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CS Language and Unnecessary Change · Business Brain – The Entrepreneurs’ Podcast

• 0:00
  Dave Hamilton: Business Brain, episode 766 for Wednesday, July 1st, Canada Day, 2026.
• 0:10
  Dave Hamilton: Oh yeah, I had that thing on, I had the volume down, Shannon.
• 0:15
  Dave Hamilton: It's been a heck of a day. It has been. Technical glitches and crazy old, anyway.
• 0:21
  Dave Hamilton: Welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take some ideas,
• 0:25
  Dave Hamilton: we crunch them, we dissect them, We use them to tune our business brains and,
• 0:32
  Dave Hamilton: level up our charmed lives.
• 0:34
  Dave Hamilton: Our sponsors include fanview.com at fanvue.com, where you can start your own
• 0:43
  Dave Hamilton: creator journey and start making some money with that.
• 0:45
  Dave Hamilton: And also bitdefender.com slash brain, where you go to save 30% off of Bitdefender
• 0:51
  Dave Hamilton: Ultimate Small Business Security. We'll talk more about both of those in a little bit.
• 0:55
  Dave Hamilton: Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.
• 0:58
  Shannon Jean: And barely hanging on here in Northern California. I'm Shannon Jean.
• 1:01
  Shannon Jean: I'm up on my backup internet. That's why there's no video today because apparently
• 1:06
  Shannon Jean: it takes several hours for my Starlink Mini to upgrade my account from standby
• 1:12
  Shannon Jean: to actually fully usable.
• 1:14
  Shannon Jean: So we're using the best technology we can.
• 1:17
  Dave Hamilton: We are. It's all fine. Yes. It's all fine.
• 1:20
  Shannon Jean: Oh, yeah.
• 1:21
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah, it's how it works. We just plow through. I had an interesting experience.
• 1:26
  Dave Hamilton: Experience you know i'm i'm always aware of the customer service experience
• 1:32
  Dave Hamilton: i'm kind of tuned into that because we talk about it so much here and it's just
• 1:36
  Dave Hamilton: always been kind of a thing for me and,
• 1:40
  Dave Hamilton: uh i my daughter got married last week we rented tuxedos congrats thank you um,
• 1:45
  Dave Hamilton: i i think i i'm not sure if renting a tuxedo was the right move versus buying
• 1:52
  Dave Hamilton: one like if i need to wear one ever again in my life,
• 1:55
  Dave Hamilton: i've failed uh assuming that i could wear the same tuxedo last week as i could
• 2:00
  Dave Hamilton: whenever i need to wear one again i don't know when that time would come but
• 2:03
  Dave Hamilton: you know so be it because i think
• 2:05
  Dave Hamilton: it was 280 bucks or something to rent a tuxedo which is just insanity,
• 2:10
  Dave Hamilton: uh it is yeah but.
• 2:13
  Dave Hamilton: Uh when i dropped my tuxedo off they said something to me uh which was very
• 2:19
  Dave Hamilton: interesting it and and i noticed the language they use they said okay yeah uh,
• 2:24
  Dave Hamilton: i just gave him the bag that the tuxedo was in you know and with with,
• 2:28
  Dave Hamilton: i know that all the stuff was in there at least i presume i i was correct about
• 2:32
  Dave Hamilton: that but they didn't look in the bag they're like great yeah some of the other
• 2:35
  Dave Hamilton: guys just dropped theirs off we'll uh you know we're going to process through
• 2:39
  Dave Hamilton: them we'll give yours a quick scan,
• 2:41
  Dave Hamilton: and we'll call you if we have any questions now,
• 2:47
  Dave Hamilton: i know what that means It's, you know, we'll call you if we have any issues
• 2:53
  Dave Hamilton: or if we have any problems, right?
• 2:55
  Dave Hamilton: Questions is such a better word than problems to keep everything happy.
• 3:02
  Dave Hamilton: And like, well, I know he's not going to call me if he has questions about how
• 3:06
  Dave Hamilton: in the world I was at a wedding and my suit looks so good.
• 3:10
  Dave Hamilton: Like, that's not a question they're going to call me about, even if they note
• 3:13
  Dave Hamilton: that. Right. They're going to call me if they have a problem.
