What’s on Your To-Did List? Small Business Show 215

The Small business show episode 215 for Wednesday, March 20, 2019. Greetings, folks and welcome to the Small business show at businessshow co. That is by, for and about small business. Two sponsors today, Abby, connect.com SBS and take care of.com where coupon code SBS50 gets you 50 bucks off. Will tell you. Sorry, not 50 bucks off, 50% off. You'd think I'd know the difference as a small business owner between percent and dollars. This is an important distinction, folks. We'll tell you what you get 50% off and what you get at Abby. Connect a little bit later. For now here back in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And out on the west coast, I'm Shannon Jean. It sounds like you've gotten back late from south by Southwest.

Yeah, you would think that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, my flights home were I had a 35 minute connection in Charlotte, North Carolina and it was the smoothest travel experience I've had in a long time.

That's awesome. Yeah, those can be rough.

Those can be. But it was great. Like I was home really quick because I didn't like stand around in an airport for an hour and a half waiting for my next flight or whatever. It was just. Yeah, that's great. Thankfully, the first flight was on time. That's really the key, right, to making those work.

Yeah, you're gonna get there in the same concourse and all that stuff. Yeah.

And my. So I'll say a couple of things about that. Number one is I tend to trust the airlines in that regard, if they will. Like, I didn't create this connection as like a la carte thing. It was, you know, I said I wanted to get from Austin, Texas to Boston, Mass. And they said, well, here's one option. It has a 35 minute layover. And I thought, you know, if the airlines are booking this and offering this as, as a path of travel, a I know they'll take care of me. And I did look to make sure that there were other flights from Charlotte to Boston later that day because, you know, not my first rodeo. But I also like the airlines know what flights of theirs are on time and what, you know, tend to run late or whatever. So I felt pretty good about this, you know, being. I know anything can happen, of course, but, you know, I felt pretty good about it. And as you know, it worked out all right. But I use a service called TripIt. And no, they're not sponsoring this episode. Although they could or should.

But you should.

Yeah, but it's, you Just you can put all your travel arrangements in it. You can actually have it slurp them right out of your email, or you can just. I choose to just forward emails. Like when I get my flight or hotel reservations, I just forward them to tripit and then it builds an itinerary for me. And the cool part is with my flights, yeah, it'll know the flight number and then it goes and searches all the other databases and finds out, like, gates and all of that stuff. So when I'm about to get off the plane, TripIt shows me a map of the terminal to get from one gate where I'm getting off to the other one. So when I step into an airport terminal, I'm not totally lost. It's like, I know I kind of know what I'm doing. Yeah. Which is helpful because sometimes you can spend a couple of minutes sort of getting your bearings, and if you've got a tight connection, you might not want to spend those minutes doing that. So TripIt kind of takes care of it, but it's kind of cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's very cool.

Yeah.

I love, you know, the thing about trade shows and we're going to, we're going to talk about South Southwest in a minute a little bit more. But, you know, I. One of the things I'm looking forward to when I don't think I'll ever retire, but when I maybe semi retire and have more time is I love going to those shows. We've talked about trade shows here from a small business perspective a number of times. But, you know, going to those shows like south by Southwest, there's a one called the Shot show that's, you know, hunting and outdoors and fishing. I, you know, I love that stuff. And then there's another one I really like, which is this. I think it's SEMA or Semis, but it's the, the, the auto show, which is all the specialty equipment manufacturers that, that add ons for, you know, trucks, cars, jeeps, all that stuff. And I, I really look forward to being able to do that and just make it, you know, hit a few of those every year. From a personal standpoint, it's interesting.

