Time to Shake the SBS Box, Questions instead of statements, Sunk Costs and more!

Hey there. Welcome to another small business show experience. So this is a show that's by, for and about small business owners. I love that phrase. Today's episode, it's going to be a grab bag of topics end of year that we're running up against here that your hosts have gathered throughout the year. Some of them are smaller but important stuff that we want to talk about and we have a really important topic that we want to discuss about the future of the show.

Yeah, yeah. I like that you set it up as, as the small business show experience today because this will be a different episode and I'm hoping you folks have some things to say and will tell us at feedback at Business show. Co we our success metric for this particular episode is the amount of feedback that we get from you. And certainly if you just want to like right now, send something and that's fine. But, but the, we are front loading this show with the thing that we think you fol respond to the most. So there is a topic coming here, trust me on this. And it's not too far away. There is, yes.

And it's, and it's great because we talk about behind the scenes, like about the show all the time. So we want to be. Do it up, do it on the episode, on this episode and just see where we go with it.

See where we go with it. Well, I, I'm, I'm eager. I'm, I'm champing at the bit as, as they say, Shannon. So I'm ready to small business. If you're ready to small business.

I'm totally ready to small business.

Well, then let's do it. He is Shannon Jean. I'm Dave Han Hamilton and this is episode 308 of the Small Business Show. All right, so the first thing that I want to talk about is our show because I think I'm going to throw it out there and then we're going to discuss it. I think this show is not valuable enough to you, our listeners. I think it could be more valuable.

I know it could be. It's a hard statement to hear.

Yeah.

But I would agree in the sense that I don't think we get enough back and forth from our listeners. And that's a big metric that's, I think, missing for me as a motivator to do this show. And, and I mentioned to you earlier, there's three things that really keep me motivated to the show. One is I really enjoy talking with Dave each week and catching up and sharing business things back and forth. Tremendously valuable. And we're coming in next year, will be our seventh year of doing this each week. Right.

Yeah.

And. And the second one is I. I totally enjoy and I'm educated with our guests that we get to talk to frequently here on the show. Usually every week. Every. Maybe the other week. And I make the comment I always learn the most. And maybe that's part of the problem.

I think that might be the part of the problem. No, seriously.

Yeah, I agree.

Like, there's. So I'm like you, Shannon. I thrive on the interaction. Right. And the shows that I do in the general, things that I do, where I get lots of back and forth, those are to me the most personally valuable. And then they also are things that I can turn into career paths. Right. You know, business opportunities, as you will. Right. But it really starts there with me. There is another metric, though, that we do have access to. Apple podcasts gives us some metrics. Now, obviously not everybody listens on an Apple podcasting client. If you listen in your web browser, the number I'm about to talk about doesn't count. If you listen in like a third party podcast client, like Overcast or an Android podcast client or anything like that doesn't count. But if you do, Spotify doesn't count, right?

Yep.

But. But if you listen on an Apple client, we do get a number. We get several numbers, in fact, but one of them is very interesting and it is the percent of the show that you all listen to on average. And that number for all the other shows that I do is well above 90%. And for this show, it's like 60 to 70%, which means that you folks are stopping listening. But before we stop recording the show in general, and to me, that combined with the fact that we don't get a whole lot of feedback is. We get some, but I want more.

We could get some.

Yeah, but. But those two together tell me that we are not doing the right things to engage you. Now, not getting feedback is not. If we were getting people listening all the way to the end and we weren't getting feedback, that would be something different. To me, that would tell me, oh, we're just not providing enough opportunity for you folks to hook into and say, oh, I have something to say. If all we're doing is lecturing all the time, then there's not a whole lot for you to ask. Right. So increasing that engagement is certainly on us. We're not blaming you folks for not writing it as often as we would like to have you, but there is something about the format and formula of the show there. But that, that listener percentage number, especially when I can compare it to other shows that I manage, that I host and other and other shows that we manage, it is like the lowest of all of our shows at that 60 to 70% number. So I don't like that. And I wonder, I wonder how. So this is my first question for all of us. You listening? And me and Shannon here too. How valuable are our guest interviews for you all? And more specifically, what would you like to get out of our guest interviews? You know, we enjoy asking our guests about their favorite mistake. When we have a guest, we're not going to stop, but that one we really like so that, that's for us. But the rest of the interview can be for you. Right. And we like the action items, but we want to know what you folks would want to hear from guests and is, you know, we, for most of this year we have aimed to have a guest every week. And then when we don't, we have plenty of topics in the hopper that we can cover on our own. I, I'm, I'm wondering if I feel like a guest every week is too much. It doesn't let us do this show. It just puts us in the steward mode.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

I do know what you mean. And it would be interesting to, I don't know if we can see this from the data is can you look at shows where we had guests versus shows that we recorded ourselves and look at that engagement.

