Website Feedback, Simplifying Your Message, Acquisition Deal Sponsors and more: Small Business Show 159

The Small business show episode 159 for Thursday, February 22, 2018. Greetings, folks and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co, where we're the show all about small business by, for and about small business owners. Sponsors for this episode include Jamf, where at jamf J-A-M f.com SBS you get three devices for free for life in their small business mobile device management service. We'll talk more about that in a minute. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

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

It goes. Having technical difficulties today, but we've spared our listeners from this.

We got it.

Yes, yes, that's right.

We put in the extra effort for you.

Yeah, some days.

Yeah, that's good stuff.

Yeah.

Hey, so we're kind of doing a. What do you want to call it.

A chat about reaction show. Yeah, yeah.

Because a lot of times what happens, you know, we have these awesome guests on and they tell their whole story and then we kind of zip out and after, you know, we, everybody hangs up and disconnects. I'm sitting here going, oh, I really. We want to talk about this thing they mentioned or that thing they mentioned.

So, yeah, the drive. The drive homers. Right, those thoughts. Yeah, the drive homers. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, I want to do that. That's right, yeah.

So we have a couple things we want to chat about today. And I want to start with. We had Corey Good. Excuse me, Corey Goodreau from G4 Design on a couple weeks ago. And one of the things that struck me as we were talking and I was looking through their website and he was telling his story and what they offered was that there's a very clear benefit in just telling your story like he was doing and having someone else go, oh, wow, I didn't know you did that. Or I didn't. Oh, I don't see that service offered or. Because, you know, in their particular case, what they are offering was, I thought, so much broader and encompass so much more than what they were telling on their website.

Yeah, yeah. Because it really was. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It wasn't just web design because when I, when I was like, wow, that's, that's a. Got to be challenging, you know, to compete in that market. There's a gazillion web designers and people do, you know, stuff for nothing. But actually it's, you know, it was a complete marketing program, SEO, logo design. I mean, it was really everything to take your small business, you Know, especially if you're just getting started or revamping something you've had for a while, bringing it current and creating a modern interface and a modern story for your business. And I just thought we should chat about that for a little bit as ways to do that. Obviously you could come on the Small Business show. If you've got your business and you want to talk about it and share your story, we'd love to have you. Feedbackusinessshow Co. But even just talking to your colleagues or that kind of stuff, or going to a trade show or a conference, I think it's really beneficial.

I find it a lot when, you know, when we get sponsors on the podcast and I've been, obviously sponsors are a relatively new thing for us here, but I've been doing it with Matt Ki Kev for over a decade and we now force our sponsors to do these calls where we get together. And I say force, we strongly encourage, obviously paying bills if they don't want to do it. Well, you know, okay, fine. But we do strongly encourage people to have that conversation because other what I found was, you know, they'd send their talking points. But unless they're really professionals, sorry, unless they're really experienced at doing this and have made some mistakes already, the talking points probably aren't going to tell the whole story, right? And a lot of times the website's not going to tell the whole story because really what needs to happen when a sponsor comes on board is they need us to understand the way they want their story told. And that's very different from the story that I would choose to tell after visiting your website and using your product. Now maybe you want me to tell that story, right? If you hear that from me, you say, oh, whoa, that's even better. You know your audience, great. But a lot of times that's not what they want. They want their own message. They have some new feature that they're highlighting or, you know, they have their own short term marketing objectives. And obviously we're, you know, we're part of that. So we need to be sensitive to what they want us to talk about and what features they want us to highlight. And so many times when I just, in fact, I had a call like that with a guy this morning. He's a solopreneur developer in, I think he's in Israel in fact. But anyway, I just get them talking and when they, you know, they tell this, like he told the story about how he started creating his product. He's like, I'm really lazy and so I created this thing to be able to control my Mac Mini as a remote from my iPhone. It was like, ah, now I understand like from reading your website, honestly, man, I have no idea. That's like the goal of this thing. Ah, you know.

