Latest / Business Brain – The Entrepreneurs’ Podcast / Losing Huge Customers and Please Text our COO – Business Brain 782
Transcript
- 0:00Dave Hamilton: Business Brain, episode 782 for Wednesday, August 26th, National Dog Day, 2026.
- 0:09Shannon Jean: I love that. Love dogs.
- 0:11Dave Hamilton: Do you love dogs? Yeah. I really do. That's great. I do not. I'm married. Yeah.
- 0:16Dave Hamilton: I like our dog, which is not always the case. I don't just like him.
- 0:22Shannon Jean: I hunt with my dog, and it's one of the most enjoyable things I do to watch
- 0:26Shannon Jean: them perform. yeah and have like they're like uh she's like a you know a pro athlete
- 0:32Dave Hamilton: Yeah yeah.
- 0:33Shannon Jean: So it's amazing i
- 0:34Dave Hamilton: Love it yeah yeah our little chihuahua mix that we have is lisa i mean he's
- 0:40Dave Hamilton: he's young he's a year and a half or so and lisa is training him to be an agility
- 0:44Dave Hamilton: dog and i mean he's great yeah no he's a great little dog,
- 0:48Dave Hamilton: i i generally don't like the dogs that we have but um,
- 0:52Dave Hamilton: I just don't, as I just don't like dogs. I, they're just not my thing.
- 0:57Dave Hamilton: Um, you know, I prefer, I much prefer cats. There's so much better pets in my
- 1:01Dave Hamilton: opinion. I don't mean to say that as a universal truth.
- 1:06Shannon Jean: I know we all have to be confident. You don't want to be timid.
- 1:09Dave Hamilton: I'm not being timid. I'm just being articulate. You know?
- 1:12Shannon Jean: Yes, I got it. Awesome.
- 1:15Dave Hamilton: Uh, welcome to business brain, the show where we take some ideas,
- 1:18Dave Hamilton: we crunch them, we dissect them we use them to tune our business brains and
- 1:22Dave Hamilton: level up our charmed lives our sponsors for,
- 1:27Dave Hamilton: this episode are hymns.com slash business brain where you can go
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- 1:42Dave Hamilton: where you can get 10 bucks off the somnipods three sleep earbuds that both shannon
- 1:46Dave Hamilton: and i are really finding to be some of the best in class of these it's really
- 1:51Dave Hamilton: quite something so we'll talk about,
- 1:54Dave Hamilton: those in more detail in a little bit for now here in durham new hampshire i'm dave hamilton.
- 1:59Shannon Jean: And here in northern california i'm shannon gene i happy to be here
- 2:03Dave Hamilton: I had an interesting experience shannon i went out to eat with my family and
- 2:08Dave Hamilton: yes i uh was looking in in detail at the receipt that showed up at the table, mainly because,
- 2:17Dave Hamilton: this restaurant previously had let me pay with like...
- 2:22Dave Hamilton: Uh, like a QR code, you know, so I didn't have to wait for the exchange to happen.
- 2:27Shannon Jean: You know, I love that. Yeah.
- 2:28Dave Hamilton: Well, it, it stopped being there and I was like, Oh, that's interesting.
- 2:31Dave Hamilton: And so I just was like looking at the receipt to see like, am I missing something or whatever?
- 2:35Dave Hamilton: And I saw something on there and it, you know, it said, you know,
- 2:39Dave Hamilton: join our loyalty program, all the things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
- 2:42Dave Hamilton: And then it said, uh, it essentially asked the question, do you have feedback to share?
- 2:46Dave Hamilton: Uh, and it said, whether it's a shout out feedback or a big idea,
- 2:50Dave Hamilton: text our COO at, And he gave his number and it says, yes, that's actually his real number.
- 2:58Dave Hamilton: And I love that. Like making yourself accessible to your customers.
- 3:06Dave Hamilton: I mean, what a message this sends, right? And what's shocking to me is that,
- 3:12Dave Hamilton: it wasn't until retelling this encounter to you,
- 3:17Dave Hamilton: that I realized I should have in the moment, and I still can and will,
- 3:20Dave Hamilton: text him and tell him that I miss having the QR code on the thing.
