Latest / Business Brain – The Entrepreneurs’ Podcast / Review Inflation + Intentional Deprioritization

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Review Inflation + Intentional Deprioritization · Business Brain – The Entrepreneurs’ Podcast

• 0:00
  Dave Hamilton: Business Brain, episode 794, for Wednesday, October 7th, National LED Light Day, 2026.
• 0:11
  Shannon Jean: Kind of feel like we were sold a bill of goods with those LEDs.
• 0:14
  Shannon Jean: It's supposed to last forever.
• 0:16
  Dave Hamilton: Oh, yeah, they don't. Well, I think that's an interesting thing.
• 0:20
  Dave Hamilton: I think the LEDs do last far longer. The problem is the control boards on them overheat.
• 0:28
  Dave Hamilton: Is that what it is? Yeah, they're built cheaply, and the control boards overheat,
• 0:33
  Dave Hamilton: and those die. And then, I mean, good luck using the LEDs if you can't get power to them. Forget it.
• 0:37
  Shannon Jean: Yeah, they're built cheaply, cost you five times as much.
• 0:40
  Dave Hamilton: Exactly. Yes, always. But I am happier with LEDs than I was with CFLs,
• 0:46
  Dave Hamilton: the compact fluorescents.
• 0:48
  Shannon Jean: Oh, I am happier too. But I do miss the warm glow of an incandescent.
• 0:53
  Shannon Jean: But you can get that now with some LEDs, which is pretty good.
• 0:57
  Dave Hamilton: They have old-fashioned LEDs. It's hard to get yellow with an LED.
• 1:02
  Dave Hamilton: That's the color that's difficult. And I know this because I hang out with people
• 1:06
  Dave Hamilton: that do stage lighting. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:09
  Shannon Jean: Yeah, I found bulbs that'll get that nice warm yellow, but they're like 10 bucks,
• 1:14
  Shannon Jean: you know, compared to like 50 cents, what it used to be. But I get it.
• 1:17
  Dave Hamilton: It's cool. Yeah, yeah. Greetings, folks. We've covered Business Brain.
• 1:20
  Dave Hamilton: Go ahead. Yeah. No, here we are. The show that is – Business Brain is the show,
• 1:25
  Dave Hamilton: I was going to say, by, for, and about entrepreneurs. And you know what?
• 1:28
  Dave Hamilton: I said it. So there we are. That's what we are. It's perfect.
• 1:31
  Dave Hamilton: We get together every week and try to elevate our charmed lives by tweaking
• 1:37
  Dave Hamilton: our business brains every single time.
• 1:39
  Dave Hamilton: Our sponsors for this episode include a new sponsor, 11labs.io slash businessbrain.
• 1:45
  Dave Hamilton: They have their 11 agents that can help you build customer experience flows
• 1:50
  Dave Hamilton: and all that. We'll talk about that in a little bit. And also hymns.com slash
• 1:53
  Dave Hamilton: businessbrain. Men's health online, on your schedule. And I love it. And you can save 20%.
• 2:00
  Dave Hamilton: I think, no, you can lose up to 20% of your body weight. I should read before
• 2:03
  Dave Hamilton: I speak and do all of that at hymns.com slash businessbrain.
• 2:07
  Dave Hamilton: We'll talk more in depth about it, and I'll get all the facts right when we
• 2:10
  Dave Hamilton: do it later in the episode. For now, back here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.
• 2:16
  Shannon Jean: And back here in Northern California, I'm Shannon Jean. Where were you at?
• 2:19
  Dave Hamilton: I was in Atlantic City. We went there for a couple of Phish concerts,
• 2:24
  Dave Hamilton: which was fun. And it happened at Boardwalk Hall. The shows happened at Boardwalk Hall.
• 2:29
  Shannon Jean: Never been there?
• 2:30
  Dave Hamilton: I hadn't either. It's right on the Atlantic City Boardwalk.
