Small Business Show Advice and How-to Year in Review – Small Business Show 100

The small business show, episode number 100 for Wednesday, January 4, 2017. Greetings, folks, and welcome. Happy new year. Welcome to episode number 100 of the Small Business show here at businessshow.co. the show by, for and yes, about small business owners. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Concord, California, I'm Shannon Jean. Did you almost say 2016 when you announced the show and you rolled out?

Yeah, I'm not going to lie. I almost.

I would have totally done that.

Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. I think if I didn't say happy new year right before that, like, if I wasn't already in that mode. Definitely. Yeah.

Definitely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, that's awesome. Well, it's certainly great to be at show number 100.

Triple digits, man.

Yeah. We were just talking about this. There's so much great content up on the site and up on itunes and in the Facebook group. That's really good stuff. Not just stuff, most of it, not stuff from us, but interviews and different things that we've rolled into. I've had a great time. I'm really happy to be here at the hundred show.

I know. Yeah. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. We had an interesting episode last week talking through all of our kind of. All our interviews and some of our. Really our interviews, I mean, either with other people or the one that we did with the two of us. And that was fun. But the other thing that we do here is we try to offer some concrete advice from now on, time and again, instead of just kind of blathering on about the philosophy of this, it's like, all right, let's. We're people that get it done. We always talk about execution, so let's talk about some of the execution that we've talked about. How's that? How does that sound?

Yeah, yeah, that's good. Well, and. And, you know, between the two of us, we've got, you know, multiple business experience, starting them up, shutting them down, you know, writing on the way up and also writing on the way down, which can be just as, you know, critically important and much more difficult. And so we spend a lot of time talking about that stuff. So you. One of the most important things, and especially right now, the beginning of the year, is to look back at last year and write up what we call an executive summary. And I think I got used to doing this back. I think it was my banker that wanted me to write up something that he could have that talked about what we got done. Last year, what we achieved as a business, it's almost like your corporate minutes as well. What? If you're a corporation, you need to have minutes every year. Very important. And just, you know, the highs and even the lows of what. What happened in the last 12 months. The other thing it really does is it also allows you to focus on your success. I mean, like, you know, we were talking about last week, Dave, it's. As a small business owner, we often don't have anybody telling us that we're doing a good job. We're. You know, hopefully your customers are telling you that, but you're. You're spending your time telling your employees and doing this kind of thing. But the writing up the executive summary can really, I think, make you feel good about what you got done last year, which is really important.

Yeah, I was. I was actually thinking about this last week. Like, all right, I get to do that soon. Like, I'm looking forward to putting this all together because I get to pat myself on the back. I don't usually stop and look backwards. Right. That's right. As great as it feels to do that, if you spend your entire time resting on your laurels, that's bad, too. You've got to move forward. But in order to move forward, you need that fuel of, I can do this, and I know I can do this. Now, of course, if it's your first business and you have nothing, you can still find things to just pump yourself up. But certainly once you've had some success, I feel like success is one of those things where it can hurt you as much as it can help you in terms of. In your own head. Right. Because you start to say, well, I've had success. Maybe it's time to stop taking risks.

That's very common, too.

Yeah. And that's really a bad idea. So you kind of need that fuel to say, no, look, I took this risk. It paid off. I took this risk. And the point of that success list is the things that paid off. You don't need to make a list of the things that killed you. I mean, you can, and that's its own thing, but it's okay to keep them separate.

Yeah. I actually think of two different things. And we have an episode, episode 73, where we talk about building your success list to help you power through. I think the executive summary, more of if you're in the insurance industry over time or financial planning, you build what's called a book of business or a banker. That's what they refer to it, but your Executive Summary is your book of your business, because each year, and maybe you don't even wait a year, maybe do it every six months, but it's a snapshot of time that is a window into what happened during that time, good and bad, who you hired, what you bought, if you leased, product, equipment, warehousing, whatever it is, this is what happened. And it's a very effective thing to hand to someone that wants to learn about your business. I always write mine as if I will. Definitely could hand it to anybody and they could get a good, you know, get some insight into what we did the last year and what we did the year before and so on and so on. And, you know, mine is usually not a page. If you've listened to the show enough, you know, that, you know, Dave and I like to talk a lot. So, you know, it's definitely a summary of what went on and what worked, what mistakes that we made, what new things we tried, you know, what existing businesses we see they're trending downward and what new business lines or new businesses we are putting in place to replace those. And it has really been a great guidebook for me, and I feel great after I write it. You know, oftentimes it's bloody and you. You know, especially if you had a rough year. But it could be very powerful to go back and read it later on, you know. For sure.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's definitely a. You know, want to listen to that? And I. I got an article in me about that executive summary I'm going to write up and put on the blog here in the next. Next month or so, but.