Yeah. I mean, there are there south by Southwest where I feel like, oh, I'm. I'm playing hooky right now, you know, and parts of that, I mean, parts of that are certainly true, but. Yeah, but you know, a lot of what that conference is sort of, if I take all of the things that I do and you know, I mean, I also do Mac Geek Gab, which I think a lot of people here know. I don't know how many people know that. You know, I do a podcast called Gig Gab that is for musicians. And so, you know, south by Southwest actually ties all of that together. They've got the business stuff that relates to what we do here and the tech stuff and the music stuff. So I lead a charmed life as we talk about all the time. And part of my charmed life is that I've turned my interests slash hobbies into actual work. And so, yes, there are times when it feels like, wow, I'm really getting away with murder here or whatever, but I'm not. It's like I've worked really hard to make this a thing for myself.

Correct, correct. You're making connections. You're doing research, and those things are really important.

Oh, they pay off. Yeah. Ye.

They really do. And I think as kind of highly productive people that are. That are just moving quickly all the time. Well, speaking for myself is, I often have to remind myself that, hey, it's okay. You're. You're.

Yeah, it's okay.

Maybe you can't check these things off your. The. The list, so to speak, but you're. You're absorbing a lot of interesting data, you're meeting some people, and, you know, maybe, maybe not at first glance at that are going to lead to anything, but it's important.

Yeah. And, you know, I would say that last week's show was in terms of, like, those concrete, sort of tangible things that I can check off on a list. I had more of those at that show than I have had at many other conferences I've been to recently, you know, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it works out well. And I took a day and went and met with ad agents, a couple ad agencies over in Houston, but also wound up running into a lot of those same people at the conference because they had a huge podcasting track. So. Yeah.

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah, it was. It was good. It was good.

Well, there's, you know, there's certain people that you travel with that they're. They all people always know someone. They always run. And I would. I would say you suggest you're probably one of those people like, hey, you know, I know that guy.

Yeah, well, and if I don't know that guy, I'm about to, you know, that kind of thing. That's cool. So next time I will share a funny story. I think all the parties involved are aware of what happened, so I think I can be pretty frank about this. But I had this meeting scheduled for Wednesday to drive from Austin to Houston to go to meet with some folks from these ad agencies. And I was at a podcasting session on Sunday and one guy went up and asked a question and made a comment and mentioned that he was the CEO of one of these agencies. I've never met this guy before, frankly. This is an agency that I would say we have the. The had the least closest relationship with. We've worked together for a number of years, but it's always been just business. And I really like to. I like to get to know people, you know, it's. It's really handy, which is why I, I scheduled this thing to go out of my way to, you know, drive two and a half hours each way to Houston for what I knew would turn in to be about a 45 minute meeting, you know, and that's fine. Like, that's worth, that's well worth it. And, and so, and this guy, you know, asked his question, it was answered or whatever, and then I see him like, bolt out of the, the, the. The thing. Like he clearly had somewhere to go. I grabbed my stuff and I stalked him and chased him down and just, you know, I mean, we talked for about five minutes and as he was sort of walking out of the hotel where this particular session was, and we chit. Chatted a little bit and, and he was actually very nice. And he's like, oh, it's actually great to meet you. Like, you know, we talked about the beginnings of podcasting, and he's like, yeah, you guys have been there since the beginning. It's like, yeah, you know, it's good. And then I, of course, went to his offices on Wednesday and I met with the team that I was going to meet with. And as I was leaving, the woman that I was meeting with said, do you want to go and say hi to him? And I was like, oh, sure, that sounds great. And so I went into his office and we said hello. We joked about how it had been at least 48 hours since we'd seen each other, that whole thing. And then we spent 30 minutes talking about drums and music. It turns out he's also a drummer. These kinds of things can work out really, really well.

Yeah, absolutely, because you find out what you have in common, right?

Yeah, that's it.

Ways to connect with them and, and it, it kind of cements some of those relationships. You do?

Yeah, it's like, I know that guy now a little bit, and he knows me a little bit, you know, and yeah, we have at least some, some common ground. We've had a 30 minute chat that was a nice little diversion for both of us. I think of these moments as creating your own serendipity. Right. Because it is, it was a serendipitous moment, but it certainly wasn't accidental, you.

