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Distribution > Product – Business Brain 748 · Business Brain – The Entrepreneurs’ Podcast

• 0:00
  Dave Hamilton: Business Brain, episode 748 for Wednesday, April 29th, National Shrimp Scampi
• 0:07
  Dave Hamilton: Day, 2026. Welcome back. Woo!
• 0:10
  Shannon Jean: Big fan of shrimp.
• 0:11
  Dave Hamilton: I'm still shocked by the song every time.
• 0:15
  Shannon Jean: That it's like new?
• 0:16
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah, I released a button and then it's like, oh, that's different.
• 0:20
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah, that's not what I'm used to hearing. Who are these guys?
• 0:23
  Dave Hamilton: Muscle medicine, you know? Anyway. Yes, yes. Let's go!
• 0:37
  Dave Hamilton: Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take some
• 0:40
  Dave Hamilton: ideas, we crunch them, we dissect them, we use them to level up our business
• 0:44
  Dave Hamilton: brains so we can keep on living our charmed lives.
• 0:48
  Dave Hamilton: Our sponsors for this episode include QuickBooks.com slash Workforce,
• 0:53
  Dave Hamilton: where you can learn more about Intuit QuickBooks payroll and all the changes,
• 0:57
  Dave Hamilton: the evolutions, the enhancements they have coming this summer.
• 1:00
  Dave Hamilton: We'll talk more about those here in a minute, too.
• 1:03
  Dave Hamilton: For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.
• 1:06
  Shannon Jean: And out here in Northern California, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you, man?
• 1:10
  Dave Hamilton: I'm doing well. Yeah. Good. Rocking and rolling.
• 1:13
  Shannon Jean: Good, good.
• 1:13
  Dave Hamilton: Starting to figure out my throat thing that we've talked about on this show
• 1:17
  Dave Hamilton: a little bit tangentially. Yep.
• 1:19
  Shannon Jean: It is kind of crazy that we both are going through this at the same time.
• 1:22
  Shannon Jean: I think that's really... It is. It's one more indicator that we're living in a simulation.
• 1:28
  Dave Hamilton: I don't disagree.
• 1:29
  Shannon Jean: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's getting to the point where how can you argue?
• 1:34
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. that's right I have one to start with I think it's pretty easy
• 1:44
  Dave Hamilton: I think I was out to eat at a restaurant on Sunday. It doesn't matter. This weekend.
• 1:51
  Dave Hamilton: And I went to pay the bill.
• 1:54
  Dave Hamilton: The bill arrived. I pulled up my credit card. I put it down.
• 1:56
  Dave Hamilton: And as I was handing it back to them, I noticed something. And I didn't flinch
• 2:00
  Dave Hamilton: at it other than noticing it because it's relatively new.
• 2:03
  Dave Hamilton: There was the total for whatever lunch was, $80-something, whatever it is.
• 2:07
  Dave Hamilton: And it was like there will be a 2.5% convenience charge added if you pay with
• 2:13
  Dave Hamilton: a credit card. And I was like, great. Okay, great.
• 2:16
  Dave Hamilton: And what that made me real, I noticed it because I try to be observant of these
• 2:20
  Dave Hamilton: things, but I didn't flinch at all. It was like, yeah, okay, that's fine.
• 2:22
  Dave Hamilton: Like, you know, they didn't say it to me. It was just written on the thing.
• 2:25
  Dave Hamilton: It's super common. And the reason it's common is because the credit card companies
• 2:30
  Dave Hamilton: now allow you to charge a different price between cash and credit.
• 2:34
  Shannon Jean: You didn't use it. Yes. No, they don't. They were forced to.
• 2:38
  Shannon Jean: You're giving them way too much credit, bro. That's fair.
• 2:41
  Shannon Jean: Walmart, Target, and somebody else, they just were like, hey, no way.
• 2:45
  Shannon Jean: And so, you know, they finally, the credit card companies or the merchant system,
• 2:52
  Shannon Jean: Visa, NASCAR, damn it, they finally said, okay, we can't stop you from charging this fee anymore.
• 2:57
  Dave Hamilton: Right, right, that's true. But for a long time, a lot of people don't know that
• 3:01
  Dave Hamilton: for a long time, that was part of the agreement that merchants made was that
• 3:05
  Dave Hamilton: you had to charge the same rate for cash and you had to eat it as a merchant.