Yeah. And that, that's powerful when they, you can kind of tease that out right. While you're trying to get them. Okay. Because you're experienced in, okay, how do I present this and what do we really want to say? And, and, and you're having that discussion and it's a really powerful exercise to have. And I think speaking in my own case, as well as you build this website or whatever it is, you've got you portraying things and you as the founder or whatever are looking at it going, oh, this is great. I know, this is just what I want to say. But then other people look at and go, I don't, I don't know what you're saying.

Right.

What do you really want to say here? Why aren't you. How about this?

Why don't you say that?

Yeah, why don't you just say it? And, and I have definitely. Sometimes you kind of get tunnel vision, you know, and so having something and.

It'S easy to lose sight of sort of the foundation of whatever your product is because as time goes on, you iterate. Right. I mean in a developer's case, it's a very intentional iteration. But even just with your business in general, you're constantly iterating and it's the new shiny thing that you're excited about. And that's right, your customers will probably be excited about that too, if they understand it in relation to the bigger picture. So sometimes you still just have to lead with the big picture. And it's hard, like you said, you get tunnel vision. So it is hard. It's helpful to, you know, to give somebody your elevator pitch for your company and have them look at your website and say, yeah, okay, right, I see the same thing. Or wow, I didn't get that from your website at all.

Yeah. And if you don't have anybody, you know what they look looking at or you want some help, I mean, go post it in the, the small business support group on Facebook and ask other business owners. Say, he, hey, here's what we offer. Here's the website. What do you think I get that from? We hang out in a podcast group up on Facebook that I see it all the time. Hey, would you go look at my website? Would you listen to this episode? Tell me what you think. Giving each other Feedback really helps and can help define your message because you really only have a few seconds when they hit your landing page. People don't read a lot, and so you really have to grab their attention and say, you know, these are the points that we want to make in 10 seconds or 20 seconds, whatever it is. And then if they want to learn more, you can kind of drill down and go, oh, I need help with this. So I'm going to click that button and learn a little bit more about it.

But. And you do have Simplify, right? And maybe that's, you know, with G4 design, maybe that's their thing. You go to their website, the first thing it says is professional web design company. And then it's like custom design, development, marketing, there's these other things. But that maybe, maybe they found that over the years that this is the right way to funnel people into.

That could be.

Yeah, yeah.

Where you have to educate, you know, bring them in a little at a time and then. And then educate it. And, And I can tell you from. I do a lot of business on social platforms now, and I still do a ton of business on ebay and everything. And it really, you know, for, especially for products, it's. It's like shopping by photo. And, you know, no matter how many words or description things you want to put in there, most people, you. You get, you get them for just a very short time. So you have to really pick and choose about what you put in the text and know that your title, that 80 characters or so, in some case 50 characters, needs to really portray what you're doing. And they may not dig down. And you can't bury stuff in long text because people just won't pay attention to it. And you can't then rely on it later if something goes wrong. And they say, well, I didn't know that. You know, you can't say, well, buried down here in paragraph four, we told you that, you know, that it doesn't work. It doesn't work.

It doesn't work. No.

Yeah, it's like my, you know, terms and conditions, they don't work. I mean, for a small business you can have those and you should in case things really go sideways. But, you know, if you have to rely on, you know, legalese and stuff buried in terms and conditions to defend yourself against your customers. I would argue that there's something fundamentally wrong with your, Your business.

Oh. If you're relying on the way you're.

Yeah. Or the way you're doing your business. Because I used to just Tell my people. It's like, you know, we have those terms and conditions, but I mean, come on. I mean, we're going to make it right. If they're not happy.

Yeah.

I don't care who did it or what happened. Let's take care of it and move on and, you know, because otherwise it turns into a huge brouhah and it's, you know, not going to do it.

Yeah, you can't. That can't be the foundation of your business because you'll get. Any customer will be there only ever once and maybe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. So it's important. So. But anyway, I'm glad we touched base on that and I would encourage everyone, all of us, to, you know, get that kind of feedback. It just really hit me as we were having that discussion a couple weeks ago. So.

