Successful Meeting Strategies

The Small business show episode 294 for Wednesday, September 16, 2020. It's time to small business folks, greetings and welcome to the Small Business show. The show by and for small business owners about small business because it's time to small business here in Durham, New Hampshire.

I'm Dave Hamilton and out on the smoky west coast still, I'm Shannon Jean. Although today we saw a little bit of blue sky, which was like a miracle.

Wow.

So that's good to hear.

I'm glad to hear that.

It is, it is good to hear. I'm impressed. So. And I'm good. I'm happy to be here. Speaking of hearing.

Yeah, we got, we got two, two sponsors this week. We have Leno.com SBS is where you'll go and, and direct mail. Mac.com is slash SBS. Sorry, directmailmac.com SBS we'll talk about the of those down the road, but, but if you just want to visit right.

Out of the gate. Yeah, yeah, I love getting those new sponsors. It's, it's, it's kind of a great feedback loop to like, hey, you guys are doing something right. Which we were just talking about before the show.

Well, speaking of feedback loops, you can always contact us folks. Feedbackus show co. That is when we would love to hear from you. No matter what it is. Send us a note, we'll love you forever. We mean that like it's sincere. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Tell us what works, what you like, help us make the show better. Do you like, you know, us chatting on topics and ideas like last week where we talked about attracting and amplifying luck. I got some great feedback on LinkedIn from that. Yep. If you don't follow me on LinkedIn, you should be just go up there and search for my name. S H A N N O N J E A N and you should be following Dave as well. We post lots of stuff and then we share a lot of good content up there as well. Not just our own stuff.

Right.

You can only take so much of that.

So it's true.

It's a good, yeah, it's a good network. And you want to connect with us because we have a pretty broad network of other small business owners. Pretty much everybody that we've had on this show in the last five years, we're connected to up on LinkedIn. And you want to be connected to those people too. Trust me. You want to build that network out before you need a resource that maybe one of those folks could help you with or to solve a problem. You Might have that back. That, that history. You don't want to connect with somebody and ask them for something right away, either to, like, buy something from me or, you know, that's the worst. I get those LinkedIn things hit up all the time. We connect and immediately try to sell me a service. I don't even know who you are.

You know, I hate that. So we all, we all hate that. But when it's. Yeah, you're totally right. If it's somebody, even if I'm. Because I'll, I'll. I'm not overly picky on LinkedIn. If you are someone that is. That tells me, for $5, I can put your podcast at number one in Apple's listings. Then I delete your request. Pretty much every other request I, I accept. And you're right. There's a psychology to it here. If I accept your request and you. And there's like, immediately, hey, thank you for accepting my request. Here. Here's my pitch to you. No, like, I usually ignore those. I mean, I might. Yeah.

I have a text expander snippet that I deal with us.

You're very nice to reply to them. I don't.

I just give them a boom, boom. Because I want to stay connected. Because you just never know where it's going to go.

You're right.

But, yeah, I, I also tell them, hey, just a tip, you know, the first engagement shouldn't be trying to sell me something.

Right. Right. Well, but even if the first engagement is that don't make it an immediate engagement. Right. Like, if I'm connected to somebody and I've been connected to them for a year and now they come in and that's fine. Hey, man. Yes, but, but there's like, really, though? There's no difference except for the level of sincerity. Right. But is it sincere if, if they. Because I've done this to people, too, where I search somebod out, like, I might need something from that cat someday. So I'm going to connect with that person.

Correct.

And then when I need something, we're already connected, so it doesn't seem so opportunistic, but it really is that I'm just being aggressively opportunistic.

That is. Okay. And because the way when I go to connect with someone, I always say, hey, I read your profile. Looks really interesting. Let me know if there's anything I can ever do for you.

Right.

And then I stop.

Of course, yes.

And then, you know, nine times out of ten, they don't respond, but somebody does go, hey, cool. I Heard you on the show or I listened, you know, da, da, da. And, and so it's, it works out really well.

That's smart, man.

And yeah, yeah, it, it just being.

