 Joe's hamburgers welcome to vlog Thursday you wanted us to take you on site but it's not Thursday it's actually Tuesday Tuesday night evening but if you round it up it goes to Thursday and we're not posting it till then so this will be if you don't post something till Thursday did it happen before Thursday and we're gonna start this yeah it didn't happen I don't know either way philosophy while we while we philosophize over that BS no no no we got to work the camera the whole time they know us everyone knows us here but we're gonna take you inside we're doing networking and then we're rolling the vlog Thursday so welcome to vlog Thursday I'm gonna go say hi to a couple people and show you this is how we get clients this is a embodiment of it Marvin does this little dance thing we got a routine we got a stick it's a stick if you will stick if you're we're hitting people with a stick to get them yes and by the way we will probably pick up at least maybe one more client if we have here's problem almost all these people in here our clients are yeah we've been doing a stick for a little while the trick is we're not gonna talk about technology at all we don't even bring it up no we're just gonna dance yeah and that's how we're gonna get people to say what the hell are you what are you guys doing actually I already got I told the job for LTS creative so I kind of later nailed it nailed it and it's gonna be something we do on video because the guy loves that our YouTube channel to help actually get us this he's seen our videos and he had a meeting and I'll talk to you about this we're gonna wait till the deals close before we post it publicly and then I will dance some dance we'll do happy dance all right let's go inside all right what do we do with the chamber this is how we do it this guy dances and we talk business cards for days business cards for days they dance together it's contagious we start a little trend here yes we have yeah well I'm gonna turn the camera off here though because it just gets too loud and in audible once it gets over there but we buy all right so chamber event is over and we are well rested and now I'm sick well because that was two days ago well rested is a relative term yeah so but it was a good time it was a good time we danced other people danced we then to make things more fun we got everyone to join around a happy birthday because we found out two chamber members including a president of the chamber who's a friend of ours and Jessica who works there it was her birthdays within a couple days so we got all the business people singing happy birthday to them and that's that night was actually Jessica's birthday yes and Ron's was a couple days before she had a little tiara yes so it's it was a lot of fun and this is something like I have the sales visit don't suck video series and I'm still working on more of and things like that but this is how we get a lot of customers as you go out there you have to be friendly and this is something that you can't do with SEO you can't do with just putting you have to have a nice website these are important things we talk about that matter of fact we started company around those ideas called LTS creative now that we've officially launched but this is the important part is you still there's a lot of human interaction when it comes to the B2B side of business it's marketing is is not just about the product which by the way there is a product sitting in front of us we're gonna do a review up pretty soon because it's got you had a mark marketing is about that story you tell around the product and you tell that story best in person that's a big thing that's important that you interact with people because we're all human and people buy from people they like you hear a mattress that all the time but there's a lot to that you know I actually got to meet the owner through some other business networking I do with this guy you had he they sent us this which we already told me love their hot sauce they sent us this as a thank you but we're like no no we're gonna thank you we're gonna do a review and talk about we genuinely like the product because I won't even I generally don't do a lot of bad reviews because I don't review products I don't like so I yeah it's one of those things like if I just know I don't like something I'm not gonna get it just to bash on the product that's not really my style so but that was the Chamber Network event maybe we'll figure out how to do more of those we have more interviews playing with some of the sales people out of the chamber I recording video there is becomes at some point just an audible amount of noise because there's so many people there so many people talking but it did lead to a couple really one really good lead and another pretty good lead so you know those are gonna be followed up and everything else and just a lot of people know us from some of the videos which is funny because we Stephanie behind us like you guys ever stop working yeah you couldn't hear what she said that's what she said because we are and a lot of people know us no they know we got the camera going we got the phone going we're having a lot of fun and we're doing this for clients and there we're getting people more used to it because it's also weird to them to see sometimes the camera we're trying to get more people used to it then we can share more with you because they're nervous at first and obviously we've talked about being on site with it is really difficult to do that with but people immediately stiffen up when you put a camera in front of them yes I will jump into and I made a little bit of notes here I'm not good with script at all script is very bad for me and I don't like reading from scripts or teleprompters not good at sharing his notes either not good at sharing that list well I and it's there's a reason there's a strategy oh okay one is because I want Marvin's real reaction without prepping or thinking about it to I forgot to share them so even if you've been sending me the list I probably would be surprised why is this on the list not think about it too much I will start out by thanking our patreon people who mostly I asked each one of them they seem to be indifferent whether or not I really put it out there so thank you very much for being a patreon for people that signed up for that did some I think two people responded with a absolutely would prefer I did not and I'm no problem I absolutely respect privacy and I thank you for the support so that made me happy to see more more people on the patreon every little bit helps we're building this channel up and building content which comes back to I have not dumped a ton of videos out there at my rate I was in December that's because I have a job of running this place Casey Marvin reminds me in theory and theory yeah so I I kind of get back with it projects started January I'm good at delegating a lot of stuff but there's occasionally things I can't delegate and with year-end and all the other things that had to be done with the business I had to do CEO business e-president of the