Tenacity and Commoditization

Business brain episode 483 for Wednesday, September 13, 2023. Greetings, folks and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take a topic or a few topics and we analyze them together, tuning our business brains in the process so that we can each keep on living those charmed lives. Sponsors for this episode include shopify.com businessbrain, where you can sign up for a $1 per month trial period. We'll talk more in depth about that in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How goes it, man?

It goes. You know, this week, Shannon, is an interesting week for me as a podcaster. My Mac Geek Gab podcast, we record this on Tuesday and we're doing it just before Apple does their big event. And, and I contextualize it that way because it means that I will be recording two episodes of Mac Geek Gab this week. The sort of one for the Apple event as a reaction and then our normal one that would come out, you know, on Monday the 18th and the one that will be recorded on Tuesday the 12th is our 999th episode of MacGeek. It is awesome. And I love that number because it's like a super, you know, palindrome. Right. Because it's like it's all the same number. Right. So which is, which is cool. But it's also the last of our three digit numbers. And then of course, Friday we start into the four digit numbers of a thousand and. And then of course, a week later we get to do a thousand one, which I like because that's also a palindromic number. So you know that a lot. Yeah, you know, I don't know. That's the way my brain works. But it's, it's, it. What's interesting is when I think about it objectively, it's kind of cool.

I think it's very cool.

But as I'm doing these episodes, it's like, oh, well, today will just be another episode. It's the special Apple one. Oh, yep. That happens to be 999 and Friday happens to be episode 1000. It. It doesn't change the way I go about doing them. Although maybe it should. I don't like to obsess about patting myself on the back.

No, I don't. I don't think that. Well, so I have two comments about. Yeah, yeah, the, the number is, is important for you. It's important for your reader or listeners. Yeah, it's an important rubric that You've made it and you're still doing it after all this time. We were talking before we started recording today about tenacity. Um, and, you know, so many people stop when they don't see success in maybe quick enough for them or. Or they don't get the kind of feedback, whether it's monetary or, you know, followers or different things. And that tenacity is what makes a difference between success many, many times, even if you're. Even if your show. I posted this on Twitter the other day that, like, we're coming up on. On the Business brain on our 500th episode. And, you know, when I first started this, you were already an expert, and I could. I remember you telling me, okay, well, we're just going to start recording a show, but we're not going to publicize those shows. And I was like, what?

Why?

You know, come on, this is ridiculous. I can talk. But listening back to those. And, you know, we didn't start publishing until episode four, so I had three good episodes under my belt that I.

That's right. Yeah, you were a pro. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, that's right. But even listening back then, the way I was doing it and the way I sounded versus the way I sound today, hopefully better, but certainly you have more experience. And. And I do think it's something to celebrate because that's. That, you know, you've made it not necessarily to the other side, but you certainly have made it down the road a ways.

It's true. I like bullheaded persistence. Tenacity, whatever you want to call it is, is one of my traits. For better and for worse. And I think you might talk about some of the for worse in the. The second topic of this episode. And I. I like the for better thing is perhaps why I'm not driven to stop and celebrate these things. I remember when we did episode 100 of Matt Geek Up. That really resonated with me at the time.

That might have been more important than the thousand in the sense that, yeah.

This week it feels like it was like that one. I. I was like, oh, man, we got to do a huge celebration. And we essentially, you know, threw a party on the air and. And. And just patted ourselves on the back and did that. But podcasting was new, right? I mean, when we started, it was new by. By episode 100. It was several years old, but still, we were part of this new thing and we had succeeded, right? We had made it in that sense. Like, oh, we. We figured it out. We're able to do this. We're able to support the efforts of doing this, like, all of these things. And that hasn't changed in. In the ensuing years. Right. Like, so I'm not sure what to celebrate because there's maybe just recognizing. I think it's a recognition. Oh, for sure. But it's. But it's like my way of celebrating it is doing the best show that I can. And that's good. And maybe that's, like, maybe that's enough. Yeah.

For you. I think, you know, having. Making sure that you talk about it to your listeners. I think it's important to have those. Those milestones, you know, that. That you're.

Yeah.

That you're talking about once in a while. And I also think, you know, as. As entrepreneurs, many times, maybe all the time, it. It's tough to find somebody to pat us on the back. Right. Because we're leading a business and we're trying to motivate everybody else and pat them on the back. And we talk about it on the show all the time. You know, okay, how to. How to get your team going in the right direction and. And giving him a good career path and making sure you. You've positive reinforcement and stuff. So I. I am a big fan of stopping and saying, okay, we achieved this thing, and here we are. We made it. Let's talk about it. And then I like it also the other side. Now let's get back to work.

Now let's get. Let's just get to work. Yeah.

Yeah.

