What's in Your Credibility Stack?

Business brain, episode 594 for Wednesday, October 30th, which is National Checklist Day. An important thing 2024. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take a few ideas, we dissect them, we crunch them, we use them to analyze and tune our business brains each and every time we get together. And it is good to analyze our business brains because that's an important thing, I think. Sponsors for this episode include notion.com businessbrain. That's where you can go and try Notion for free today. And also legalzoom.com where promo code bbshow. I know it's a little different. Gets you 10% off any business formation product, excluding subscriptions. We'll talk more about both of those in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

That was a mouthful, man. I'm Shannon Jean, still out here in Northern California. I love having those sponsors on because I've used them both and super great when we have products and services that we've used over the years to come on and sponsor our show.

I love it.

I love it. You know, one thing, I'll be happy next week. I'll be happy. Hopefully my text, the amount volume of texts that I get will drop considerably.

Oh, because you're getting all the spam texts about the upcoming election. Yeah.

Yeah. It's driving me nuts. It's driving me nuts.

I wanted to talk about talking about politics. I don't want to talk about politics. No, because we've made it. We've made a good show over almost 10 years in part by avoiding that as a subject. However, a lot of businesses do choose to talk about politics and perhaps even more than that. A lot of businesses make decisions about their business and what companies they're going to work with or not work with because of politics. And so I want to talk about not just talking about politics in your business, but I want to talk about reacting to politics in your business and letting them influence your choices.

Yeah, it's such a great topic. And here's my 30,000.

Yeah. Give me your take. And I have. I have a take. Mike. I'm guessing we're going to be slightly different on this, but I could be wrong. Yeah.

Yeah. And I'll use an analogy. I know they're not always the best, but I liken it to music. Okay. I love music. It's actually in my toolbox. I use it every day. I, you know, depends what mood I'm in. You know, always something going on. Got it all over our house. We've got the sono stuff. So music's very important to me. If I knew, and I'm just speculating here, but I feel pretty confident if I knew about the politics of each artist that I listened to, I would argue that it would take something substantial away from the music that I'm enjoying so much. And to separate the artists from politics or whatever, I don't really care. Right. I want to feel the music, feel that emotion, connect to the music. I'm connecting to the music. And oftentimes with the artist as well, if, you know, you like them or follow them, whatever. But I try to go out of my way not to listen to. If they do talk about politics, because I think it would change the way I feel about the music. Right.

It may endear them to you, or it may excommunicate them for you. Right.

So I would rather remain politically agnostic to my. The musicians and the bands and the artists that I listen to and learn from, you know, whatever.

Sure.

And I would. I feel the same way about business.

So this is interesting because Music is the 1 business, and it is a business. Yeah. Where some, not most, not even a majority, but some musicians have made their entire. And bands. You know, I'll lump them together in this. Some artists have made their careers because of, or at least on the foundation of their politics. It's not. It's not solely because of it. It's. They've got, you know, they're good songwriters, and they've also made the right connections and they're relentlessly touring and all the things that you got to do, working hard.

Right.

But, you know, I. I mean, I think of. Of, you know, Woody Guthrie or Arlo Guthrie or, you know, the Guthrie father and son team there. Absolutely, you know, political with their music. James Taylor, absolutely political with his music.

You know, Green Day. I mean, Green. Yeah, yeah.

You know, it's interesting you say Green Day. I didn't. And this is gonna say more about me than it does about anybody else. I did not think of Green Day as a political band. And it's ridiculous for me to say these words until this year when I. I saw them, you know, and I've seen them many times, and I'm. I'm aware of their lyrics. I'm obviously aware that they're singing about politics and all of these things, but I. It just never. I never thought to call them a political band until this year when somebody commented on a post. I was like, oh, I'm here at Fenway park to see greeting. And somebody was like, I hate those guys because of their politics or whatever.

Well, that's it.

And it was like their music. What are you talking about? Oh, yeah, you're right. Obvious. Duh.

Of course they're a political band, but.

The same true R.E.M. it's another band I love, founded on politics, and I arguably was.

Yeah, you should be able to love them and still enjoy the music without. You don't have to buy into what their politics are. I like a lot of what, you know, you know, hip hop or rap. That old man. But, you know, I'm not buying into the lyrics of, you know, rolling down the street in the Range Rover, rolling the window down, taking a shot at something.

Right.