• 3:11
  Dave Hamilton: And now that, of course, that went away. And now as a merchant,
• 3:15
  Dave Hamilton: you don't. And my advice to everyone out here is...
• 3:19
  Dave Hamilton: Don't eat it. Charge your customers. Everyone is used to it.
• 3:24
  Dave Hamilton: Everyone. Because it's been happening for years.
• 3:27
  Dave Hamilton: And we started doing it with Backbeat, I don't know, last year maybe.
• 3:32
  Dave Hamilton: We used to do almost all of our business on credit cards.
• 3:36
  Dave Hamilton: Okay. And then we started moving.
• 3:39
  Dave Hamilton: ACH became easier for people to use as online banking, right?
• 3:43
  Dave Hamilton: You know, Evolve and all that. And actually, there's even more evolutions to
• 3:46
  Dave Hamilton: that coming. I was just reading the other day. So it's getting better,
• 3:49
  Dave Hamilton: but it's still pretty good.
• 3:51
  Dave Hamilton: So we moved to ACH and then we had people that were, it was clear they were
• 3:56
  Dave Hamilton: like us, that were continuing to use their credit cards so that they could get
• 4:00
  Dave Hamilton: their points or whatever.
• 4:01
  Dave Hamilton: And obviously, I can't blame them.
• 4:04
  Dave Hamilton: And so the first thing we did to mitigate that was to pull all public reference
• 4:10
  Dave Hamilton: to paying with a credit card off of everything.
• 4:13
  Dave Hamilton: And that actually helped a lot. It just moved everything over to ACH.
• 4:18
  Dave Hamilton: Because if credit card wasn't listed as an option, they wouldn't choose it.
• 4:22
  Dave Hamilton: But we had some people who were like, okay, I want to still pay with my credit
• 4:25
  Dave Hamilton: card. And we let that go for a little while. And then it was like, all right.
• 4:27
  Dave Hamilton: And then we just put on a thing that it was like, all right,
• 4:30
  Dave Hamilton: if you go into the credit card form, you pull up your invoice.
• 4:32
  Dave Hamilton: Here's the price of your invoice. Here's the 3% credit card fee. Here's the total.
• 4:38
  Dave Hamilton: And we haven't had anyone balk at that. We've had some people say,
• 4:43
  Dave Hamilton: hey, can I pay with ACH? I want to avoid the fee. And it's like, of course you may.
• 4:48
  Dave Hamilton: Like, yes, here's the instructions again.
• 4:52
  Dave Hamilton: But you're not going to pay.
• 4:53
  Shannon Jean: And more and more have them. What's that? Have that built. More and more payment processing.
• 4:57
  Shannon Jean: Stripe. Like when I send invoices out, there's just an option there.
• 5:02
  Shannon Jean: And if you do the credit card, they pay the fee.
• 5:06
  Shannon Jean: If not, here's the ACH. You can send it right here. and they use,
• 5:11
  Shannon Jean: you know, plaid or whatever it's called that connects your bank and you can automatically do it.
• 5:16
  Shannon Jean: What I find the challenge is, is doing it for small dollar purchases is like,
• 5:23
  Shannon Jean: building it into your system that would allow you to, how am I going to phrase this?
• 5:31
  Shannon Jean: Yeah, like the $29, $35, or if you're selling like on eBay, or they eat the fees.
• 5:39
  Dave Hamilton: EBay is, yeah, part of it.
• 5:40
  Shannon Jean: Yeah, they're part of it.
• 5:41
  Dave Hamilton: So you're paying 15% anyway. So, you know. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 5:45
  Shannon Jean: But yeah, I agree with you. I would like to – I'm still like not thrilled to
• 5:54
  Shannon Jean: have that shown it added on my thing, on the invoice.
• 5:59
  Shannon Jean: So I like the you choose how to pay.
• 6:02
  Shannon Jean: It's cash is this price if you're like at a restaurant. Credit card is this
• 6:06
  Shannon Jean: price, and it's just obvious.
• 6:07
  Shannon Jean: I mean, gas stations do it, you know, and lots of places. So,
• 6:11
  Shannon Jean: yeah, I agree with you, and I think that.