company things I don't know any of them he said sadly I wanted anyone yeah sadly there's a lot I've delegated a lot of things like I don't sign checks anymore Marvin we got like a stamp for all this and structure produced and yeah yeah we I really cuz people ask me like I was just in the bank account like we've talked about this with our business there's like I'm the guy that goes home and I check once a month Marvin lets me know if there's a problem I yeah because Marvin checks it every day Marvin checks it every day and taps Tom on the shoulder like you need to get back to work your YouTube videos I know you're loving it Tom but by the way everybody love it account you know we all love to money yeah so that is I won't lie as an entrepreneur I'm very focused on a lot of vision stuff a lot of thought stuff and I love making YouTube videos and it's so much fun and I I have a friend Victor meeting up with on a whole nother idea so it's like there's these constant things going that don't necessarily have because I don't think about the revenue first this is where maybe I'm an entrepreneur okay I am an entrepreneurs I have a business by the definition of that but I'm also not someone who tries to look at every scenario and try to figure out how to make money and my scenario starts with I think that sounds fun I'm going to go do it let's figure out how to make money at it later yeah let's figure out maybe there's some way to monetize this I don't know we still if for all the stuff we've done with our podcast we're not really much monetization comes from for all the effort and there's like 260 something shows and hardly any money because it's like let's get around and talk about Linux now the cool thing is Microsoft flows around places so but that's not direct money that's not paying the bills but we're all cool with it because we haven't a lot of fun yeah so also new camera oh I was excited so we did buy a studio camera and that is a we'd show it to you but it's what's recording so it's recording us right now it eliminates so we're recording on SLRs and a lot of users do it I still think it's a very valid format to record on downsides are you have 29 minute record time limits and other challenges because SLRs are something that weren't designed from ground up to do video there are cameras that do this that will shoot video this is a dedicated C100 Canon Mark II studio camera now I've always been just a massive fan of Canon and you'll find people like oh you didn't try this camera that camera and they overthink it Canon has amazing color science a focus system that is outstanding and a lens kit system that is amazing the series of Canon lenses it's nice that I can just drop my Canon lenses on here it's a little bit of learning I may do some to my own tutorials on this camera as I didn't find a lot of them but I still think it's a very very valid camera no it doesn't shoot 4k and I'm fine with that because you don't really want to see the pores of my nose it's not pretty want to see us in 4k yeah so the 4k stuff is not really something that gets me outside of my GoPro could shoot 4k my phone can shoot 4k for when I need certain things in 4k but I mostly don't need things in 4k not for a lot of what we're doing especially like the new video series you're working on for a client with LTS Creative it's all shot in 1080 and the majority of it's gonna end up as a series of Facebook and Instagram video clips that get broken down and spread over time as part of the project you know what they don't care about 4k so it's not something is it's not the critical thing and the next jump from this I mean this camera's $4,000 without a lens the next step up it to get 4k I think it's like 9,000 in the Canon line of cameras it's something like that I don't know exactly but it was a lot more than I want to spend yeah so that was a definitely consideration when we when we're getting it and it's just like it's important to have good studio stuff because we want to do more long-form things and this gives us an opportunity I was who I do public speaking events and I want to record them and you have 29 minute record limits on SLRs yeah I talk a lot more than 29 minutes my college talks that I do when I was speaking at University of Michigan which I need to message them again about some stuff but generally those are an hour hour and a half talks they're very interactive I don't mind making myself up and have an interaction with people and our recording is maybe there's some value in documenting some of those videos and throwing them into a second channel of hey if you ever want to watch this again that way I can give the content back to when I do these talks who will ask oh do you have recording of the whole content so I can watch it again every bullet missed it so that's we could call it Lawrence Tech University oh wait no dang it yeah sorry there's a college with that name already now a lot of you I was in the forums and I asked the question of what you want to see a lot of people want some business stuff we're trying to decide now do you want more business stuff on here and I'm gonna jump in a couple business topics work do you want to hear some of my personal ramblings and thoughts I have on business and things like that and we did the video the other day sit at a table and we have discussions the hard part of just jumping in so we I like what Michael Stelser did with social media examiner with his journey that show I watched some of that he gives a lot of his journey for doing it but things you can't really cover especially in ours is when we're we're discussing client details for stuff I mean it's like we just be dumping all our client information of how we're doing it are we got a you know XYZ manufacturing company we got to move them to the server and I don't know see his journey is different because he's talking about how he's getting more sales through that and we can talk about some of the sales cycle but I can't easily publish like oh yeah this is the proposal and this is how he worked out the polls and I will I am gonna do some videos and like bidding and things like that and maybe those are the videos you're looking for is how I come up with pricing and I say it confidently and I see we're gonna give it this price and Marvin we make money if I sell it at this price that's that's sometimes how the whole process goes yeah and I say you need to ask me these questions before giving the proposal yeah that's true too so yeah there's that so that's a there's there's so much of it where you I want you to realize that I have run a business for 15 years so there is a certain level of confidence comes up but there's not it some people like when your employer like well they seem so confident I close the door and I'm like man these people believe me sometimes do anything with confidence and people will buy it sometimes I mean I mean you just kind of have to you know call it a gut feeling call or you want there's a lot of there's obviously a lot of background knowledge you work in IT for 22 years had a business for 15 years so yes I