The Problem Solving Framework

Business Brain, episode 488 for Casual Friday, September 29, 2023. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take a few ideas each episode, we crunch through them, we analyze, we dissect them. This way, we train our business brains together, and we can each keep living that charmed life here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton, and out here in.

California, I'm still Shannon Jean.

Still. Yeah. As far as, you know, every morning I check the. I grab my license and I look in the mirror and I figure out what my name is, and then I check to see if it's my birthday. That's. That's kind of how I start to be sure. Just to be sure. That's right. Yep. Hey, last week or end of the previous week, episode 485, we talked about the Silver Tsunami and selling.

Lots of comments on this.

Selling your business, buying a business, you know, whether, whether you should buy or build that whole thing. And I want to share two emails with you folks here that we'll talk about. The first comes from listener Eric, who says, interesting show. I'm in the process of selling my business that I've worked there 41 years and I've owned it for the last 23. It's a manufacturing company, which is different than what you guys are used to with products and service companies. We manufacture countertops and cabinetry. Oh, I wish I'd reached out to Eric because I'm redoing my kitchen right now. He says, and it would be very difficult to build the business, which I do know takes years of buildup of customers and manufacturing processes. However, I'm finding it difficult to find people interested because it is a difficult business to learn and, and to take over. And I, I, Yeah, that's. I know, it's fascinating.

Exactly. Kind of what that the Silver Tsunami concept is that you've got, you know, folks like us that are older business owners and how do you prep the business, you know, to, to, to sell it. And yeah, you know, here's. He's worked there for 41 years, but he bought, you know, he owned it for 23. So he had, you know, a decade or more of working there to learn all these processes and how the place worked before he took over. And I think that that's saying something right there.

Yeah. And my guess is he doesn't have an employee like himself to, you know, to, to, to sell it to at this point. So.

Well, that it's a good concept. And actually, and I know you have Another email to read. But I think, you know, next week's show, we should talk about this concept of prepping to, you know, what steps you can take years in advance in many cases.

Yeah.

To get your business ready to sell it. How you identify people, how you delegate, how you scale. There's a. There's a lot of good information here. And I know we have a number of messages about this concept, so I think we should do another episode on.

I agree. Yeah, we'll tee that up for next week.

Nice.

For now, listener Patrick shares. He said, I was listening to 485 and your comments about the Silver tsunami made me want to scream. Your comments are more true than you would ever believe. I work with small businesses to get them through this. And almost all of the businesses I know that have revenues under 30 million or so are just not prepared. Think about that, folks, right? 30 million is a lot of money. If you run a business that's doing 20 million in revenue, that's a lot. But he's saying you're. At least statistically, you're not prepared either. And he continues, I think it's a combination of not wanting to share financials. Yep. That's one thing that we small business owners always have trouble with. Liking the extra profit that comes with not hiring a management team and just liking being the person in charge. But the pitfall of doing these things are so costly. Two quick examples. A company that was told outright by private equity that if he and his wife were not responsible for about 40% of the sales volume, the company itself would be worth twice as much, which for their business was an additional 4 to 5 million on the sales price. That's a lot. Obviously, just because the. The people that were selling were still working in the business. Right. That whole thing about becoming your business's biggest, you know, shareholder and not the business's most important employee. There it is. That's the. That's the value of that.

Yeah. Delegating. What. When someone else can do, you know, 80% of your job so you can move up and get more of a dashboard view of what's going on. Critically important.

Yeah. And he says a construction company with revenue north of 60 million that could not be sold at any price. They closed it. They closed it. He says, please spread the word on the importance of building a management team and a group of trusted advisors. The result is invaluable. I love the show. Thank you for this, Patrick. Yeah. You know, a couple of months ago, I mentioned the. The dumpster company. Right.

That's another good example.