A good networker is a good thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is.

It is. So. But hey, this week we're not talking about networking. We've done shows on networking, I'm sure. Right? Yeah, yeah. We're talking about meetings. Right.

Well, meeting strategies, you know, strategies.

We are all.

I think we're probably having more formally scheduled meetings now than we did in the past. Now, I mean, I say that and the we I truly mean as the broad we. All of us. My world in terms of business. I mean, I work in literally the same place that I did before, you know, the pandemic and everything. Me too. But it seems like I'm doing a whole lot more zoom meetings and just, you know, those types of things than I ever have. And it makes sense. You know, we're not going to conferences, we're not going to trade shows, and we're not getting together. So, so there is this sort of intentional, let's have meetings. But yes, regardless of all of that, meetings are things that happen now. We want to talk about some things to make our meetings more productive. And hopefully you, you can take some of these tips and make your meetings more productive. First and foremost, I, I don't like meetings. I need a l. You know, like, I find them, I mean, they are usually wastes of time and I don't be. Certainly, yeah, they can be. It's like if you're not careful, they, they, they almost will default to being that because it, you know, people think, well, I attended a meeting, therefore I was productive. And you can't really necessarily change that mindset by telling people that that mindset needs to change. You just need to change the way that your meetings are. So, but you know, as we were going through this list, I think one of the, one of the first questions you had was, you know, do you. Yeah, because, you know, and I will add to that with whom? You know, don't just assemble the whole group because two or three of the six people in your group need to meet. You know, I always think of meetings as what is it costing me in man hours? Right. So If I bring five people into a meeting and it's a 15 minute meeting, well, you know, I just wasted an hour and a quarter worth of time, or I spent an hour and a quarter worth of time, hopefully I didn't waste it, you know, but if there were Three people there that didn't need to be there for those 15 minutes. Don't have them there. You know, we talk about spotlighting and, and the, the cost of changing focus while a meeting completely disrupts your day. I mean, it's, that's how it's. I mean, it's sort of how it works. You're supposed to disrupt your focus and be focusing on the meeting. Hopefully you are not. Not just checking email in the background. But.

Yeah, well, that, that's a kind of. As a. Along a similar vein to that on, you know, who should be meeting, I think you should ask yourself, do you need to be there?

Yes.

As the business owner, as the founder. Because you being there changes the dynamic of any meeting. Right. And sometimes in a good way, which is great, but sometimes maybe not. And so I think you need to ask. And maybe you ask people, like, if you're working your way up to a meeting, your things are getting talked about, you got to get updates. I think it's a very good thing to ask. Hey, do I need to be there? Yeah. Or can somebody send me an email with a quick synopsis when we're done? I think people like that, your employees will like that in some way sometimes. Like, oh, no, no, we need you there because we want to talk about this or whatever. But I've often, once I realized I really didn't like meetings because maybe I wasn't very good at it. You know, I would always ask, okay, do you need me to. Do you need to have me there?

Yeah.

Something to ask.

That's a good point.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I also think it's the. One of the first things you do, maybe even before the meeting or certainly as the meeting starts. What's the purpose of the meeting?

Right.

Why are we.

Why are we meeting? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, and, you know, laying it out there, it's like, okay, does everybody understand the purpose why we're here? You know, not just, I guess, unless it's which I, you know, one of those, like, all hand or Monday. You know, I'm not just not a fan of those.

Yeah. We have with, with, you know, with Mac observer and Backbeat, we've experimented with, with standing meetings. Right. It's a, you know, every time of either every day or a certain day, we all get together. And with Mac observer, we still do this each day. And it is a good thing to get the team together.

That's good.

And talk about whatever's going on. I mean, you know, we are publishing news. We are publishing Stuff. And there are things.

There's an immediacy to it, right?

