The Small Business Safari
Have you ever sat there and wondered "What am I doing here stuck in the concrete zoo of the corporate world?" Are you itching to get out? Chris Lalomia and his co-host Alan Wyatt traverse the jungle of entrepreneurship. Together they share their stories and help you explore the wild world of SCALING your business. With many years of owning their own small businesses, they love to give insight to the aspiring entrepreneur. So, are you ready to make the jump?
The Small Business Safari
Disaster Preparedness 101: Protecting Your Business When Help Won't Come | Ian Hay
Ian Hay returns to share crucial disaster preparedness strategies for business owners during hurricane season and National Preparedness Month, emphasizing self-reliance when government resources may be limited.
• Text instead of calling during emergencies and include specific location information
• Keep multiple backups of all cloud-based data in different physical locations
• Maintain cash in small denominations for emergencies when electronic payments fail
• Have essential emergency supplies readily available including water, food, and batteries
• Keep fire blankets accessible for electrical fires rather than just fire extinguishers
• Establish clear communication plans with employees including alternative contact methods
• Understand your business insurance coverage thoroughly before disaster strikes
• Consider carrying phones on different networks to maintain communication during outages
• For career transition and AI integration coaching, contact Ian at 770-293-8870
• Visit lickitysplitdisasterkit.com for a special discount on Ian's disaster preparedness video package
https://licketysplitdisasterkit.com/
Oh man, are you asking, why are people stupid?
Speaker 1:I guess, so that was a whole other episode. Yeah, because how about? This is why, as I rented my house, you know, we built the house in the mountains, we rented out and the guy told me you cannot have a real working fireplace. Let me tell you why. I had a renter who thought they were doing me a favor and took the embers out and put them out on the deck and it's a wood deck, everybody. So note to self that's nice Hot embers. Wood deck equals fire extinguisher or fire. Yeah, he goes, don't do it. So that's why we took all the gas out. I have an electric fireplace and we have electric candles up there too. Guess how many times every time we go up there to check them out, how many of them are just charred. Silly, because people try to light up all the time. So let's not go on. Are people stupid?
Speaker 2:I've got the ultimate on that, but I'll save it for another time. It's a fire extinguisher. People are stupid story. It's pretty good. All right back to Ian.
Speaker 1:I don't know, why don't you go ahead and, uh, all right, I can't say anything I don't want to was it firsthand you putting it out?
Speaker 2:no, no, it was. Uh, we had our cabin up in blue ridge and I get a call and we'd had a break-in, and so these three idiots and apparently one of them was barefoot kicked in the back glass so to get in, and then obviously that meant they had a bloody foot. So they got into my liquor cabinet they're having a good time, but then they also got into my first aid kit somewhere along the line. They must have realized hmm, our fingerprints are all over this first aid kit.
Speaker 2:Let's light it on fire in a cabin that's made out of wood yeah in a stairwell that is all wood and it's super dry, and so they light that on fire, which then catches the stairs on fire. So then they get my fire extinguisher, which puts out the fire, thank god, but then it has the foam all over the place, which then has their footprints all over the place. So at that point then they decided to rip the water pipe out of the wall and flood my basement just to get that cleaned up. Did we find these idiots? We did, thank God for Fannin County's finest, because I think in Atlanta they'd be like sucks to be. You call your insurance company and they're like I think I know who that is and I we're going to get them and we're going to make them pay you back. Oh, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Small Business Safari where I help guide you to avoid those traps, pitfalls and dangers that lurk when navigating the wild world of small business ownership. I'll share those gold nuggets of information and invite guests to help accelerate your ascent to that mountaintop of success. It's a jungle out there and I want to help you traverse through the levels of owning your own business that can get you bogged down and distract you from hitting your own personal and professional goals. So strap in Adventure Team and let's take a ride through the safari and get you to the mountaintop. We just got the 3, 2, silent count 1. And we're started, alan, you didn't know it, but that's what we got from our director. My fingers weren't lined up with the 3, 2, silent count 1. And we're started, alan, you didn't know it, but that's what we got from our director, my fingers weren't lined up with the 3, 2, 1.
Speaker 1:So we're ready and we're going to do some SNL kind of stuff really. I mean, we're bringing back former guests, kind of having the tribute. You know we just had our fourth year anniversary, got a lot of celebration comments about our fourth year anniversary from the newsletter that went out. If you didn't get the newsletter, please subscribe to the newsletter.
Speaker 2:A little preemie podcast. I have your NPR voice going today.
Speaker 1:You like that.
Speaker 2:No, not really All right. Let me get going, All right.
Speaker 1:I said he goes man you're always too amped up. I'm like, all right, buddy I he goes man you're always too amped up.
Speaker 2:I'm like, all right, buddy, I'm going to bring it back. That's not exactly what I said. It was just the talking over me part. What? All right, that's enough, let's go Back to me. I'll get back in my corner.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. So, alan, we've got a great guest today, but before we get to our guest, it's got to be about we had to do something on Labor.
Speaker 2:Day, you mean like watch an enormous amount of college football. I did, yeah. How about that? That was so good.
Speaker 1:And we had a guest on who said I think UT all the way and he found out that Buckeye Nation had a different ID.
Speaker 2:I noticed how quickly you played that episode after it recorded.
Speaker 1:Yes, well, he was great. I mean, I think I had a lot of fun with that one. And then, especially when he said UT was going to beat, I'm like, oh, we're running that now. No, I'm kidding, it was, I did. I watched a lot of football, a copious amount of football, loved it, ready to go, ready for the NFL season. I'm now going to get all seven days of my week ruined because I'm betting on college football and I, of course, have my fantasy football. So this ought to be fun. Seven days of just misery and then five days of running the business, isn't it great? I love it. I look forward to this time of year every year, because I am a masochist. All right, alan, we've done it. Snl style, they always bring back the hosts that they think are the best, and these guys are always vying for who gets to come back. And we're like, yeah, well, so we've had people on twice. Yeah, we've had people on once.