Know, and I think it, not only does it build trust, but it, it builds credibility. Right. So that when they think of you, it's just more, wow, this guy took the time to come all the way out here, you know, took the time to, to jam out of the session, to go meet me, you know, too quickly. Yeah, you're just a more credible guy than somebody just picking up the phone or sending an email and trying to get business. I think that that's, that credibility and trust are a really important part of the sales process that maybe some people miss.

Yeah, it's true. And yeah, yeah, yeah, there's, there's a lot that we could talk about with the sales process, but we'll, we'll leave it for, leave it for that for today. Yeah.

So tell me, you mentioned something about volunteers at south by Southwest, and I was curious to, you know, hear more about that.

So for those of you that don't know south by Southwest, I think they have upwards of 200 actual employees that work year round. Now. It was started by, as all things are, it was started by a group of partners. I think it was like three people that started this thing 25 plus years ago, whatever. But they, and now they have a much larger sort of workforce, full time and part time, I would assume. But during the trade show itself, most of the labor, I think, you know, somewhere north of 80%. They haven't released numbers for this year, but looking at previous years, it was actually like north of 95%. So I don't know where it is, but it's certainly lots and lots of the people that do the, like boots on the ground, the people that are like helping you get into sessions or helping you get into film venues or music venues or taking care of your registration and all of that are volunteers. And it, it's amazing, right, because these people are putting in a ton of time. But. Well, it depends. Like I, I looked at some of the, the deals again for, for years gone by. It was. If you put in, I'm gonna get this. Well, it was from a, it was from years gone by. So it's, I'm sure it's not accurate for right now, but it was. If you did 30 hours, I think you got two T shirts if you did 50 hours, you got one pass either. There's three main conferences, there's interactive film and music. So I think 50 hours got you one of those passes and then I think 80 hours got you a pass to everything. But of course, if you worked 80 hours, I don't know when you'd have time to do any of these other things. Yeah, but maybe there's some jobs that happen before or after the conference that.

For logistics instead of take tear down.

Yeah, exactly. Right. And the amazing part is I've talked to these volunteers over and over, you know, throughout the years, because they're the people I interact with more than anyone else, you know, and. And they're all really happy about the deal. So on paper, this might like. You might look at this and say, oh, my God, this is terrible. But they've really cultivated an atmosphere where the volunteers are happy and respected. Every film there's a film festival and I try to go and catch a few films while I'm there because there's some movies that will never come out and some that, you know, certainly aren't signed, you know, aren't. Aren't picked up yet by any distributors or whatever. And there's some interesting ones. And I'm a musician and so I'd like to go and see some of the documentaries about. Like, I saw a documentary about Cream magazine, which was fascinating. I saw a documentary about the song who Let the Dogs Out.

Is that right?

This is the best movie I saw all week. It should not be good, but, but for any. As a little detour here for anyone that, that's interested in, like, business and rights and, and copyright and law, this song, this one guy decided that he needed to eight years ago to edit the Wikipedia entry, because there was someone listed in the Wikipedia entry that was only the first name, not the last name. And he's like, oh, I should fix this. And so he started, like digging and he found the guy's name pretty quickly and then went to London and met him and. And it just opened up an obsession for this guy because the story about this one song, this, you know, the song from the Baha Men, or.

Yeah.

Or was it from the Baha Man? Right, yeah. There have been multiple lawsuits about who actually wrote the song and who should get credit. And even through the course, like, so he took eight years and did this and now he has this PowerPoint presentation that he like, goes around to, like, pub night at places. And he'll deliver this because it's, he's entertaining and it's fascinating. Some filmmaker saw him like a year ago and thought, this is a movie and it's already finished. I just need to film it. And so they made this film in like six months. And even through the filming of it, they found that it goes back even further than this guy thought. It goes all the way back to 1986. I won't ruin where it comes from. But yeah, it was a fascinating movie. It shouldn't be as good as it was, but.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah. But every single movie before the film, they, you know, run a little pre roll that tells you to turn your phone off. And even all of those are created like, individually. And like some artist went and made these, like, little pre rolls and stuff to make them interesting and unique and funny. And in every one of them there's a. And we couldn't do this without our volunteer slide. And the entire theater every single time erupts an applause.