- 3:26Dave Hamilton: Like, why wouldn't I tell him this? They give, they've literally asked for it.
- 3:30Dave Hamilton: And I love that they've asked for it because they're going to be able to level up.
- 3:34Dave Hamilton: Are they going to get, you know, feedback from, uh, that, that maybe isn't so
- 3:39Dave Hamilton: positive. Of course, you know, and some of that's positive and that's more important.
- 3:44Dave Hamilton: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.
- 3:47Shannon Jean: That's a great idea. Even if you use a, uh, you know, even if it's not his real cell number, right.
- 3:53Shannon Jean: But it's an automated, you know, not automated where it's going to kick you
- 3:56Shannon Jean: back an instant reply, but something there you're capturing that data that then
- 4:01Shannon Jean: you can have some, you know, follow up afterwards and thank them or
- 4:05Shannon Jean: give them a coupon code or something like that, that they could use sometime.
- 4:10Shannon Jean: It really sends the right message, right?
- 4:12Dave Hamilton: Personalizes everything.
- 4:13Shannon Jean: Personalizes everything. And you can do it in so many different ways.
- 4:17Shannon Jean: Remember that guy who used to put his social security number on the billboards
- 4:21Shannon Jean: or in the commercials? It was like for us.
- 4:23Dave Hamilton: I forgot about that.
- 4:24Shannon Jean: Yeah, I mean, it was crazy where he was, it was a life lock is what it was,
- 4:29Shannon Jean: right? And they were doing that stuff, but I mean, that's a little extreme.
- 4:33Shannon Jean: I don't suggest you do that, but it certainly got a lot of attention.
- 4:36Shannon Jean: And just like this gets a lot of attention that'll be going out to tens of thousands
- 4:40Shannon Jean: of people that we talked about. I think it's great.
- 4:42Shannon Jean: Yep, I love it. It's smart. It's smart. It's really smart.
- 4:45Shannon Jean: And there's so many ways you could automate it now too, where it's personal.
- 4:51Shannon Jean: I think we are really, I mean, we're in it, but it's just going to get better and better.
- 4:55Shannon Jean: The age of personalization, that the management of data is so much better now that,
- 5:05Shannon Jean: you know, we can treat our customers as individuals in so many more instances
- 5:10Shannon Jean: than we used to be able to.
- 5:12Dave Hamilton: You know, when you, the reason that you and I wound up being introduced to each other,
- 5:19Dave Hamilton: was because you were a customer of BackBeat Medias, right? You were buying on
- 5:24Dave Hamilton: our websites. It was long before podcasts were even a thing.
- 5:27Dave Hamilton: And I remember the first conversation that we had, and it was so,
- 5:31Dave Hamilton: the reason I remember it was because it was something that we worked hard towards.
- 5:35Dave Hamilton: You said something about, you know, man, like you guys, I love what you do because
- 5:40Dave Hamilton: you send me these automated reports every week about my ads progress,
- 5:44Dave Hamilton: and it's super valuable to just get them in my inbox.
- 5:46Dave Hamilton: I don't have to ask and nobody else even has this information and you just make it super easy.
- 5:51Dave Hamilton: And I remember thinking, okay, great. It was validation of something that my
- 5:57Dave Hamilton: business partner, Greg, and I had talked about years before.
- 6:01Dave Hamilton: We started the business when you could be an idiot and make money on the internet.
- 6:05Dave Hamilton: You know, we were basically just order takers.
- 6:08Dave Hamilton: That doesn't work anymore? No.
- 6:10Dave Hamilton: Well, I mean, actually, no, it totally works. But, you know,
- 6:13Dave Hamilton: you have to get lucky in a sense, right? And we did.