Speaker 2:Of course, but what do we have now? Have we ever had anybody three times?
Speaker 1:This is the third edition of the Ian Hay episode experience.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Let's go the Ian Hay experience in the house. He's back. If you don't remember what Ian does, hold on to your socks, because he'll tell you about your socks and what you should do with them. And it's not what you're thinking, alan.
Speaker 2:You probably need to wet them and put them under your door in case of a gas attack. Am I right? Am I close? Do I even need?
Speaker 3:to be here for this, and let me just say, if anyone is going to do the NPR voice, it's going to be yours truly. That's true, he does that. I have to hold up the intergalactic adventure team. Let's strap in and get going.
Speaker 1:Let's do this adventure team. We got to rock and roll, we got a great episode. We brought ENA back because we're going to talk about disaster preparedness. We're going to talk about executive coaching. We're going to talk about the crews around the world that didn't happen and talk about how lack of planning and I can't wait to hear about this stuff.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's got to be edited, oh yeah, oh yeah, I'll hear from a lawyer on that one.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, let's send you. Let's know, let's keep that one in. Yeah, all right. Yeah All right. They don't know what we're talking about. That's right, let's go then.
Speaker 2:They'll forget by then. Have a bourbon with us.
Speaker 1:You know what we're having? Scott Think old malt gotch whiskey that you can only get in duty-free stores.
Speaker 3:Exactly so. This is Talisker Dark Storm. It's one of my favorites Dark Storm. I'm not trying of, uh, you know, thankfully we haven't had landfall. Obviously, aaron was pretty damn close and people it impacted people in north carolina, amongst others. We had multiple people die and rip currents. I mean, you know really, uh, why I brought the dark storm? Is I need people or we? We need people to better prepare?
Speaker 2:And you start with a good bottle of booze in the basement.
Speaker 3:We call that cellar temperature. There's one great place to be in any really bad weather and that's in the cellar.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about disaster preparedness a little bit. We just talked about hurricanes and we're coming into our hurricane season. Here we're in hurricane season, we're fully into hurricane, we're coming into our hurricane season.
Speaker 2:Here we're in hurricane season, we're fully into hurricane, we're coming into the peak, though the peak, but it's been quiet. Knock on wood, it has been quiet and we've had such a wet, hideous, I just thought, oh, this is going to be a horrible year and nothing so far.
Speaker 3:I mean, it's the craziest. I've been in Georgia for 25 years. Right Little three-year stint in DC, four deployments this is by far the most bizarre weather that I remember in Georgia Super hot summer, my electric bill is out of control, and then all of a sudden we have this cool down and this massive high pressure that really prevented that storm from making landfall, and so I think we got super lucky. It has tamped down, you know, production and the peak for just is September 11th through October 10th, so that's really the window where we are most productive, the peak and high point for hurricanes in the North Atlantic, and that's why you know we need people to be better prepared. So here we are it's September, it's National Preparedness Month, obviously in recognition of 9-11, and what I want people to do is to really focus on having that lickety-split disaster kit, knowing what your plan is.
Speaker 3:Remember, here come the—I always like to launch with the golden nuggets Text don't call. If you send me a cross street, I can find you. If you don't send me anything, I have no idea. Just remember that when you send three of your friends the cross street of where you are, that when you're safe, you say all clear, or I am safe, or what have you, because if I don't hear from you, I'm going to work and we're either going to find you or we're going to find a dead body.
Speaker 1:But we're going to find something. Uh-oh man, that is a dark storm. It is a dark storm. It's also we're celebrating an anniversary of Katrina hitting in New Orleans, and that's bringing up a lot of documentaries, a lot of news, and kind of bringing that back and how it affected us here in Atlanta is a lot of people had to evacuate and end up here in Atlanta for that. But you went back and looked at this. So we've had kind of a lucky disaster. You know hurricane season here in the Southeast. But one of the things we talked about right before we got on air is that, with what's going on and we're not doing the political thing, but when something like this happens, we rely on our federal government to help us, and our state governments usually back us up. But right now, in the current environment, are you concerned that there won't be that support that we're hoping for if something big happens?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, I think you know, post 9-11, and one of the reasons why we did that short, you know, 20-minute episode on the Lickety Split Disaster Kit was to really increase preparedness, and this obviously is critical for our small business owners as well. So the thing you've got to take in, you know, keep in mind is that we usually have more bench strength. Right, the FEMA apparatus would have been in place. When you have a large, you know, scaled, multi-state jurisdiction disaster, you need that bench strength to people who know how to do procurement right. Is it a great idea to put more money toward the states for their own preparedness so that they can choose the types of disasters that they face and be better prepared for that? Sure, we just don't have an apparatus right now, and so one of the things we want to make sure is that you individually, your family, your pets, are prepared for that disaster, and also for your small business owners.
Speaker 3:Make sure you have your backup files. Make sure that, as long as you can get to a computer without a network, everything is in the right. If you have everything in the cloud, man, please, please, please, please, please, hear me, ask me how I know. Make sure you have a copy that you keep somewhere else. So I have. I have three drive, actually five drives, but I have three. One gets rotated in and out of my strong box, uh, in the bank, and the other two one is away from us and the other uh, you know the other is in in the car or with a friend, wherever it is.
Speaker 1:But the key is to make sure anything that you have in the cloud it sounds like we've got the air horn going off in our ears, but no, we have disaster preparedness happening right now in Lalamia's house.
Speaker 2:I am so impressed that you created these special sound effects Right. It sounds like an air horn. I feel like we're right in the middle of reconstruction.
Speaker 1:Right, it's just perfect. That's what we're doing, but don't worry, you won't hear this on the podcast. But what's going on is we are remodeling the house right now. I'll put pictures up eventually. But back to these drives. When you say your drives, this is all your personal financial information, personal what? What is on those drives?
Speaker 3:A hundred percent. I just want to note that the professionally trained PIO did not break character. I would have kept going if that noise didn't.
Speaker 2:It was probably not no, you were doing a great job.