Wow. Yeah, that's cool.

And you know, at one and it's become so normal that I had never thought about it before. And one day I'm like applauding for the volunteers. Like, how did they do this? Like, how did they cultivate this environment where the volunteers are just as happy to be doing the volunteering as. And it's trade. But my guess is if you netted it out for dollars per hour, it might not look so good. But everybody knows it's not like anybody's pulling the wool over anyone's eyes. You know, it's all very upfront. Like you could buy a ticket or you could trade your time for one.

Well, I think the key is, like you said, how do they. They're like, you know, very esteemed and raised on a, you know, recognized. And. And I think that people love that recognition. Right?

Yes. And it's true. Right. And the volunteers, I think, truly enjoy the work too. Like, you know, they're. They feel like they're a part of something, but. And they. Because they are a part of something.

Yeah.

You know, but.

Yeah, that's awesome.

It really is. It's just a fascinating thing. And I, as I started researching this, you know, because I knew we were going to talk about it, I saw and I don't know, four or five years ago, somebody was like floating the idea of bringing a class action lawsuit against south by Southwest because they said it's illegal. You can't volunteer your time at a for profit venture. You know, like there were some laws that were like. But, you know, it gets very murky when you get into that. You Know that deep into employment law, it's like, well, Right, but are they volunteering or are they trading their time? And, like. Yeah, I think it's okay, you know, so.

Yeah.

But, yeah, let me put it this way. The lawsuit never happened, so.

Yeah. And I think that, you know, when you mentioned that earlier, and I was like, gosh, you know, how do you get volunteers to help you in. In, you know, your small business?

Yeah.

Yeah. That's incredible. And it would be interesting to have that discussion with somebody at, you know, south by Southwest that could discuss how they, you know, encourage that culture and got people excited and. And that kind of thing. Because, I mean, it kind of reminds me somewhat loosely, like, you know, on an internship program maybe for your company, which we've discussed here on the show before, about how and why you should have interns and where to find them and that kind of thing, and how to make it in a similar, you know, bent where they're hold or the volunteers are held in very high regard and make it worthwhile for them. You also have to do it for interns and really make it. Make your program successful for them so they get something out of it. Because that's how you get more interns. Yeah, yeah. Because if you just squeeze them.

Kind of like what we've done at Mac observer with our forums over the years when we've had forums and we have some again, you know, there were people. There are people that will engage and. And rise to the top, and you make them your moderators. Right, to help out. And we learned, like, we tried to pay our Moderators, you know, 10 years ago or whatever. The last time we had, like, a really active forum session, and it was a disaster because as soon as we started paying them, like, the relationship changed. We were just looking to do something nice, like, you're doing all this work for us for free. We don't, you know, we don't want to build our business on the backs of others. Like, we're trying to be. Do the right thing. And it was a disaster. So we found that what we need to do is not pay them a salary, but instead kind of like what south by Southwest does, give them perks that are valuable to them, you know. And so, you know, we do what we can. But it was really. It was a fascinating lesson to learn about human nature. You know, when they. When they feel like they're a part of something and helping out, that's one thing. But as soon as it changes, like, nothing else had to change. But it did change. Yeah. It was a disaster.

Yeah. Well, that's. That's really cool. That's a very good thing to understand of how to get people and what really motivates people, because it's not even. Even your employees. It's not just the money. And oftentimes there's lots of things, even if they don't think about it consciously but subconsciously, you know, it's recognition, autonomy, flexibility. You know, those things are critically important to rewarding them and making them feel valued.

Yes.