There's an immediacy. Yes. There is always something, usually something to talk about, you know, and, and there are things that each of us sees. You know, we're all very observant people, but it doesn't mean that we all see everything. And so having that conversation can sort of immediately allow us to mind meld on. On a few things on, on sort of the topics of the day and make sure that we're not going to put our feet in our mouths, essentially, you know, Ooh. You know, like, it happens all the time. I, I am the least industry aware person at each of those. At every one of our meetings for the Mac Observer. Yeah. You know, because I'm doing other things too. Right. So I'm not in the thick of it, but they are. And so it keeps me from putting my foot in my mouth too, most of the time. So it is helpful to have those. But, but I am very, you know, very aware of the fact that, you know, we're spending the time of six people, sometimes seven people, and, you know, more than 15 minutes even. Fifteen minutes is a lot of time.

That is a long time, you know.

And you can see people like, because it, it can't always be everyone talking and engaged, you know, it will be some of the, the loudmouths being engaged and.

Yeah.

You know, and so, so it's a tough and, and managing, managing the loudmouths, but also managing the people that aren't loudmouths.

Yeah, you want to. Because you got to create that environment. And may, and that may be what happens when you opt out. Right. You may find that if you go back to a manager or supervisor and say how to go, oh, so and so really spoke up and you're like, wow, man, they never talk when I'm there.

Exactly. Yeah.

That's just a normal, a normal thing. And so one, one trick that I used to do when we were having, you know, meetings with departments or whatever, and I knew there was just certain people that didn't like, you know, didn't speak up. And number one is I would just always say, hey, would you bring a question to the meeting? And I would go by and talk to them personally, say, okay, would you come in as a technician or whatever? Would you do me a favor? You know, it helps me if, to get people to. I just, I'm just truthful.

Yeah.

Getting up there, you know, sitting and talking and not getting any response is not a meeting. It's a lecture And I don't want to do. To have a lecture. Would you bring one question? So if you have, you know, four or five people come to this meeting and you've asked half of them maybe.

Yeah.

That, that wouldn't normally speak up. And I don't care what the question is. It could be, hey, what are we going to barbecue on Friday? You know, what are we, what, what's. Are we closing early for? Whatever. I mean, it doesn't matter to me. But it gets them comfortable with asking questions.

Well, that's it. It gives them the confidence of being able to come in and say, you know, my voice matters here. Yeah, yeah, very important.

Especially if you have younger staff, which I tend. We. We tended to have.

Yeah.

And, and, but I guess on the flip side, thinking about this, you know, what is a strategy for keeping the dominant voice to. In check? Right.

So that you ask about that question. I wanted to ask you that question because I'm not good at that. I don't know what to do because I don't want to stifle people. I mean that.

No, me neither.

You know, but every organization at one point or another is going to have people that, yes. That are just naturally. They, they butt in on everything and they have a thought about it.

Maybe they're your great salesperson or your great PR person. That's awesome. And they're, they're extroverts and gregarious and outgoing and you need those people.

Absolutely.

Perhaps, perhaps you. Since they already have that type of personality, you could bring them into your circle of hey, we need to make sure that we keep it, keep it on a even keel here. So other these people.

Oh, I like that. You and me, we need to play. We need to downplay a little bit in the meetings to let so and so speak up more.

That's right. Yeah. Because I know I, I have a big mouth. I get up and talk and you know, this kind of things. And I don't want to just like I said, I always just tell myself it's not a lecture. You, let's do it. And the. I think another looking back at the meetings, I used to have my agenda and I would break it up in pieces and I would give each person something to talk about if they didn't bring anything. Right. It's like, oh, I don't have anything. Okay, here, I want to bring this up. What do you think of this? Because so they read the little, you know, sentence out my, my part of my outline or whatever. So it puts them in charge of that topic and gets, gets feedback. So I, I can recall doing that. It worked pretty well.

Yeah, I, I'm, I, I, yeah. Next time I'm in this scenario and it might even be, you know, if you've got a big enough team, if you've got, you know, six, eight, 10 people or whatever it is or more, you might even be able to, to create a little group of people, like three or four of you, where you say, hey, look, the four of us need to pipe down so that those two people that never talk can talk. And that way it's not about any one person and no one feels like they're getting stifled. It's just like, oh, we're doing a thing. We're, we're, we're supporting them, not squashing ourselves like that.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. Because, because those people are going to be okay with you pulling them aside, going, hey, dude, yeah, you gotta chill out.