• 3:16
  Dave Hamilton: But I really it was it was clear that this was language of intention.
• 3:22
  Dave Hamilton: And I was like, oh, I got to remember this.
• 3:25
  Dave Hamilton: We're not going to call you if we have problems. We're going to call you if
• 3:27
  Dave Hamilton: we have questions. We both know what it means. There was no,
• 3:30
  Dave Hamilton: nobody was pretending. But still, I love the language.
• 3:34
  Shannon Jean: Yeah, that's good framing. Yeah. Because it's just inquisitive,
• 3:39
  Shannon Jean: right? It's not accusatory.
• 3:41
  Dave Hamilton: Right.
• 3:42
  Shannon Jean: Thinking that, oh, you're going to have problems. And so we're going to call
• 3:46
  Shannon Jean: you or just in case and you're responsible.
• 3:49
  Shannon Jean: That's starting off on the wrong premise right there, right? Yeah. I like it.
• 3:55
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah, I was really impressed. I was like, oh, man. And I immediately took a
• 3:59
  Dave Hamilton: note on my phone because I never would remember it. You know,
• 4:02
  Dave Hamilton: I suppose that's another tip is when you have an idea that you are certain is
• 4:07
  Dave Hamilton: so good, you'll never forget it.
• 4:09
  Dave Hamilton: Write it down somewhere because you will definitely forget it.
• 4:13
  Shannon Jean: Yeah. I use my notes app on my phone, like religiously, constantly.
• 4:19
  Shannon Jean: I mean, I've got hundreds and it's really my second brain, right?
• 4:22
  Shannon Jean: I've got tons of content and I share notes with people, with my wife,
• 4:27
  Shannon Jean: with business partners. We have lots of, it's such an underrated app, right?
• 4:31
  Shannon Jean: It's pretty crazy.
• 4:33
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah. Yeah. Apple notes. I have, I have notes about Apple notes.
• 4:38
  Dave Hamilton: I have some issues with it, but, but by and large, which it's fairly ubiquitous.
• 4:43
  Dave Hamilton: I mean, if everybody's got an iPhone anyway.
• 4:45
  Dave Hamilton: And then if not, Microsoft OneNote is there.
• 4:49
  Dave Hamilton: Evernote used to be a great option. It's still an option. It's not a great option,
• 4:53
  Dave Hamilton: but it is an option. Yeah.
• 4:56
  Shannon Jean: Why isn't it great anymore? Did they increase the prices or something?
• 4:58
  Shannon Jean: I thought I heard something about it.
• 5:00
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah, they did increase the, they changed the model, the subscription model,
• 5:05
  Dave Hamilton: so that, yes, it effectively costs you more.
• 5:07
  Dave Hamilton: But they also made the app terrible.
• 5:12
  Dave Hamilton: On all platforms they they moved it from being a first party app that they were
• 5:16
  Dave Hamilton: developing individually for each platform they moved it to one of those um uh,
• 5:22
  Dave Hamilton: cross-platform development environments and they just did a terrible job with it,
• 5:27
  Dave Hamilton: uh that's too bad took away a lot of features i used to be able to use apple
• 5:31
  Dave Hamilton: script with it on my mac and and that went away like all of that stuff it it
• 5:35
  Dave Hamilton: was it was a step backwards for sure but you know yeah yeah.
• 5:40
  Shannon Jean: Yeah what are you gonna do
• 5:42
  Dave Hamilton: What are you going to do? I have one more tip, and then I want to...
• 5:48
  Dave Hamilton: And then we have other things to do, but my tip is...
• 5:53
  Dave Hamilton: It's July, which means if you haven't yet created your business's holiday calendar
• 5:59
  Dave Hamilton: for 2027, today's the day to do it.
• 6:02
  Dave Hamilton: Go look at whatever holidays you're going to take off next year.
• 6:06
  Dave Hamilton: Put them all out there. This is what I do every year. I look at the following
• 6:09
  Dave Hamilton: year and oftentimes I'm actually now a year ahead. I think I've already got
• 6:13
  Dave Hamilton: 2027 in there, but I'll put 2028 in there.