He. He called. So we did two bathrooms this summer, and right now we are doing our kitchen. We started demolition on the kitchen this week, last week. But bear with me here. We started demolition on a Tuesday. He called us the Tuesday before the dumpster guy and said, hey, I need to come pick up that dumpster on Sunday because I'm closing the business. I can't find a driver. He needs a CDL driver. He says, I can't find a buyer. And he says, I'm 80 years old and I need surgery, so I can't be the one driving the trucks for the next six months. So I've got to close the business. And when he came here to pick up the stuff, I happen to be here. And he said, yeah, I'm just going to auction off all my. He said he found a company that, like, handles these auctions. He's going to auction off all of his dumpsters and everything. And I thought, man, first of all, I thought, can you give me another week? Because we're doing demo on the kitchen two days after you're taking my dumpster away. Which sucked, by the way, trying to figure that out. Yep. But. But it was fascinating. Yeah. He couldn't find a buyer for a business that was putting, you know, 250 a year in his pocket, and he only wanted 500 for it. Yep. Yeah, it's. Yup.

There's a lot of this going on. And that's why I think. But I mean, asking that guy to, like, get, hey, put your hands on your financials and kick me out of P and L on a balance sheet, that might be the hardest thing in the world for him.

I know it was. I asked him. Cause I was kind of interested. And he's like, well, I said, what are your revenues? And he said, well, I can't tell you that. And I'm like, but you want me to give you a check for 500 grand?

Exactly.

I'm gonna need those. And he's like, well, but, you know, some of it's cash. Some of it says. And. But the thing is, I've been there. I know what it's like to be a small business owner. You're embarrassed at some times to share your financials. And it's like, well, if you want somebody to buy it or help you sell it, by all means, be as honest with them about the numbers as you can, because that's what's going to get it sold, folks. That's what's going to get it sold.

Yeah, yeah. Like, Patrick Says, you know, a combination not wanting to share financials. And it may not be just a, oh, we're. I'm private or I don't want to share this information. It's like our financials may not exist. Or, you know, they're. They're running a $30 million business out of a spreadsheet and you just.

And they're embarrassed.

Never know.

Yeah.

And they're embarrassed.

Yeah, don't be embarrassed. You're not the only one. I have run businesses doing millions of dollars of business out of a spreadsheet, and I've been embarrassed about it, and it's probably cost me over time. So don't. Let. Let me be a lesson to you. All right. Hey, look, while we're here, I have a great podcast recommendation for you. When it comes to Apple, the folks over at TWIT know what they're talking about. Leo Laporte, the founder of Twit TV, bought his first Mac almost 40 years ago in 1984 and has been an Apple lover ever since. That's probably why they have three, not one, not two, but three Apple podcasts on the TWIT podcast network. The oldest, of course, is Mac Break Weekly, started almost 20 years ago. Alex Lindsay, Andy Inotko, Jason Snell, and Leo talk about the latest Apple news. Sometimes they even have me on with them. They're Apple fans, but they're not Apple fanboys. They call it as they see it, and sometimes they're even a little hard on Apple. They also do a show called iOS Today with Micah Sargent and Rosemary Orchard. If you're into iPads, iPhones, Apple Watches, or Apple TV, you'll love iOS today. And then, of course, the there's Hands on Mac inside Tips from Micah Sargent on getting the most out of your Apple devices every single week. Expert analysis, helpful advice, and entertaining discussions. Go to Twit TV Apple to find your next favorite Apple podcast. And our thanks to the folks at TWIT for doing this swap with us. So, Shannon, you know I am fond of saying that every business is in the customer service business, right?

Yes. Which I do. I agree with.

Okay. Is there anything that might also be simultaneously true in parallel to that?

Yes. And I remind my wife and I, we have some businesses and there's always problems. I mean, he's just constantly beating your head against the wall, solving problems, fixing things. And so I say all the time, every business is the problem solving business. And the sooner you get, you get on board with that and agree with that framework, the sooner you're Going to be able to take a breath and just realize the problems are never going to stop. Those are the opportunities, right?

Yes.

There's a great book, and I can't think of the author, but the title is the Obstacle is the Way. And by learning how to solve those problems, that's how you create value for your customers. And, and it may be that you started solving those problems for yourself.