Oh, sweet.

I think that'd be great.

Oh, that'd be great, man.

Oh, some finer. Some finer points on it just to kind of maybe a template, even if. How to write it out. What works for me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow. Very cool. I look forward to that. Yeah.

And then we spent talking about one of our favorite rockers, the Red Rocker, Sammy Hagar. We kind of stumbled into that show, episode 55, talking about Sammy Hagar and less learning from Sammy to make your customer feel like they're the most important person. And I think you pointed that out, Dave.

He's such a master at that.

Yeah. And he's singing right to you, right?

Yeah, he's singing right to you, but he's also selling tequila right to you. Or rum now. Right to you. Right. He's just this charismatic, and you feel like he cares because at some level, I. I firmly believe at some level, he actually does that, you know, like it? I don't think he's faking all of it, but he draws on that, you know, even if he's not feeling it in the moment. It's like, well, you know what? It's Showtime, and there's 15,000 or even 1,000 or even 15 people out there, and it's showtime. And that's, you know, there's a lesson in that. Okay, it's time. You know, you don't get to be like Axl Rose and decide, I'm gonna wait. Well, Axel doesn't do this anymore. But, yeah, even Axl doesn't get to be like Axl Rose anymore. Right. Where he, you know, he used to wait until he was good and ready to go on stage. Now you go on stage when the clock says it's time, and that's totally true for us as business owners. The phone rings, guess what? Time to be on, Pick it up and go, you know?

Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, we talk about creating your own reality on the show a lot and how it helps you as a business owner, you know, and Sammy does that so well. But not only does he create his own, but he creates it for you while you were at the show. You know, you're at Cabo Wa. It's kind of like the Margaritaville thing, right?

Yeah.

You're relaxed. You're having a great time. You're not thinking about your worries. So, you know, he's wildly successful because he's made that connection with everybody. And so we spent a lot of time talking about how you can use that same concept and philosophy to connect with your customers. That was a fun show, and it was great because we had an agenda, and I don't even think we touched on it. We didn't.

Yeah, it was 55. Time to go. That's right.

Yeah. Those are some of those. Some of the best shows we have.

So all year, Shannon, we keep in touch. We do this show, right, Once a week, and sometimes, as you folks know, we record in advance or whatever, but, you know, we release a show once a week, so we're constantly talking about what are we going to do, not only scheduling. We're pretty good at that. That's sort of an automatic thing for us. But in terms of topics or interviews and who's going to be on when. We keep in touch with each other and as most businesses do, we started with email, and very quickly, because we both have experienced how inefficient email is at regular communication between groups, even a group of just two people. We moved to Slack and episode 57. We talked about using Slack to run your business and we both use Slack not just here, but for pretty much every other business we run. Is that, that's right. Yeah, yeah. Have you talked about moving your family communications to Slack yet?

No. I mean, we've discussed trying to think you and I might have talked about it, but I have not. But I could see that being pretty powerful. I mean, Slack is unbelievably effective at managing all the different, you know, aspects of your life and your businesses. And it breaks everything down into, into channels which are just, you know, basically topics that you need to, you know, to keep things separate. And you know, you can have different folks subscribing to different topics and you can create as many teams and in our case, you know, we, we, we do some for our different aspects of the same business and then we have different, you know, teams for different companies. So it is a phenomenal product. It is free for most small businesses until you run over kind of that 10,000 messages and then they start prompting you, hey, if you'd like to upgrade to get access to the older stuff, the archives.

Yeah, that's really what it is, is you pay for. I mean, there's a couple of things now. They, this year, just recently, they added video chat to Slack.

That's right.

And you can do one on one video chat in the free version. If you want to do group video chat, well, then you pay them, which is fine. I mean, it's. Yeah, you know.