• 6:16
  Dave Hamilton: It just, you don't want to be thinking about this in November when somebody
• 6:19
  Dave Hamilton: is like, hey, do we have like, you know, whatever day? do we have MLK day off?
• 6:23
  Dave Hamilton: Do we have this off? It's like, Oh shoot. That's right. Nope.
• 6:25
  Dave Hamilton: We should get ahead of that. Everybody should know.
• 6:27
  Dave Hamilton: So, and it's, you know, I think it's something that large companies just probably
• 6:33
  Dave Hamilton: like also have codified, but it's very easy for us as small business owners to not codify that.
• 6:39
  Dave Hamilton: And so I put it on for July 1st every year.
• 6:42
  Shannon Jean: That's pretty good. So this is your shared company calendar.
• 6:44
  Shannon Jean: So everybody knows what days people, everybody's off that kind of
• 6:47
  Dave Hamilton: Thing yep i have a you know i mean backbeat media is the main company that matters
• 6:53
  Dave Hamilton: with holidays because of the number of people that we have there and so i have a back media,
• 6:58
  Dave Hamilton: holiday shared calendar and i just put them out there as holidays and then everybody
• 7:02
  Dave Hamilton: knows and it's great we share it and it's yep.
• 7:05
  Shannon Jean: I like it. It's smart, man. Good thinking.
• 7:08
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah. That's why I, uh, that's why I wanted to share it. I started doing it
• 7:11
  Dave Hamilton: and it was like, Oh, I should tell everybody about this. This is a good one.
• 7:14
  Dave Hamilton: All right. We have more things to talk about. The next thing that I want to
• 7:20
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• 7:22
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• 7:30
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• 7:37
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• 7:41
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• 8:46
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• 8:50
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• 8:54
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• 8:58
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• 9:02
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• 9:07
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• 10:31
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• 10:36
  Dave Hamilton: All right, Shannon, you were talking about change in our pre-show,
• 10:41
  Dave Hamilton: and it sounded like a good topic here. So I think it's time to talk a little bit more about change.
• 10:47
  Dave Hamilton: I see that you're muted, though, so I'm going to have to ask you to unmute before you can talk.
• 10:52
  Shannon Jean: It's the first time for me, Dave.
• 10:56
  Shannon Jean: I do want to talk about change because I love change. But one thing I've realized
• 11:01
  Shannon Jean: over the years is not everybody loves change.
• 11:03
  Shannon Jean: And sometimes people that don't love change point out that maybe I'm
• 11:11
  Shannon Jean: instigating change or my love affair
• 11:13
  Shannon Jean: with change is just for the sake of change because I get bored or I,
• 11:21
  Shannon Jean: you know, think that there's something else, a shiny object syndrome that I should be chasing.
• 11:26
  Shannon Jean: And so I just wanted to have a discussion about how can you tell that,
• 11:32
  Shannon Jean: you know, the change, this change that you want to make or that's spurring you,
• 11:36
  Shannon Jean: you know, you're being motivated to make.
• 11:39
  Shannon Jean: Is that really to achieve something new and something better?
• 11:43
  Shannon Jean: Or are you just bored and, you know, I feel like I got stuck in a rut,
• 11:47
  Shannon Jean: so I'm going to change everything, you know, around in the office.
• 11:51
  Shannon Jean: And I think that one of the ways for me is that I've tried to step back and
• 11:57
  Shannon Jean: I ask myself, are people, meaning like my clients or my customers,
• 12:02
  Shannon Jean: or maybe my employees, are they asking for this change?
• 12:06
  Shannon Jean: Not maybe like verbally, but by their actions or, you know, are we systemic
• 12:12
  Shannon Jean: problems in the way we handle something?
• 12:14
  Shannon Jean: That, to me, is a huge indicator that, okay, we're going to change this to address
• 12:20
  Shannon Jean: the situation or to take advantage of this opportunity, right?
• 12:24
  Dave Hamilton: I like that. Yeah, yeah. The last two things that you said there, are we—,
• 12:30
  Dave Hamilton: Addressing a problem? Are we taking advantage of an opportunity?