And then often times it is, yeah.

Yeah, hey, this is something in demand. I figured out how to solve this problem in my own life. Or created a product that fixed something or a solution or service that led you to start a business in the first place. But fixing it and solving a problem for yourself are totally different than doing it for other people. And, and I just constantly hear, you know, business owners, number one thing, complaining about customers.

Right? Yeah.

And I'm, I'm okay if you're commiserating with peers and your business owners, but.

I'm not a bank sometimes. And we do it here.

Yeah, we do it here. And I'm totally cool with that. But if you walk around your business complaining about your customers to your employees, partners, your teams, you're changing the whole outlook the whole way people think about how you make money. And so rather than that, you just, hey, what's, what are the problems that we're working on today? You know, that's just gonna happen. You're gonna be short on cash. That's always gonna happen.

Right.

You're always gonna be chasing the dollar. You're gonna have customers that are really upset at you for sub, for something that happened or something your employees did. There's always going to be employees that you think you should fire. And there's always going to be employees that, you know, oh, we, you know, I can't find somebody to fill this role.

That's.

That's just the way it is.

Right?

It's just the way it is. So if you kind of, you know, we talk about on the show all the time, tuning your brain here. If you tune your brain to just accept that you are in the problem solving business, you're going to have a better time of it.

Yeah. Well, how does business work if not to solve someone else's problem? Yeah. I mean, people are paying you a premium to do something they don't want to figure out how to do for themselves. Now, it might be as basic as, you know, you need gas for your car. Well, you could go and create like you could drill for oil and then refine it and go, all right, but you're not you don't want to do that. You have, you have, you don't have that skill. So you're happy to pay somebody who has that skill, but they are solving that problem for you. You need gas from your car for your car. You know how to get it in theory. But it's way simpler to go to the gas station when they've already solved that problem for, for you and then.

You just pour it in your car.

Same groceries, same when you go buy pants. Well, it's the same when somebody comes and helps you with your computer or fixes your iPhone or, you know, finds the right, you know, podcast for you to sponsor so that you can promote your business. Like, this is what's happening. You are solving problems for other people. That's what business is.

Yes. And if you grasp this concept and embrace it, really, and share it with your team all the time, hey, yeah, we're in the problem solve because you're going to have people in the customer service and like, oh, this customer's driving me crazy. And maybe you haven't taught them the two tokens customer service technique that we always talk about here. So what I'm trying to say really is you're going to remove the emotion of it, because when you get backed up with problems and things and some days you're just going to stack up. If you remove the emotion by understanding this framework that. Okay, all right, put that on the list. This is a problem we're going to solve. And maybe by solving that problem, it creates an entirely new opportunity for you and your business.

Many times it will.

Yeah, yeah. And if you can get buy in from your employees, it's more difficult than you might think because some people are just not. Maybe they're not all optimists. And I guarantee you they don't think like you do. So it's a constant discussion. They kind of pick it up by osmosis. And one of the first ways is that you don't complain about it. You look at it as, oh, okay, what's going on? How do we solve this problem? Yes. Sometimes solving the problem means firing the customer. And we've done episodes on that where you just have somebody, you know, it's just you cannot make happy over and over and over. But most of the time you're going to solve a particular problem and it may not be the customer. Maybe it's the process or the employee that needs to learn a new technique or, you know, a new tool that you need. So constantly discussing things from that aspect.

How do you solve problems. Yeah. Be productive. Because that literally is how you remain productive as a business is just. Yeah. Buying into that mindset as the default makes all the difference in the world. Yeah.

You should have a big banner down the hallway or in the break room that says, we are in the problem solving business. You know, with the smiley face. That's it. And the better we get at problem solving, the more successful we are going to be.

I got nothing. That's it. That's the take right there.

That's the post it.

That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's.

What do you think? Yeah. And how do you use this concept? Or am I totally wrong? You know, feedback@businessbrain.show. we'd love to hear from you. Come up, share your information or share your tips so we can share with everybody else.

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