Speaker 3:I'm like I am staying in, I like I'm on a camera live. So yes, when I say drive and.
Speaker 1:Alan went squirrel on us, I know. Thank you, alan.
Speaker 2:Well, we have problems with sound all the time, so I figured why not? I love this.
Speaker 3:He's very, he's very bougie about his sound. And look my friend Richard Miller right who, who uh, runs mission control studios in Arizona. He's like looking and people will tolerate bad video they will not tolerate that audio.
Speaker 2:Who else said something like that?
Speaker 1:Uh, Winston Churchill, oh.
Speaker 2:I knew that.
Speaker 3:Warmer Okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, oh brother, anyway, can we get back to Ian? What's on those drives? What should I save on those things? Save on them, well, your fantasy league, of course, that's number one.
Speaker 3:Hey look, anything that drives revenue right. So if that's your thing, you know, make sure you keep the Powerball ticket in there. But no, basically, yes, an external drive, am I over under?
Speaker 2:bets for the NFL Falcons over Wow Gym card. Yeah, Perfect Gym card. No, the gym card is golf handicap.
Speaker 1:Yep, I have that on the phone. That's right, got to have that.
Speaker 3:But anything you store digitally, make sure you have a paper copy. Okay, there you have it, meaning anything that's critical. I'm not saying you got to have everything. Another thing we you know, make sure you have pictures of your family or your pet, just in case you can't access your digital device, in case they go missing. You want to be able to find them or post something, reproduce that image. But really the most important three golden nuggets is text. Text, don't call, give me a crossroads where I can find you. Have that plan of communication with your family. Number two if you've got a lot of information in the cloud, don't be reliant on that's going to be there, right? So make sure you have that backed up. You're storing it in different locations. And then, third, you got to have cash. Like we are such a cashless society and go for small denominations, otherwise I'm a very expensive banker.
Speaker 1:So hundreds is not good.
Speaker 3:If you want to pay everything for $100 for everything, sure, oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, just like I've got, get your cheetah money.
Speaker 1:All right, oh, that's well. That's turning into 20s and 50s. That's a different story. Don't ask me how I know that one either. Back to the vault, please, so much. Let's go back to the vault Again. Pictures, Pictures of what? Nope, not those pictures. Got you Identification pictures? What? When did that mole?
Speaker 3:get there. We literally cannot take him anywhere. No, this is what makes this fun.
Speaker 1:Ah, let's keep going. So, disaster preparedness, so you got to have it. Personally, one of the things you talked about with your lickety split kit is a couple of things we have to have. What's the one thing that Alan remembers? Oh, this is great Quiz time. Lickety split kit, lickety split kit, disaster kit, disaster.
Speaker 3:I think I've already said it.
Speaker 2:It is a bottle of your favorite booze that makes you happy in the middle of a storm.
Speaker 3:I don't remember that being in the kit, but I'm adding that ding ding ding. Look, it's a great trade partner. You can trade it for those critical things.
Speaker 2:Watch this water water, food, batteries, cash, yeah, some sort of way to make fire light now, that's what I remembered all right, let's make some fire. Maybe, maybe something to keep warm, like one of those reflective things I don't know, a Zodiac boat, does that fit?
Speaker 3:A Zodiac boat. Yeah, okay, what's?
Speaker 1:a Zodiac boat.
Speaker 2:It's a little inflatable one that you just get it.
Speaker 1:You know you can get out of Dodge with. That's hilarious. Yeah, I can just see that. You know the one where I have the phone and I go, I go, I've got one in my attic and now.
Speaker 3:I got to Because, Ian, you do not have a no. What should you have in your attic? Here we go. Now it's really time An axe.
Speaker 1:Oh, good call.
Speaker 2:Huh, I remember that. No, you didn't. I didn't you remember when I said it, I do.
Speaker 3:That's right in your attic. Never know when you have to get out. I actually have a hatchet right near my bed, just in case. Windows right there, but just in case, and note to self, make sure, do you sleepwalk? No, no, no, we don't do that I mean I'm Matt. Debusin. So there's a great opportunity here to do a Lizzie Borden joke, but we'll leave that behind.
Speaker 1:Oh, no All right, so lickety-split, let's talk about just personal things. I'll get over to what businesses need to do To be prepared. What you said is in every room we needed to have a couple of things as well, right? Wouldn't you say that? No, go ahead. I thought it was fire extinguishers In every room. I remember him saying, not in just the kitchen.
Speaker 3:Right, so, ideally, what I have are fire blankets. Right so, I have a fire extinguisher downstairs in the kitchen, where it's most likely, and then I have a fire blanket upstairs in the event, like we. How many electronic devices do we have plugged in now? Right so these little fire blankets are great for an electrical fire. You just lay the blanket over the burning and it kills the oxygen, puts the fire out.
Speaker 1:Oh, and then you don't have to use a crap all over your house. See, I almost remembered it was a fire blanket, not a fire extinguisher.
Speaker 2:By the way, and I just want our listeners to know if anybody's like me, I had never used a fire extinguisher until this last year. Oh do tell. Yeah, well, I'm on the HOA board and somebody texted me and there was a trash can on fire up at the clubhouse and so they were freaking out. Let's call the fire department and everything. I'm like I got a fire extinguisher, I'll just go up and use it and on the way there were you going.
Speaker 3:Fully ensconced in a Minions outfit.
Speaker 2:I mean, I was honestly, I was rolling my eyes Like really, and I get there and there's a pretty good amount of fire coming out of the huge trash cans that we have here in Georgia.
Speaker 1:Literally a dumpster fire.
Speaker 2:It was literally a dumpster fire, and so I thought I had all the weaponry I needed and I pulled the trigger and it was empty. At that point I'm like there isn't a whole lot in here. But it appeared that the fire was out and the next thing, you know, the flames came back. So you know, saving a couple of bucks by getting a little vanity boutique, you know small one. No, you need I think you need a real fire extinguisher. So I did. You know, everybody panicked at that and I just rolled the, rolled the trash can into the middle of the parking lot and then the fire fire department came and they just ceremonially walked out and it was a goddamn birthday party. Nobody threw their birthday party. How do you not make sure the candles are out?
