You Need Patience More Than Money

Business brain, episode 658 for Wednesday, June 18, International Panic Day and also International Picnic Day. Coincidence? You decide. 2025. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take some ideas and we crunch them together so that we can each be tuning our business brains every single time we get together. Our sponsors include longtime sponsor Shopify.com BusinessBrain, where you can sign up for your $1 per month trial period, and new sponsor Eversight.com BB, where you can sign up for this whole webmaster team that will take care of your website for you. We'll talk more about this in depth in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And I'm Shannon Jean. Is it at Tahoe or in Tahoe? Oh, that's when you say I'm in. I'm in.

I mean, you're in Tahoe.

I'm in New Hampshire. I'm in Tahoe. Yeah. So I'm in Lake Tahoe up at our place and enjoying a few days up here in the part where that.

Well, the part where in gets. Gets. Gets grammatically correct but sounds weird is because you're not just in Tahoe, you are in Lake Tahoe. And if I remember correctly, the towns there, some of them are like South Lake Tahoe, California.

Correct.

So you could say I'm in South Lake Tahoe. It sounds like you might be saying you're swimming in the lake, but you're not. You're just in the town of South Lake Tahoe or, or whatever town you happen to be. And I'm just making up.

I know that that's exactly where.

Okay. So. Yeah. When I think that's why a lot of people say we're up at Tahoe.

Yeah. There's a lot of things like we brand this house because we, we of course, don't have guests. And it's, it's. It's Elk Tahoe.

Yeah.

Is what we. As we call it. So as I'm always like, huh, it's kind of weird.

Anyway, I think that. Yeah. Because when I, when I go up and visit Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, I would say we're.

Great name.

Yes, it is a great name. Baby steps to Winnipesaukee. We. From. What about Bob? Yep. Yep. We. We would say we're at Winnipesaukee. So we're at the lake. And it's because we're at the lake.

Yeah. That makes.

That's where this comes from.

Yes.

Yes. You're grammatical. You're weekly. You don't.

We're solving more problems, adding additional value than standard entrepreneur fare.

Speaking of value, we. We received a five star review from Jeremy Lubke at businessbrain.com review. Jeremy says five stars. Just the facts, ma'. Am. I'm pretty picky about who I let into my podcast rotation and every time I go to full the Business Brain Boys make the cut. No nonsense, to the point and thought provoking. Thank you for that, Jeremy. That's great. We actually, we have a bunch of reviews here.

The BBB Business Brain Boys.

Business Brain Boys. That's.

That's the BBB you want to deal with. That is.

That's the only BBB you want to deal with. That's correct. New.

I feel a new logo in our future.

Yeah, we. We got one from someone whose handle is I've got the Touch. Well, don't you? Four stars. Okay. A Different Perspective is the title. I wish I had a business to apply all their ideas to. Maybe someday. Still, I think about the two tokens concept a bunch and I try to implement it and share it with my kids, but these two are far better at explaining it than I am. Play the episode for your kids and then go back and give us that fifth star.

That's fifth star.

That's right. You can go back and update your Apple podcast review and bump the stars up. I know this from experience. So that's the second review and then I got a third one. If we. If we have a moment.

Yeah, do it, man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listener Dave, I swear it's not me. Left this on good pods. The other two were Apple podcasts.

Oh, okay.

Five out of five podcast. Come train your business brain with this thought provoking podcast from Shannon and Dave. Get ahead of the impending AI driven future with the Friday episodes. They quickly become a must listen. Highlight of the week. Dave, you have a great name and an even better perspective on life. I love this. It's great. Yeah.

And if you sent those reviews, make sure you let us know. Feedbackusbrain show so we can enter you to win a MacBook that we're giving away.

Right.

The odds are ever in your favor, so definitely would do that. Speaking of reviews, Dave, I have this tip that I'd like to share about reviews. We have an extra minute or so, right?

Yes, of course.

Okay, great. So everybody wants reviews, testimonials, all this stuff. But oftentimes, what happens now? If people are searching and they see it on Google or whatever, Yelp, that's great. But when they're on your website. Most people have their testimonials or reviews kind of buried. And so what I always recommend to my clients that they do is mix. Take screenshots of those reviews and mix them in with your product photos. So when people. Or if you're selling products, but if you're selling service and you have pictures of houses or whatever, you know, you know what I'm talking about. Mix them in with the way you normally use images on your site. You should have screenshots of those testimonials and reviews mixed in throughout your site. So as people are just clicking through to look at things, they're hit with that good feedback that you're getting without having to search for it.