And. And I think that's what F. Friday's episode a thousand will be. I'm really not sure which one of these three. When we're talking about the numbers. I'm not sure which one of these three numbers. 999, a thousand, or 1001. I don't know which one makes me happiest. Like, which one is actually the one I want to celebrate. But you make a really good point that it's not a. It's not about me. In fact, I learned a long time ago. But not. But. But probably after episode 100. Right. But it's certainly somewhere between 101 and 999. I learned that the show isn't even about me. This show isn't about us. This show is about all of you listening. Right. And it's what can we deliver for you? Not what can we do for ourselves. Yes, we get benefit out of it, but it's because we're all the same here. You know, we don't see ourselves as different from you, as our listeners, we're all trying to learn this together. And the same is true with mackab, where we're all just learning things together, but we're doing it together. And so, like, the thousand might mean more to our listeners than it means to me or some of our listeners. You know what I mean? And so.

No, no, I think so.

You're right that I don't like. The decision as to whether or not to celebrate this or acknowledge it or anything also isn't about me. It's about our listeners, and this is important to them because I do get. This is one of those rare scenarios as an entrepreneur where I actually do get someone else patting me on the back for this. Right. I mean, fellow podcasters, like, wow, congratulations to a thousand. You know, everybody on the teams. You, my friend, like, my friends, and. And our listeners, like, congratulations. Like, what? Congratulations to all of us. But, yes, congratulations. Like, I'm getting the. The accolades, if you will, the pats on the back without having to do them myself.

Yeah, well, that's always better.

It is better. Yeah.

It's always better when. When the other folks recognize it versus you having to kind of crow about it.

Yeah. But there's nothing wrong. You're right. That. There's nothing wrong with taking a moment to stop being so tenacious and celebrate where you and your team have gotten and then just resume being tenacious because it's who you are. Right. You know, so. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'm into it. And I think there's a lesson here for all of us.

Like, I do, too.

The tenacity is important, but it. And we've talked about this before on the show, and I'm glad that you and I had this conversation because it frames it properly for me. We do need to celebrate those things, like employees anniversaries or even company anniversaries, those things that are like, well, yeah, we made it another year. We don't need to celebrate that. We're still working here. We're not ending things. And I guess that's what it is, is it feels like if we pause and do too much celebration, it's like, well, are we ending things? It's. No. Yeah. It's not old.

Yeah, right, right. I do think it's important to recognize it for yourself, for your listeners. And when you have things, your business with your employees, all that of stuff, everybody likes that. And it. And it's, you know, with the podcast, your. Your culture, if you will, is made up of your listeners. Right.

Yeah.

So it's kind of like, you're, you're building this company, your work culture with your listeners. So recognizing they think these things, it is a good thing and then getting back to work.

All right. Earlier this year, one of the other businesses I have, we had the idea to start selling merch, right? We wanted to sell T shirts and mugs and hats and that sort of thing. And thankfully I knew about our sponsor, Shopify, because if I didn't, I would have had no idea where to get started. But I did know where to get started because Shopify has been sponsoring us here at Business Brain for a while and they really helped us level up quickly. And they can help you too. Shopify is the e commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Whether you're a solopreneur or you're IPO ready, Shopify is the only tool you need to start, run and grow your business without the struggle. Shopify puts you in control of every sales channel, right? So whether you've got like a in person point of sale where you're selling like whatever, satin sheets or something, or you're selling stuff online like we are with our merch or, you know, you could be selling olive oil for all we know. It doesn't matter because Shopify's all in one e commerce platform has you covered. In fact, it even works if you're doing like courses and things like that. Shopify can be the engine for that, handles all of that for you. They really are focused on you and your audience. And once you've reached your audience, Shopify is the Internet's best converting checkout to help you turn them from browsers to buyers. Like I said, we started doing this earlier this year and I've used Shopify in the past. It is an amazing tool that instantly helps me level up and it can help you too. So go sign up for a $1 per month trial period@shopify.com businessbrain. That's. That's all lowercase. Go to shopify.com businessbrain to take your business to the next level today. Shopify.com businessbrain and our thanks to Shopify for sponsoring this episode. So, Shannon, when we were talking about tenacity, we also kind of came up with the. What might be the sort of negative flip side to tenacity. And it's this idea of your business as it, as it's. After it's been around for a while, the commoditization factor that happens with your business and a mature market. Right?