Speaker 1:Oh, man, oh, are you asking why are people stupid? I guess there's a whole another. Yeah, because, um, how about the? This is why, as I rent, rented my house. Uh, you know, we built the house in the mountains, we rented out and the guy told me you cannot have a real working fireplace. Let me tell you why. I had a renter who thought they were doing me a favor and took the embers out and put them out on the deck and it's a wood deck, everybody. So note to self, that's nice Hot embers. Wood deck equals fire extinguisher or fire. Yeah, he goes, don't do it. So that's why we took all the gas out. When I have an electric fireplace and we have electric candles up there too, guess how many times every time we go up there to check them out, how many of them are just charred. Silly, because people try to light up all the time. So let's not go on our people stupid. I've got the ultimate on that, but I'll save it for another time.
Speaker 2:It's a fire extinguisher, people are stupid story. It's pretty good.
Speaker 1:All right back to Ian, I don't know why don't you go ahead and say it? I?
Speaker 2:can't say anything I don't want to.
Speaker 1:Was it firsthand you putting it out?
Speaker 2:No, it was. We had our cabin up in Blue Ridge and I get a call and we'd had a break-in, and so these three idiots and apparently one of them was barefoot kicked in the back glass to get in, and then obviously that meant they had a bloody foot. So they got in my liquor cabinet they're having a good time. But then they also got into my first aid kit. Somewhere along the line they must have realized hmm, our fingerprints are all over this first aid kit. Let's light it on fire. In a cabin that's made out of wood, yeah, in a stairwell that is all wood and it's super dry, and so they light that on fire, which then catches the stairs on fire. So then they get my fire extinguisher, which puts out the fire, thank god, but then it has the foam all over the place, which then has their footprints all over the place. So at that point then they decided to rip the water pipe out of the wall and flood my basement just to get that cleaned up.
Speaker 2:Did we find these idiots? We did, Thank God, for Fannin County's finest, because I think in Atlanta they'd be like sucks to be. You call your insurance company and they were like I think I know who that is, and we're going to get them and we're going to make them pay you back. That is, and we're going to get them and we're going to make them pay you back. Oh, that's awesome. And for years I got these weird little I'm sure they were garnished check bits sent to me. Wow, as a result, that's awesome. Yeah, that is a good story. That's a victory right there. I love it. Give a small garnish. But they called me so many years later and they're like it's going to trial and I'm like I don't even really remember other than what I just told you. I mean, I'm like just do whatever you need to do, but please don't bring me into court, because it's so far in my past I mean, it was like eight years yeah, Wow, yeah.
Speaker 1:All right. So disaster preparedness being ready in your own home, be ready to use your fire extinguisher. I love it. And let's double check. We got fire blankets on each floor that's what it was, not each room and an ax or a hatchet in your attic if you ever have to escape out or let the Even if you have an ax or a hatchet.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I mean that can't be easy to hack through a roof.
Speaker 3:I've never had to. I'll let you know if I do.
Speaker 2:I'm thinking I mean you can't even wield it and it's on an angle and yeah, I don't know. It gives you a shot, keeps you busy until you drown.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you or fire right, I was thinking probably going to swing a little with a little more gust. Yeah, I guess that's why you have the crowbar, though use the crowbar to ply right, to ply the boards apart, and then the hatchet to get through whatever you need to get through.
Speaker 1:Now we're talking and remember where that comes from. Try it out.
Speaker 3:You're at it. There is a company out there who wants to pay to have us do this. We're going to make it a strongman competition. The three of us are going to cut through a fake attic.
Speaker 1:That's right, we're going to go up there. We'll put our gloves on, put our mask on, put our glasses on Anybody in Pallisker.
Speaker 3:If you're interested in sponsoring this event, we would love to have you host this, let's not go wrong Alcohol and axes in the attic.
Speaker 1:Ooh, alcohol, axes, attic. I think we need to make us toss the caber.
Speaker 3:Oh he's using all his pants. Hey look, I've picked it, meaning I've picked it up right. So that's calling pick, picked it. But they wouldn't let me throw it because it was starting to lean a little too far. So you've got to be safe with novices, okay.
Speaker 1:All right, let's get back to business stuff. So since we've met Ian and talked to him and has all this wealth of information and understanding around national disaster preparedness, you also started to say wait a minute, I got something I can do, I can offer back to people. So you've been coaching some people. So let's talk about your business coaching and what you're doing. What's your angle, what's your difference? What are you doing with people to get them?
Speaker 3:ready. I mean there's a beautiful transition and don't worry, I'm going to come back to other things we can do to prepare your business. We'll catch that at the other end. However, when I'm not responding to a disaster or in deployment, I have been doing executive coaching since 2003,. But I've been coaching since I was a sophomore in high school. So I became proficient.
Speaker 3:I was a decathlete placed 17th in Massachusetts State Decathlon, had to learn each of those events, became experts, technical experts in those, and I would teach many people and ended up being an assistant track coach for the throwing events at my alma mater, beloit college, which I believe just made the Forbes laptop 25 list or something. So yay, beloit. Um. So what's the? What's the difference? So you know who.
Speaker 3:Who are my clients? If you're somebody you know, you open the fridge door and you look at that salad that's about to to be compost and you made a promise to yourself you were going to eat that you could be my client. If you're somebody who like, oh, I'm going to catch up this weekend and yet rarely, if ever, do. If you're in mid-career and you're not sure, you just go to work and you're not really feeling like what you're doing is meeting your personal mission or it's just no longer satisfying to you. We go back to your favorite Churchill quote do what you like, but like what you do. So I have programs to help do these sorts of things.