But the rhythm is amazing and the. And you. The song is great. So, you know, it's the same thing. Like you're not going to live the lyrics. I feel the same way that. But taking it over to the business side, I don't really want. I think it's great to be patriotic. Okay, sure. I think that's great. And I also think it's great to promote people to do their patriotic duty, to vote, to get involved, to make your voice heard. I think that's wonderful. Right. So if I was in business and was thinking about, gosh, you know, how do I. I'm all fired up and I want to, you know, whatever. I believe that's the way to do it is. Is talk about the power of getting involved. Because all politics is local. Right. And. And don't get caught up in a lot of the national stuff that is often just political theater. But your help is needed on a local level so much. And then encouraging people to vote, all that kind of That. I think that's the way to. You can attract, let's say, both sides of the team.

Sure. So let me. And I. I agree with all pretty much everything. Certainly the gist of what you said there. I'm on board.

Just the gist.

Yeah. Just let me spin this around a little bit. Would. If you were doing business with someone and it could be, you know, one person or it could be a large company, and you were then after you started doing business with them, you were then to find out that they had strong political opinions that were not in line with the. I don't want to say against the way you think, but. But not in line with the way you think, would you. Would that change your decision to continue doing business with them?

I don't think so. I have plenty of friends that I know are politically.

Yeah.

Polar opposites of me. And I don't base that. I would think it's very shallow to base that on your friendship, obviously. And I don't think I would change. I find myself being. I'm less attracted to a business if it's one way or another. It doesn't matter if you're promoting something I happen to agree with. If that's your big message. It's like, dude, I need a plumber or an H vac person. Who's the best at that, right?

I don't want to know. Yes, I think there are a lot of people like you and me, Shannon. And my guess is, just because of the way podcasting works, most of our listeners are probably similar enough to you and me because we tend to attract like minded people to listen to our shows. That's just sort of the nature of podcasting. Yeah.

Super smart, successful.

Right. Driven. Yeah, yeah. Attractive. All those things.

All those things.

Yeah. But I know that there are a lot of people out there that make business decisions, or what we would call business decisions, based on what they know about a company's politics or a person's politics, or the leader of a company's politics, or any permutation of the above. And I think that's the reason I would continue to give the advice of keep your mouth shut about that stuff, especially in terms of your business. Yeah.

Haven't we seen example after example after example?

That's right.

It doesn't matter what topic or what your biases are, we all have them. You've seen it go wrong. So I agree with you. Keep your mouth shut.

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Yeah, it's a good tie in because there's a lot of this election's crazy and there's lots of discussions about the media and whether independent or biased and different thing and we just had Jeff Bezos come out with an op ed I thought was fascinating about trying to keep independence and doing things. And I thought there was some good, good touch to it. And you know, one of his comments was no one trusts the media, basically. And I, I was immediately thinking with my business brain, I'm like, you know, nobody trusts your business if they don't know it. Nobody trusts, nobody trusts your product that it's going to solve the problem if they've never used it. Right. So how do you overcome that? Because it's always so hard, especially if, if you're competing, if you're in a, what they, you know, a boring quote. Boring, but maybe very profitable business. You know, how can you rebuild? He talked a lot about rebuilding and they're, they're taking steps to rebuild and I would like, you know, love to see that. But how do we do it for our own companies and our own business? Right, right. The first, I mean, and the first thing that comes to mind is it really like under promising and over delivering and, you know, exceeding people's expectations on whatever service or product that you give them or sell to them. Because that news, you know, bad news travels the, the fastest. Sure. The next, you know, in line is when you really please somebody and they're surprised because people are cynical. Right. And they, they order something online and they're just waiting. They're not going to ship it on time. It's not going to get here.

Yeah.

It's not going to be what I got. I ordered a rug and I got a towel. You know, this kind of thing. It's so you have that first chance to really show that you are adding value. We are selling a product or a service that's really good and we believe in it and it's going to change your life. That, that's, that's got to be number one.

Yeah, it's, you're right. I spend so much. I never thought about this until just now. I spend and have for decades spent so much energy earning the trust of my, my current and potential future customers, my current and potential future vendors, my current and potential future competitors, my current and potential future employees and contractors. Right. Like, if I could, and this is like I'm having a moment here because if I could distill down the thing where I spend the most of my energy, it is credibility and it feeds everything else that we do. Obviously, I don't just sit here and fret about it. It's, it's. I like to take, take a bias towards action. I don't always succeed at that because I fail more than I succeed. But it's baked into all of the actions that we do, too. Replying to people quickly, you know, giving. Being accurate, being friendly, being reliable. Like, all of those things boil down to credibility. And I'm hyper. It's interesting. I've never stopped to think about this before because I'm hyper aware of the value of that credibility in whatever market I'm in. And it's fascinating to me when I can watch the scales tip. This year has been a different year for Gigab, the third podcast that I do, right? I do this one. I do MacGeek Gab, which I've been doing for 20 years. And Giggab, ironically, format totally changed this year. Yeah. But it started on the exact same day as this, so it's been going just as long. But this year, the format changed because my co host left the show, at least on a regular basis. So I had to start doing different things. And a lot of what I've been doing has involved outreach to the industry. And it was about six months. It was about June of this year. And after I'd been.