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Yeah, and then last week we had, yeah, Mahir Shah, the CEO of Drobo on. And gosh, that was fascinating because here's a guy that's done lots of things with big companies and then stepped back into what was a large company, you know, one time, 50 million in revenue, but not profitable. And that's always my, my yardstick for, oh, is this a good business or not? You know, it's easy to do big numbers, but it's harder to make a profit.

And then he stepped in cash flow. That's right, yeah, yeah, he stepped in.

Well, 10 years after they were founded to really come in and try to straighten things out. And now they're a smaller company, but it seems like they're doing much better. And he's a fascinating guy. Had tons of great things to talk about, mergers and acquisitions. And one of the things he talked about was he mentioned this concept of a deal sponsor, which I was not familiar with at all.

I'd never heard it before either. And as soon as he said it and he said it a lot, it was like, whoa. The bells were like ringing in my head, like, oh, this is, I didn't even realize that this existed, but of course it does. Right. You know, and the concept is, at least as I interpreted it is when a very large company is, I guess really any size company is acquiring another, there's one person that is the cheerleader for that particular, you know, acquisition and that particular deal. And they've got a lot riding on the success of that deal in terms of their, you know, social capital amongst.

Their, their, even their, even their career path.

Right, that's right, right, right.

Yeah, yeah. It was interesting that, you know, I mean, they're essentially the champion of that, of this deal. Okay. I've either, I believe that we need this, you know, this product or these people or this intellectual property or this technology. And I think, you know, we need to bring them on board and it totally makes sense that there is one point person that is ultimately going to be accountable to make this thing work. And you know, my here talked a lot about really getting to know the, the owners or the, the people that were Going to the founders, the president that's going to come over with this, with this business to see if there's a fit culturally and how they run it. And you know, we talked about on the show a lot too. We call it the beer test, right?

Yeah.

And maybe it's a coffee test if you don't drink beer, but, you know, or a glass of wine or whatever it is. But, you know, having a beer or a drink with somebody and chatting personally, you learn a lot about them. And the way they, to your point, Dave, you mentioned the, the way they treat or we were talking about, we had a show where the way they treat the wait staff.

Yeah.

And you know how that impacts. And so you learn just a lot about them that have nothing to do with their business but actually has everything to do with it.

It has everything to do with it. And if it's a very small company, I've even seen people bring spouses on those, you know, beer test or, you know, dining experience things. If you feel like, look, this is, you know, this is someone's life and I'm, you know, I need to know how, like what the interaction is, how much support are they getting from home for something like this. And honestly, now that I say that that's almost more important if you're, if you're starting a business with someone. Right. If they've.

Oh yeah.

If they've got, you know, if they're married or whatever, they've got a family, they have. They're not just a lone wolf, you know, getting together and just making sure everybody's like, yeah, I understand, I'm not going to see you for a while. That kind of thing. You know, that's important.

That's true. It really is. You know, do they have buy in, does the spouse have buy in on this concept?

You need that. I mean, I know that you and I have both, you know, had great buy in from our wives and without that, I mean, we couldn't do this.

Much more difficult.

It would be different. Yeah. I don't even know how it is.

Difficult.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a challenge. So, you know, so that, you know, back to the kind of deal sponsor. So you have this person that really is bringing everything back and they're the ones that have to, you know, oversee everything. And it was fascinating that that's who you, as a small business, let's say you're getting, you know, you got approached by someone. Well, I think you also have to do that due diligence. The other way is okay, who Is this person that's, you know, bringing this concept of acquiring us or merging with us, and, you know, what. What's their personality like and what does it say about the culture of this company? Because you, you know, you read about it over and over, these large companies acquiring these other businesses, and then, you know, within a couple of years, boom, everybody takes off.

Right.