That's brilliant. I love that.

And especially if you only have a few reviews, if you're just getting started, it's way more impactful to have a couple of them scattered around on things. And I do it on my social media so you can do it anywhere that people are going to be looking. Could be in a blog post. You could have it. If you have a newsletter, take a screenshot and just have it in there. It's like, hey, listener Dave, thanks for this. You know the thing today, use that content and save it. Get it off of the review sites. Grab it from Google My business, grab it from Yelp, Save all those screenshots and use them in every place you can possibly imagine. Instagram, Facebook, wherever. Share that great data. Don't just leave it and you take control of it. Don't just leave it for the, you know, the review people to be in charge of when it's shown.

I love this and I would say if there is a spot where reviews matter most for you. So it, you know, might be Yelp, it might be trustpilot, like whatever it is.

Yeah.

Link your review image when people click on it, have it open a new window. Don't replace the window. Right. New tab, new window, whatever, you know, target equals underscore blank if you're an HTML person. But when they click on that review, have it bring them directly to like. For us, it would be businessbrain show review wherever you can send people, wherever you want to send people to leave their own review of your site or service or podcast or whatever it is.

That's great. Really works. Love it.

Love this. Oh, that is great stuff. Okay, man, you're blowing my mind with this stuff, Shannon. I love it. I want to take a minute next and talk about our two sponsors because, well, have you ever been online shopping late at night, tea in hand, mint or throat coat, naturally ready to impulse buy your way into happiness. And then boom. The dreaded realization your wallet is not within reach. But then, like a purple beacon from the heavens, you see it. That glorious shop pay button. No wallet needed, no second guessing, just tap pay. Done. That magical purple button. That's our sponsor, Shopify. And it doesn't just make buying easy, it makes selling a dream. I use Shopify to sell merch for one of my other podcasts and businesses because it's just flawless templates that actually look good, marketing tools that work and analytics that make you feel like a wizard of Commerce. Shopify powers 10% of all e commerce in the US and probably 99% of my productivity when it comes to to online sales. Candidly, if Shopify were a person, I'd invite them to Thanksgiving and give them the seat at the head of the table. So if you want to see less carts being abandoned, it's time for you to head over to Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com businessbrain. That's all lowercase. Go to shopify.com businessbrain again, shopify.com businessbrain and our thanks to Shopify for sponsoring this episode. And now let's talk about websites. Because having a great one isn't optional anymore. It's like showing up to a pitch meeting wearing pants. Basic, expected and crucial to being taken seriously. And that's where Eversight comes in. For just $3.99 a month, you get what feels like your own in house web team without the soul crushing upfront bill that usually comes with buil building a website. No $10,000 invoices, no. We'll get back to you next week. Delays. Just real humans answering emails and texts the same day. Making your website work while you build your business. Need a fix? Boom. Done. Want something updated? Already handled. They proactively manage hundreds of sites so you don't have to live in WordPress purgatory praying your plugins don't rebel. And there are no long term contracts, just solid grown up service that you can walk away from time though you probably won't want to. So if you're ready to outsource the headaches and focus on living your charmed life, visit eversight.comb and see what real support looks like now. Shannon, you are actually an Eversight customer, right?

I am. Yeah man. Not I'm not just a customer. Like what happened? My old site got hacked and I was like what? I don't know what to do. I couldn't fix it. And I basically shot a flare up to Eversight. Help, Help. And within hours they had a splash page up to stop and handled a bunch of redirects for me that pages I had set up that were subscription stuff. And then I said, great, now let's build. So all that stuff was up while they were building my new site and it was just simple and easy and their team is amazing. They made my life so much better. I really appreciate what they do for me.

That's great. Well, folks, you can get signed up today. Like I said, eversight.com BB and our thanks to Eversight for sponsoring this episode. What's next, Shannon?

It's cool. All right. I have this. I have this thesis that I want to hear. You pick apart or tell me. All right, sure. Okay. Just, just tell me. All right. It doesn't matter. You're correct.