Not just, look, I'll give you an extra whatever in your. In your check. It's because it's never. The money is never enough. It doesn't matter what you pay.

It's never enough. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. But the other stuff is. Is highly valued and can be your secret sauce, you know, so to speak.

Yeah. If you. If you manage it properly. And, you know, like I said, we learned exactly the wrong way to do it. And I was like, oh, okay. Well, yep. I mean, like anything, you know, we talk about when we interview people, we ask about your favorite mistakes. It's like, well, here's one of them. It's not necessarily my favorite, but it certainly was a valuable one, you know, down the list somewhere. Yeah.

Right on. That's great. That's cool, man.

Hey, let's. Let's take a minute here. I want to talk about our two sponsors. Our first sponsor is a returning sponsor with a. With a different deal. So it's worth. It's worth listening through. And that is Care of. Right. And Care of is a monthly subscription vitamin service that delivers completely personalized vitamin and supplement packs right to your door. And, you know, like, here we are. The winter blues are coming to an end. Right. So it's time to get back into that, you know, routine that empowers you to feel your healthiest. And this can be a part of it. You give yourself an extra boost. And like I said, it's not just vitamins. It's vitamins and supplements. But my favorite part about Care of is that you go to Take care of T A K E K C A R E O F dot com Take care of. And you. The first thing you do is you take an online quiz. And it's fun and funny. I will say, you know, it's asking you questions and it's vetting you to figure out what you already take, what your demeanor is towards and what your attitude is towards different levels of, like, supplements. And are you someone that likes to take, you know, stuff you've never heard of? Or are you a little more, you know, risk averse? And you want to take things that are tried and true and I mean everything that they have is, they've vetted it out, but it's depends on what you've heard of. You know, is this new to you and would you be open to it or do you want to take stuff that you've heard of and this, you know, the quiz takes what you took it too, right, Shannon? It's like five minutes. It's nothing.

What I love about it though is when you say, oh, are you open? You know, different type of things and you're like, sure, yeah. But then they give you the background of each, you know, vitamin or component or supplement, whatever it is, and tell you, oh, this is where these studies have shown this and this could help here. So it's, it's, there's lots of great background information and the way they do it that they're kind of creating this profile of what they would recommend for you. It's really done well, I think so. I was really impressed with it.

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All right. So if you've listened on the show, you know, I'm not a huge fan of to do lists. I, I think they're kind of too rigid. You know, I, I certainly keep lists and I write things down, but I find myself using like the Reminders app much more than anything else. And I'm constantly hitting my phone and saying, remind me to do this, remind me to do that. And it, they just pop up throughout the day. And it works great because I, I'm, I, I, I'm pretty scattered. But I've learned to use that as part of my superpower, is that I can jump from different things quickly. But I do need to stay focused, so it helps me a lot.

So I want to. Actually, can I offer some clarifying suggestion to what you said? You said you don't like to do lists. I think what I'm hearing is you don't like the super like getting things done rigid scheduled to do list, but you do actually like the very basic to do list where you put something on it and then you cross it off when you're done.

Yeah. And, and I'm, I'm a highly productive person. I'm constantly moving, you know, from 6:00am to 6:00pm I'm, I'm getting things done. But what I found, maybe just recently, but I, at the end of the day sometimes if I had, I'd look around, it's like, gosh, you know, what did I really get done? And you know, I may be doing research for something. I may have gotten tied up in some other project that I hadn't counted on. And so I started to create a list of what I had done, not what I was going to do and on just a quick line for anything that took up time during my day. This could be business related. I have three or four different small businesses that I'm running. Could be personal, could be travel related. Whatever interest I have, I do some volunteer work and I always have to do stuff, especially this time of year. And then I also, I certainly will put, if I'm adding something to my list that I've completed and something pops into my head, I'll write that on the line as well, you know, on the next line.

On the next line.

Sure, yeah, why not? And so I came up with this concept that I call a to Did List.

You know, it's terrible grammar, but I like it.

