost you. And I'm willing to do, you know, whatever you, whatever you advise me to do, but I think that you may want to go back and put some more effort into resolving this issue or walk away from this issue because you're going to spend more money. The problem with, with lawsuits, unless it's a significant amount of money or something that has some significant value, the, the return on investment, you know, ratio is, is, can be lousy.

Oh, it's terrible. It can be terrible. Yeah. I am a person that seeks justice.

Yes.

And I am fully aware of the risk of that, but I think, you know, in looking at my track record, it's, it. Well, I can tell you I've only sought justice on things that aligned with the law. So. Yeah, you know, so. And I remember my attorney, in fact, the attorney that handled a bunch of these things for me is now retired. And while he was sitting in his villa in, in Italy enjoying his, his anniversary with his wife, he did text me recently, we were talking about something else. And, and he said, you know, I'm not sorry your attorney retired. He said, because I'm happy, you know, where I am. He said, but I always enjoyed working on, on your cases. He said, because you had this uncanny ability to bring me things that actually would win. He said, nobody else. He said everybody else just, you know, was unreasonable. He says, I'm not saying you were always reason there was merit to the cases that you brought me. It's like, well, yeah, why am I going to spend my money on something that I don't think is a winner? Yeah, I want justice 100% of the time. But you have to temper that with is this worth my time and my money time first.

That's right. That's right. And it sounds like you have a good filter where you evidently, you know. Yeah, yeah. Filter down enough to where you're like, okay, you know, this one we may have to do something on.

We got a punt on this or not. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But you do need to listen to your attorney. So anyway, that, that's, that of my story is learning to identify kind of that signal in yourself when you feel like, okay, whoa, this is new for me or this is unique for me or Rare for me. I'm against the wall right now. Reach out, find someone that can be your counsel. And yes, you might have to pay them, but you need that person at that point because otherwise you're going to make a bad decision.

That's right. And we've talked a ton. Ton. You know, grab a show and you'll find us referencing a number of ways to get outside advice, whether it's, you know, having a partner, the score mentors, you know, the Society of Retired Executives, or your quasi board of directors that we've discussed, you know, ad nauseam. And, you know, we just came across a new way to get some advice that will cost you a little bit of money, but might be an interesting way to get some instant advice. And I thought we'd talk about it today. That. That is a company called Clarity, and their website is Clarity fm. And basically what these folks are, you know, well, there's two sides of this. As a business owner, you can go up there and there are specialists, if you will, that have some experience. You can read about what their experience is. And, and you can have these people call you. There's a price per minute charge. Yeah. And starting at every, anywhere from a dollar a minute to. All the way up to, you know, Mark Cuban from Shark Tank is listed up there. Of course, of course he is at $167aminute for him. But, but, but he'll call you back. And, and it's, it's a fascinating concept. And I spent some time, you know, I went ahead and signed up just to go through that process, see what it was like. It's pretty straightforward. And they actually pitch you both sides of things. Because if you're a business owner, have had some experience, or you specialize in.

Something like, oh, they want you to be a service provider.

Yeah, exactly. So you can sign up and use your expertise to share with others and maybe generate some revenue. There's all kinds of ways. There's a number of sites out there that have reviewed Clarity and talked about ways to kind of build your audience, if you will, if you want to be a consultant. And it's a pretty interesting way to get some quick advice, especially if you just want someone to get right back with you on a specific area, whether it's something like email marketing or how to sell into the healthcare markets, how to do crowdfunding. I mean, if you go up there onto Clarity, you'll see there's a tremendous amount of, a tremendous number of people up there pitching their services to help you out. And you know, I would suggest it's, it's definitely worth a, worth a visit.

Huh. That's a pretty interesting thing.

It is, it is. And I don't know, you know, they were purchased a while ago by Startups Co, which is kind of an aggregator, it looks like. Sure. And they're buying up some of these sites. Looks like they just did another acquisition of a company called Zana Startup University for entrepreneurs. You know, and some of this, you know, some of these are, are for, you know, startups, and a lot of them, you know, just for small business owners that, you know, if there's a difference there, that need help with certain things, whether it's search engine optimization, how to raise money, all kinds of stuff, how to connect with journalists.