• 6:13
  Dave Hamilton: As more and more people – We are giving you an instant 3% boost to your gross revenue.
• 6:20
  Shannon Jean: Yep.
• 6:21
  Dave Hamilton: If you're running everything on credit cards, yeah.
• 6:23
  Shannon Jean: Yeah. I've seen – I just saw a post about it today where people are like,
• 6:27
  Shannon Jean: we charge 3.9 because – right?
• 6:31
  Shannon Jean: Because it's probably – if they're paying with Amex, it could be 3.5%.
• 6:36
  Shannon Jean: Plus you pay like 30 cents every time they use a card.
• 6:42
  Dave Hamilton: So here's the thing. I don't disagree with you. 3.9 is right.
• 6:48
  Dave Hamilton: Where I disagree is the myth that Amex is more expensive to the merchant than Visa or MasterCard.
• 6:56
  Dave Hamilton: And it is a myth. I have dug very deep into this.
• 7:01
  Dave Hamilton: Amex charges a higher fee, right? Their percentage is higher than Visa or MasterCard.
• 7:08
  Dave Hamilton: Correct. The difference is that MasterCard and Visa charge a lower fee and then
• 7:15
  Dave Hamilton: per transaction, add on the cost of the points that you are buying for the customer. Amex.
• 7:23
  Dave Hamilton: Eats effectively eats that but the way they
• 7:26
  Dave Hamilton: eat it is by charging a higher fee so i've had merchants
• 7:29
  Dave Hamilton: and we looked at it here when we were going into all of this
• 7:32
  Dave Hamilton: it was like okay knowing that everyone is
• 7:35
  Dave Hamilton: using rewards cards now uh let's assume that every transaction has this and
• 7:41
  Dave Hamilton: and for us 100 of them did anyway because we're all b2b stuff anyway but uh
• 7:45
  Dave Hamilton: we looked and it was like all right for you know a five thousand dollar transaction
• 7:49
  Dave Hamilton: what are we paying in fees to amex what are we paying in fees to MasterCard and Visa,
• 7:53
  Dave Hamilton: and we could look back over a couple of years because we had that data,
• 7:57
  Dave Hamilton: and it was like 100% of the time, Amex was the cheapest option.
• 8:03
  Dave Hamilton: That's interesting. And I've tried to tell merchants this, like when somebody's
• 8:06
  Dave Hamilton: like, oh, we don't take Amex because, and I'm like, you are- It's the
• 8:10
  Shannon Jean: Way they present it.
• 8:11
  Dave Hamilton: It's the way they present it.
• 8:12
  Shannon Jean: Because Visa and MasterCard, they hide it, right? Yes. They try to hide it.
• 8:14
  Shannon Jean: Yep. It's just like your old, I don't know, cell phone bill,
• 8:17
  Shannon Jean: cable bill, fees, this, that, this tax that thing you know where they don't
• 8:21
  Shannon Jean: really want you to add up the.
• 8:22
  Dave Hamilton: Total correct correct yeah they
• 8:25
  Dave Hamilton: try to hide it so yeah i i recommend all of
• 8:28
  Dave Hamilton: you listening if you are of the belief that
• 8:31
  Dave Hamilton: amex costs you more in your business just
• 8:35
  Dave Hamilton: do the math and and by the way it's great you don't have to do what i did you
• 8:39
  Dave Hamilton: can take 12 months of your statements and feed them to an llm and let it decide
• 8:45
  Dave Hamilton: for your do that report for you they're very good at this but I did it manually
• 8:49
  Dave Hamilton: and it took me 10 minutes to just run through.
• 8:52
  Dave Hamilton: They, they, to your point, Shannon, they make it difficult.
• 8:56
  Shannon Jean: They did on purpose.
• 8:57
  Dave Hamilton: They hide the things. Yeah. Yeah. It's terrible, but it's really easy to find it.
• 9:00
  Dave Hamilton: You're, you know, if you're listening to the show, obviously you're smart enough
• 9:03
  Dave Hamilton: to like look at a report and do that stuff. So yeah.
• 9:06
  Shannon Jean: Yeah. That's cool. But confirm it for yourself.
• 9:10
  Dave Hamilton: Yep.
• 9:10
  Shannon Jean: Yeah. And I agree. I think you should have that option and I see it.