Everybody who came on board is like, oh, I don't want to be here, or the founder left, or these kinds of things after their, you know, contract ran out. So I think protecting yourself as a small business, I mean, it may sound very glamorous, and certainly financially, it may have a dramatic impact on your life, but what is it going to be? You started your company for a reason, either for that autonomy and flexibility or to solve that problem, to have this close connection with your clients, your customers. Are you going to have that if this deal happens? And can you commit 100%? And are you strong enough to walk away, especially from the money? I would say, you know, when I sold, you know, I've sold a few companies, and the last one that we sold, it really became clear to me, and my wonderful wife pointed it out. It's like, you're not the guy anymore to run this business. The business needs someone else. Well, maybe you're in that position. You know, have you maxed out your skill set or, you know, your knowledge of how to grow it bigger, if that's important. So there's a lot to do with it, I think, that you have to think about. Just like the deal sponsor from a larger company is thinking about, how do we make this work and how do.

We make it work? Yeah. And that's, you know, even after the, the, you know, the deal is done, like that person, that's when that person's job is really on the line. Right. Is now it's got to succeed because we just spent all this money. So. Yeah, right.

And you have to smooth out the bumps. And you, you're the liaison, I would imagine, between these. These groups that may have. Well, certainly are going to have some conflicting cultural issues as well, maybe as business practices. And so you really have to be invested in this thing to make it work. If. If you didn't hear that episode, you know, it was 158. It really is. I think it's probably the most important episode we've ever recorded related to mergers and acquisitions. It was fantastic. Especially from the other side of a larger company buying this smaller deal.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy, fun stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was good and then at the same time, Myhir mentioned that he had written an article up on the drobo website, the five Cs of a successful Turnaround. And I thought that was really fascinating and I enjoyed reading it and I thought we ought to chat about it here as well.

Absolutely. Yeah. So he wrote this. He actually called it the five Cs of a successful hardware company. Turn around. So, you know, we'll. We'll couch some of. Or it is all couched that way. But. But I, I think most of these lessons apply kind of everywhere, so. And number one, obviously applies everywhere. Customer connections. Personally connect with your customers. So what he's saying is, you know, he came in, he didn't know he was brought in as the turnaround guy. Well, one way to learn your business is to just look at the numbers, Right. But that doesn't tell you the whole story because the numbers don't exist without customers sending you dollars that then become those numbers. Right?

Yeah, that's right.

So he says, get to know your customer base. Why are they choosing your product? Why aren't they, you know, why haven't they chosen to upgrade or whatever that is? Learn what your customers think about you. That is, it's a, that's a huge thing. Right? That's a huge thing for any business.

Yeah, well, and it kind of pulled. Pulls you out of your, your own bubble, right, because, you know, you believe the story and everything to this episode.

That's right.

Yes. Yes, there is. And so, I mean, you know, he talks here about, he's, you know, made it a point to talk to, you know, 500 customers a year and ask them like a real simple question. Why did you choose Drobo and how you use it and how you can improve it with products? And, you know, I love that. There was a long run of time where I used to go on the map and map out a group of clients and I would fly out, rent a car and just start driving and meet with these dealer customers that were doing business with us. And I loved it. It was great. You get to meet some great people and connecting. I think it's critically important.

It's critical. Yeah. Because all business is just people business. Right. You know, you can't do anything without other people. So whether they're your vend or your customers, getting to know them and reminding each other that, yes, we're all human. Like, especially in today's, you know, the way everything's done, we do everything online. Email is very detached from the humanity aspect of things. Yeah. You can try and, you know, insert some level of personality in your email, but like, you have no idea how someone's interpreting that, like what kind of mood they're in, how they're seeing it. Just there's no way to control that. And really there's no way ever to control it. But at least you get some reactions when you're meeting someone face to face. Even like you said, if you're just kind of driving around and saying, going and saying hi, that's. Oh yeah, huge thing.

Yeah, yeah, it's a big deal. And then number two, I mean, we've, we've said it I don't know how many hundreds of times on this show, you know, as cash is king. Right?

Yep.

And you know, I would imagine, I mean, creating a piece of hardware and, or multiple pieces of it, you know, super cash intensive is what. You know, Mahir said having access to capital is really important for the growth of the company. So in addition to an initial investment, you know, you have to get something going or whatever. You may need ongoing capital. So thinking long term, you know, what is our burn rate? And your idea may be awesome and incredible, but so many businesses fail because they can't realize their, their goals without that on may perhaps ongoing investment because maybe they can't generate that cash in the beginning.