Yeah, this could be a good way. You know, I mean there's, there's several levels of hiring or purchasing expertise. One is, you know, hiring a full time employee to do it for you. Right. One is finding a contractor or someone you can hire part time. And then there's hiring a service to do it for you, which, you know, for some things works and some things doesn't. And that's true of all of these things. And, and then there's this, which is sort of the, you know, no commitment. We're just gonna, we're just gonna go on one date and, and that's the end of it kind of, you know, vi. But it could, it could be a, a no commitment way of finding out. Do I, you know, would I get value out of, like you said, someone to help me with my SEO for my business?

You know, and.

Because in 10 minutes you, you actually could, you know, you're on the phone with somebody for 10 minutes, it's a long time. That's a long time. Right. You know, I, and I've learned how long that is doing these shows. Occasionally Shannon and I will be on a topic and we'll, one of us will say to the other, we've been on this for a while. Hey man, you know, go another 90 seconds, maybe two minutes. And the first time you see that, it's like, oh, I gotta wrap up right away. No, I've been on this tangent for only about 20 seconds, right? So, you know, it's a long time. 10 minutes. You know, in 10 minutes, if this phone call is valuable, because if you're still on at the 10 minute mark, it's valuable, if not, you're gonna hang up.

That's right. And there's some, you know, what you do is you kind of, you draft an email to Whoever you'd like to have call you. So you give them some backst. And, you know, they give you lots of good cues and suggestions and kind of narrowing your focus. Hey, I want to, I need help with this, or I have this situation or this problem that I need help solving so that this person that gets it, you know, they can, they can help focus the conversation so that 10 or 15 minutes can be a valuable, you know. Yeah.

So you're not spending the first 90 seconds explaining.

Yeah.

The stuff.

Tell me about your problem. Yeah, no, you want to go. So, you know, and I would say most of these folks that. And they're all user reviewed, so you can go up and read past reviews from other folks that have used their service. And some have a lot of reviews and some have few, but a lot of them sit right in the two to three to four dollars a minute. And I've been looking at this and I would imagine that it's actually a way that a number of these people up here that are advertising their consulting service by the minute connect with customers for a much longer time period.

Sure, yeah. Well, you, yeah, you negotiate something longer term.

Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, let's say you're talking to someone about, you know, lead generation or SEO and have that 10, 15 minute conversation with them. And then I'm sure it's like, hey, you know, I'd be glad to help you out and you know, continue the conversation or something off, you know, maybe off the platform. I don't know how they do that.

Yeah. I don't know what the, right, what.

The, what their deal is, exclusivity is or whatever.

Yeah, yeah.

If they're dead. But it's fascinating if anyone has used Clarity before or if you advertise on Clarity as a consultant. We would love to hear from you@feedbackusinessshow.co. and what other ways can they get ahold of us, Dave?

Well, I was just gonna say that's not the only way. We promised you last week that we would come with a phone number and we have it. It's 401-4724, Biz B I Z. Right. So that's 401-472-4249. And you can call that number, obviously with your phone and leave us a message and we will get it and probably play it on the show if it's, if it's appropriate to do so. If not, you know, that's fine too. But you can also text that number if you, if you have something quick that you want to talk to us about. So that's again, 401-4724, biz, which is 400-101-472-4249. Lots of fours, but that's lots of fours, man.

Yeah. That's good. That's a powerful number.

It is today. That's right. Yeah.

That's awesome. That's good. Well, you know, we have a lot of other stuff to talk about. I don't know whether we have enough time today to jump into my next topic, which was the Facebook advertising and boosted post and things, but we might want to leave it here and continue with that under next episode, I think.

Yeah, I mean, let's tease it a little bit, which I think we have. You know, Go ahead.

Well, we're talking about, you know, Facebook ads, different flavors, boosted posts, promoted posts, advertising in the sidebar, and, you know, what works best for your particular business and how to get some additional help from Facebook, either online or local in your area. We've got some information on that to talk about.

I will share one little teaser for next week. You know that a lot of people complain about Facebook and that you shouldn't have to pay to have your businesses or pages posts promoted. That's great, because for all of those people that say that they don't want to do that, it means they're not doing that, and the price that you'll pay is less. So we can help you.

Good stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah. Awesome.

Folks. We already told you how to find us, but we'll say it again. Feedbackusinessshow. Co and of course, our number, 401-472-4249. We'd love to hear from you, and if there's another angle that you'd like us to open up, let us know. It's all good. Shannon, you got anything else?

Nope. Here's to the better rest of the week.

It can only get better from here. I hope that's it, man. Right on.

Talk soon, everybody.

We'll talk soon. Yep. Sam.