• 9:13
  Shannon Jean: I just see it more and more everywhere. Um,
• 9:17
  Shannon Jean: And I think it just becomes more acceptable.
• 9:19
  Dave Hamilton: It's way more acceptable. That was kind of my reason for bringing it up,
• 9:22
  Dave Hamilton: is it's so acceptable now.
• 9:24
  Shannon Jean: The golden age of credit card points are gone.
• 9:27
  Dave Hamilton: It's gone. We're buying our own points now, Shannon.
• 9:30
  Shannon Jean: Yeah, yeah. If you use that, if you're, I mean, it's fine. If you run it through
• 9:34
  Shannon Jean: your business, it's still kind of hidden benefit that you don't get taxed on.
• 9:39
  Shannon Jean: If you're like, well, just go ahead and pay it. The business is going to pay
• 9:41
  Shannon Jean: the 3% or whatever they charge you, and then I'm going to personally benefit.
• 9:45
  Dave Hamilton: Yep.
• 9:45
  Shannon Jean: But I imagine in the near future, there'll be some politician that says, you know what?
• 9:51
  Shannon Jean: We need to get that money because they never can get enough.
• 9:55
  Dave Hamilton: But here's the flip side to this. If you are paying with a credit card,
• 9:59
  Dave Hamilton: the merchants are going to charge you a flat rate, that 3%, 3.9, 2. Whatever it is.
• 10:08
  Dave Hamilton: But for lunch yesterday, they were going to charge me 2.5% if I used a credit
• 10:13
  Dave Hamilton: card. Not if I used a rewards credit card.
• 10:16
  Dave Hamilton: Not if I write. So if you are using a credit card, make 100% certain that you're
• 10:21
  Dave Hamilton: using a rewards credit card because you're buying the points whether you get them or not.
• 10:26
  Shannon Jean: So, yeah. And I mean, they're just trying to recover whatever they can,
• 10:29
  Shannon Jean: right? Because they know it's too complex. I'm totally. Oh, no.
• 10:31
  Shannon Jean: That's why they couldn't.
• 10:32
  Dave Hamilton: In real time, you couldn't know. That's the problem. Yeah.
• 10:35
  Shannon Jean: You don't know. That's why I was a little shocked. And I was like,
• 10:39
  Shannon Jean: oh, that makes sense. When I saw that, you know, hey, you should be charging 3.9. It's like, wow.
• 10:43
  Dave Hamilton: I mean, we use Stripe for everything with BackBeat, so that's a fixed rate for us.
• 10:49
  Dave Hamilton: So the 3% we charge actually does cover it.
• 10:52
  Dave Hamilton: But yeah, if you're going through a merchant services provider,
• 10:56
  Dave Hamilton: calculate it and make sure that they're not screwing you because they probably are.
• 11:02
  Shannon Jean: I guarantee it.
• 11:04
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• 11:11
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• 12:17
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• 12:21
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• 12:24
  Dave Hamilton: And our thanks to QuickBooks Payroll for sponsoring this episode.
• 12:29
  Dave Hamilton: All right, well, what do you got, Shannon? What's on your list for today?
• 12:33
  Shannon Jean: Okay, I want to talk about distribution. And I want to start with this quote.
• 12:38
  Shannon Jean: And it's this guy, Justin Kand. He was the founder of Twitch.
• 12:42
  Dave Hamilton: Right? Oh, yeah.
• 12:43
  Shannon Jean: It's a streaming, gaming, streaming platform that Amazon bought for a gazillion dollars.
• 12:49
  Shannon Jean: And Justin said, first-time founders are obsessed with product,
• 12:54
  Shannon Jean: second-time founders are obsessed with distribution.
• 12:58
  Shannon Jean: And I agree with this, but it's never hit me as much as it has in the last couple
• 13:05
  Shannon Jean: of years with this current business that I'm running. And I wanted to talk about that.
• 13:10
  Shannon Jean: It's so common, and I've done this, to get focused on the product.
• 13:14
  Shannon Jean: Like, we're going to build this thing. It's a better mousetrap,
• 13:16
  Shannon Jean: whatever, better service, better product.
• 13:18
  Shannon Jean: And we're going to go all in, and we know it's great to focus on that.
• 13:22
  Shannon Jean: And then you release this product into the ether and nobody knows. Nobody knows about it.