Right? Yeah. And you go, but you gotta have a plan to generate that cash. Even though you know your plan's gonna change, you have to. You know, I've always felt like when you're going to either a bank or an investor or whatever it is, I think they know your plan's gonna change too. But if you show up and just say, look, I didn't put together a plan because it's just, we all know it's gonna change. Like that sends the message that you haven't really even thought about this yet. Right.

You gotta have some. I mean, I'm not a huge fan of really detailed business plans just for that reason because they change. But you gotta have a story for your bank and, and we should do a show. Show on. I think we did do a show on that.

Yeah. A while back. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, you gotta show them that you've got like, if things go as they look to be going now, here's how this is gonna happen and, and show that, that you have a handle on that and you understand it and it's not just thin air and. Okay, yeah, I see it. We all know that's going to change. Fine. But okay, this is, this is a realistic plan. Great. Let's, you know, that allows, again, either the bank or, you know, an investor of another kind to evaluate the risk, because a lot of that is them risking, you know, their feelings about you. Right. What.

Sure.

What does this person or this company, what are they going to be able to do when plans change? So there you go.

Yeah. And I think as small business owners, we talk on this show a lot about creating your own reality and the power of being optimistic and positive, and you have to be careful. And speaking from my own experience, there comes a time when you have to have a conversation eventually at some point when something doesn't work. Right. And my personality is always to be like, oh, I don't want to have to go back to this investor, to the bank or whatever, or even own bank account and realize that this isn't going as planned and I have to do plan B or. And I need another influx of capital to keep things going. It's not a fun conversation to look essentially, look yourself in the mirror and say, this is not working. But if you don't do it, it's just going to push the problem down the road, and then it may be too late to go back to your investor, however you're doing at your bank. And I've been there where a lot of times the bank says, oh, we didn't know this was happening. We don't want to renew your line of credit, you know, or. Or, you know, oh, you should have told us six months ago, you know, that kind of thing. And so you have to have that open, transparent relationship with wherever your cash is coming from.

Wherever. Yeah, wherever it's coming from. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Number three, which we've already talked about a little bit here, he called it the culture club, but, you know, getting everybody in the company thinking the same way about what it is you're doing and why you come to work every day. That's the, you know, and he says when you're, when you're turning things around, the company will undergo a transformation. So everybody needs to be on board with, okay, here's the new way, and it's a better way. And, you know, the future is bright, but we're going to have to work differently and, or harder and probably both to make this happen. So you got to get everybody on board with that vision. And that's. That's like, if you don't think about that, you're going to have a problem. But if you do think about it, that could be the one thing that, that really is the, the fatalist that I was going to say the foundation or catalyst. So I said fatalist. So it's a fatalist. There you go. It's a new word, Fatalist. That's it.

I like it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, and it's true. And sharing, you know, good news and bad news, you know, is critically important. And letting them go, hey, you know, we, if this didn't work or that didn't work, this goal we didn't meet here, we didn't do this. Getting them on board and getting them vested in the success of the business and one another is really very important.

That's it. Yeah, trusting. That's right. Trusting that the team around is going to be able to do the things I'm not doing. And there you go. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

And then number four, he talks contract manufacturers with, obviously related to a hardware company that's building something. But even you could put suppliers, suppliers in here, vendors, this kind of thing. But your partners, they have to believe in your company and your vision. And in the case of Drobo, you know, your contract manufacturers are creating, building the products that you're designing. So they have to know that, okay, this is what's going on. They have a good plan, a good team and suppliers as well, especially if they're extending you any kind of credit, they need to be comfortable with your business plan and what's going on. And I recall that as Mehir was telling a story about when he came on board Drobo, they had to go fly over to China and talk to their suppliers and show them that plan. Hey, guys, cut a deal. We're going to give you a little bit of money. Not all that you're owed right now, but we want you to be on board with the turnaround and the growth. So very important.