You gotta chill out. Yeah.

I mean, introvert, I've had it, done so much. Yeah, yeah, me too, me too. So, and what you're, what you're doing often when you're going to, you know, pulling these people together is you're kind of, I think of it as like data mining. Right. You want, you know, the people that are quiet, man, I guarantee you they're thinking, oh, this is, this is whatever, this is not going to work. Or I would do it, I would do it this way. Yeah. You know, this kind of thing. So you really want that information, the talent from them, you want their ideas, you want. Because there's different and they look at things differently and you don't want just this feedback loop from sales and marketing. No way. It's not, it's not the way to go. So getting that and I think just be transparent about that and talk about it and then, you know, get. Those are not the people, the introverts, that you're gonna call in and say, hey, I need you to speak up. That doesn't work.

No, it doesn't work. No.

The other people, you can say, hey, I need you to be quiet on this meeting. Yes, I want to ask, I want these technicians to feel comfortable in my case, you know, speaking up. Yeah. And, and good. And often, you know, talk about whether I needed to be there. I would often start the meeting, get the stuff out of the way. I wanted to ask some questions, and then I would just leave and say, okay, now you guys are going to have your department meeting. Yep. You know, you don't need me here. Thanks so much. If you have any questions or you want to follow up, come, come talk to me and, and we'll go. But getting out of the way was really important for me.

I like that. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

That's good, man. All right, well, I have some, I have some, some very strong opinions, thoughts about meeting time, as you might have heard. But there's more to this that I want to share. The next thing that I want to share is our first sponsor, which is linode.com/sbs no matter what you're doing with your business, you need a server, right? If you're a server nerd, and more specifically, if your company is experts at like managing servers, then you're in great shape because you already got everything you need. But if your company's main focus is not managing servers, you don't want to be managing servers. What you want is a company whose main focus is managing servers to manage your server. And that's what Lino does. They are server nerds. They know how to make sure your stuff is going to stay up and running and smooth and all of that. And they know how to do it affordably and economically for whatever it is you need to. 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Well, if the meeting's supposed to start at 1:00pm and it's, you know, we, we wait until 1:05 when everybody's there. You've now effectively said that the meeting's starting at 1:05. And this is especially true if you have a recurring meeting. And again, like I said, recurring meetings are something you really want to be very careful about allowing. Sometimes it makes sense, but most of the time it doesn't. Look at that. That's. Siri just wants to talk to me all the time. She loves you, man, why that happened. But that's cool. So you want to make sure that if you set a 12, you know, a one o' clock start for your meeting, that it starts at 1:00'. Clock. And if somebody shows up late, they should feel like they showed up late. They shouldn't be, you know, I was going to say, leaving their desk at one o' clock to get to the meeting. Well, we all just sit at the same desk. But they shouldn't be launching Zoom at 1 o'. Clock. They should be launching Zoom at, you know, three or four of one o'. Clock. So that they're in, everything's working, you know, they're, they're ready to go at the start time of the meeting. And you know, I, whenever I give a presentation, if, you know, if it's at a conference or something, you know, you see, you have a two o' clock presentation, you get up on stage, it's two o'. Clock. I always ask the room, I'm like, hey, so it's two o'. Clock. You guys want me to start now or should we wait five minutes for all of the people that are late to, to the, to getting here? And I'll tell you what, it's a, always a unanimous vote because the people that are late aren't there to vote on it like that, you know.

Yeah.

And I think of meetings the same way. You gotta start them, just start them. Don't say we're gonna start without so and so. Just start. It's noon, we're or whatever. It's 1 o', clock, it's 2 o'.

Clock.