• 13:30
  Dave Hamilton: Right. Sure.
• 13:31
  Shannon Jean: And you're either stuck buying expensive ads or you're, okay.
• 13:37
  Shannon Jean: But you built this thing without the distribution system, right?
• 13:42
  Shannon Jean: Yeah. You just do it. So the opposite is what I have found in the last couple of years is that,
• 13:50
  Shannon Jean: You build the distribution center system first, and that could be on your socials,
• 13:56
  Shannon Jean: if you're followers, your personal brand, your business or whatever.
• 14:00
  Shannon Jean: But that's rented distribution, right? Because you can lose that at any time.
• 14:05
  Dave Hamilton: You don't own them, right?
• 14:06
  Shannon Jean: And so you're trying to then get them to your newsletter, which is then you own them.
• 14:13
  Shannon Jean: It's a more direct connection. And then you're listening to those people and
• 14:18
  Shannon Jean: they will tell you what to make.
• 14:21
  Shannon Jean: So you flip the script instead of, I'm going to build this product because I think it's needed.
• 14:26
  Dave Hamilton: Which is what I always hear. The product is the distribution system.
• 14:31
  Shannon Jean: Yeah, that's right.
• 14:32
  Dave Hamilton: In a sense.
• 14:34
  Shannon Jean: Yeah, distribution isn't just the marketing of it. It is the strategy.
• 14:39
  Dave Hamilton: It's the foundation. Yeah.
• 14:41
  Shannon Jean: Yeah, that's right. And it, I think we've done it, build this thing.
• 14:46
  Dave Hamilton: We've done it backwards too.
• 14:48
  Shannon Jean: Yeah. Yeah. We've done it backwards. And so it's, it, it's kind of layer.
• 14:54
  Shannon Jean: I'm going to move my notes over here.
• 14:56
  Dave Hamilton: And it's difficult, not certainly not impossible, but it requires a lot of intention
• 15:02
  Dave Hamilton: and commitment to take an existing product-based business and prioritize the distribution.
• 15:13
  Dave Hamilton: Because- Very hard. One of the things that you will struggle with with this
• 15:18
  Dave Hamilton: is your product will change.
• 15:23
  Dave Hamilton: By nature of what you're doing, if your product, if whatever you're calling
• 15:29
  Dave Hamilton: your product now, like for us, the podcast, the other things, great. But-
• 15:35
  Dave Hamilton: If you make the distribution system the most important thing,
• 15:38
  Dave Hamilton: that will inform changes to your other things that you used to call your main product.
• 15:44
  Dave Hamilton: And that might be emotionally difficult or even procedurally difficult.
• 15:48
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah. Like both of those things. Yeah.
• 15:50
  Shannon Jean: Yeah. And you get lost in the product and you think you're making progress, right?
• 15:54
  Shannon Jean: Because you're like, oh, we're going to tweak this a little more.
• 15:56
  Shannon Jean: We're going to build this app a little better. We're going to do this.
• 15:59
  Dave Hamilton: Once we make this one change to the product, people will come flooding.
• 16:02
  Dave Hamilton: No. That's not true in today's world. There were times when that was true.
• 16:07
  Shannon Jean: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you look at the successful companies,
• 16:11
  Shannon Jean: they all have an existing distribution system in place. Yes.
• 16:15
  Shannon Jean: Whether it's, you know, whatever it is, whether it's Apple's doing something,
• 16:21
  Shannon Jean: whether it's, you know, a company that has locations throughout the country that people come to.
• 16:25
  Shannon Jean: People go to Costco, the number one and two selling things at Costco are paper towels and water.
• 16:32
  Shannon Jean: Right. And that's why those are all in the back. Yeah. Because right.
• 16:36
  Shannon Jean: They get you there because they want you to walk through and buy all this other stuff.
• 16:39
  Dave Hamilton: So that's why they put pharmacies in grocery stores.
• 16:42
  Shannon Jean: Yeah, exactly. They want to get you in there. So this the here's my stack as as I do it now.
• 16:49
  Shannon Jean: So about one hundred and seventy five thousand followers on social.
• 16:53
  Shannon Jean: That's just for awareness. And that's that's rented because you could lose it
• 16:57
  Shannon Jean: any time. X could say we don't like your account.