• 2:34
  Dave Hamilton: And for those of you who don't know, all of the Monopoly properties are derived
• 2:42
  Dave Hamilton: from either streets or places in Atlantic City. Oh, I didn't know that.
• 2:46
  Dave Hamilton: So the boardwalk, there you go.
• 2:48
  Dave Hamilton: Ventnor Avenue, Atlantic Avenue, all those things are right there. Oh, that's cool. Yep.
• 2:53
  Dave Hamilton: But it is also home to the world's largest and loudest musical instrument.
• 2:57
  Dave Hamilton: There is approximately 33,000 pipe organ in there.
• 3:03
  Dave Hamilton: And in 98 years, it had never been used to play.
• 3:09
  Dave Hamilton: It had never been played for a public crowd. And that ended on Sunday night
• 3:14
  Dave Hamilton: because just before set break, Fish's keyboard player went over and played on
• 3:20
  Dave Hamilton: the pipe organ to sort of send everybody off to set break.
• 3:23
  Dave Hamilton: It was 93 decibels in there with just the pipe organ. Like not the PA was like
• 3:29
  Dave Hamilton: it wasn't mic'd, obviously. Yeah. It was there. Yeah.
• 3:32
  Shannon Jean: Definitely got to have your earbuds in for that thing.
• 3:35
  Dave Hamilton: Oh, yeah. It sounded amazing. Oh, God, it was so good. That's awesome.
• 3:40
  Dave Hamilton: I did have a thing, though. I sent you a note that I saw while I was in Atlantic City.
• 3:48
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah, you did. We talked, I don't know, last year, maybe earlier this year,
• 3:53
  Dave Hamilton: about reviews and how the one-to-five star system is broken.
• 4:00
  Dave Hamilton: Yes, it is. Yep. And when we got to our Airbnb...
• 4:05
  Dave Hamilton: There was a sign there that said Airbnb star ratings.
• 4:08
  Dave Hamilton: When rating us after your stay, please consider that Airbnb's ratings are totally
• 4:12
  Dave Hamilton: different than the classic hotel star rating system.
• 4:16
  Dave Hamilton: You should know, and I don't know if this is true, that Airbnb can close down
• 4:20
  Dave Hamilton: any listing that drops below an average of 4.3 stars.
• 4:24
  Dave Hamilton: The system is rather confusing. To give you a better understanding,
• 4:27
  Dave Hamilton: we designed the following cheeky guide to their rating system.
• 4:32
  Dave Hamilton: And it says on there for five stars, perfection doesn't exist,
• 4:36
  Dave Hamilton: but we were happy here. Four stars, several issues need to be improved.
• 4:42
  Dave Hamilton: Three stars, major problems that should be improved. Two stars, close it down at once.
• 4:48
  Dave Hamilton: One star, put the hosts in jail.
• 4:52
  Shannon Jean: I like that.
• 4:52
  Dave Hamilton: And then they say, we always strive to give our guests a five-star experience.
• 4:56
  Dave Hamilton: Please let us know if any problems, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 5:01
  Dave Hamilton: Uh like this is the problem that i have yeah and i know we've talked about this
• 5:07
  Dave Hamilton: before but a five star review is the baseline and there is nowhere to go up
• 5:13
  Dave Hamilton: from there that's the problem yeah what.
• 5:15
  Shannon Jean: Yeah and what they said here is like hey if if related to airbnb and i own vacation
• 5:20
  Shannon Jean: rentals so i'm very familiar with the scale if you fall below 4.3 they'll just
• 5:24
  Shannon Jean: take your listing off Is that,
• 5:25
  Dave Hamilton: That is correct, huh? Yeah. Yeah.
• 5:28
  Shannon Jean: And so you, you do have to, uh,
• 5:34
  Shannon Jean: work hard to get that great review and, uh, the, uh,
• 5:42
  Shannon Jean: We have found it's not so much like people are okay if problems happen,
• 5:49
  Shannon Jean: but it's responsiveness.