- 6:16Dave Hamilton: Certainly uh we started a business in the right thing at the right time and
- 6:20Dave Hamilton: we were order takers for like a year and then the market fell out from underneath
- 6:25Dave Hamilton: us the whole you know internet's,
- 6:27Dave Hamilton: like the stock market you know the internet bubble burst in like 2001 or whatever
- 6:30Dave Hamilton: it was and uh but thankfully we hadn't spent all the money that we had earned,
- 6:35Dave Hamilton: and we realized that okay now that you know our our like.
- 6:41Dave Hamilton: The the value of any given ad dropped by less to less than half of what it was
- 6:46Dave Hamilton: and so it was like okay maybe this is what they're actually worth now so that's
- 6:49Dave Hamilton: a good thing you know but uh
- 6:52Dave Hamilton: we can't like we can't do it the way that we would have been able to do it with that money,
- 6:57Dave Hamilton: It was coming in before. And so what we did was we took the extra money that
- 7:01Dave Hamilton: we had laying around and automated the crap out of everything that we could,
- 7:07Dave Hamilton: to preserve our time to spend interacting with people.
- 7:13Dave Hamilton: Yeah, I love it. And we've always been doing that. But now technology,
- 7:17Dave Hamilton: I mean, technology has always made that possible.
- 7:20Dave Hamilton: Technology continues to advance to where it's easier and easier for every business
- 7:25Dave Hamilton: to do those kinds of things.
- 7:26Dave Hamilton: And I think that's what you're saying here is that this age of personalization
- 7:31Dave Hamilton: is part of that, that you can personalize the stuff you're automating and then
- 7:35Dave Hamilton: also just be personal with people. So, yeah.
- 7:38Shannon Jean: Yeah. And be able to, you know, the data that you have about them,
- 7:43Shannon Jean: be able to use it in a really productive way that I think was more difficult, you know, in years past.
- 7:51Shannon Jean: I think it's just a great way to connect.
- 7:53Dave Hamilton: Yeah, no, I love it. I think it's great. i think it's great uh yeah yeah customers
- 7:59Dave Hamilton: we got to take care of our customers and
- 8:01Dave Hamilton: yep and every business is the customer service business and you got it the tech
- 8:05Dave Hamilton: we have today makes that super possible all right we,
- 8:10Dave Hamilton: are going to talk about um,
- 8:12Dave Hamilton: how to how to manage your flow when you lose a customer or you know like,
- 8:18Dave Hamilton: big customer big customers yeah uh,
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- 11:36Dave Hamilton: So, you lost a big, in a theoretical world, you lose a big customer.
- 11:41Shannon Jean: No, it's a real world. I'm going to tell you a real world example.
- 11:43Shannon Jean: I'm going to name names. I'm going to name names.
- 11:46Dave Hamilton: He's got receipts, folks. And they don't have the COO's number on them. That's right. No.
- 11:51Shannon Jean: So, I will tell you that I've had some giant customers buying parts from me,
- 11:59Shannon Jean: repair parts, different things from one company to another.
- 12:02Shannon Jean: Companies like circuit city sure the good guys radio shack companies that at
- 12:08Shannon Jean: at one time or another all three of those companies were my number one customer okay buying buying
- 12:14Shannon Jean: hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of components from us every single month
- 12:18Shannon Jean: right yeah and one after another they all disappeared so
- 12:25Shannon Jean: there's a lot to break down about that you could talk about you know what happened
- 12:29Shannon Jean: why are they gone but sure what i really want to talk about is how you
- 12:33Shannon Jean: sustain things how you recover when you build up because it's not like they
- 12:37Shannon Jean: they drop a or they turn on the fire hose and they start giving you hundreds
- 12:41Shannon Jean: of thousands of dollars worth of orders every month right away
- 12:45Shannon Jean: you slowly build trust you build credibility they start by they start nibbling
- 12:50Shannon Jean: a little bit can you fill this order yes can you fill this order here's a po give you a chance
- 12:54Dave Hamilton: And you either deliver or you don't.
- 12:56Shannon Jean: Yeah. Yeah. So if you perform, they keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
- 13:00Shannon Jean: So when that happens, well, you're like, wow, we need more people.