• 16:59
  Shannon Jean: We're going to pull you Facebook at the same time, whatever.
• 17:01
  Shannon Jean: Then I have get those people into the newsletter.
• 17:05
  Shannon Jean: It's about 21,000 people on the newsletter.
• 17:07
  Shannon Jean: That's your permission. You own that, right?
• 17:10
  Shannon Jean: Okay. And then you build more trust. We do it with this podcast.
• 17:14
  Shannon Jean: I have another reseller podcast that I do. So you're continually building trust.
• 17:19
  Shannon Jean: Then I have about 3,200 people that pay to be in my mastermind.
• 17:23
  Shannon Jean: That is the business. The mastermind is the business.
• 17:27
  Dave Hamilton: But I did not know. That's the revenue generating part of this.
• 17:31
  Dave Hamilton: The business. Correct. Right.
• 17:32
  Shannon Jean: Correct. Yeah. And so I didn't guess the mastermind. The audience told me what they wanted.
• 17:40
  Shannon Jean: That's the big smash in my face that I learned the last couple of years,
• 17:45
  Shannon Jean: much better than I've ever learned on any other business where we sat around
• 17:50
  Shannon Jean: and thought about, this will be cool.
• 17:51
  Shannon Jean: I mean, we sold product. It was great. And we used just our distribution center
• 17:54
  Shannon Jean: systems were using like marketplaces like eBay or whatever, because you get traffic there.
• 17:59
  Dave Hamilton: I want to stop you, though. I want to go through this again.
• 18:03
  Dave Hamilton: I'm going to regurgitate what you just said, but I think this is one of the
• 18:08
  Dave Hamilton: most important things that's ever been said on this show.
• 18:12
  Dave Hamilton: Your social media audience is your rented audience.
• 18:15
  Dave Hamilton: Because it could go away. It's ephemeral. Your newsletter is where you get permission
• 18:20
  Dave Hamilton: from that rented audience. One feed. All these things feed the other.
• 18:24
  Dave Hamilton: And then your podcast or your posts, whatever it is, that's where you build trust.
• 18:29
  Dave Hamilton: So that that kind of goes along. That's in parallel to these first two that that are happening.
• 18:34
  Dave Hamilton: Right. And then. So really, I'm
• 18:36
  Dave Hamilton: taking the podcast out, even though trust building is important. Right.
• 18:39
  Dave Hamilton: You've got social as your rented audience.
• 18:42
  Dave Hamilton: Newsletter is when you ask your audience to give you their permission.
• 18:48
  Dave Hamilton: And then the mastermind, which you invite them to via the other two channels,
• 18:52
  Dave Hamilton: is your revenue generator. And you do need to do the trust building.
• 18:55
  Dave Hamilton: It's just not directly in that funnel. You can do it in parallel and you keep
• 18:59
  Dave Hamilton: doing it and all of those things. That's right.
• 19:01
  Dave Hamilton: But that, I think, is so important to think about because hopefully that's blowing
• 19:08
  Dave Hamilton: someone's mind right now.
• 19:09
  Shannon Jean: Yeah, and the other thing that's really important is it compounds,
• 19:14
  Shannon Jean: right? Right. So the social post,
• 19:17
  Shannon Jean: It creates content for the newsletter.
• 19:20
  Dave Hamilton: Yes. Right?
• 19:21
  Shannon Jean: The newsletter feeds into the mastermind. The mastermind provides content that
• 19:27
  Shannon Jean: I can share, again, on social about people being successful and builds more trust.
• 19:33
  Shannon Jean: So it's not a sales channel. It's a system.
• 19:36
  Dave Hamilton: It's part of the system. Correct. Part of the system. And you certainly can
• 19:40
  Dave Hamilton: make money from these things. You can make money from your social audience.
• 19:43
  Dave Hamilton: Oh, yeah. That's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can make money from your trust
• 19:46
  Dave Hamilton: building, the podcast, and that sort of thing. Of course.
• 19:48
  Shannon Jean: You should be making cash.
• 19:50
  Dave Hamilton: Right. At any point in time, one of those revenue streams is going to be higher
• 19:55
  Dave Hamilton: than the others. That's fine.
• 19:57
  Dave Hamilton: But do them all. Don't just limit to one. Yes.