• 12:34
  Dave Hamilton: Those are good questions to ask.
• 12:36
  Dave Hamilton: And if you can't answer yes to at least one of those, then you might be making
• 12:45
  Dave Hamilton: change for the sake of change.
• 12:48
  Shannon Jean: Yep.
• 12:48
  Dave Hamilton: It doesn't mean that that's necessarily bad.
• 12:53
  Dave Hamilton: It means to me that you just need to be a little more thoughtful about it.
• 12:58
  Dave Hamilton: Because sometimes, you know, and I suppose this could fall into the taking advantage
• 13:05
  Dave Hamilton: of an opportunity bucket.
• 13:07
  Dave Hamilton: But, you know, looking at something
• 13:09
  Dave Hamilton: and saying, OK, we've been doing it this way for a very long time.
• 13:13
  Dave Hamilton: We could be more efficient if or, you know, the world has changed.
• 13:18
  Dave Hamilton: And so we do need to change this. But I guess I mean, I guess that then then
• 13:22
  Dave Hamilton: I have a specific answer to it. But if it's changed for the sake of change,
• 13:26
  Dave Hamilton: I guess where I'm going with this is.
• 13:30
  Dave Hamilton: Picking the lesser of two evils because we have change for the sake of change being one evil.
• 13:36
  Dave Hamilton: And then the other evil being, well, let's keep doing it this way because that's
• 13:40
  Dave Hamilton: how we've always done it. Yeah.
• 13:43
  Dave Hamilton: Right. That's the worst. And that's it. That's a swear word.
• 13:46
  Dave Hamilton: That's that's cursing in my business. Right. If we say, if anybody ever says,
• 13:50
  Dave Hamilton: well, we've always done it that way.
• 13:52
  Dave Hamilton: It's like, Oh, the afternoon is shot now because we're definitely going to have
• 13:56
  Dave Hamilton: to change because somebody said a bad phrase, you know, um,
• 14:00
  Dave Hamilton: so i like it's a fine line i think.
• 14:04
  Shannon Jean: Yeah i think so too and i the way i one thing i've implemented based on conversations
• 14:10
  Shannon Jean: with you dave is your two-week experiment
• 14:14
  Shannon Jean: uh trick right where i get i start thinking about okay i have time on my hands
• 14:19
  Shannon Jean: i'm maybe not grinding away every day like some of the people that work for
• 14:23
  Shannon Jean: me and all their projects so i start thinking hey uh
• 14:26
  Shannon Jean: we should implement this. We should change the way we do this.
• 14:29
  Shannon Jean: And I can identify that we're adding value, that this is going to make things
• 14:36
  Shannon Jean: better for my clients, that I'm solving this problem or taking advantage of
• 14:40
  Shannon Jean: an opportunity. Great. We're going to move forward.
• 14:42
  Shannon Jean: But I still like to roll it out as like, let's try this for a couple of weeks.
• 14:47
  Shannon Jean: Let's get some data and then we'll make a decision.
• 14:51
  Shannon Jean: Maybe it's a month and and decide what worked and i've done this with
• 14:56
  Shannon Jean: recently had a uh one of my employees that wanted to really increase the number
• 15:01
  Shannon Jean: of emails that we send out to our mastermind uh members in our community
• 15:07
  Shannon Jean: and like oh and you know he justified it look we should do this we could bring
• 15:10
  Shannon Jean: this we could do onboard this we have an onboarding you know sequence that goes
• 15:14
  Shannon Jean: out but we want to do more so okay great
• 15:17
  Shannon Jean: But we noticed after a couple of weeks that our churn rate increased directly
• 15:25
  Shannon Jean: proportional to the number of emails we sent out.
• 15:28
  Shannon Jean: And so it would kind of be like Netflix emailing me to remind me that you haven't
• 15:33
  Shannon Jean: watched a movie in a while, you know, that kind of thing.
• 15:37
  Shannon Jean: And so because we framed it as this experiment, we want to change this,
• 15:41
  Shannon Jean: we're going to try it, and we captured some data, we immediately turned it off
• 15:45
  Shannon Jean: and said, hey, let's not do that.