Speaker 3:Whether it's magnetic networking, where I help people network to find that great next job, whether it is career counseling, career clarity, career curation, I've worked with people who've actually designed their own job and then sold it to their executive, and in fact, one of my current clients did that, uh, at a prior firm. He's now in a small business owner. I have sent his name along to be interviewed. When, uh, when you guys get around to him, uh, amazing guy, absolutely amazing. Uh, he, you know, fights for his people. They're now doing hot washes. So a hot wash is something we do. Let's say, we finish the show and then Chris is going to ask hey, what are the three things that could have gone better and the three things that went really well? That's a hot wash.
Speaker 2:So we each pick three things that went well, completely different than the hot wash I was thinking of.
Speaker 1:Where was you?
Speaker 2:I'm not going there, you sure? Yeah, all right, I'm still on the cheetah money.
Speaker 1:Okay, All right. I was hot washing at the cheetah money and I was like that's enough Hot wax.
Speaker 3:Hot wax. There's a whole different room.
Speaker 2:Mama San found me a whole different room there's a piglet I don't want in my head any longer.
Speaker 3:This is where I know I am just a. So he's doing, where are we he's? So you know, my client is doing hot washes with his team, all right, so hot wash, and three things that went well during this meeting.
Speaker 3:Right Three things that could have gone better, whether it's a meeting, your week, your month, your revenue, right. So what they're doing on Fridays is getting together to say, all right, what worked well this this week and what didn't, and they're doing it on their own, even hot wash. Doing a hot wash and this is a very common thing we do after exercises or operations and the reason why we call it a hot wash is we're probably all standing in a circle at the airport Like we're all about to go back to do our regular lives and we want to quickly capture what went well and what didn't. This works extraordinarily well for you, small business owners.
Speaker 1:The standup meeting. I like that idea as well. That's new Is that you're standing up and we don't have time for chit-chat because people sit down. Hey, do you have a minute and sit down? I'm like I do. No, you can stand up. That meeting goes a lot quicker, my friends.
Speaker 2:You've removed all the chairs but one.
Speaker 1:I do, and that one is exactly, not exactly chair height, it's more like kitty height. A little stool in the corner I do, and it's right under my chair. Yeah, looking down on them so I can go. Are we done with this conversation now? Is there more you want to? You want to discuss this more? I can, but no, I love that because it does. It forces people to be a lot more effective and choose their words wisely and think through things and realize that we're not going to sit here and shoot the shit for 30 minutes. Absolutely. We're going to actually get after it, figure something out and move on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, you could go through 15 people and then you know you, you have got 45 data points. And then, of course, what we do in our world is we'll do a full on after action. We'll look at all the evaluations we did, you know, and essentially we're we're attempting to get to the root cause again for small business owners. What are the root causes? Why didn't you hit that revenue number? If you don't measure it, you don't manage it.
Speaker 1:Usually it starts with D and ends with MS.
Speaker 3:You fire extinguisher. Noise oh.
Speaker 1:Hey, I've got to start off this. Johnny Carson bits, here we go, all right. So you come in, you help people with the business coaching work on some of these things to help them become more effective. But one of the things you mentioned that was, I think, very interesting is you're helping people either exit the one they're in, their job they're in and move to another one, so that's more like career transition, it's part of it Really.
Speaker 3:It's more of a career transition, it's part of it Really. I'm a huge fan of Richard Bowles' what Color Is your Parachute? And I use that as part of the three-legged stool in this endeavor. And that is, you've got to do a little self-evaluation, you've got to figure out what lights you up, and so I often will look to people's avocations, what they like to do, volunteering, what they like to do in their spare time, and then how do we transition that into a vocation where they can make a living, or at least a partial living? You know, call on.
Speaker 2:Chris, a cruise director. What would that? What would that make you? What's my avocation?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Vegas, fast cars, fast boats, beach mountains, women water, hot water hot water definitely yeah, I think and I'm thinking maybe I did miss my calling out. I should have been. I should have been on the love boat. I should have been a cruise director.
Speaker 3:I'm the boat director I mean, look, ai is not going to get us for a little bit. We might all end up living to 125. I mean we've got to prepare. We've got to prepare now. Longevity is going to be a thing.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't take the over on that one for me.
Speaker 2:I mean honestly, I wouldn't take the over on it if I was 50 on that one.
Speaker 3:But I appreciate the ad. Can I have some more bourbon? You want bourbon or do you want the dark and stormy? You're welcome.
Speaker 3:And then the third piece of what I'm doing now, because this is really landing with Gen Xers who are mid-career is a thing called AI on ramp. And so you know, I know a lot of people are anti-AI or don't trust it. What have you? All I can tell you is this AI is a language, and if you aren't fluent with this language, you could be fundamentally unemployable by the end of the decade, because it's just, it's going to become ubiquitous. It is going to be something that you can, that maximizes your skill and, for me, creativity. Right, it's not quite Jarvis. However, I can tell you, in the three years that I've been using it on an almost daily basis, it has vastly improved, and, of course, we never thought it would take the creative jobs we thought it was. Oh, this is going to. You know, do the nuts and bolts stuff. It's going to be a while before we have plumbers and handy people. Right, we will probably get there, but we got to worry about, you know, 5 million truck drivers being out of work, and you know that's. So. Let's, let's, find a way to interface with this device, play with it at the level that you're comfortable with. I've seen people who put their dreams into it and it shows and you can tell you like, hey, here's what's going on in your life. This is why you're dreaming that. That's what this stands for, too.
Speaker 3:I wrote you know Rick LaScorella's bio, uh, in. I think it took about seven seconds and it was awesome. Right, all about the prompting, how, how carefully we can you will use a page, two pages, to really, you know, garbage in, garbage out to get the right thing. And so I'm just trying to meet the user where they are with AI and then find ways that they can use it in a safe manner. What the company that I contract for? They've created a thing called Astrid.