• 5:50
  Shannon Jean: It's how you deal with it, for sure. Yeah, responsiveness earns you those five
• 5:55
  Shannon Jean: stars, but you kind of are held hostage, right?
• 5:58
  Dave Hamilton: It's ridiculous. I think, and I know I've said this before, I think three stars
• 6:04
  Dave Hamilton: should be the baseline, right? Was it better than you expected? If so, four or five?
• 6:11
  Dave Hamilton: Was it worse than you expected two or one?
• 6:14
  Dave Hamilton: But that's not that's like their sign, albeit cheeky, is is accurate when it
• 6:21
  Dave Hamilton: says that this is not like the typical five star review system is not correct.
• 6:29
  Shannon Jean: Yeah, like we'll get people will ding us because we have we have to tell them
• 6:33
  Shannon Jean: that you can't go in the hot tub after 10 p.m.
• 6:36
  Shannon Jean: And that's not our rule. It's a county rule that says if you own a vacation
• 6:42
  Shannon Jean: rental, everything, nothing after 10 p.m.
• 6:47
  Shannon Jean: The no hot tub, no outdoor fire pit, whatever, 10 o'clock, dude, you're done.
• 6:53
  Shannon Jean: So we constantly have these little reminders saying, hey, don't hate the player, hate the game. Right.
• 6:59
  Shannon Jean: Yeah. Because we don't care.
• 7:02
  Shannon Jean: But, you know, we're trying to be good neighbors, even though we don't have
• 7:05
  Shannon Jean: very many houses behind, We are, they still, it all comes down to. It matters.
• 7:09
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah, sure.
• 7:10
  Shannon Jean: It matters. And it's challenging. And people do the same thing for businesses.
• 7:14
  Shannon Jean: You see it on Google reviews. You see, oh, they never called me back. One star.
• 7:20
  Shannon Jean: They didn't show up. This kind of thing. You know, I was in New Orleans
• 7:25
  Dave Hamilton: All last week. Yeah. That's right.
• 7:27
  Shannon Jean: You were away. At a vacation rental. Yep. And there were all kinds of problems.
• 7:32
  Shannon Jean: But I just interacted with the host.
• 7:37
  Shannon Jean: I said, hey, I just got here. The pool cues are both broken.
• 7:42
  Shannon Jean: I didn't complain that there's only two pool cues, which is kind of lame.
• 7:45
  Shannon Jean: But both of those pool cues had broken tips.
• 7:48
  Shannon Jean: That's bad. Which makes them, you can't play pool. Right.
• 7:51
  Shannon Jean: And to their credit, they got us pool cues by the next morning.
• 7:55
  Shannon Jean: Amazing. But it was just like, there was one TV remote in the entire house.
• 7:59
  Shannon Jean: And we didn't even watch TV.
• 8:00
  Dave Hamilton: More than one TV. I presume.
• 8:02
  Shannon Jean: Yeah. It was a huge house. Okay. See, it slept 27.
• 8:06
  Dave Hamilton: Oh. Right. Yeah. Okay. And so the...
• 8:12
  Shannon Jean: But we only wanted to turn it on for music, right? Because there was no other
• 8:14
  Shannon Jean: music. But I just know, just so I, so what I did is I emailed the host and I
• 8:18
  Shannon Jean: said, hey, I'm going to leave you guys a five-star review because we had a great time.
• 8:22
  Dave Hamilton: Yes.
• 8:22
  Shannon Jean: And it was a beautiful home. It was great. But you know what?
• 8:26
  Shannon Jean: It's hard to, it's just like with your business, you know, stuff happens.
• 8:31
  Dave Hamilton: Yes.
• 8:31
  Shannon Jean: And, and they were responsive when I needed it. I gave them a list.
• 8:35
  Shannon Jean: I'm like, Hey, these are the things I noticed. There's a broken toilet seat downstairs.
• 8:39
  Shannon Jean: There's this, the garbage stunk. and it's right by the front door.
• 8:42
  Shannon Jean: Yeah. And you're just like, hey, this will help you make your experience better.