• 15:47
  Shannon Jean: It's not working. So it's identifying if it's changed, you know,
• 15:51
  Shannon Jean: not just for the sake of change and keeping yourself, you know,
• 15:54
  Shannon Jean: going or, you know, it does add value, that kind of thing, but also how you roll it out to your team.
• 16:02
  Shannon Jean: Because sometimes, you know, your employees kind of freak out if you're constantly
• 16:06
  Shannon Jean: wanting to add new things or change the way you do things.
• 16:09
  Dave Hamilton: That's a good point. Yeah. You and I, and presumably many of you who are listening
• 16:16
  Dave Hamilton: are people who embrace change, right? But...
• 16:20
  Shannon Jean: I would think so, yeah.
• 16:21
  Dave Hamilton: But we, I think we have...
• 16:25
  Dave Hamilton: We have more affinity for change than the average person does.
• 16:29
  Dave Hamilton: And that's good to keep in mind because you're right.
• 16:33
  Dave Hamilton: You can scare the crap out of people with change all the time.
• 16:35
  Dave Hamilton: That's where the whole two week experiment thing comes from,
• 16:37
  Dave Hamilton: right? Just to soften the blow of change.
• 16:40
  Dave Hamilton: So yeah, I agree with that. Yeah.
• 16:43
  Shannon Jean: Yeah, exactly. And so for me, like if we start talking about what the big takeaway from.
• 16:51
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah. What's the big takeaway? Yeah, that's right.
• 16:53
  Shannon Jean: This week's or today's episode, it's not only do you need to,
• 16:59
  Shannon Jean: I don't like the word justify, but you need to clarify whether the change you're
• 17:04
  Shannon Jean: talking about is needed and be mindful of how you roll it out.
• 17:09
  Shannon Jean: So it's kind of two things, but it's all wrapped around change.
• 17:12
  Shannon Jean: Should you implement it and how you implement it?
• 17:15
  Dave Hamilton: Well, and I would add something to that, which is once you've made the change...
• 17:24
  Dave Hamilton: Look at the results of it evaluate you know just monitor it monitor it yeah yeah because
• 17:32
  Dave Hamilton: maybe it worked out and it served the purpose that you wanted it to serve if
• 17:36
  Dave Hamilton: so great maybe it served a purpose you didn't even consider,
• 17:41
  Dave Hamilton: and and that's positive great but if it's doing neither of those things,
• 17:46
  Dave Hamilton: or worse it's slowing down productivity long term you can't look at the initial
• 17:51
  Dave Hamilton: couple of days right because obviously uh,
• 17:54
  Dave Hamilton: there's going to be some change resistance but also just adaptation,
• 17:59
  Dave Hamilton: once you get through it and that's why that two weeks is a nice period of time
• 18:03
  Dave Hamilton: because it's usually more than enough time to learn okay is this did we really
• 18:08
  Dave Hamilton: reduce friction or add value with this change or or not,
• 18:12
  Dave Hamilton: and and don't be afraid to walk it back if it if it turns out that you can't support,
• 18:18
  Dave Hamilton: the change after you've made it.
• 18:22
  Shannon Jean: That's the key. Positioning allows you to walk it back if it doesn't turn out
• 18:28
  Shannon Jean: the way you think it's going to be. Without you looking like,
• 18:30
  Shannon Jean: oh, look, here's another thing that Shannon came in and screwed up. Working so well.
• 18:39
  Dave Hamilton: Thanks for hanging out, everybody. If you have,
• 18:44
  Dave Hamilton: make sure to go to Business Brain businessbrain.show slash blueprints because
• 18:49
  Dave Hamilton: we want you to be able to check out what we do is we take the lessons from this
• 18:55
  Dave Hamilton: episode including the big takeaway,
• 18:57
  Dave Hamilton: and we create a business plan from that and you can have that if you go to businessbrain.show
• 19:03
  Dave Hamilton: slash blueprints so go check it out and uh make sure to tell you all your friends
• 19:07
  Dave Hamilton: about the show thanks for listening,
• 19:09
  Dave Hamilton: we'll uh we'll see on friday keep living that charm life folks later.