Oh, sure.

It's how it works. We pay for Slack with Backbeat Media because we want access to be able to have guests in our groups. You know, we've got different folks that we work with and we want to be able to pull them in but not just give them access to, you know, to everything we talk about. So, so that's what we do. And we could get around that by having, you know, only talking in private groups and that kind of thing. But it's just, it's, it's not, it's not cheap, but it's not horribly expensive.

Yeah. You can get into it, you know, for nothing. And then as you, as it becomes more valuable to you.

Yeah.

You can definitely, you know, upgrade. It is a phenomenal app. If you have not, you know, used it yet, you need to start.

Yeah.

Even if it's just yourself and keeping notes and then having, you know, as you build your team, getting people in there. It's incredible.

Yeah, I love it. I agree. Yeah, it's Great. It's great. It's fun.

Equally incredible. We talked a lot. Probably as much, actually. Way more actually, than we talked about Slack this last year. We talked about Scott Adams book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. This book was fantastic.

So inspirational. Yeah.

Humorous and funny. Scott Adams is the author of the Dilbert cartoon strip, and he's done it a ton of different things that you probably don't know about. And this book is.

This past year, people paid attention or people heard a lot more about him because he started writing blog posts about the election.

Yes. And that's a whole.

That's a whole separate thing.

Fascinating. Yeah. He went about it on a really different way, which I was impressed with. And it was very good and entertaining, very educational. And the thing about this, what I loved about the book is he really took a contrarian attitude to so many things that are kind of baked into, you know, the way things are and the way things should be. And, you know, one of them was he really doesn't like goals. He thinks that, you know, goals are you kind of hang it out there at the something out there and you. You basically fail, fail, fail until you make your goal, but then you're done, and then you kind of have to, oh, now I got to start back at the bottom. And his concept is to develop systems that help you achieve what you want to achieve all along the way so that you can, you know, make these small bits of progress all along the way and adjust. You know, there's nothing worse than putting a goal out there and then realizing halfway through, well, that's really not what we want, you know, or what I want. And so this is a must read. If you haven't read this book yet, you really need to get a copy. It's a quick read. And I've been sending it out to, you know, colleagues and friends here for the last year that have found it's, you know, very, very useful. It's fantastic.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's so inspirational. And I have found that to be true of most of Scott's books, to be honest, over the years. I mean, I've been reading his stuff. You know, I started reading his Dilbert comic, as many of us did, and then.

Yeah, sure.

And then I picked up a couple of his books. Even like, you know, they were ostensibly comic books, but not like, not comic books. They were essentially humor books, but not really like the Dilbert principle and that kind of stuff. They're funny because he's got just an entertaining way of writing but really informational and inspirational. Great stuff. Yeah, man. Good stuff.

Pick up a copy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Definitely.

Another.

We went and talked about taxes. The IRS show.

We did.

Yep. Yeah, that was. Those are great shows because, you know, we've both had some experience, and, you know, I think that for someone especially, you know, businesses maybe just getting started or even if they've been around for a long time that haven't dealt with the IRS and those kinds of things, there were some good tips in there about not specific tax advice, because we're certainly not, you know, accountants or tax attorneys, all that kind of stuff, but just how to manage those situations. And for me, one of the biggest pieces of advice I think I gave out was if you're having a bad time with somebody on the phone, thank them, hang up and call back later, and try to get a connection to the person who seems friendly. And when you reach that person, and it may take you two or three times to do it, but when you get that person, that's when you want to get their extension. Get their contact as much as you can so you can reach out and connect with them again because you want them and they will advocate for you.

It's generally their job, too. That's some level. I mean, you might reach someone who's not as good at that, as you said, and then you just hang up and start all over.

Yeah, just thank them and hang up.

One piece of advice, because invariably I don't pay attention. I don't pay close enough attention to remember at the beginning of the conversation, as soon as you get on the phone, write down the person's name.

Yeah.