It's higher on the shows that we don't have guests.

Then let's not have as many guests. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the first thing I think that we could do. And I will admit being really busy and because like I, I, I've commented to you and I said earlier today, I said, well, part of this engagement problem is I, I take responsibility for it because once I disconnect, I'm done this for the show this week I have, I'm going on to my next things. I have two or three other businesses I'm running. I'm trying to do this, trying to do that. So you get in what you put out of it, right? You get out what you put in.

And I have noticed this with my, so I do two other shows that I am a co host of and then I'm on shows that I don't, that I can just show up and be Dave. But, but the shows that I actually have to put work into are this one Gig Gab, which is a show that's almost exactly the same age as this one. And then MacGeek Gab, which is about twice the age of this one. And for Matt Geek Gab, I probably put in a full day of prep work when it's all added together and then record the show. That's a lot for me to invest in something one day per week. One day per week, yeah. And it might be. It's certainly not more than one day, but it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, certainly easily a half a day. And I'm talking about like solid, uninterrupted, true, like working time. So probably three days to, you know, the, the folks that we employ. Yes, I don't say that though. That's just how it is. Um, anyway, with Gig Gab, I put in about an hour and a half to two hours of prep time a week and then we do the show, which is, you know, another hour or so like this one. And, and we get more engagement out of that one than this one. We get not nearly as much as we do out of Matt Geekab. Matt Geekab does deserve an asterisk. A, it's a, it's a, it's an old show, but B, it is a Q and A show. So like we, we very much invite. The content of the show is essentially written by the audience. And that's an interesting thing to me. I would love to find a way to do that for this show.

I would as well.

Yeah, I would as well. And so maybe that's a thing that, that, that we need to focus on. And, and, and really we make an effort such that we answer every email that comes into this show. And that's true for all of my shows, in fact. Right. But, but this show doesn't take all that much time because we don't get that many emails in. So we need to find a way to get you folks more engaged with the show. And, and listening is a huge part of it. Telling your friends about it, especially other small business owner friends, is a huge part of it. But, but the dialogue between us, we like it when it's a two way conversation. Not just a one way conversation. I don't mean between you and me, Shannon. I mean between us. And like.

Yeah, I understand.

Yeah, yeah. So I'm really curious. Feedbackusshow co is where we want you to send in what you want out of this show. I think back to Matt Geekab. When we started that show, we did not know what it would become. It was our listeners who told us what it would become. And so we know we need to listen to you better. But there is a two way street there. We ask. And now hopefully folks will tell us and give us some things to go on. And if you have some ideas for what you would like to hear from the show, great. If you have some questions with your business, you know, the business therapy concept, I feel like there's something more to that that we have not fully gotten value for all of us out of. We would love to incorporate business therapy more into the show. I know I could pull in my own topics more and we, we've sort of let that go just because we had so many interviews in a row. It just fell by the wayside. Well, and what, I would love to do that for you folks too.

Yeah, me too. And one of the things with interviews I realized too is it also allows me to disconnect even more, right? Oh yeah, because because I, an interview gets booked and I say great. Now I do spend time, I research the guests.

You do, right.

I, I come up with all the questions, I try to get them, you know, relative to what they're doing. It's like, okay, well what is this guest? What is the nugget of, you know, that we're going to tease out of this guest that's going to be important to our readers, but, or our listeners. But I, I, and maybe this is not the right way to do it because this is the only podcast I'm involved in and I consider myself to be the, the type of, of demographic that would enjoy this show.

I think that's, yeah, that's a, that's a self fulfill, I mean most podcast audiences are exactly that self fulfilling prophecies, right? Yeah, yeah, you make, you want to hear and.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. It's just like starting a business because you have a problem you want to solve, right? Same kind of thing. Yeah, but I, I am, I am very interested in experimenting with different formats for this show. And I think that is one of the frustrating, most frustrating parts of this business. And I consider this a business because it generates revenue. It's part of my revenue stack. The most frustrating thing is there, there is really not enough metrics for me to look at to say what works and what doesn't. And I often feel like I'm talking into the ether here. And yeah, I know someone will listen to it because especially since it's out there fore.