Even if you had the money, if you can get one of your suppliers to sort of buy in that way, like, look, we're going to make a, you know, a good faith offering here. We know we owe this to you. We're going to come up with a plan to pay you, but if you pay them off, then they, then that's a different thought process for them. Like, okay, we got out of that. We.

Yeah, that's true.

We're at zero now. They don't owe us anything.

We're not invested anymore.

We're not vested anymore. Exactly. So we can walk away. And I remember somebody did that with us years ago. Years ago. In fact, I think I can say the name of the company. It was Max Speech. They had a really hard time. I think it was OS 10.1 or something. They were famous for this. Just the bottom fell out because they couldn't release a product. And they were really good about keeping in touch with us, though. That's the thing. They owed us some money for previous ads. Fine. Since then, that company doesn't exist. They've been acquired and everything's all good. But. But they were great about communication. And they always picked up the phone when one of us called to say, hey, where's the money? Never hid from that. In fact, we never even had to call them. They were upfront about it. They were on top of it every month and like, okay, this month. I don't even know if there were months where they couldn't pay, but if there were, they told us about it before it happened, as opposed to just, you know, sticking their heads in the sand and hoping that they didn't hear the phone ring or whatever. It was really well handled. And I've learned a lot from that. Like, I've done that at times when we've been cash tight. It's like, okay, wait, you know, I'm gonna talk to you about this. I'm gonna explain to you where I am. I'm gonna explain to you what I wanna do. And people like that, especially when they're sort of. It's that forced vesting. I think it's really what that comes down to.

Well, it kind of leads you into, you know, here's number five. Communication.

Yeah, right, right.

And it is critical. It's, you know, when there's a problem, like I, I would always say around our office, hey, man, if there's a big problem around here, nobody's door gets closed. Everybody's office is open. And we all are, are open and discussing this because if, you know, it can be human nature sometimes to be like, oh, man, I can't deal with this. I got to close my door and kind of decompress.

Wait it out for a week. It'll be better.

No way. It's like, go walk around the block. Walk and get your head, you know, because you have to be there for your team. Just like you're discussing here a vendor, a supplier, whatever you have, even your landlord if you're renting. I mean, we, we had a massive building that we were doing some projects at the time and, and adding some new channels to our business, and it didn't go well. You know, it worked in the beginning, and then, you know, we don't have enough time to talk about why it didn't work. But suffice to say that, that, you know, all of a sudden we didn't need this massive, you know, 35,000 square foot building, but it was costing us a lot of money. And, you know, we worked with the landlord and to your point, the more we communicated with them and let them know what was going on and the more transparent we were with them, the more they partnered with us and they knew, okay, they're going to, eventually they're going to get this paid. We know that, you know, they're this type of business and type of people that they are. We just couldn't pay them all at once.

Sure.

And eventually, you know, it took a long time, but we eventually got them all paid and made them whole. And because of that, because they worked with us, because I think they knew, well, if we just lock down on these guys, we're never going to get any money.

Well, that's it. Yeah, you know that. Yeah, that's right. I think everybody listening to this show has been in that scenario at some point where it's like, yeah, that company entity person owes me. But I know, like, blood from a stone doesn't work. So, no, let's be friendly. Let's make sure you have a plan. Let's be. Let's not ignore the fact that there's this, you know, issue. It's not the, the elephant in the room. It's just like, okay, it's a thing. Let's talk about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you know, communicating, whether it's with your team, within your business or, you know, all this stuff, it. It's really important. So it's a great article. We'll link it up in the show notes and you can take a look at this and we'd certainly like to hear from you and how you may have used some of these things or some different things you want to add to number 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10, let us know.

Yeah.

Share your story.

Show co. That's right. Yeah.

Awesome. What else you got, Dave? Anything else?

You know, I had, I had one thing very quickly. We talked to or we talked about, we didn't talk to, although we probably could about. But Jean Louis Gasse is two tokens method of customer service, right? Oh, yeah. It's nothing or it's everything token. And a quick recap is when either literally or figuratively, you're sitting down with a customer that has a problem. There are two tokens on the table. One says it's nothing, one says it's everything. You get to pick first. But whatever one you pick, your customer picks the other. So if you pick the it's nothing token, get ready because you're about to hear it's not nothing. Right?