So for my to did list, it's a review to do where you write down each task that you completed throughout the day and you review it. I like to up my update mine hourly. Sometimes I do it every 30 minutes. Sometimes like right before lunch I'll sit down and go, okay, what did I get done this morning? Da da da. Hit this out real quick. I just use it on a little yellow pad. You could certainly do it on your phone. And then what I get to do is I get to review it and I get to sit down and look. And now I've kind of started adding little categories, primarily the name of the business that I'm working on. Because I want to know. You know, like with our luxury goods business, one of my claims to fame is, well, I only spend an hour a day on it. But do I really only spend an hour a day on it? I jump in and out of it a lot and sometimes I find, wow, I spent two or three hours on that business instead of just, you know, another time, just a half an hour. So I'm trying to do that and. But at the end of the day, what's really powerful for me is that I do a quick review and I can really see how productive I was and what I achieved and to see did I have a good day. Because that's how I measure myself. I measure myself in two ways. Sales, unfortunately.

Yeah, I'm the almighty greenback. Yep.

I'm just a built in person like that. And I've always done it. I measure but the numbers. But now I also can look at this list, this to did list. It's like a mini success list. We've talked about the success list and we have a, I think an article up on the small business or businessshow.co that talks about why you should have a success list. And I think I was talking about this the other day to my wife Renee and I said, you know, I'm pretty hard on myself and I can't stand going into the evening feeling like I didn't get much done. And so this is a way for me to really confirm or find that, oh no, wow, I really wasn't productive today. What do I do tomorrow to avoid this feeling? Because I don't like it, you know, I, I really don't like it at all. But if I, if I look at my list and go, wow, actually got like 30 things done. And yes, some of them may have only taken me two or three minutes, but that's still two or three minutes out of your day and, or if something really sidelined you, you're like, wow, I, I didn't plan on this and look how I, I got sidetracked or, you know, went down the, went down the rabbit hole. Yeah. And part of it I, I think is it's another way that I'm programming my brain so that I can create my own story every day. We've talked about that, the ad nauseam on the show, about how we get to create our own story. And I want to go into the evening where I'm going to hang out with my family feeling like, man, I really kicked ass today. And if I can't do that, I find I don't enjoy the evening as much because I have things gnawing at me like, oh, wow, I need to do this, I need to do that. And I'm setting these reminders on my phone for the next day. But if I really killed it, I'm going, you know what? I am going to disconnect here and have a great evening. So it's my to did list and I'll create a sample of it and we'll put it up on the website and when I get the article up there, we'll let you know here, but try it out. Let me know if you like it. Feedbackusinessshow Co or come talk about it. I'll mention it in the small business support group, which is businessshow Co. Facebook will get you over there. So what do you think?

My guess is that it because I, I am in this way in many ways, but certainly this way very similar to you. I, I, I, I like knowing that I did something helps fuel me to do the next thing. In addition, as you said, to being informative sometimes about what maybe the next thing should be like, oh, I did that. But while I was doing that, I thought about this other thing that I didn't write down or whatever it is. My guess is that we have a lot of people listening who are nodding along and probably saying things. I was certainly nodding along and had to bite my tongue not to chime in because I didn't want to interrupt you, but this is, yeah, this is great. So I've done, I've never called it my to did list, but I'm certainly guilty and I've always felt guilty about it and I shouldn't. But it's been a guilty pleasure to go back to my to do list and add things that I did and check them.

Yeah, it's just like that, that's how I got started. Kind of started. You know, I would write a few things down and, and then my phone would remind me and I was like, gosh, you know, I'm not keeping track of this stuff, you know.