- 13:04Shannon Jean: You know, wow, we need more space. We need more inventory.
- 13:08Shannon Jean: And then one after another, each of those three companies imploded with not
- 13:14Shannon Jean: a ton of warning, but, you know, little signals.
- 13:19Shannon Jean: But I mean, I think when Circuit City went, when they closed, you know, I had,
- 13:26Shannon Jean: hundreds of thousands of dollars for the open purchase holders with them uh
- 13:30Shannon Jean: right and so as a small business you start freaking out like not only
- 13:35Shannon Jean: do they owe me a bunch of money which we were able to get paid for eventually
- 13:39Shannon Jean: but i've got all these resources allocated to their account and and the worst thing about
- 13:46Shannon Jean: in my opinion about being a small business owner is having to like lay people
- 13:50Shannon Jean: off i hate that i don't want that you know it's it's awful an awful experience
- 13:55Shannon Jean: there is no oh just let hr do it you're always doing it no
- 13:58Dave Hamilton: You are hr yeah yeah.
- 13:59Shannon Jean: Yeah yeah and so i think the key after it happened the first time and i don't
- 14:05Shannon Jean: i think it might have been good guys that that went under
- 14:10Shannon Jean: yeah um we just really started watching for the signs of what would happen and
- 14:17Shannon Jean: bringing everybody into the conversation so as we built up let's say like our
- 14:21Shannon Jean: circus city business and it grew and grew and grew and it was wonderful for
- 14:24Shannon Jean: for a number of years sure uh
- 14:27Shannon Jean: we really communicated about and i always say this the only constant is change
- 14:32Shannon Jean: so the team that managed that account i often was like hey this is great we
- 14:37Shannon Jean: want to do take care of it but there's a good chance
- 14:41Shannon Jean: that it's not going to last forever right there's a good chance that something
- 14:44Shannon Jean: is going to change and either their requirements may change or whatever so we need to be ready.
- 14:50Shannon Jean: And as you build out this parts business or you're selling it,
- 14:54Shannon Jean: how do we add another level or how do we stabilize it?
- 14:59Shannon Jean: So if that customer disappears again, it doesn't, you know, really hurt us or
- 15:05Shannon Jean: freak me out for six months or, you know, and everybody can,
- 15:09Shannon Jean: you know, have something to do, right?
- 15:11Shannon Jean: Because if you lose that client that you're servicing And what it turned out
- 15:15Shannon Jean: it did is it allowed us to start an entirely new parts division
- 15:22Shannon Jean: we took their skills. It's like, okay, that's your main customer.
- 15:26Shannon Jean: They're driving all this infrastructure.
- 15:29Dave Hamilton: Let's take those resources.
- 15:31Shannon Jean: They're paying to build it in essence. Let's take that.
- 15:35Shannon Jean: And what do we build out with it? And we built Tech Restore Wholesale.
- 15:40Shannon Jean: And that became our parts division where before we sold parts and these companies
- 15:45Shannon Jean: kind of came out and said, hey, can you get us these parts? Yes,
- 15:47Shannon Jean: we'll do this. We'll do this.
- 15:48Shannon Jean: But it led us to building an entirely different division of the company that often
- 15:56Shannon Jean: generated more revenue than the repair division or the refurbishment or the
- 16:00Shannon Jean: reselling division, those parts, the wholesale parts, and used all those resources.
- 16:05Shannon Jean: So when the time came, when Circuit City closed up or when Radio shack closed
- 16:09Shannon Jean: up well we had hundreds of other maybe smaller clients yeah
- 16:15Dave Hamilton: But that's the best.
- 16:17Shannon Jean: That's the best yeah and and i would argue maybe they're better because they
- 16:21Shannon Jean: don't beat you up on profit on margins and they
- 16:24Dave Hamilton: Don't have the leverage too.
- 16:26Shannon Jean: They don't have a leverage when you have a you know a thousand pound gorilla
- 16:29Shannon Jean: telling you yeah we're going to bring you millions of dollars for the business
- 16:32Shannon Jean: but here's the prices that we can pay and we want to pay you in 60 days right
- 16:38Shannon Jean: instead of that kind of thing.