Yeah. And when they, when you say it's nothing, it's like, oh, your problem's not that important versus wow, this is a big deal. And you know, that kind of thing. And, and it, it is so true when you think about it.

Yeah. Oh, it's totally true. It's just human nature. When a customer, if a customer is so upset with you, they just won't talk to you anymore. They'll just write you off and walk away. But if a customer brings you a problem, it's actually because they want it solved. They might not, they might not be so clear about that. They might need to rant and vent and yada yada, that's fine. But if they're, if they're talking with you about this, it's because they want, they see that a solution is possible and they're hoping you can facilitate that. So by you kind of taking that. So anyway, that he was, you know, president of what, Apple France for a while. Right. And that's where he kind of, you know, forged this two tokens method. Well, Apple recently released their HomePod speaker. And then people started realizing that the HomePod makes rings on wood furniture. And you know, Apple's response was effectively, it's nothing, don't worry about it. Happens all the time.

That's right.

Fascinating.

That's the wrong token.

Yep, it's the you're holding it wrong token, which goes back to Steve jobs with the iPhone 4 or 4s, whatever it was. That's right. Needed a bumper so that you didn't short the antenna with your skin. But yeah, yeah, it's like, you know, you had that guy there. You could have learned from him. Make a big deal out of it offer. Yeah, I agree.

Hey, we'll send you a little coaster. Send you a coaster, piece of Coke or cork or whatever. And some way to convey that, wow, we know this is an issue and we're on it. And, you know, you could argue that the way they handled kind of the battery situation was kind of similar. It's like, oh, you know, their processors, this. And it uses the battery and it kind of surges and the batteries get older. And you can certainly talk the tech side more than I can. But instead of really being transparent and open about it and taking that token, well, whoa, this is a big deal for people because these phones are so important. It was like, well, let's just do this update and we won't say anything. And then when it came out, all hell broke loose and they look like the bad guy when they were actually trying, imagine to smooth out some of these issues and we could do a whole episode on hubris.

Hubris of Apple. Yeah, exactly. It is.

It is crazy, you know.

Yeah.

But that's a good question. Definitely worth revisiting that. Jean Louis guesse two tokens. We did an episode on it. We'll link his article here. And I believe it should be the foundation of your customer service plan. And every customer service person you have should read that article and understand exactly how it works and why they need to convey that this is critically important to us that we solve this problem for you. Because then your customers are just going to breathe a sigh of relief that someone is listening to them.

That's right.

And you know, I think it's important.

That's step one. It's just step one. You need to then fulfill on that. But of course, you need to just make them feel like. And you can't just say, I hear you. You need to show that you hear them. Yeah, yeah.

Action, man. You got to take some. Some kind of action. And, and, and then what you have is an opportunity to earn a customer for life that then becomes an evangelist for your business. Because the way you solved a problem.

Yep.

And I used to tell my people this all the time. It's like, you know, this person will stick with you forever if you really show empathy and, you know, know, think about, especially in where everything's E commerce and fulfillment and you get something, you're waiting for it to show up and you're building up this thing in your head how it's going to work and what it's going to look like. And you open this box and it's not how it looks and it's not how it's supposed to work, and you're upset and, you know, it's a big deal. Big deal.

Yeah, it's a big deal. So cool.

Yeah.

So anyway, it just seemed ironic. It was like, wait a minute, Apple picked up the it's nothing token. I can't believe it.

The wrong one. They're not sending out T shirts.

I don't think so. No, I don't think so. My guess is that their margins on that home pot are pretty healthy. But that's just. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm returning mine, by the way. Yeah.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, I got it.

Yeah.

Cool, man. Some good stuff. Today, we'd love to hear from you folks, either at feedbackusinessshow co or at the Small Business show, facebook.com.

Yes, sir. Facebook business.

Small business show. Facebook book.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that's all I got, man. You. You got anything else, or are we. We're good.

No, I'm. I think we're all set.

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