• 20:02
  Shannon Jean: That's right. And it's great because then you get like my payout from X for
• 20:06
  Shannon Jean: the last two weeks came in on Friday. It was like $448.
• 20:11
  Shannon Jean: Yeah. And so, you know, that helps pay the bills, right?
• 20:14
  Shannon Jean: And then you get some money from Facebook for your socials. And then maybe you
• 20:19
  Shannon Jean: get some sponsorship in your newsletter that you made a little money.
• 20:22
  Shannon Jean: And so it just kind of feeds this whole thing. But it is like a flywheel. And it feeds itself.
• 20:29
  Dave Hamilton: It feeds itself. I know. Yeah.
• 20:31
  Shannon Jean: So you don't have to read that.
• 20:33
  Dave Hamilton: I want to talk about this on another episode. The hard part is knowing when
• 20:37
  Dave Hamilton: to break away from the socials and move your community somewhere else.
• 20:44
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah, it is hard. I think it always feels like it's done later than it could
• 20:52
  Dave Hamilton: have been, but I'm not sure if
• 20:55
  Shannon Jean: That's – Yeah, and you also get the dopamine hit of like more followers and
• 21:00
  Shannon Jean: feedback and that kind of stuff, and that can derail you from this permission
• 21:05
  Shannon Jean: part of it where you're like, I got to get these people in here.
• 21:07
  Shannon Jean: What are you going to – you have to give them something of value to get them
• 21:12
  Shannon Jean: to subscribe to your newsletter because nobody wants another newsletter. Let's face it.
• 21:17
  Shannon Jean: But if you give them something that's valuable and then you continually share
• 21:22
  Shannon Jean: valuable things in that newsletter without wasting their time, then it works.
• 21:27
  Dave Hamilton: Then it flywheels. Yeah.
• 21:29
  Shannon Jean: All right. Then it flywheels.
• 21:29
  Dave Hamilton: This has me thinking about what we're doing with GigGab. Sadie,
• 21:33
  Dave Hamilton: stay tuned for a new conversation.
• 21:35
  Dave Hamilton: No, it's good though. Awesome. I mean, it's all it's easy to look at something
• 21:41
  Dave Hamilton: after you've done it and say, oh, man, I could have done this step,
• 21:44
  Dave Hamilton: you know, six months earlier or whatever. Right. Of course. Of course.
• 21:49
  Dave Hamilton: It maybe, maybe, but also maybe not like did we're, you know,
• 21:53
  Dave Hamilton: you don't get to know those things because, of course, you don't have parallel experiments.
• 21:57
  Dave Hamilton: It's just doing it when you realize it is time to do it.
• 22:01
  Dave Hamilton: And by often by the time you realize it's time, it's later than it could have been.
• 22:07
  Shannon Jean: Oh, usually I'll say I'll use that Rick Rubin quote, which I just love is he
• 22:11
  Shannon Jean: says the work reveals itself to you as you do it. Yeah.
• 22:16
  Shannon Jean: Yeah. That's why you're in the studio. That's why you're hanging out with your
• 22:20
  Shannon Jean: group and, you know, I don't know music terms, but riffing back and forth.
• 22:25
  Dave Hamilton: Oh, that's why you jam on stuff.
• 22:26
  Shannon Jean: That's why you jam.
• 22:27
  Dave Hamilton: The work reveals itself, yes.
• 22:29
  Shannon Jean: Yeah. And so, you know, the power of the distribution system,
• 22:33
  Shannon Jean: this can't be understated.
• 22:35
  Shannon Jean: And once you have that distribution system and you have the people's trust and
• 22:41
  Shannon Jean: their permission, it opens up so much more opportunities for different products
• 22:47
  Shannon Jean: and different services that you can lean into.
• 22:49
  Dave Hamilton: I love it.
• 22:50
  Shannon Jean: I love it. That's my take for this week. I'd love your feedback.
• 22:53
  Shannon Jean: Tell us what you think. Feedback at businessbrain.show.
• 22:57
  Shannon Jean: We would love, love, love to hear from you and talk about what you want to talk about on the show.
• 23:03
  Dave Hamilton: Thanks for hanging out with us, folks. yeah, feedback at businessbrain.show.
• 23:07
  Dave Hamilton: And we'll see you on Friday.
• 23:10
  Dave Hamilton: Keep living that charm life, huh?