• 8:46
  Dave Hamilton: That's it.
• 8:47
  Shannon Jean: But I'm still going to leave you a five-star because we had a great time and
• 8:49
  Shannon Jean: I know you worked hard to allow us to, you know, to have that great time.
• 8:55
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah. No, there is the onus on the customer to report any issues and the onus
• 9:03
  Dave Hamilton: on the, you know, the host or the business owner, you know, whatever the business
• 9:08
  Dave Hamilton: is, to address any issues.
• 9:10
  Dave Hamilton: And like both of these things are necessary.
• 9:14
  Dave Hamilton: And I love it. Right. Like I love that. That's the exchange. I wish there was a way to.
• 9:21
  Dave Hamilton: To rate hosts and show that like this one went above and beyond,
• 9:27
  Dave Hamilton: but there isn't, it's always five stars.
• 9:29
  Shannon Jean: It's only in the comments.
• 9:30
  Dave Hamilton: In the comments. Correct.
• 9:32
  Shannon Jean: Yeah. Like if you look up our place, you know, you search for elk view at Tahoe, you'll find it.
• 9:38
  Shannon Jean: But this it's my wife runs it and it's all in. You just see it over and over again.
• 9:44
  Shannon Jean: Renee was super responsive. Renee gave us all the information host just got
• 9:49
  Shannon Jean: right back to us over and over and over.
• 9:51
  Shannon Jean: And and you know so i think with your business that's the same thing and now
• 9:57
  Shannon Jean: with new technology and ways to interact with your clients like i it's
• 10:04
  Shannon Jean: A it's a good example here my wife was up in tahoe while i was in new orleans
• 10:08
  Shannon Jean: okay and we we have a ton this huge decks in front and houses front and back
• 10:13
  Shannon Jean: of this house we need it restained and like worked on
• 10:17
  Shannon Jean: sent out i don't know four or five requests for information,
• 10:22
  Shannon Jean: not one person got back to us.
• 10:24
  Shannon Jean: And those people are going to have their lunch ate by somebody that's using
• 10:29
  Shannon Jean: AI to immediately reach back out and interact. And it's great.
• 10:34
  Shannon Jean: We have that 11 labs host because they do this kind of thing. Yes.
• 10:38
  Shannon Jean: It's never been easier and more available and inexpensive to add real,
• 10:46
  Shannon Jean: it's literally real time communication with your customer.
• 10:49
  Shannon Jean: If they fill out the form on your website or they send you a text or an email,
• 10:54
  Shannon Jean: you can have a tool that immediately engages with them to get some more information
• 10:59
  Shannon Jean: to let them know, okay, great.
• 11:00
  Shannon Jean: Then we're going to have somebody get back to you with an X or something like
• 11:03
  Shannon Jean: that. And that is going to be the new normal.
• 11:07
  Dave Hamilton: Yes, it is. You're right. It is the new normal. Well, it's the new.
• 11:13
  Dave Hamilton: It will become the normal very, very quickly. Yeah.
• 11:17
  Shannon Jean: And that's how you build that five-star review plus text. And people don't expect
• 11:22
  Shannon Jean: you to get five stars all the time. It actually looks fake.
• 11:25
  Dave Hamilton: But they do it. But like the platforms do.
• 11:28
  Dave Hamilton: That's the problem here is that Airbnb expects you to get five-star reviews
• 11:33
  Dave Hamilton: all the time. Yeah. That's a broken infrastructure. Yeah.
• 11:36
  Shannon Jean: That that's definitely broken.
• 11:38
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah. There's no like what a dumb what have they done? It's ridiculous. Yes.
• 11:45
  Shannon Jean: I will tell you the best my and we're I'm sure Airbnb will listen to this podcast,
• 11:51
  Shannon Jean: but they've just enacted new changes where they've shifted all the fees over to the hosts.
• 11:57
  Shannon Jean: And there's a massive exodus to people building their own site to book direct
• 12:07
  Shannon Jean: because it's incredibly expensive.