They will tell you, hi, this is, you know, Susan. Okay, great. Write down Susan. That's it. And it can either be, you know, you may need to say down the road, well, when I was on the phone with Susan on, you know, January 4th, well, you know, so and so happened. And at least now you've got something that can be corroborated, if not in terms of the information. Something where. Yes. Well, that, you know, he was on the phone with Susan that day. Okay. But more than that, it's just to help kind of reinforce that human connection. Thank you, Susan. I really appreciate your time. Susan, hey, while we're here, can you help me with this? People like hearing their name. They like knowing they're recognized. I like it. Of course, there's no reason the person on the other end of the phone wouldn't like it. Right?

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the. The other. I think Tip that really came out of that show was it's all about communication. I mean, if you communicate, you know, with the IRS during those process, and especially, you know, if you have help and, you know, accountants helping you or your attorney or if it's, you know, something sticky, but even if you're just dealing with them, direct communication is the key. And if they know you are, you know, being authentic and really trying to figure out the problem, whether you owe money, whether they owe you money, whether, you know they've made a mistake or they. They say you've made a mistake, the more you communicate, the better off it's going to be in. In my experience. And they will work with you to make things right. I mean, there is, you know, it's a horrible letter to get or, you know, and remember, the IRS typically is not going to call you. You're going to get a letter. So usually those phone calls out of the blue from the IRS are not the type of calls you want to take.

Oh, no, any. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Out of the blue. Bad. Yeah.

They're going to send you a letter, they're going to give you phone number, you know, they're going to give you a case number, and it's going to.

Be a real thing, not some scammer from.

From where you got it.

That's right.

Yeah, you got it. And then right about that time, you know, episode 87 is when we talked about. We started our small business support group up on Facebook, and that's, you know, been a place to hang out. We share, you know, links up there and try to, you know, get topics going and answer questions for folks. I think we've got about four or five hundred.

Yeah, we've got quite a few folks there. I feel like we. And when I say we, I mean that actually in two different forms. We meaning you and me, Shannon, but also we meaning the general community. We can do more things to really leverage the benefit of that group. That's true. We need to increase the. I don't want to say traffic, although that's one word, but just increase the amount of conversations that we have there because I know that there are things we all kind of have going on. And so. So making that a place where we can all just kind of bond and, and, and help each other would be a helpful thing.

So, yeah, we built, you know, it's. It's another group of advisors that you can ask questions to. And, you know, we. We had some folks last week asking questions about, hey, what do you send out for end of year gifts or do you. And how do you handle it? And I thought there was some real good feedback there.

There was. That was a great. Yeah, yeah. It was a. That was. Yep. That. That kind of thing. Very helpful. Very, very helpful.

That's right.

And I jumped ahead earlier talking about our success list, but that we certainly did in episode 73. And that's not just an end of year thing. That's something to look back at anytime you need that inspiration.

Yeah. And I wrote a brief article up on BusinessShow Co about just little things. And it's so often, you know, the stuff we overlook, especially when we're powering through every day. But you really need to stop and make a list. And here's what we got done. Here's what I got done. You could do it daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, whatever you want. And I just put some tips up there on the site that work for me. You can find success in anything you do.

We'll link to both of those. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Perfect. Perfect.

Credit cards. Shannon episode 49. But I feel like I could go back to a single digit episode and also find us talking about credit cards. I realize this is our 2016 in review, but rewards cards can get you so much.

You coined a term, I think up here, Dave, where we talk about living a charmed life. And this is one of those things that you really need to work to your advantage to help you live that charmed life with travel and hotels and other rewards that you can get. And. But there's so many different aspects to it. So we spend a show talking about ways to use those types of cards to get more benefit for your life.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And one thing I will point out, the card that at the time, and I believe still currently we both use as our favorite, which is the American Express Starwood cards, either personal or business or if you're smart, both. Both get you access. Free access to Boingo Wi Fi hotspots around the world.

Yes.

I had no idea until I just earlier this year and I know we mentioned it in the show, but wanted to mention it again. I just happened to be looking at my statement. It's like, wait a minute, what's this? And it was right before we went to Europe. It totally paid off.

That's a big deal.

Yeah, it's a huge deal. Yeah, yeah.