Yeah, yeah. And I've been thinking a lot about this because I've seen it happen to so many of my businesses, and it's happening to one right now that I was. I didn't think it would ever happen to. And that is the vacation rental business in certain areas. And I think part of it is during. Well, let me back up. So when this whole concept of renting out your house or a room or whatever came out, you know, I don't know, 10 years ago, it was certainly unique and different. And so it was not very difficult to be successful and start and just, oh, I'm in this area that people want to come stay and I can rent this out. And it was pretty straightforward. By the time we got into it, it had matured a bit. So you needed to differentiate yourself a little bit. And we've done that. But even now, I see. And again, it's kind of localized. I see certain things happening. And I was just talking to my wife Renee, who runs that business. I was talking last night, I said, this is the same thing happened to us when we were in the repair business. And she's like, wait, how can that be similar to the, you know, vacation rental business? And so hear me out here. When we first started in the repair business, you know, we were primarily working on Apple products, and it was great. Okay. We knew what we were doing. We had a unique proposition. By the time we were focused on laptops in the sense that we could repair it in 24 hours and get it back out overnight anywhere in the country. It wasn't an Apple Store. The Apple stores were not around, so there wasn't as many places to go for repairs. That changed everything. Getting things shipped out quickly was kind of a new concept where now it's like, everything I want tomorrow. Thank you, Amazon. And so that we kind of lost that edge and the same. And then by the time we got out to like working on phones, the same thing, it just, okay, we're going to get these screen repairs, for example, and all right, we got this really good quality and people are going to come in and we're going to do a fast turnaround time. And then that became like, well, I can't be without my phone for more than an hour. So it became. Everybody did it really quick. And so then it became, well, not only will we repair it, we're going to drive and come to you and I'm going to work. Some guy's going to work out of his van or his truck.

Right, Right. Yeah.

And so eventually, over time, I saw it just became price. It was all price and, and some. Some service. In the vacation business. It's. It's happening now. There's too much inventory. Lots of people jumped into the market, especially during COVID because people couldn't travel. You know, the airlines were kind of not shut down. People didn't want to fly as much, but they wanted to get away from their house and they wanted to drive. Lots of people invested in vacation rentals, especially in very popular areas that got oversaturated and you again, had to differentiate yourself. But at the same time, and this happened in the tech business too, expenses started going up. And we've seen this in the last couple years as inflation has gone up, everything has gotten more expensive. But you haven't really been able to raise your prices to coincide with those things. Where in, let's say a mountain property where snow removal has gone from $500 a year to $2,000 or insurance that, you know, eight years ago I was paying $1,800 a month, and the quote I just got is $8,100 a month because of fire danger. Well, I can't pass those on to my guests, those expenses, because it's. It's a saturated area and there's lots of competition.

Right.

Thankfully, we have a little different unique property, so we, we still do fine. And we're not too focused on you. We don't like to run out every single day anyway.

Sure.

But it's. I, I told Renee, I said eventually, it, this, this doesn't work because it's going to get so expensive and the prices will continue to go down, down for guests because this competition that. It just gets upside down. And that's what happened. I've seen it over and over and over.

It happens everywhere. Yeah, everywhere. With every business, we always say, you don't want to compete on price. You have to find a differentiator. And. And that is true. But your ability to find differentiators gets more and more difficult.

Limited.

It becomes more and more limited. I don't want to say becomes more and more difficult. It's always difficult. But the differentiators that are available to you require more and more creativity and more and more sort of expansion of your business or a pivot of your business or changes to your business so that you actually can be different. And it's not just some artificial label that you're putting on something that might fool people. You don't want to fool people with a differentiator. You want to actually offer a differentiator.

You.

Yeah, yeah.

And you want to learn to compete with yourself.

Yeah.

And if you want to, if you want to model it, a company that does just a great job with this is Apple. I know we talk about them a lot, both Apple guys or Mac guys or whatever, but you know, they consistently create new products and services that put their other products and services out of business. So rather than waiting for another company to do it, they do it themselves. You know, the, the iPhone put the ipod out of business or you know, maybe it's the touch, I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, right? Yeah, it kind of did. Yeah. Yeah.

And so being tenacious is, is critically important. But we, we did an episode on a topic that I've been, you know, leaning into lately called the Focus Trap. Don't get into the Focus Trap so much that you miss this opportunity to, to pivot into something else now so you can ride the wave again before it gets commoditized. Commoditized. Yes, I could say that. And you know, we did that with Tech Restore and with, with Mac Rescue a bunch of times where you're just like, okay, what's the next thing we can fix? What's the next product we can tear apart and sell parts for and keep continuing to look for new and new things. And that's what I would encourage you to do is as you start to see this, your business where price becomes more and more important and maybe your costs and maybe things are kind of going upside down a little bit, where are you going to move sideways to, to start a new track that can then get back to the bottom of the cycle and ride it up to the top again and then do it over and over and over and, and I think that's just, it's having that wide bandwidth and being able to look at opportunities and expand them, whether you're in the H Vac business or whether you're a pressure washing business and all of a sudden you're like, you know what? We don't do a lot of business in the wintertime, let's hang Christmas lights or whatever it is using the resources that you already have, all your employees, your equipment, and what else can you offer? What else can you sell before you get squeezed down to one of those people that just competing on price.

Yeah, yeah, I, man, that's, that's, that's it. Yeah. Yeah.

So I'd love to hear other businesses that have had this issue and what you've done to overcome it. Feedbackusinessbrain show you also get entered in to win a MacBook, which I think we ought to give away on our 500th episode, which is coming up.

I like that idea. All right, folks. Feedbackusbrain show. Send it in. Keep living that charmed life, and we'll see you on Friday.