• 12:09
  Shannon Jean: They take about 20%, maybe a little bit more.
• 12:14
  Shannon Jean: They don't offer a lot for that. It's a marketplace, I get it.
• 12:17
  Shannon Jean: But it used to be split between
• 12:20
  Dave Hamilton: The—,
• 12:27
  Dave Hamilton: pay all the fees and the host got everything so that there was no incentive
• 12:31
  Dave Hamilton: to the host to leave the platform yeah yeah i know now you do.
• 12:34
  Shannon Jean: Yeah it was that's
• 12:36
  Dave Hamilton: Not how it was in the beginning.
• 12:38
  Shannon Jean: Yeah before we paid like got it uh a percentage you paid eight or ten percent
• 12:42
  Shannon Jean: depending upon ranking sure and then the the customer the the paid like i don't
• 12:48
  Shannon Jean: know some kind of percentage it was expensive yeah but i think you will continue to see
• 12:52
  Shannon Jean: people hosting and if you're
• 12:57
  Shannon Jean: If you're going to be a guest, you find the place you like, you need to go search
• 13:02
  Shannon Jean: uh off the platform for that place yep nine times out of ten you'll find it
• 13:07
  Shannon Jean: and you'll save yourself hundreds maybe thousands of dollars totally
• 13:11
  Dave Hamilton: Oh yeah once you find i use airbnb for the first time i find a place as a as
• 13:16
  Dave Hamilton: a as a customer and then it's like okay well you know let's let's yep let's
• 13:20
  Dave Hamilton: see yeah yeah that's right.
• 13:21
  Shannon Jean: Yeah yeah that's good but we'd
• 13:23
  Shannon Jean: love to hear what you're doing about these five-star reviews or how you uh
• 13:28
  Shannon Jean: promote more positive reviews feedback at businessbrand.show or you can reach
• 13:33
  Shannon Jean: out to us anywhere on any socials, Dave or Shannon Jean or Dave Hamilton.
• 13:38
  Dave Hamilton: But you can also go to businessbrain.show slash review and leave your five-star review for us.
• 13:44
  Dave Hamilton: We have one more thing that we're going to talk about here. Well,
• 13:48
  Dave Hamilton: actually, we have three more things that we're going to talk about because the
• 13:51
  Dave Hamilton: next two things we're going to tell you about are our sponsors.
• 13:55
  Dave Hamilton: You know, just the other day, I had to call our hotel about our CES reservations
• 14:01
  Dave Hamilton: because I go for the other podcasts that I do.
• 14:04
  Dave Hamilton: Simple question, right? I just needed to make sure two reservations were linked
• 14:07
  Dave Hamilton: together. But first, the phone tree, right?
• 14:10
  Dave Hamilton: Press one, press three, listen to all five options because they've changed. Hold.
• 14:15
  Dave Hamilton: And then a menu that doesn't have the thing I'm calling about.
• 14:18
  Dave Hamilton: Of course, by the time I finally got a human, I was already worn down.
• 14:22
  Dave Hamilton: And let's be clear, that human was great.
• 14:25
  Dave Hamilton: She fixed it in about 90 seconds, right, which is the whole problem, right?
• 14:29
  Dave Hamilton: The system is broken for everyone in it, for us waiting, of course,
• 14:33
  Dave Hamilton: for the rep who's good at their job but stuck behind decades-old technology,
• 14:38
  Dave Hamilton: and for the business that genuinely wants customers to have a great experience
• 14:43
  Dave Hamilton: and keeps getting in its own way.
• 14:45
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• 14:50
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• 14:55
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• 15:09
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• 15:34
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• 16:02
  Dave Hamilton: Check it out. I think you're going to like it. And our thanks to 11 agents by
• 16:05
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• 16:07
  Dave Hamilton: And, you know, we founders have a dashboard for everything these days,
• 16:11
  Dave Hamilton: right? Revenue, churn, downloads, open rates, whatever it is in your business.