Speaker 3:I not going to say any more, more than that, but it's essentially a safe space where you put. It's not connected. It doesn't draw its source from the internet, right? It only draws from its design document, and so you can put in a let's call it a, you know a shrimp recipe and it will say well, first of all you've got to be worried about food safety, and then you've got to worry about food. You know preparation, not cutting yourself. Then you get, and it was awesome. I mean, this is something that you could use on a high powered homeland security or emergency management Exercise, and yet the way it drew from its design document was to give you that sort of safety approach Absolutely failed.
Speaker 1:Oh, so that's what you meant by safe place, not like safe word. Oh gosh, whoops. Sorry, I just was wondering. All right, you have to pull us there, don't you? I do? All right, let's go back. So, ai, I love that. Everybody's talking about it there, don't you I do? All right, let's go back. So, ai, I love everybody's talking about it. What is one thing that you would do today that you didn't?
Speaker 3:do before AI that helps you in your biz or in anything. So the most important thing that I've learned about AI is have it ask you a series of questions about whatever topic you're diving into, one at a time, informing the answer with the next question. So if I ask okay, this is my, the avatar of my client, ask me a question are they more like this or more like that? Okay, well, I need somebody who recognizes that they're probably. You know that we have. One of the key terms in my business is overcome yourself. It self-qualifies the client. They recognize that they've got to fundamentally change themselves in order to get a different result. If that doesn't land with you, or you don't like that, you're probably not my client.
Speaker 1:But you use these prompting questions, uh, to help identify what you should be talking about. So use that a little more self-reflect. I love that.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you what I just. I mean that is so different, cause I'm thinking okay, you use AI to help create your avatar, but basically you're you're having the AI help you create the avatar the other way around.
Speaker 3:Right, it's a little bit of both and I'll use I'll use a parallel example. So one of the things that came up with this, that's exactly where that first pain point or not the first, I think it was the third about that. Are you somebody who says you're going to catch up this weekend? Three quarters of that came out of AI and it has amassed it from a, an amazing course I'm in. It's called Visions to Ventures. We meet every two weeks. We'll meet this Friday and we've been creating a whole marketing package inside of my.
Speaker 3:I call my, my AI is called Resonance inside of ChatGBT, and so it has captured, you know, my business philosophy integrity, discipline, execution and then has rolled a whole bunch of avatar elements from my current clients where I think I'm going. And then I did something crazy to really answer your question. I listened to three or four YouTube videos. I think it was Alan Watts. I've always followed a Warner, earhart, landmark, landmark, forum, carl Jung and I can't remember who the, and and Spinoza, and so I threw those four into the AI and it knows my integrity, discipline, execution model and I said it told me about all the alignment, where these things are aligned from each right quote, you know, basically highlighting each, each thinker. And then I asked it one of these questions where what elements of each of these thinkers have I not? Is not currently in the list. The summary that you've created for me, oh, ian, hold by boom, right, so it's thinking and it generates all that.
Speaker 1:I love that one. Ask me the question. I haven't asked you that. I should have asked you A hundred percent. That one has been pretty powerful for me in using AI to help with some things. That's been great, and you named four people. Did you know any one of those four people?
Speaker 3:No, Yep, I was there. I was over there, well, and what's funny is that this is exactly what I say to people when they're interviewing. Your last question in an interview from the career counseling perspective, is what question should I have asked you? And that really lets the interviewer's guard down. They're like that's a great question. Let me think about that. They may not have anything.
Speaker 3:I've had people say to me and my clients that question, that's the question that tells me right, you're a high powered thinker, you're about problem solving, you care about what I'm looking for. It really sets you apart, and so I swear by this process. You know that I learned from Warren McKee, who's the leader of Visions, to Ventures and the way I work with this now. So you know, I told you what I had already done these four thinkers and then I said what about adding Gandhi, churchill, john Maxwell, brene Brown? I just listed off all these great coaches and thinkers and it just laid the entire thing out.
Speaker 3:Wow, and that's really, when you think about it, I was a translator between the red tape of government and the bleeding red ink of private sector. I am clearly going to be a translator between people who don't want to have anything to do with AI and actually using it. And really here I want to create an on-ramp with my offering that, if you're a, if you're devoted to John Maxwell, I will tell you about what it was like to lead volunteers and save the taxpayer half a million dollars to $ 1.7 million dollars I'm chewing checkers over here because I um, I used to help me set my fantasy football draft exactly.
Speaker 1:You did not, I did, why not? And it was close. It was a little a little, uh, benign, little kind of vanilla, but it was, um, pretty good. I'm like I'm drafting 10th in the 12-person league. This is the league format. Look at that. What do you think my first three options are going to be in round one? I love it, given that I take option one. What do you think my comeback should be in the second one? And it was relatively close, except my draft never follows any kind of logic because our guys are all over the board. But clearly, I'm doing it for fantasy football, you're doing it for deep thinking. I did. I would say how I'd used it, though.
Speaker 1:Uh, here's a practical example for a lot of home service people. I was in a house today. She says I want to do my whole basement. Okay. Now I said do you have a hope number? And she said a number that basically wouldn't even get me, uh, framing out a half a room. And I was like, okay, so we're way off.
Speaker 1:And she went what I said let's just start cranking the numbers. And I just put it all in the chat GPT. I put all the dimensions in there. I said I want you to calculate the drywall, the insulation, the framing lumber and then give me an estimated price on that. And I showed her that the price alone from reputable sources, the depots, the lows, the menards, they pulled from all three. And I said the price alone for that lumber not even with me marking this up, if you hadn't bought everything is now twice what you just said. And she went oh my god, I'm like yeah. And I said I haven't even started hitting them with a hammer. And I just showed her on the phone and she goes what are you using? I said chat GPT. She goes so we with me just being in front of her, being very transparent, showing her look, it's not even me thinking, this is me just using this device in my hand just to show you something. And it changed the entire conversation.