Thanks for listening, folks. Everything.

Thanks, folks. See you later. Anyway, I. A lot of my clients, you know, we're all in a hurry. We want to get things done just. But that. My thesis is that at certain parts of the entrepreneurship cycle, you need patience more than money. Okay.

Yeah. Okay.

And, and, and, and what I mean by that is there's a. Whether you're learning something new or you need to experiment and focus on. If you're like reselling, which is kind of my world, you need to be more focused on like the process and the how and the just, just getting your investment back while you get in the rhythm and put the reps in. Not so focused on profits. Right. Yeah. You don't lose money, but. Right. You often just have to take a step back. And let me tell you, I. Finding that it's. It's tough to get people to, to do this and to get the value, explain the value of it to them so it resonates.

I mean, this is. I, I agree with you. So. Yes, there we go. It reminds me of what we were talking about a week ago. Right. My thesis of acting like I need time more than I need money. Right. And this is you need patience more than you need money. And it. There's. My whole thing was actually about impatience fueling your success. I mean, essentially, that's, you know, that was it last week. Whereas this is you need patience. And both of these things, of course, are true at the same time, because those times when you actually need money more than you need your time back, you have to act like you don't need the money.

It's the same with this. Yeah.

And it's the same with this. That's. Yeah, that's where I was going with it is, is you just need. And, and the trick, of course is sometimes you really do need the cash flow. Right.

Of course.

And I think when you're starting a business the most and perhaps even, you know, on a regular basis with your business, you need to sit down and look at what you, what you need to take out of the business, cash wise. And that could be zero or it could be 100% of what you need to cover your monthly. Your monthly nut like personally and all that, but figuring out what that number is so that you can realistically work the business and you know, how long do I have to actually be patient? Those, those numbers are really important.

Yeah. And it's not that I'm, I want to clarify. I don't mean that you have to like slow down and let kind of outside forces work. No, no, you still have to be like grinding and taking action every day. But that stuff takes time and, but the, the foundation of what you're building, I don't, you don't bypass that at the expense of or. I just need to make more profits. So I'm not going to put all this in, you know, the time you need because that foundation is crucial if you're going to build a long term evergreen revenue stream, I'd like to call it. You have to have a good, strong base so it's not so chaotic. And you're not just chasing. In my case, this is reselling. You're not just chasing products and deals. And I got to keep going. Got to keep going, got to keep going. No, you build this really strong system or foundation. You're patient while you build that and then you start making money. You'll make more money in the long run because you paid more attention in the short term to all these important steps.

I, Yeah, I love this. Now. This is, it's got a lot of thoughts kind of swimming around in my head. One, one is we were. We're not going to do this today because I would want to spend more time on it.

Yeah.

The difference in prioritizing cash flow versus profitability.

Oh, that's a huge topic.

I know, I know. We've covered it. It's on the list. I just put it on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but this, yeah. This idea where you need, you need to know how patient you can be, but.

Correct. You got to survive. You got to survive and make money.

Correct.

And to your point, Dave, it comes Also, especially in the beginning, I'm talking about, like, you're either starting a brand new thing or maybe you're pivoting in your business.

Exactly.

Starting something else. But along the line, you want to keep your expenses as low as you can. It gives you more flexibility. You know, I want you to lead a great life. I want you to make a ton of money. But if you keep those that your overhead lower, it allows you to maneuver more because you're just not like, oh, I got, you know, I have to make 25 grand this month to pay XYZ. It's like, well, let's. Let's try to bring that down to a reasonable amount.

Yeah, bring it down. Yeah. And man, I like, there's so, like I said, there's. There's a lot of things swirling, but that whole idea of keeping your personal expenses, your personal monthly nut as low as you can, too, gives it part of that flexibility you're talking about. It's the same thing. It's not just the business that needs money. It's, you know, you and the business are intertwined and your partners and the business. And you are intertwined with. With one of my businesses, the one that we didn't just sell. We had been holding off on doing a lot of things with it that we were going to do right after we sold with our new partners and all of this stuff. And obviously that didn't happen. So it was like, okay, great. Well, we have all these things ready to roll out now. We can do it. How much do we. How quickly do we want to do this?

Yeah.