That's true.

Yeah, but there's no, like, hey, every, every week or month or quarter we can sit down and go, oh, check this out. This is Doing good. And, and one of the only measurable metrics I have is those sponsors. Do we get sponsors? Do this. And then I'm, you know, I made the comment earlier as if we were just out there on our own. Not part of the, of your network, Dave. And back and represented by Backbeat Media. We wouldn't have these sponsors because we're just a smaller show and it's harder to get noticed as many times we.

Would, we would with one of the other networks whose names I guess simply.

Not going to mention here, of course, the best. So it doesn't matter.

That's correct.

So I think that experimenting with different formats would be great. But, but above that is what is the metric to, to gauge the success of that, those experiments. And if we, if we agree that, well, first and foremost we want to get up into the 80, 90% of, of these things, then, you know, let's experiment for the next few months and not have any guests try new things. I have some ideas about maybe coming up with different segments, but if, if, if you look at the, the state of the interview, you know, it's these standardized questions at the end that people seem to. Oh, I don't need to hear that. So let's not ask those anymore. Yeah. You know, and because there's nothing new there, maybe we've, we've squeezed all the juice out of that. M. I'm leaning into it, relying on it too much because. Oh, that's one question I don't have to research. Right.

Right. I don't know those questions. I get a lot out of those questions. But maybe it's not only about us. I don't know. I think, I think it's, and this is the really hard part is we're trying to guess what's in your head. So I'm hoping that by thinking out loud incorrectly, it will inspire you to tell us how wrong we are. But I think, you know, I think we just have too much of the interview thing and not enough of whatever else we can do for all of you. And I think it just sort of. It, it, it dulls it.

Yeah, it's another interview show.

It's just yet another interview show as opposed to an interview show. Who is this person they've got and what, what, why did they choose this person? Right. You know, if, and, and if we're only doing one interview a month, that, I mean, that really allows us to cherry pick who we have to interview. Now it also forces us to spend some prep time creating the topics for the show. But that's also not a. Like, I want to. Yeah, that's. I want to do more with this show, so.

I do too. Yeah. Yeah, I do too. And if, again, we will need to agree on what is that metric, and I think we could say, okay, one of them is that engagement. What's that percentage? Right. Just to see how that going up. The second would be what is the, The. The number of, you know, interactions we're having with our listeners? Okay, are. Are we getting more email? Are we getting more messages? Are we, you know, should we be live streaming the show so people can ask questions while we're on the topic? You know, interesting. Not a. You know, I'm not a huge fan of the face in the webcam. In the webcam conversation, but there are certainly ways to. To deal with that. I, I will say this.

I'm not a fan. I don't watch shows like that. But I know all of the listeners to my other shows. Not all. Many of the listeners to my other shows like that.

Yeah.

And that is one of the things that we started doing, especially with Mackab during Pandemic. We started live, essentially live streaming, so that you can watch us record an audio show because most of the audience is still listening audio, so we don't have video content that would exclude them. But we do allow this sort of voyeuristic thing. Right. Where you can just watch. And it has allowed us to maintain a level of engagement during this Pandemic when people aren't commuting and doing all of those other things. So that is like one thing that we do with macgeekab that I would not do for me if I were in the audience, but it has been valuable. So I'm like. Well, I don't like the whole talking head thing. It's not that I. I don't. It's not that I don't like it. It just doesn't. It's not the thing. It's not the thing for me, but it is the thing for a lot of people. And so, yeah, it. It like that there may. And maybe it's once a month we do live a truly live. Not just this voyeuristic. Watch us record and yes. Also be in the chat room with us if you'd like, but this, you know, actually interactive thing. And maybe that's. Maybe that's a thing we should maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Interesting to see. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see try. So I'm open to it. We really want to hear from you. You know, whenever you Listen to this feedbackus show co if you've never listened to the show before, tell us what you'd like to hear in a small business podcast. And if you've been listening to the show for years, tell us what works, what, what makes you, what gets you to tune in, you know, to, to press play on and listen to it. Your time is really valuable. We want to make it valuable for you, to make it valuable for us and come up with ways that everybody can benefit from this each week.

I like it.

I do too.