He.

He left at the end of last year. So I had, like, six months of hitting it hard. And it was. Initially, I played it safe a little bit. I brought in, like, guest co hosts and guests that I kind of knew and, you know, feel felt it out because I don't know. That's what. That's what I did.

Yeah, great transition.

But then it was like, well, I got to. I got to. I got to swim in a different pool here, and so I got to go fishing. And as I started bringing in other people and being more confident with, okay, yeah, that went well. Let me do this, let me do that. And reaching out and then telling other people about. Just like we do here, anytime the products are mentioned, suddenly it was like June, where I had people coming to me and being like, hey, I want you to talk about my product. And it was like, oh, look at that. Now there's a credibility. And I had one company, I can't mention their name because they sent me a product. I'm looking at it, but you can't see it. That doesn't yet exist. And it's a really cool thing in the industry. And they sent it to me, and I was convinced they sent the email to the wrong person. Oh, and I knew who I syndrome. Right. Well, well, but there was actual reason. It was like, oh, I had this person on the show. We talked about your products.

I see.

In that episode, I really think you meant to send this, like, to ask them to send it to Like, I think you got confused. And they were like, you know, we, we reached out to that person and we're sending them one too. But we know that you test these kinds of things. Again, I don't want to talk too specifically because I don't want to. It's not my news to share. Right. But yeah, but it was like, oh, okay, well then, yeah, here's, here's my address. Like, I'd love to test. Yes, I do test things like that. I would love to test that out. That'd be amazing. You know, and it was like, oh, that's a really nice. Just like, it was a validation of things, of credibility. And of course, this means I probably have to go to the NAMM show in January, which is something I don't want to go to. Like, you know, all these things. It's like, oh, well, now I gotta, now I'm part of this industry crap, you know?

Yeah, yeah, of course.

Yeah.

And I think if, if you, if you start with this value concept, if you can't add it, I think you really have to try to figure out why, you know, if, if there's a problem, if you can't make a profit doing it a certain way, you know, how do you change things to where you, you know, where you can. And, and did you fall down into this slippery slope of competing on price? So you had to cut this or cut that or, you know, people pay for quality and they pay for timeliness. Like, you know, you need something done at your house. You go online to five different websites and fill out a contact form. You're probably, you're lucky if you hear one.

It's amazing. Crazy.

So, yeah, it's crazy. And so that, that value add focus on, you know, credibility, I think it's, I think it's just a great place to start and, but I think we all have to work at it. Like you said, it is a constant fight. You know, every time. When I, when I did that handbag experiment, you know, and eventually sold like 7,000 handbags, well, I didn't start by selling $5,000 handbags. I would have been laughed out of the room. You know, I sold $50 handbags and then I built up a following and then credibility. And over that, then I sold a 3, 4, $500 handbag and then I put, oh, shoot, man, I could get an $800 thousand. So it took me a year and a half before I was okay. Now I can probably get twenty five hundred dollars. Now I could. Because there was all this credibility stacked up and all these great reviews, and they didn't care that somebody had spent 50 bucks. They just saw the review that said, man. Shipped it fast. It met my expert. It was so.

They have no idea. Right.

There's no dollar amount next to it. So offer services. Maybe you need to offer an inexpensive solution. Like, you know how everybody. Oh, $79. Clean your vents or, I don't know, whatever. Yeah, do it. Do it for free and get all those reviews and stack them up, and then you get the people that want to come spend ten grand on your H Vac. That's my tip of the day.

No, it's great. I'm glad you brought this topic up. It's. Yeah. Interesting.

It's important, man.

Let us know what you think, folks. Let us know what you think, not thinks. Let us know what you think, folks. See, I want my grammar to be accurate to add to my credibility stack. That's the credibility stack. The credibility stack.

All right, that's good.

You got it.

Credibility stack.

Yeah. What's in your credibility stack, folks? Feedback at businessbrain show. Yes. Thank you so much. And. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Feedbackusbrain show. Think about this now. I'm. Yeah. Credibility stack. That's good.

That's another T shirt.

It's on the T shirt.

I'm adding it to the list right now.

Keep living that charmed life. We'll see you on Friday.