Speaker 3:And I've heard multiple people doing this. Right, they like hey, here are three phases, Give me the options. Anyway, it's gone from being a genius five-year-old to a genius eight, maybe 12-year-old.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree, and it's always going to hallucinate. And yet, the more power that you can put into this, either reducing options give me this or be this person you'll get a better result. And the key is you've got to have that human review. You can't just copy and send, because you'll I'll always catch something, I'll catch something that's off, but it's ability to synthesize that information and to have you know I was making the joke. One of the marketing pieces I may use is I've studied everything from Socrates to Spinoza, so that you don't have to. What I'm going to give you are the nuggets, absolute golden nuggets from their thinking, their way of being that alters your entire life. Right? So the Socratic. If I had to pick one Socratic method, if you are asking questions, you're going to win the day because you are understanding the other person. What do you mean?
Speaker 2:by that Was that that there's gotta be more than one.
Speaker 3:Now it was it was a little harsh for a Sandler reverse. This is how it would sound like in a Sandler world. Yeah Gosh, ian, that's really interesting. What do you?
Speaker 1:RCA dog. You go back and forth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, you got to be authentic, that's the biggest thing. 100%, yeah, that's the biggest. So, very interesting. So that's where you're kind of evolving your business coaching. But now let's get back to preparedness.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to sell myself as an authenticity coach, and yet that's really what I do.
Speaker 1:I agree.
Speaker 3:I think you coach and yet that's really what I do is, I agree, I help people get in touch with the thing that lights them up, uh, really reframing, like, what I love is when people go. Oh, you know what I actually do have great, you know, work-life balance. I did. You know I was able to do this and and uh, one of my favorite things that I tell people is look on, on Wednesday evenings, I clean kitchens and bathrooms. Ideally, on Friday evening or Saturday, I clean the rest of the house and that way I can enjoy my environment for the weekend. And I'll never forget when I said that to a coaching client, it altered his entire life. Right, do these things at 10 items a day. You need a break. You're tired of doing work quickly. Go do something physical and and move the 10 things. Organize 10 things at the end of that week. Right, you've done 70 operations and it doesn't feel like you went, you know, head-to-head with a fire extinguisher. That didn't work, yeah, oh it worked.
Speaker 3:No, the first one.
Speaker 2:No, the first one. It went three seconds. Oh right, I got you yeah.
Speaker 1:Working on my sound effects effects coming later next soundboard, we'll get the sound effects. All right, let's talk. Let's get back to it, because we're gosh, we're oh my god, it's already almost done with our uh episode. Alan, we've got to talk preparedness, so the government's not here to help me. What do I need to be doing?
Speaker 3:well, if you're a small business owner, let's make sure you have all those things that we talked about. That's the three drives right, get ahead of your external drive. Make sure you can copy stuff that's in the cloud. Make sure you've got this. Remember that good, good, petty cash, um, because that's the thing that's going to make the difference. Don't expect.
Speaker 2:Look at him, he's now, we had to speak his language, though we had. We had to make it real.
Speaker 1:I said TIP money. He's like oh.
Speaker 3:It used to be, once man it used to be. I may have to steal the first part of that TIP money. Right, If you're carrying TIP money, then I'm no longer a very expensive banker. And then really the key is any documents that you need to prove your business or be able to receive a grant or loan or what have you. Make sure you have that, Because that could mean the difference between the life and death of your business in one of these events.
Speaker 1:One other thing I would tell everybody is that if you don't have a good insurance agent, you need to have them and you need to have continuous dialogue with them, because in the event of like again, if you're leasing a space and it goes up in flames, you're leasing a space and the power goes down in the entire grid for two days. Yep, um, you got to know what's going on and you can call your insurance agent and go hey, is there any relief here? In both cases, not the fire, but the grid uh, our grid went down for two days. Uh, he said there is. Uh, how much of an impact was? I said, said no, we were able to go remote right away, so it really wasn't a big deal. So we didn't really lose anything other than food and fridge. And he was like is that something you want to make a claim on? I'm like no, I don't think so. I said the salad can wait. I was listening.
Speaker 3:I appreciate the comeback here, matt. That's great, yeah, and this is exactly when you have. You know, just like you have to handle your personal preparedness. You've got to handle that for your people right. You've got to have a communication plan, even if it's a text string. You've got to know where we're going to rally in a disaster and then how are you going to outwardly communicate to your clients and make sure everything everybody's feeling okay? If you haven't't, you know, practiced this or workshop that, call me in, I'd happily run you through a tabletop let me give you one that just happened to us.
Speaker 1:I didn't realize it. I am not on Verizon, I'm on T-Mobile. My general manager is on Verizon. He was not responsive Saturday night and Sunday. I just thought he happened. He happened to be in the mountains or doing whatever and come to find out there was an outage in Verizon in the Metro Atlanta area. So what would you do in something like that? I mean, let's just talk about that, so I have an outage in one carrier, maybe both carriers, or I don't know. Tell me what I should tell my 32 employees what to do if we have an outage like that.
Speaker 3:Smoke signals no, I'm kidding Always great. They would have heard the first word. By the way, Smoke. I know the, you know. For over a decade I carried a second phone on a different network. If you have revenue or if your business like, if that's serious, you need to have that, or a sat phone or some other way, right, have a Starlink account, what have you? So that's one thing. I have used Facebook to communicate with people as a matter of secondary resort, right.
Speaker 1:Somebody's phone went down. Do you think social media may be the way, because that's exactly how he found out that he was down. Yeah, he said he got a social. He was looking on social media and said, oh man, it was right there. Uh, that's what happened to me. And so he said, and he was like he was just falling over. So I apologize, I apologize, I'm like dude. Well, how would you know? Yeah, were they going to send you a note saying, oh, by the by the way, your network's down. They can't.
Speaker 3:So you have no idea. Yeah, and in many cases you've got companies that have bought, you know network on the main network, so they may be a reseller right, and so it doesn't matter if you're on X company. If the Verizon trunk is down, you're down, and that's critical to know.
Speaker 1:All right, give me, give me some conspiracy theory stuff, what again?
Speaker 3:we did go to the moon. I want to be very clear about this.
Speaker 1:You know, I do have one guy who absolutely said I can't believe you bought into that.
Speaker 3:I used to and I talked him off the flat earth edge.