All right, we have a couple other things to talk about. A B testing actually, I really want to get into this. And then of course, one of my favorite topics you have on the list is sunk costs. So I love these both. I also love our two sponsors and I want to tell you about textexpander@textexpander.com podcast. This is one of my favorite utilities that I use on my computer. And I mean, I guess all my devices are computers. Even though we call it a phone, it's still a computer. What textexpander does is it allows you to take all of the bits of text and these can include graphics, like if you include images in an email, even inline images. No problem. Put them all into textexpander and then when it's time to use those things, instead of digging through your sent folder or going into your sticky notes and copying and pasting, no, textexpander is right there for you. You just either click a button and have it pop up, pop this right in to your email or a web form or wherever you are, or you type a short little bit of text and it expands into this larger bit of text. And the nice part about this is not only is it at your fingertips quite literally, it's also exactly what you want. It's accurate. You don't have to proofread it because you've already proofread it once. You can share these snippets amongst all your own devices and also all of the devices of your team members. So it's great for customer service and things like that. You got to check it out. Textexpander is available on Mac, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, iPad, and for being a small business show listener, you get 20% off your first year. Go to textexpander.com podcast to learn more. And our thanks to Textexpander for sponsoring this episode. Next up is betterhelp@betterhelp.com SBS 2020 has been a tough year. We're not entirely sure that 2021 is going to be remarkably better, at least not anytime soon. It helps to have someone to talk with and who better than BetterHelp to help you? The way BetterHelp works is they will assess your needs and then match you with your own licensed professional therapist. And then you get to connect in a safe and private online environment. No waiting rooms, no offices. It's safe. You just, you don't have to wear a mask if you don't want because you're in your own home and you know right there. And you can do it video or audio. And it's of course safe and private, convenient and you can start communicating in under 24 hours. They are ready to get you going. But it's not self help. It is truly professional counseling. And you can send messages to your counselor at any time and get timely responses. And they'll of course you can also schedule a weekly video or phone sessions. You can do it audio or video, however that works. And they've got licensed professional counselors who specialize in depression, anger, stress, anxiety, sleeping, self esteem. So look, we want you to start living your happier life today. And as a small business show listener, you'll get 10% off your first month by visiting our sponsor@betterhelp.com SBS join over a million people who have taken charge of their mental health. Again, that's BetterHelp. H E L P.com SBS and our thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode. All right, Shannon, take us to. I think a B testing is what's next, right?

Yeah, well, I, I've been, I've been kind of refining this, this concept during the past year because it's so interesting. And what I've started doing is asking instead of making statements, is asking more questions to get more responses from people. And, and what I've come to understand better responses. And for, for example, when someone's trying to tell me something, I often would be like, oh, I under, I, I understand what you're saying. But now I always go, you know, I think I understand what you're saying. Is it this? And I would ask them and oftentimes I'm wrong. You know, I, I didn't think that, you know, or I was thinking about it in the wrong way. So I've stopped myself. And even now I was just doing this with, with Renee in the car the other day. It's like, oh, I understand. And like, no, no wait, I think I understand. Is this what you mean? And I was, I was wrong. No, that's not exactly what I meant. I was me you know, this, and it's really helped me to connect with people, business colleagues, whatever, and to, and to reframe what they're saying. And so I've seen, taken that, try to take that concept and we just were doing it a few minutes ago with our, you know, trying to get the listeners asking those kind of questions and then, you know, spur that open ended dialogue by, by asking open ended questions instead of making statements. Oh, I, I, I would like to do this or we're going to do this in our, in our business. Here's the next thing. But instead maybe asking your employees, well, what would happen if, Whatever. Yeah, what would happen if we did this? What would happen if we closed on Fridays and opened on Sundays? Whatever you, you put it in. Asking your customers the same kind of thing. This is what we're doing right now, asking our customers, so to speak, listening to the show, what would you, what do you want? What do you want? But coming up with, with intriguing ways to ask those questions and, and testing them and maybe, you know, asking your accountant, I just asked this because December is a great time to talk to your accountant. I always say, what if we used our cash this way? What if I went and spent $50,000 on X on, you know, next week before the end of the year? How would that impact us? Because a lot of times they don't know how to think about something unless you ask the question. And I'm trying to avoid, because this is what I usually do, I go spend the $50,000. And then in January I'd say, oh, I spent 50 grand on this. And they go, why did you do that? That was not the best way to do it. And so I'm trying to get that, that guidance up front. And then I've been asking my suppliers more, hey, if I had more money, if I had an extra $10,000, what would you sell to me that I could make a profit on?

What?

Don't think about what I'm buying from you now. What else can I buy from you? Tell me. Think about it. And I've had some really interesting feedback with that question and I believe I'm going to get into some other channels. I hate the phrase stay in your lane. That's a terrible phrase. Because only way I've been successful is to bust out of my lane.