And what do we. Like, let's think about our cash flow here because we might want to reallocate some of that to a marketing budget to, you know, to. To kind of push some of these other things once we get them rolled out. To push them out. And so what the. The my two partners and I did was we created a spreadsheet and that we share and put all of our personal expenses in it. Like, how much do each of us need to take out of the business?

And there was trusting.

It was.

That's. Yes, that's a lot. There's a. That. It gives me goosebumps, but I see the value in that. If you really have this great trusting relationship because you're putting yourself out there and they're like, dave, why are you spending 3,000amonth at the manicure pedicure place?

Don't judge me. But really one of those things where we each kind of sort of waded into these waters with like, yeah, okay, let me put my. How about my, you know, house payment or whatever?

You know, basic stuff.

Let's put. But then it was like, all right, is that the number? And I was like, no one.

Yeah. No.

And then as. As we each sort of put things that were more revealing, you know, made us feel more naked in there, it got way easier because it was like, oh, yeah, we're. We're all tied together in this thing, so let's just. It's fine. Yeah. You know, we're not.

And, you know, judgments. Yeah. Yeah. And I would imagine you know each other enough to know that, like, you know, oh, you know, Bob's not driving a Ferrari and. Or whatever. But the challenge is, like, even on your mortgage or, you know, your house payment stuff is like, oh, one guy lives in California and another person lives in Texas or whatever. I mean, it's just so many variables.

Yes.

But it's the reality.

It. And that was. It is. We just needed the reality of it so that we could make decisions while respecting candidly. It makes it. From my perspective. It makes it way easier for me to be more empathetic, in a sense.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because I, you know, if I don't know what your monthly expenses are, I can only look at mine and project them onto you. And, you know, when. When it's like when you say, well, but I need, you know, 30% more than that, it's like, dude, what have you done with your life that causes you, like, that's the first thought, the frustration. Right?

Yeah.

But when you show me the list of what you're spending, it's like, oh, yeah. Well, I know all of these things about Shannon, and so, of course you need that money, like, you know what I mean? It made it way easier.

I get it.

Yeah.

I've never done this exercise same.

This was a first for Dave.

This really is blowing my mind. I have to really.

You and I did a version of this, Shannon, 20 years ago when we started deals on the web. Not. We didn't go fully deep.

Yeah.

But. But we did share some of the. Well, look, I need this business to pay for this part of my life. And it was like, okay, great. But once we knew that, it was super easy. It was like, great, okay, fine. We'll balance it out.

That's cool, man. Yeah, I. Yeah. If you. I would love to hear from listeners, if you've ever done this with your partners or whatever, investors, I'd love to hear it. Feedback. Businessbrain. Tell us if you know. Yeah, it's still freaking me out.

I know, but.

But I get it. And I'm, I'm. I think I'm pretty empathetic, but I would be. You really would have to have a great partnership. Yes. And have that trusting relationship to not have somebody, you know, hammering, because I don't want any. But the whole reason I'm an entrepreneur is I don't ever want to have anybody tell me I can't spend money. Or I just like, well, sure, I spend. I know what I can spend, and if I don't have enough, I'm going to go start another company to create enough.

Yes. Yes.

That's just the way I've lived my whole life.

Yes.

And. And so, yeah, that's cool.

It was. No, it was. It was a great. We've had, you know, this is. I've been fortunate to have some fantastic partnerships and some awful ones. And both of them have. Have been. I mean, that I am fortunate to have had both. I might not feel that in the time, but, you know, but after the fact, it's like, nope, I learned something that was valuable. But this particular partnership is obviously one of the good ones.

That's cool. Yeah. Good for you. Congratulations. That's really great.

Yeah, yeah, it was. It was actually my idea. And as I'm saying it to my partners, I'm like, I'm going to have to anticipate, too. I don't like this idea, but it really was to serve me, like I said, in order so that I could be. Not be so judgmental. It was the opposite of, you know.

It'S like, I love the concept of opening the kimono. If you.

That's what it is.

This is just what it is. So.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Thanks for hanging out with us, folks. Thanks for coming inside the kimono with us. If you would, feedback at BusinessBrain show and BusinessBrain show review. We definitely want to hear from you in a variety of ways. We love it and keep living that charmed life. We'll see you on Friday.

See ya.