• 16:15
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• 17:37
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• 17:40
  Dave Hamilton: All right. I've been experimenting with something lately, Shannon.
• 17:45
  Dave Hamilton: Okay. It started as an unintentional experiment.
• 17:48
  Dave Hamilton: In fact, I was having a conversation with a friend, I don't know,
• 17:51
  Dave Hamilton: a couple of weeks ago maybe, and he said to me, he said, hey,
• 17:55
  Dave Hamilton: you know, how are you doing?
• 17:56
  Dave Hamilton: And I said, you know, I feel like I just need to take, I have one too many things on my plate.
• 18:03
  Dave Hamilton: And this was, this was, right, right. This was a musician friend.
• 18:08
  Dave Hamilton: And he said, I assume you're not referring to, like, one gig that you have too
• 18:12
  Dave Hamilton: many. I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no. If only it was that simple, you know.
• 18:16
  Dave Hamilton: It's just, you know, I put a lot. Like, you said, story of my life.
• 18:19
  Dave Hamilton: It's story of my life, too. And he said.
• 18:23
  Dave Hamilton: When he asked me this, it was towards the end of the summer when family time
• 18:29
  Dave Hamilton: winds up sort of dominating a lot of my available time.
• 18:34
  Dave Hamilton: And that's not a complaint. I love it. Sure.
• 18:37
  Dave Hamilton: But it does mean that other things wind up getting less of my time.
• 18:43
  Dave Hamilton: And I was talking about this.
• 18:45
  Dave Hamilton: I still have that Strawberry.me coach, right? Oh, yeah. Because they sponsored
• 18:50
  Dave Hamilton: my other podcast years ago.
• 18:51
  Dave Hamilton: And uh and and i was talking to him about it and came up with,
• 18:57
  Dave Hamilton: the reality is that when i have lots of things on my plate as i always do some
• 19:05
  Dave Hamilton: of them get my attention and some of them wind up in maintenance mode just kind of coasting along,
• 19:11
  Dave Hamilton: and i'm not i have learned and this may be a bad thing but,
• 19:17
  Dave Hamilton: be that as it may i have learned the value of having a few things in maintenance mode,
• 19:25
  Dave Hamilton: just in case one of the things that i am focusing on falls apart for whatever
• 19:30
  Dave Hamilton: reason right you know i've got this other thing that's like not,
• 19:34
  Dave Hamilton: producing at its full capacity but it's also not at ground zero and i can take
• 19:39
  Dave Hamilton: that put some time into it and in theory make it flourish and generate cash, right?
• 19:44
  Dave Hamilton: So I like having things in maintenance mode. I don't just like killing them off.
• 19:50
  Dave Hamilton: But what I hadn't been doing was intentionally choosing which things were going
• 19:57
  Dave Hamilton: to remain in maintenance mode.
• 20:00
  Dave Hamilton: Now, I had unintentionally been choosing what things were going to remain in
• 20:04
  Dave Hamilton: maintenance mode by nature of how much time I actually have and the things that,
• 20:09
  Dave Hamilton: I wind up spending my time on that therefore leaves the other things to get
• 20:15
  Dave Hamilton: less time than they would need to flourish.
• 20:18
  Dave Hamilton: And and that in and of itself was causing me some like distraction and so,
• 20:25
  Dave Hamilton: the the solution was well what if i just pick because i never want to be seen
• 20:30
  Dave Hamilton: as a failure right i'm not afraid of failing we've talked about this on the
• 20:33
  Dave Hamilton: show but i am afraid of being seen as a failure,
• 20:37
  Dave Hamilton: now yeah i know that that is like a terrible trait,
• 20:43
  Dave Hamilton: be that as it may it is it's just how i am.
• 20:46
  Shannon Jean: I don't know if it's terrible about it but but i understand the terribleness of it
• 20:50
  Dave Hamilton: Yes right right like it'd be better if i just didn't worry what other people
• 20:54
  Dave Hamilton: thought about yeah and and and so that's why i say it's terrible but uh in order to manage that,
• 21:02
  Dave Hamilton: The idea is, well, what if I intentionally say these things are going to get
• 21:09
  Dave Hamilton: less of my attention and be in therefore be in maintenance mode?