Yeah.

Over and over and over. Right?

Yeah. Lanes are usually paved by other people. That's right, yeah.

Yeah, it's, it's ridiculous. So asking that question like the supplier, hey, if I had an extra ten grand, That I, that I just needed to spend. What would you sell to me? Has. Has made them think out of their lane and go, oh, you know, I called this guy in this other division and he has this. Would you be interested in buying this? I was like, wow, that's. That's awesome. So it's the other thing that's helped me. Is it kind of back to that I think I understand. Instead of saying I understand, is it. You may be wrong, you know, in your assumptions. And it's a great way to get fact checked, to use a very popular term and to. Asking those kind of questions allows you to not fall back on assumptions or your own cognitive biases about the way, about the way things are. And I'm, I just started this in the last couple months and I'm really going to embrace it into 2021. You're going to hear more about it. Because I'm trying to teach, especially as I get older. I'm trying to hack my brain into doing new things and not getting complacent and to just keep challenging myself.

No, that's the key. So I like this whole. I think I understand. Is this what you mean? What a great way. As I missed. I think a lot of us entrepreneurs are this way, but I am certainly this way. I'm very impatient. So when I think I understand I've already moved on. It's not that I am ready to move on, it's that I've already moved on. And like, you're moving quick. I'm wrong more than once, you know about these things. Because often I move on before the person really finishes explaining or like you said, they think they've finished explaining. I think they've finished explaining. But we haven't done this level check to make sure that what they thought they said is what I thought they heard. And so I like this. I think I understand. Is this what you mean? A, it truly does get that clarification. B, to your point, it forces a little more human interaction, builds a little more trust, builds a little, builds a better communication avenue. And that's a helpful thing. I mean, if, if you have one person with whom you ask that question 10 times, and 10 times they say, yeah, that's exactly right. Well, now you can start to be more efficient with that person. Right.

But you're connected, you know, you're on kind of the same wavelength.

You're on the same wavelength. Yeah, exactly. But. But you also find out very quickly, oh, well, with, with person B. Oh, no, I'm not on the same Wavelength. And so I need to figure out how to get on that wavelength. And that's a great way.

It.

The idea of asking. I've experimented, I haven't done this experiment. I'm going to start doing this. The idea of instead of telling your employees, you know, we're going to, you know, close on Friday and open on Sunday, instead of telling them that, asking them that. I've done that in the past and I have failed miserably with that because I, at least the way I did communicated a lack of confidence or it.

Yeah, there's a danger to that.

It communicated a lack of leadership which then devalued or like I'm coming up with the wrong word. But my employees then lost some confidence in me and therefore the business. And that's not a good thing.

That's correct.

For obvious reasons. So I would caution people to not go too far with that. You know, get, get your employees opinions and get them, you know, having buy in is huge. And this is why I like the two week idea of let's try this experiment for two weeks. Because someone. Because when you say it's an experiment, you're saying I'm confident enough to do this. But I also know that it's an experiment, but that that label gives people the option to step in and say, I think you're missing something here. Like, I know you know, this is an experiment. So it's okay for me to tell you you're going to crater the business if you do this right. And they might bring up something that you completely overlooked. And that certainly happened for me. And that's better. I found that better than just saying, like, I'm thinking about a thing but I don't want to commit to it. So what do you think?

You know, like, I think it's all the way you. The exercise in my. What I'm trying to get at and open to getting that feedback you're providing is the exercise is really to get them to think in a different manner and to embrace those experiments. But you're right, you have to do it in a confident way. You may have already made the decision. Right. But you just want to test and see and maybe you couple it with this two week, hey, okay, let's get this feedback. And, and ultimately the decision is yours. Ultimately you don't need to come back and say, well, 64% of you decided this, so we're going to go with that. I would never do that.

No, but testing the waters and you know, like we did at the beginning of the show encouraging that feedback loop to keep happening from your employees. That's great. So there's something here. I just wanted to identify some pitfalls.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I like this, and I love this. Is this what you mean? I think I understand, but is this what you mean?

And maybe it comes with age, as I realize I'm like, man, I've just been charging forward, you know, for so many years, and I. Now I've started thinking, well, maybe I'm missing a few things. And. And those questions that I'm. I put here, those are questions that I've asked the people in the last, you know, 45, 60 days that have had a very positive impact, especially, like, the supplier, my accountant, that kind of stuff. So I'm, you know, trying to. Trying to hack your br and think differently about. About things.