Right, right. Yeah, that's the problem. If you're not keeping track of it, then, yeah, what are you doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I know. I think this is it. It. It's great to thank you for coming out of the closet about this. You know, I'm, I'm here with you. This is an important thing. Like, I, I really do. I think it's a part of my success too. Like knowing that, like just giving myself credit for doing things because no one else is going to. You know, that's the whole reason you do your annual executive summary and that sort of thing. Right. Because no one else is going to pat you on the back. Now, you don't want to spend your whole life thanking yourself for the thing you did yesterday because then you won't do anything good today or tomorrow. But, you know, a little bit of fuel there is the key. And this is one way to sort of do that without it being time consuming. And I think that's your sort of circling back to the beginning of this. I think that's my issue and perhaps yours with all of these very over formulized getting things done style to do lists is you spend half your day managing what you're going to do. It's like, no, I want to what I do not. I've never once put on my to do list and never felt like I missed out. I never put on there managed my to do list today.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, that it's too much. If you can't keep track of it, find something else. Yeah, I agree.

And for me, you know, like after this we're recording the show, I'm gonna go down to deck, down to my house and make lunch and I want to be able to throw my hands up in the air and go, oh, I killed it this morning. And you know, and this is one of the things that's on my list. Oh, I recorded the podcast with Dave and I don't need to put that on my to do because I know it's happening scheduled thing, but I want credit for. And it sounds kind of funny, but, you know, these are short term little things. But again, it's one of these brain hacks that you're recognizing what you did or measuring why you didn't get done what you felt you should Have.

Oh, yeah, it goes both ways. It definitely goes both ways. But like you said, it's informative and it's these little things that you can just, at a glance get a feel for. Okay, do I need to make a change, like a corrective measure, or am I heading down the right path? But even like you said, when you're heading down the right path, there are still things that you're going to, you know, add and change. One of the hardest things about being a small business owner is that you don't generally, you don't have someone telling you what to do. Yeah, right.

You don't have a manager, which is kind of the reason why you do in the first place.

But, but right, you have to come up, like, you have to generate the work that you're going to do. And this is one way to sort of kind of by looking back for brief moments here and there, like, oh, right, I gotta do this other thing. And then you know what to do. Whenever I know what to do, I feel like my job is super easy because I just have to go do it.

I agree.

It's the thinking about, all right, well, what's next? That's the part personally I struggle with. So, yeah, this helps with that too.

For sure, it does. And I always tell people when we're talking about ideas and all that kind of stuff, it's always action. That's the critical part that's often missing. You know, and I use this phrase my kids a lot and other people, it's like, you know, what you want is a symphony of action. And I'm sure I stole that from somewhere sometimes, some quote or whatever. But it is true is you want to put all these things into place. You may not take all the action, but you're the impetus for it.

You're the conductor of the symphony of action.

Exactly. You're working with your programmers to get this done. You're talking with contractors to get that done. You're working with your employees to get. So you're, you know, pushing out this vibe and all these things start trickling down. And so, you know, with a to did list, you are recognizing the action that you did. Because if you had these conversations, if you walked in, you had a 15 minute meeting in the, you know, hallway with whoever you need to put that on your list because that took 15 minutes out of your valuable time. Yeah, but, you know, and if the end of the day you only have a few things on there, like, well, I spent too much time digging into this or digging into that, Then maybe you shouldn't feel like you can disconnect that night. You know, maybe it'll motivate your ass to get back in and take, take more action the next day and that, that's what I use it for. So I found it's working pretty well and I'm sure we will talk about it again on the show.

Yeah, for sure. For sure.

That's awesome.

Great.

That's very cool.

Yeah, right on.

Well, we'd love to hear folks, what you do to keep yourself moving and like I said, feedbackus show co or jumped over to the small business support group on Facebook.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Great stuff, man. I. This. Conducting a symphony of action. I've, I've often, I've never put that label on it obviously that, you know, that's, that's from you and from our little conversation here. But, but the, the periods of my business life where I've felt the most productive could be described as those where I am the conductor of this symphony of action. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's awesome.

Yeah, that's awesome. God, that's great.

Right on, man.

Cool.

Good chatting as always.

Thank you for always.

We appreciate it.

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