• 21:13
  Dave Hamilton: And these, you know, one to three things are going to get attention from me
• 21:19
  Dave Hamilton: and actually get the growth and the things that, you know, I want to be doing.
• 21:24
  Dave Hamilton: And therefore that way I'm hacking my brain and then,
• 21:31
  Dave Hamilton: when I would otherwise be worrying about, well, if this thing's not growing,
• 21:34
  Dave Hamilton: somebody's going to say, Dave's failing at that. It's like, oh,
• 21:37
  Dave Hamilton: no, no, no. Dave made a choice about that.
• 21:40
  Dave Hamilton: Very different. This is how it's supposed to be in my world.
• 21:47
  Dave Hamilton: And so far, this mindset hack has been good for me.
• 21:54
  Shannon Jean: Yeah, I think I do like it because there is a mental load on everything you work on.
• 22:04
  Shannon Jean: Yes. And you can, if you're like us, you have a ton of stuff going on and it's
• 22:12
  Shannon Jean: not just like, oh, I get up and I work on the same thing. You know,
• 22:15
  Shannon Jean: there's all these things you juggle and do stuff. Yeah.
• 22:20
  Shannon Jean: But I find this extremely valuable to get that mental load off of you.
• 22:29
  Dave Hamilton: That's what I'm working. That's exactly what this is about. Yes. Yeah.
• 22:33
  Shannon Jean: Because if you have all this stuff that you're thinking about,
• 22:37
  Shannon Jean: this is the stuff that I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about.
• 22:41
  Shannon Jean: Like, oh, I got to take care. I got to do this. And that tells me I'm carrying
• 22:46
  Shannon Jean: too much of a mental load instead of using tools that I've spent years to figure out.
• 22:53
  Shannon Jean: I've talked about them here for years, you know, to get them out of my head
• 22:59
  Shannon Jean: so that I can focus on the stuff that's really important and that does need
• 23:03
  Shannon Jean: to grow and problems that need to be solved and that kind of thing.
• 23:07
  Shannon Jean: So I do think there's value in that intentional deprioritization.
• 23:14
  Shannon Jean: That's how you phrased it before we came on the show. And I was like,
• 23:16
  Shannon Jean: yeah, it's a mouthful, but, you know, relieving your mental load, always valuable.
• 23:21
  Dave Hamilton: Just, yeah, telling myself and telling yourselves that it's okay to not be focused
• 23:28
  Dave Hamilton: on these specific things.
• 23:30
  Dave Hamilton: Now, I think what I need to do, and it'll probably start with a monthly cadence,
• 23:37
  Dave Hamilton: is revisiting that list of like, what's going to get my attention over the next 30 days?
• 23:42
  Dave Hamilton: What can I leave in maintenance mode? and let's define maintenance mode.
• 23:47
  Dave Hamilton: Like, let's not just let that be nebulous either.
• 23:50
  Dave Hamilton: Let's define all of these things and then let's go execute and do the things.
• 23:54
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah. And being realistic about it.
• 23:57
  Dave Hamilton: And maybe in that 30 days, not just planning ahead, but also doing a little
• 24:01
  Dave Hamilton: bit of a review. Like, I said 30 days ago, I was going to focus on these things
• 24:06
  Dave Hamilton: and maintain these others.
• 24:07
  Dave Hamilton: Did I succeed in those in my own...
• 24:13
  Dave Hamilton: Goals or guidelines or whatever you want to call it. Right. So, yeah.
• 24:17
  Shannon Jean: And I do, I do think it's so important to recognizing that. And, um, it's kind of,
• 24:22
  Dave Hamilton: It's just the reality. It's what's been happening anyway.
• 24:26
  Dave Hamilton: Now it's, it's, it's adding the illusion of control maybe, but it's not an illusion, right?