Yeah, no, that. That thing with the accountant, that ask before you spend kind of thing. I've found it. So I've been. I've been doing it this year, too, and for the first time, I hate it.

But it's helpful.

No, it's great, because when I asked my accountant that question, you'll get that. Well, wait, did you do it already? No. Okay, well, here's a better way. Oh, I didn't exactly, you know, like. Yeah, but it makes the conversation very efficient. If you show up and you just say, I don't know what to do with my money, you know that most accountants will just say, well, you want me to invoice you? And then you can just send it to me. You know, like, that's how my accountants are. But when I show up and say, I'm thinking of spending money on that, and here's how I'm gonna structure this deal, and they say, whoa, let's talk it through. Now you've given them a problem to solve. Most accountants really do like to solve money problems, and they see, you know, money things as technical problems that require technical solutions. And they're like, well, but if you do it this way or that way, and suddenly, you know, you get three layers deep in the conversation and you're like, well, we're. Now we're talking about a different thing. But that's great because we. We got here, which is the whole point. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

So. So that leads me into my. My next topic that I want to talk about, a few examples. And the first example is, it cost me $25,000. And. And mainly because I did not ask that question. I think I understand. I just listened, and in my head, go, I Know what this, I know what this is. And I tell you what, I've talked about a little bit on the show, but I've always wanted to be in the software business. It's definitely the grass is greener thing. It's like, oh, I hear all this great revenue, da, da, da, da. And I thought I'd met someone that could help me with this. And I had a problem I needed to solve and great, so we're going to do this. And, and I made a commitment to make a monthly investment to kind of support this person while we develop the software. And all along they were telling me that this wasn't going to work, but I was not hearing them. And after about a year, things just really fell apart. And I thought back to your comment, Dave, that you've mentioned over and over again. Is this sunk cost, this fallacy of sunk cost that don't make the decision you've already, I've already spent the 25 grand. I, I have to make the decision that makes sense going forward, not because I've spent 25 grand. I've got to keep this thing going and keep losing money or whatever. You know, I, I learned a lot about the software business in many ways why I didn't want to be in it after this.

Yeah.

But you know, on the flip side, when I did finally ask that question about. I think I understand what you're saying. But then when he said, no, no you don't. What I underst, what I learned was this person really wanted a paycheck. And you've used this example before, Dave.

Not so frustrating.

It is. And not. He didn't want to be a partner, but he, I mean, he wanted the revenue partner share, but he really wanted the guarantee of a paycheck that I was, I kind of was giving him on a small basis just to barely survive. And, and I had Ms. Kind of Misunderstood. So on the sunk cost thing, my example, I stopped worrying about that money and figured, okay, that's done and I'm not going to go forward this. But I had created all this content. My part of this thing was to create a tremendous amount of marketing content. And I had all this content and I said, well, what the heck am I going to do with this thing?

Sure.

Again, I've mentioned this before on the show and I've always wanted to publish a book. And so I started to learn about publishing and I took all that content and I published a book and, and it generates, you know, it's part of my revenue stack now. I've Got, you know, a great group of followers that buy, has bought the book and uses these techniques that I've talked about in there. And it's a long term revenue stream for me. I'm going to get that 25 grand back.

Sure.

And far beyond that over time. And then I read about a really obviously much larger example of this is the company, the sports out outdoor company, rei. Yeah, out here in, in California. I don't know if they're nationwide or not, but they're huge. They built this huge eight acre, 400,000 square foot campus and it took them four or five years to build it. Hundreds of millions of dollars that they invested that this was going to be their flagship campus. Had all this outdoor stuff, all this great things. And the, literally the day they got done with the building, they realized they didn't need it. And it came along in the pandemic. Every, people were very, you know, dispersed, working from home, different things. And somebody had, you know, someone in that organization had the strength to stand up and say, well, you know what? This, we made a mistake. We don't need this, we don't need this headquarters anymore. And they sold it. They never took, they never moved in and I thought never, they never took one office. They literally put it on the market the day they got it done and they sold it. And I don't, I don't know what it sold for, but whether they made any money or they lost money, you know, who knows?

But well, I mean they definitely lost because it, it was a distraction for probably several high paid executives and lots of other people, you know, in the chain there for many years. And now it's like, okay, we've got, even if they got the, their, their investment money back, like they definitely lost on this or they made a mistake and that was their tuition.