That's great. And those, you know, that card, if you travel, especially if you travel with your family, you know, we were in New York for Thanksgiving and we go for the parade all on points. And we were in the hotel, and my son, who's 14 and I'm always trying to, you know, I'm sure he gets tired of it, but trying to talk about money and lessons and this and that and how to hustle and get through things. And I go look behind the door and look at the rate on the door on the hotel, and he just goes up and he says, does that say like, 120? I'm like, no, no, there's another zero. He said, that can't be right, dad. This is $1,200 a day. And I said, well? And he says, well, what do we pay for this? And I was so happy when I could tell him, we don't pay this. We pay nothing. You know, I mean, you pay for it with your purchases, of course, however. And then I followed up, said, if. If we were paying for it, we would not be staying in this hotel room, you know, and you can do that with, you know, the SPG card. There's so many good ways to take advantage of the points and the rewards that they give you. And if you're, you know, running your business and growing. I mean, UPS and FedEx would love to take your credit card for. If you're at a business that does lots of shipping and, you know, I can. You know, there was a time we were booking 100 grand a month in freight bills, all on that card.

Yeah.

And that's how you, you know, you really can build up a lot of points on there that will go, you know, go a long way to building your charm life. Yeah, that's for sure.

Yeah, for sure. No, it's a. I. It's a great thing. Like you said. It's really nice to be able to. To take that and use it personally, of course, you know, because it's like, oh, here's this little benefit. It's not anything. It doesn't show up on a balance sheet.

At least, you know, it's not taxed yet.

Yeah, I know. I know that. I feel like that's coming at some.

Point, but, yeah, you never know.

I know.

I think it really speaks to finding ways that your business can enrich your life in very, very way beyond the check you're getting at the end of the month or whatever it is, whether you're taking a draw or a paycheck or whatever it is. There are so many other benefits that typical W2 earners miss.

Yes.

Whether it's expenses that you can legitimately write off that will enrich your life, whether it's the fantastic people that you get to meet along the way, the travel you get to do, the, you know, credit card stuff. You get me. All this kind of stuff is there for you as a small business owner. And, you know, we love being here along the journey with you and sharing our journey, you know, with you every week.

No, it's fun. It's totally true. The. You got to let that stuff in. That's what I. You know, I've really kind of come to realize that this year, the bad stuff, whatever the bad stuff is, is going to find its way in. That's kind of how it works. Right. The good stuff is the only thing that you can successfully shield out. And that's where you just gotta, you know, people ask me, you know, how do you do it? Well, you gotta let it in. It's like so much of it is literally that simple, and sometimes you get a tug at the string a little bit, but, you know, but that's okay. And, you know, if you're doing a good. If you're doing a good job with your business, people will respect that and they'll kind of want to help you out. I mean, you know, absolutely. I think we talked about it here, but I got the opportunity to tour Abbey Road, Abbey Road Studios this summer with my family, and it, you know, it was such a thrill to be able to share that kind of experience with them.

Yeah.

And. And it was Giles Martin, the son of George Martin, who gave us the tour.

Nice.

And, you know, for my kids, this was like. I was like, magic man, being able to make this happen.

Yeah, of course.

Of course.

We've done the same thing, you know.

Same thing. Yeah.

NFL experiences, you know, with one vendor or another. This, you know, FedEx flew my wife and I out to the Orange bowl and put us up at the Doral for, you know, a week. I mean, all these kinds of great things that would never happen to you if you didn't push and. And take the challenge and go out there and get yourself rolling, you know, that's it.

You just got to kind of get it rolling and. And you can have some really kind of magical experiences. So.

Absolutely.

So that's. I think that's all I got from our. Yeah.

From our house, the first hundred folks.

That's it. That's it. That's right. Yeah. Well, the first 98, to be fair.

There you go.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yes. Y. Yes. So that's great. Good stuff.

So come to BusinessShow Co Facebook and. And just tell us a story. Ask us a question, whatever you want to do, you know, whatever, whatever you feel, just tell us something, post something there. We'd love to get things moving. We're going to do the same thing. We're going to be a little more diligent about that and keeping things moving because it's a good group of people we've got there. And like Shannon said, anytime somebody asks, asks, you know, any question or bring something up, people just flock to it. And there's great advice. It's like, okay, we've got a, we've got to all sort of take advantage of this. I agree of each other. It's good because it's what we got.

Yep, got it.

All right, folks, so we will see you there and next week we'll see you here.

Have a great 2017. Remember, your best years are always ahead of you.

Always.

Sam.