Whatever time it's supposed to start, just start. Okay, we've hit our start time, let's go. People will get the picture. And if they don't, then you have a conversation with them. But I always give people a pass, you know, like, okay, you showed up late. Well, you're going to figure out that we start our meetings on time here. And it is okay when you bring somebody else into the, into the, you know, the team, tell them we start our meetings on time. But then you got to own that because they are going to expect that of you as well, you know?

Correct.

And how about.

And how about end times? Do you say that when you start.

Every meeting must have an end time?

I totally agree. Otherwise you lose. You just. I mean, you wind up spinning your wheels and one of those, you know, alpha aggressive PR marketing people can spin you in circles and you could just be there for way too long.

Yeah, no, every meeting has an end time. Yeah. And that's actually the best.

Well, go ahead. Go ahead.

Oh, yeah, I was going to say that's easier these days because you send out calendar invites a lot of times.

Yeah, that's.

You know, you put that in time in there. But yeah, no, I like, if a meeting is. Is ever scheduled to last more than 15 minutes, I have a lot of questions about does. What is this meeting for? How many of the people that are invited truly need to be there? And you know what. What are we doing? We got to stay on track. This is the reason that. Well, some people in my. In my town want me to run for, like, you know, school board or city council or something. But. But the school board or city council would hate me. I mean, because I would show up and be like, okay, so we're setting an end time to every meeting because they just blather on for hours. And you know what else I would do if I were in that scenario? I would remove the table and chairs from the room. Everyone must stand.

That changes everything.

Standing meetings, everybody's paying attention and interested in truly getting the job done and out of there because you don't want to stand around forever. But if everybody's lounging around in their chairs and, you know, can check their email and dick around on their phones or whatever. I don't know. Whatever. It just doesn't. It goes. It goes in circles. It's a waste.

It does.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

It is. Waste time. Yeah. And, you know, one. One, I guess, tactic or philosophy that I recently learned about that I want to talk about today is this. And it's referred to as this rose and th technique. And I was listening to a woman talk about meeting strategies and life. I can't remember her name, but if I do, I'll put it in the show notes. And she was discussing this concept of getting stuck in the positivity trap. And when I heard that, it really resonated with me because, you know, I'm always looking for positive things, always trying to tease out the optimistic response to everything. That's just my personality and that Work works in, in many ways it's great and it helps lift everybody up and everything, but also can really cover up and cause problems. And with this rose and thorn concept is you ask two questions for when you're getting updates or you want to know how project's going or sales or whatever, you name it.

Yeah.

And it's those two questions are, well, okay, what's working? So everybody's oh yeah, this is great. We've signed up new customers, but you must follow up with, with what's not working. Ah. And that causes the. And maybe I hear, I'm already thinking maybe you flip it, you know, hey, what's not working and what's working? So you can end on positivity, but I'm not sure that matters.

I actually kind of like the idea of, of end on, on. On the what's not working?

Well, it makes you think, right?

Well, it gives you like, as you're leaving the meeting, you have an idea of what you're going to do, like an action. Because if you start the meeting with what's not working, you'll come up with your list of actions. Then you get to sort of bathe in the serotonin filled delight of hearing about all the great stuff that's going on. Now for some people that will fuel their action. Right. But for a lot of people it's the pain of, oh, we have a thing that's bad, it's not working. I need to make it better. So I don't know, I think there's.

Yeah, there's.

Yeah. Anyway, I like this idea.

I like it too. I'm going to read some more about it. I'm sure I'll be bringing it up, you know, a bunch more times here and I'm going to start practicing it so that even for myself, you know, you, if you're a, you know, just a crazy optimist and things are always going to work out. I think asking that question, what's not helps to guide you into the next thing and then you can come back and update on that, you know, the next time you.

Yeah, right. Well, that's the thing is, is if you're doing it right, right. You talk about the great. You start the meeting with the good news of how you fixed the problems or are fixing the problems you identified last time and then you end the meeting by saying, okay, now what are we going to. What do we need to do? What. So therefore, what are we going to do before we get together again? I like that. That's. Yeah, there's there's something I, I sound like I'm a slave driver with these meetings because I, I really am focused on getting the heck out of there. I mean, I'm impatient and I do not like spending all my time in meetings. You know, it's just, it's rarely. Meetings are rarely productive.