Yeah. But I was so impressed by it because I was like, man, talk about sunk costs. And, and, and you know, having the balls to stand up and say, oh, we screwed up or, or it's not. You know, four years ago this made a lot of sense. Today it doesn't make sense.

Right.

So let's sell it. Let's not move in and then, and then spend all this more money. And then five years from now we realized, let's get it. So I commend rei. It's a great example of. Dave, you always mentioned this fallacy, the sunk cost fallacy of sunk cost. I think it's great. And I wanted to, just wanted to bring that up today.

One of my favorite. The first time I Was aware of the idea of a sunk cost. It really isn't a sunk cost, but it was the thing that taught me how to approach sunk costs. I was out to dinner with a friend. This is back in, let's say, the late 90s. At some point Apple's stock had been on a, you know, I mean, if we look at it now, not so much of a rise, but at the time it had been like kicking butt and it had plateaued. Right. You know, like they were. There was no iPhone or anything at this point in time. And you know, Steve had come back and Apple was on better footing, I guess. No, I'm trying to think, was Steve back yet? No, Steve had not come. Come back. No, Steve was back. Anyway, he asked me, you know, and I held a lot of Apple stock at that point. Thankfully I still hold quite a bit. And he said, do you think I should buy Apple stock? Should I get into that today? Now, in retrospect, we all know the answer is yes. But you don't know that at the time.

You don't know.

And at the time I said no, there's nothing here to make me think that it's going to have like another, you know, year where it triples in value. Right? There was a time when you could buy tech stocks if you followed the tech industry. You were one of the only ones. Wall street did not follow the tech industry back then. They do now, obviously. So it was almost like insider trading, except it was fully legal. The information was all public. It's just that Wall street wasn't paying attention. So you could buy. I made, I mean like a crap ton of money buying E trade stock. Now you'd think of all the tech stocks, that's the one Wall street would have paid attention to. No, didn't matter. Like in three months, I think I made like 10x. It was just crazy. And, and the same was true with Apple. Wall street was not watching Apple yet. And, and he said, should I buy? And I'm like, no, I just don't see any reason for you to buy. And yet I'm driving home and I'm like, wait a minute, if I have told him not to buy, why would I continue to hold? And it was a really interesting thing. Like because. And the way I framed that now, thankfully I didn't follow my. Well, I followed some of it. I sold some of it then, but I kept some. So, like things were still okay. But as I was driving home, I thought, wait a minute, what a great way to look at all investments and that is, it doesn't matter if I've already bought it. Would you buy it today? And if the answer is no, then you should sell it today. Right. And Rei's headquarters is a perfect example of this. Right? They invested all this stuff. They have a building, Right. If someone showed up on your doorstep with this building today, would you buy it? Their answer was no, and therefore they sold it.

Yeah.

It's a really hard decision to make, though, when it's not just someone showing up on your doorstep. It is. You own it. You know, it's your doorstep, all of it. So. But that's the way to look at these things. And it really has helped me with all manner of investments since then. It's just asking the question, would you buy it today? And I have a friend who does some day ish trading. And as he was getting into it, he had one position that sometimes he'll hold stuff over a number of days, and it was just tanking and tanking, and he's like, oh, I'm gonna hold onto it until it comes back. I'm like, would you buy it today? He's like, no, no, it's going in the wrong direction. I'm like, then you need to sell it, accept the loss and buy the thing that you would buy today to get some profits out of this. You know, that's interesting, right? But it's hard when you get emotion involved. It's super hard. So that's the question to ask yourself is, would you buy it today? And if the answer is that, hopefully will give you the answer that you need, not the answer you want.

So. Yeah, fascinating.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I want to leave you today with just a comment about our embrace of the. Of the term action, you know, and trying to talk about action a lot because it's so important to, you know, small businesses. Dave, I think, you know, about halfway through the year, you said to me, hey, I want to add a question about action for our guests because, you know, it's just so critically important to all that, you know, know. And so we did that. We added the, you know, question on there. And it also got me to start thinking about using the term small business as a verb, because action is so involved. So we've kind of tried to talk about, talk that up and. And get that, get that out there. And. And I just would encourage, you know, our listeners to. To embrace that as well, especially in the context of what we talked about at the beginning of the show. You know, ask the question of yourself, what do you want? What what help would you like to have? You know, we've got access to a pretty good resource of small business experience, good and bad. And sometimes, you know, I got a.

Lot more of the latter, but that's okay.