- 16:40Shannon Jean: So it's an opportunity when you have these big clients, communicate with your
- 16:48Shannon Jean: team and talk about what would happen if they were gone tomorrow.
- 16:52Shannon Jean: What would happen?
- 16:53Dave Hamilton: What would we do?
- 16:54Shannon Jean: Okay. Let's take that exercise. Let's, let's take it even further.
- 16:58Shannon Jean: What do we do now? So if they disappeared six months from now,
- 17:04Shannon Jean: whatever, three months, we, we would all still be here and we could use all
- 17:08Shannon Jean: these resources that we have, that we've developed.
- 17:10Shannon Jean: And, you know, I had, you know, we had to get ISO, you know,
- 17:13Shannon Jean: 9001 certified and all these resources that we had allocated for these clients
- 17:20Shannon Jean: and it turned into a great business.
- 17:21Shannon Jean: And even after they all disappeared, that company, you know,
- 17:24Shannon Jean: that division in our company did, it was so profitable. It was amazing.
- 17:29Dave Hamilton: I love that. Yeah. I've always said that if you give me the choice of having
- 17:34Dave Hamilton: one client that's going to pay me $20,000 or 20 clients that are each going
- 17:39Dave Hamilton: to pay me $1,000, I will choose plan B every time.
- 17:42Dave Hamilton: It's a little more customer service headache in theory and might and maybe in
- 17:47Dave Hamilton: practice too but in both cases i know one thing is true at least one client is going to go away,
- 17:56Dave Hamilton: and yes it's absolutely right when it's the 20 000 well you know you can do
- 18:00Dave Hamilton: the math right you know yes so um all,
- 18:02Dave Hamilton: right so i i i loved our um oh what's going on there i love that sound the double
- 18:09Dave Hamilton: sounds love that that's fun,
- 18:13Dave Hamilton: um i loved our conversation about the age of personalization almost as much
- 18:16Dave Hamilton: as i love the double sounds but,
- 18:18Dave Hamilton: i think our big takeaway is answering the question what would happen if your
- 18:24Dave Hamilton: biggest customer disappeared tomorrow because yeah like like you said changes
- 18:29Dave Hamilton: aren't permanent but changes i mean you didn't say yes,
- 18:33Dave Hamilton: professor pierce said that but that's what you meant and uh,
- 18:37Dave Hamilton: And I think preparing for that can serve your business very,
- 18:41Dave Hamilton: very well. I think that's my vote for the big takeaway.
- 18:45Shannon Jean: I would agree. I think it's a great takeaway. And I think it's a discussion
- 18:47Shannon Jean: you should have with your team.
- 18:48Dave Hamilton: No matter what.
- 18:50Shannon Jean: No matter what. Not that, hey, we're paranoid and we're about losing this customer. No, no, no.
- 18:54Dave Hamilton: No, it's not paranoia. This is practical.
- 18:57Shannon Jean: Yes, very practical. What would
- 18:59Shannon Jean: happen if this occurred? And how would we respond? How would we respond?
- 19:04Dave Hamilton: Yeah.
- 19:04Shannon Jean: When you get all that good data from your team, then you go,
- 19:08Shannon Jean: well, what if we just built that now?
- 19:10Shannon Jean: How would it impact our business and what other opportunities?
- 19:14Shannon Jean: So that's what we're going to dig into on our business plan.
- 19:20Dave Hamilton: Business blueprints.
- 19:21Shannon Jean: Business blueprint, thank you. Which you can get, it'll be uploaded after this
- 19:26Shannon Jean: episode at businessbrain.show slash blueprint. You can grab it for free.
- 19:31Dave Hamilton: It's true. He said businessbrain.show slash blueprint. Make sure to visit that.
- 19:35Dave Hamilton: And do me a favor. Keep living that charmed life, huh? We'll see you Friday.
- 19:39Shannon Jean: See ya.