Well, I think you have little meetings all the time.

Yes.

It could be in the hallway. Well, you're not on site or whatever, but you could, you know, a little interaction. In Slack, it could be considered something like that.

If I'm having an interaction with Slack, with someone, it is often that. It's like, all right, let's. Let's fire up the video chat here and let's talk to each other for five minutes and hash this out or go through whatever we need to go through and then we're done. Like, those things are great, but these scheduled standard meetings can be the death of a business because you feel like you're being. Well, I attended my meeting today, so I did my work. I get a gold star, right? Well, yeah, but, but nobody gets paid for attending meetings. I mean, maybe you do, but really, the company doesn't earn any money when you're attending meetings with each other. That's generally not how things like that go. Now you do need to keep everybody on the same page and all of that. So there is that necessary interaction. Sometimes it's necessary to get groups together now. So I say all that and I do have all of my hard and fast rules. As soon as Covid hit, you know, we had an interesting thing. That first meeting after sort of the world hit lockdown status. And, you know, it meant different things to different people in different locales and. Okay, you know, but, but we hit that point and, and we got to the meeting and everybody in the meeting was sort of laughing about, you know, oh, look at this. You know, the rest of the world has to figure out how to work from. From home. You know, we've got them be. We're all set here. Nothing changes for us. And I, I don't know why, but I, I had a moment of clarity where I said, wait, you know, you're right, but this is going to affect us too. So be ready to be about a week and a half behind the world because everybody's freaking out now. We're probably going to be freaking out in about a week and a half when we realize all the things that we normally do to leave our houses, we're not going to be able to do, you know, and it like, for me it's not rare for me to be home and not leave the property for, you know, four or five days in a row, but then I do leave the property, you know, or would normally leave the property, you know.

Yeah.

And. And so I was like, we gotta be aware and careful with that. And so, sure enough, for each person, and over the course of the next, you know, few weeks, everybody kind of hit that point of like, okay, yeah, this. Wow, this sucks. Like, okay, you know, yeah, it sucks. And so we've found that, you know, I found that I had to allow for more of the just sort of venting, you know, quote unquote, wasted time to happen at our daily meetings. It doesn't happen every day, but there is that therapeutic time where people just are. I mean, we're the only people other than our. Our families, except for the people that are single and living alone. And then truly, this group might be the only group with whom we interact. And so it was really important to kind of loosen the reins. And I even made it clear, like, we're going to loosen the reins on these things a little bit. We need to allow ourselves the opportunity to do this. If it gets out of control, we might have to tighten it. But everybody knows we're here for each other. We are the social circle that we all have right now. So, you know, let's. It's okay to. To have that conversation. And.

Yeah, I. I think that's really important to recognize.

It is just.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. So great. You gotta. You gotta allow for a little therapy and things speaking.

I agree.

Therapy.

Speaking of therapy. Yeah.

Business therapy time.

Shannon, let's talk about business therapy here. One thing that, that frustrated me a bit in our Facebook group, which is currently the small business support group, is the lack of interaction. You know, we've got about 300 members up there, and it. The goal of that group is to kind of create this, you know, loop, a feedback loop of people that are listening to the show that might have questions, that don't want to email, that want to connect with the business owners that we have on the show. And, you know, we have failed miserably at doing that. There's very little interaction. Yeah, yeah, it's. It's you, me, your wife, my wife, you know, that kind of thing. Even though there's 300 plus people on there, we haven't done a good job of connecting. And I. I recently really struck me because I have another group that I started related to my fashion business in the Poshmark Unlocked book that I published Last year, and I've got a third of the members that are in there, and the interaction is exponentially more with people posting questions with them commenting. I post daily, once a day. Maybe that's the difference. I only post once a week.