Yeah, yeah, it's fine. It's fine. We made it, we made it this far. But I also would, would encourage you to ask those questions of your team. Your employees ask that same question. And, and I think a good way to do it in a, in a non. Because I don't want to use the word threatening, but challenging that question. A lot of times, you know, employees. Oh, you're challenged. Whatever. Because like, you could ask the question, what action can you take to make your productivity increase? And people look at you like, what is my productivity bad? But I, I like to say, you know, what action could you take to make your job more enjoyable? And you know, certainly you can joke around, oh, well, I want to come in later. I want to do whatever. No, no. What, what part of your process, your system that you use every day could, could you change to make your job more enjoyable? And I would argue that that will make them more productive and in turn make your business more money, improve the culture, you know, at your, at your small business, whatever it is, something like that. But, but I would, you know, I would encourage you to ask that question. And then, and then lastly, I would also encourage you to flip that question on, on its head and ask them, what, what, what action can I take?

Yeah.

To make things better.

Yeah.

And get it, get, get that mutual buy in. And you may not like to hear everything. You know, I don't like hearing you'll.

Get the answer you need. Not the answer.

Yeah, that's right. I don't like hearing that we don't have good engagement on the show. It really kind of like, it demoralizes me a bit, but it also makes me think, okay, well, how do, what changes can we take?

Yeah, I get frustrated when I, when I learn that information. I ignore it at first and be like, that's it's wrong. It's, that's not, that doesn't matter for us. Maybe it's not wrong, but that doesn't matter for us. And I go through, I've learned, though, to just let myself experience that and go through that process. And then on the other side of it, it's like, okay, this is 100 relevant. It's right. It's something we need to pay attention to. We need to fix it. And then suddenly it's like, oh, I have a problem to Fix. I love fixing problems. Like, I, I, I need to, I need to detach a little bit from it being about me, although it 100% is about me.

Right.

I mean, like, you know, like, this is our fault.

I started the show for myself.

Right.

There's no doubt about it. I wanted to, I, I wanted to invite people on this show, small business owners, probably because I wanted to be invited on other shows. Right?

Yeah.

Because I would like to talk about, I love talking about my businesses and my experience and probably love hearing my own voice. Right. So, like, like, we all do. But I was like, okay, let's start this show. And, and I would love nothing more to have somebody else, hey, come on the show and talk about, you know, come on our show and talk about your podcast, talk about your business, do whatever it is. And I've been able to do that a little bit. And so, you know, I, I want to continue to do this, but I want to have these measurable metrics. I want to take the actions that make the show more useful to our listeners. And, and I'm excited about the, the year ahead. I think it's going to be awesome. And we're going to try new things, which is great. We're going to challenge each other.

I'm, I'm stoked about it. Yeah, it's good, too. You said we all like to hear our own voices. Call us. 401-472-4249. Leave us a message there. We'll play it on the show. You get to hear your own voice. Works perfectly. Or you can record a voice memo with your phone and send it to us@feedbackusinessshow.co. either way. Or you can type one out. We don't really care. It's all fine. I mean, we care. That's. I hate that.

As long as we get something.

Yeah, yeah, we care a lot. But the form is up to you. You get to pick, and we will digest it and make it a part of the show, because you are a part of the show. Without you out, out there, it's just me and Shannon talking with each other. And we would do that anyway. We've always done that anyway. But we certainly wouldn't do it in this format, and we want to. We like doing it in this format. We like having you involved. So let us know what we need to do to make it easier for you to be involved. That's really the question we're asking here. And, and we'll get there. We'll get there. We will. Thanks so much, folks. I would like to propose that we take next week off. And the reason I would do this is we're not going to record next week. We would put a best of show in the feed. I think there is value to the best of shows. By the way, I've. I've. I have. You have turned me around on that because certainly not everyone has listened for seven years straight. So, yeah, mining the old episodes and sending them out, I think there is value in curating our own content. But I would like to say let's take next week off and breathe for a week.

Sounds great.

Unless we get a comment in that inspires us to record something as part of our new experiment next week, we do reserve the right to do that. But I would say let's take next week off. We'll come back next year and we'll turn this thing on its head a little bit together. How's that sound?

Yeah, that sounds great to me. Right on.

All right, well, that's what we got, folks. Keep living that charmed life. Do what you need to do, Take care of yourselves, enjoy your families over the holiday here, and, yeah, we'll see you next time.

Thanks, Shannon. Thank you, Dave.