Speaker 1:Okay, flat earth edge. So, conspiracy theories though, we always think, you know, the government's always listening, ai is always listening, things are always listening. Therefore, I'm not going to use it. So how do you tell people that you've got to embrace it? And oh, by the way, they've been listening to you a lot longer than you've ever thought they were. And basically, let's face it, you're that boring. Nobody cares.
Speaker 3:Well, and legitimately right. How do I respond to that? Number one government is so busy that it doesn't necessarily have time and space to focus on you. This is one of the reasons that made me more comfortable with AI, in that if I wanted learning from somebody, I wanted learning from me. I wanted learning my ethics. I wanted being responsible. It doesn't mean that it always will be my ethics. I want it being responsible. It doesn't mean that it always will be. However, as an example, if all of us are that way right, we may get a different result, I think go ahead.
Speaker 1:Oh no, I was sorry adjusting. I want to make sure somebody wasn't listening. I was checking my implants Looking for drones. What no? I didn't say that.
Speaker 3:What, what, no no, we're back, Okay, do we need to have him committed or just look dead? I think you forgot to take a pill this morning. What pill See you always have my back. Make sure in your disaster kit you've got your prescriptions. You can get to your prescriptions. Make sure you have it every day, or month. I mean man, he's awesome.
Speaker 1:I do need that. That's actually another good point. It is a good point. Yep, screw the water. I need the drugs.
Speaker 3:Well, I need water. How else do you need? Right, you need the water to take the drugs, right I?
Speaker 2:actually thought about it. I mean, you're not that far from the Chattahoochee. Do you have a way?
Speaker 1:I do up in the mountains.
Speaker 3:I do, but not on me. I did when I came before I have the tourniquet today. Oh Right, I also brought the red bag because I have to bring you know, you need to be able to reconstitute the federal government, which we can do right now and the green bag money bag. I forgot about the bag.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God, that's right. I love that you brought the tourniquet. That's good. Can we practice on Alan? Alan, get your leg up here. Wow, no, it's not for long. All right, so let's. For the listeners maybe who didn't listen to that, let's explain the bag and reconstituting.
Speaker 3:So, very quickly, I carry a red bag that's got four copies of the Constitution. Obviously, Article I is the judiciary. You have two houses. You need two copies of the constitution for the house and the Senate. They must be in the same city because they have to conference as they write laws. The executive branch, article two can be somewhere else. Judiciary article three can be somewhere else as well, but you've got to have the legislative branch together to create laws and from that, if we have a pencil and writing paper, we can reconstitute the government and as we did last time uh, I was the legislature, the man was land of. Chris was number two, was number two the executive branch. And what I loved is Alan's over here and he's he's reading and he's like come on, man, we're in the podcast, like no, no, no, he's actually studying the laws. He did, we did loop that one on that one. He keeps us in check, right, which is vital.
Speaker 1:Riveting podcast when one of the hosts just starts reading and not engaging at all.
Speaker 3:Oh, but then he busted. Like you know, it's even better than in terms so plain as to command their ascent. I'm not going to repeat the quote. You actually have to go back and listen to the podcast because Alan kills it at that. It was awesome. I don't remember that at all. Of course we're listening to again. That's all right.
Speaker 2:Really. I mean, the planet has to collapse. You survive. You've got the red bag. We can put it back together.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, even if it's just, you know the Southeast survives, right, Region 4 backs up Washington DC and you know we have to look at our current political environment. We have a leader that's talked about putting nuclear devices in the field, right, we had an attack at the CDC. It's game, I mean, it's a job I meant to say that at the outset like it's more gamey and even more jungly, uh, than it was when, when I was here a year ago. So we got to take care of this gamey and jungly, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Gamey and jungly? That's the, that's our podcast, the small business safari. And we're coming to the end, ian, you did it again. Man, this has been Gold Nugget City. You learned a lot, not only about, maybe, your personal growth. Maybe you like a salad, maybe you don't. Maybe you like to clean your toilets, Maybe you don't. Don't invite me over, by the way. Very gaggy Can't handle that. So, yeah, oh God, no Bad toilets Got to go. No.
Speaker 2:I can do it. I actually do it at our house.
Speaker 1:That's my job. You clean the toilets. I'm so proud of you, thank you.
Speaker 2:I don't have to do laundry, but I do toilets.
Speaker 3:Oh, it works and oddly enough you can do both in a Lowe's Home Depot bucket, so long as you have those detergent strips that you can drop in and have the toilet seat that fits over the bucket. I'm here to help.
Speaker 1:He's always here to help everybody. Ian A Ian. How can everybody get ahold of you, man?
Speaker 3:Let's put that out there again, yeah, so if you want to reach me, please call me on 770-293-8870. Again, that's Ian A 770-293-8870. And here live. If you go to lickitysplitdisasterkitcom that's lickitysplitdisasterkitcom you'll be able to add an email, you'll get a quick worksheet and I'm going to create a special for the adventure team. We'll give you a discount. I have a 30 minute video that goes through my entire disaster kit and we'll make sure there's a special for your listeners.
Speaker 1:Love it. All right, guys, go out there. Lickety split, disaster, kitcom. All right, we got to do this everybody. Hey, go make it a big day, let's go make it a great week. Hey, go make it a big day, let's go make it a great week. You know what?
Speaker 2:Alexander the great said I have no idea. So, uh, I was like I'm going to be really impressed right now.
Speaker 1:No, and I'm not no, you shouldn't be, but we got to make it better. Keep going, keep driving, keep digging. Sometimes it doesn't feel good, sometimes you're down in the dirt, sometimes you're down in that tunnel. You just got to feel bad and you got to get out. You got to get running, you got to get up. You got to make it happen. Let's keep it going. Everybody, make it a great week. We'll talk to you next week. Cheers, everybody, cheers. Thank you for listening to this episode of the small business safari. Remember your positive attitude will help you achieve that higher altitude. You're looking for a wild world, small business ownership. And until next time, make it a great day.
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