In the mean, I had to shut down a Facebook group for our Mackie Gab podcast. It had about 3,000 members and was overrun with. With people asking questions and helping each other. And the reason I shut it down was because it was taking some of our time and distracting us.

I would be a good problem for us to have.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, like, because it wasn't about the show was why we shut it down. It was, it was. We were. We suddenly became the unpaid stewards of this group of Facebook users that had nothing to do with us. But yeah. And, and so, and then, of course, at. At Mackie, Kev, the show, we get, get, you know, it easily 100 or more emails a week that we have to answer. So I'm feeling this frustration, and it's like how I've succeeded with it over here. How come I can't succeed with it here, you know?

Right.

And I, I don't know what the answer is, Shannon.

I don't either. I don't either. I, I. We're going to a couple things I think we should do. Is one, I think we should really rebrand that group.

Okay.

Or even start a new one. I'm not sure. But I want to really focus on founders, and I really want to create. Add value to what we're doing for founders and small business owners. And I really want to focus on helping small businesses recover and lifting these people up. You know, these. I really think of these people as heroes that are running these small businesses. No venture capitalists, you know, just.

Yeah, right.

Or no venture money. Just the guys that are. And women that are just grinding it out every day to create something from, from nothing.

Yeah.

That drives the bulk of our employment and the economy. And, and they really need our help right now. And so I, I'm gonna, you know, put together a few ideas and concepts. I would love some feedback from people that are listening to this show. Feedbackus show co or connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message. We could use your help. It's. It's really time to give back to the small business community. If, if your business has suffered, which, like, so many of ours have, and you want to come on the show and talk about things you're doing to recover or, or you need help, we'd Love to have you on the show, get some exposure for your business and be exposed to our, our network of, you know, thousands of small business owners. So we're going to change it up a little bit because I want it to be, I want it to add more value.

I think we need to tend to the garden a little bit. Shannon.

I do too.

Like we, if we want this thing to grow, we need to be in there every day.

I would commit to that.

The time will come when we need to be out of there every day too.

That's okay too.

Right. But the garden's not growing and so we will be there and we hope you'll be there with us. And truly it's for all of us. So part of the reason I kind of, when I say the time comes to step out and clearly, you know, I, I chose it too soon here with this one or we chose it too soon here with this one. But it's because it's not our group. It Shannon and our Shannon and my group. It is our group. Right. Like it, it truly is for all of us. I want to be able to ask as many questions as I answer for people. I want, you know, I, I want it to be a two way street, but I'm happy to, to, to make it a one way street for a little while. You know, like I'm happy to, to do the work that, that sense of what our community will be down the road. Yeah.

Yeah. So, so we're gonna, yeah, we'll have some new, new ideas that will be trying things out and I think you, you made a really good point, Dave, as we were talking before the show is that continue to try new things and you know, we're having some, you know, some level of success with our small business pocket guides. We have the mistakes guide out that's selling. We just launched the partnership guide and it's moving up the charts on Amazon right now. You can find those at BusinessShow Co guides. We have a new guide that we're working on right now that I'll be talking about in the coming weeks that's going to be all about employees and employment that I'm excited about. So we're going to continue to do that and we're going to continue to grow this out and just we're going to change and try new things and we're going to be adding the value to people and, and over time also developing a revenue stack of different revenue streams that will be coming in for years.

To that end, let us know what it is we do that you find most valuable. So that's the feedback I'd like. That's my ask of all of you this week, is let us know what value it is. We bring to you something specific, and it doesn't matter if you think it's like, oh, well, that's silly. No, it's not silly. We really, truly want to know so that we can continue to focus on that. If we, you know, we do a lot of different things here, like Shannon said, you know, we throw things, we try a lot of different things. Let us know which of those things is truly valuable for you.

Absolutely.

Yeah. That's helpful. All right, cool.

That's what I love talking about it. Yeah, me too. Really gets me thinking about new things. I always love new challenges, and I love being here each week. Thanks for. For listening.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for doing this show.

Hope you find it valuable.

Yeah. Yeah. Have a good week. Keep living that charmed life. See you next time.