• 24:31
  Shannon Jean: No, no. And I think it's also kind of an argument for making sure you have enough
• 24:37
  Shannon Jean: free time to think, being able to not have your calendar scheduled like,
• 24:47
  Shannon Jean: you know, right after another.
• 24:50
  Shannon Jean: You know, kind of, I like to wander around in my projects.
• 24:54
  Dave Hamilton: Same. Right?
• 24:55
  Shannon Jean: And yes, I like to jump from thing to thing because it creates these kind of
• 25:04
  Shannon Jean: tenuous connections that often become very powerful. Right?
• 25:10
  Dave Hamilton: And I haven't been doing that. That's the part that I'm realizing,
• 25:14
  Dave Hamilton: wait a minute, I have to carve out time for the things I can't plan for. Yeah. Yeah.
• 25:21
  Shannon Jean: And I think there's different ways to do it. Go out, walk around,
• 25:25
  Shannon Jean: you know, driving. I drove back from Tahoe yesterday and it's like
• 25:31
  Shannon Jean: just thinking. Yes. And being able to set notes and, you know,
• 25:37
  Shannon Jean: using one of those new Pebble rings that they have. Have you seen this?
• 25:41
  Shannon Jean: Yeah. Never charged it. Last two years.
• 25:45
  Shannon Jean: And so you just hit this button that it makes a note. So it's nice while you're
• 25:48
  Shannon Jean: driving. You can just kind of hit this thing.
• 25:51
  Shannon Jean: I think it's really good. I like it. I like it. We had a comment in the live
• 25:56
  Shannon Jean: stream that I wanted to mention that somebody on YouTube said,
• 26:00
  Shannon Jean: good afternoon, brothers.
• 26:00
  Shannon Jean: I'm new to the podcast. Have you addressed the tax benefits of owning a small
• 26:04
  Shannon Jean: business regarding the tax code and all of the write-offs that are available?
• 26:07
  Shannon Jean: We have many, many times, but it's a good topic to bring up again.
• 26:12
  Shannon Jean: So we'll add it to a future show and talk about.
• 26:16
  Dave Hamilton: Absolutely.
• 26:16
  Shannon Jean: We're not accountants. we're not bookkeepers but we certainly know how to live a charmed life
• 26:20
  Dave Hamilton: That's the key all right so i have a question for you shannon as as it's time
• 26:24
  Dave Hamilton: to pull the ripcord on this episode uh,
• 26:28
  Dave Hamilton: but don't worry friday i is coming up where we will talk about a couple of things
• 26:32
  Dave Hamilton: including some of my concerns with ai but they're not what you think before we do that though,
• 26:39
  Dave Hamilton: before we say goodbye what's this episode's big takeaway shannon.
• 26:46
  Shannon Jean: I think the takeaway is this offloading, being able to offload to lessen your
• 26:55
  Shannon Jean: mental load on these projects, however you want to phrase it.
• 26:57
  Shannon Jean: Intentional deprioritization.
• 27:00
  Shannon Jean: That sounds very efficient. But I think that is that's the takeaway.
• 27:06
  Dave Hamilton: I agree. I think it's important for all of us, and it's really easy for us,
• 27:11
  Dave Hamilton: these days and every day, but still these days, to just get overloaded,
• 27:16
  Dave Hamilton: and then suddenly you're not as efficient with the things that you're doing and not as attentive.
• 27:23
  Dave Hamilton: Thanks for hanging out with us, folks. You can send in your thoughts to us here
• 27:27
  Dave Hamilton: at feedback at businessbrain.show.
• 27:30
  Dave Hamilton: We mentioned that big takeaway.
• 27:32
  Dave Hamilton: What we're going to do is we're going to flesh that out into a full report,
• 27:36
  Dave Hamilton: a business plan if you will that we call our business brain blueprint that you
• 27:40
  Dave Hamilton: can get at businessbrain.show slash blueprint so go check that out and uh we'll
• 27:45
  Dave Hamilton: see you on friday keep living that charmed life see ya.