have some experience that drives those decisions and documenting how I come up with some of those is not always as easy it's like I don't I just know that we should charge this much and things like that we look at the numbers in the back end I do my mom I say look at a big count once a month it's because I do a monthly P&L profit loss statement for the company and it also means I have to go over and review all of the transactions for the month and looking I'm in summary like that means I focus heavily on them for several hours once a month I focus on all the numbers and I can look and take it one month at a time because looking at it at the tiniest portion of a day-to-day operation would be really hard you're not getting the right picture so 12 times a year and then an annual summary makes it easier for me to understand the money and decisions you make so I can look at decision-making for month-to-month and say overall those are trends I can't say I'm gonna buy ads on Facebook this week and I need to know next week if there's a return on that investment you have to look at it over time and people do that they panic all the time trying to think there's a shorter cycle to it some of our sales cycles are really long yeah you know my sales cycle is from the time you meet the client to time you actually do the job there's so many touch points in between really kind of follow up with them and you know we did the proposal we which one do we do that took forever before they replied and we're like out of the blue they're like oh yeah you got the bid oh yeah yeah oh god that was back over the summer yeah there's a couple like that we we'd almost like forgotten about it when we had our usual follow-up maybe those no replies and all so they're like so can you start in two weeks on this big job and project we're like oh yeah well thank you we can we absolutely can we will get you in the schedule here you don't mind me since May but yeah sure we can do it in July why not yeah so that does happen a lot so sometimes those payoffs come really hard you get aggravated you invest so much time in clients and then you just don't hear from they just vanish with your your some proposal on a piece of paper somewhere we think we don't know sure and we get it to I mean a lot of these especially if it's a wiring job like it's they're building things out right so we and they are often at the mercy of some other contractor yeah so you know they when they contacted us they may have thought they were ready for us to do wiring and then something changed or whatever and you know not ready yet so restaurants are very much like that we had some of the restaurant projects take a really long time to get cameras and because they well they just have every factor in between so they have the deal with building inspectors health inspectors liquor licenses and everything else so there some of those we just kind of expect if it's a new building and they don't have occupancy yet it's gonna be some trouble so yeah we fought hard to get this building and we still had about 30 days of occupancy issues to sort out with the city to get timing and it took a lot of persistence on my part of calling and scheduling and they actually make you not schedule with the city they make me schedule with the individual people involved in my inspection like I had to call the fire department directly I'm like so I pay the city all the money for it but then I got a call each inspector and schedule like just show up all at once well he doesn't work that way sir I'm like it really should work that way like it should if you want me to be in an unoccupied building all day waiting for them and they they're like Comcast they give you these ranges the downside that cities are monopolies yeah I have I can't call a different inspector right different fire department yeah I can't call different fire department scheduling and then they're like oh the one guy's on vacation I'm like there's only one guy so buildings can I be opened in the city while the one guy is on vacation right well I will just take my business to Riverview then yeah just go I'm gonna get a building in a different city then that's not on vacation that week there's a lot of ridiculousness that we know goes into building and planning so those ones really have some we we're like look we've I've opened a couple buildings several over the years that I've worked on projects of other businesses and just we know we get it we get it we're like city problems yeah I feel you here yeah so other things we're doing though is I'd be grudgingly I am expanding our service area a little bit because we do so much work remotely and this is where as an IT person I've really done I have a video called keeping all my clients within 30 miles which is exactly what we keep doing but is what it is we've we've expanded up our service here because we do so much work remotely and it's gonna force me at some point been looking for ways to have tax in other areas this is kind of the way Michigan is laid out we're not in a rich area happens to be where I live happens to be where I'm anchored and going to the rich area is very expensive and rich by me medium income averages and things like that because we're heavy manufacturing we talk about manufacturing clients last week being heavy manufacturing they're not technology dependent so they look for always the minimum way it's they like for the minimum amount of technology combined just to accomplish the things they need to accomplish versus when you get to hire tech companies or engineering companies and there's a few of them and we have them as clients down here but there's very few of them down here versus there's a ton of them about an hour and a half north of here we have a hotbed of technology we first of the area is automation alley you can look that up and it's really interesting it's all the high-tech engineering companies and they technology is crucial to their business so they don't have a problem buying the premium services for that the other companies are just minimum it the company we're doing for is a the manufacturing one we're still not completed they're getting computers for the first time in 2018 they really have a 12 year old computer that just prints checks and a couple invoices yeah one singular with no backup that they've just been happy hasn't failed they don't really think about any of this stuff and we're putting in two new computers which is a massive change to them and now they're upset with us not only upset with us just miss communication because we got them computers and screens and they're meant when it goes to printers I'm like well you said you want a new computer so we got them well we want a new printers to okay well then we get laser printers from which is normally what people like they want dot matrix printers because they like the dot matrix tractor feed so now we have the challenge of we're working with a QuickBooks company that's doing your QuickBooks support of how to find the right to printer making sure it's completely compatible with both Windows 10 and QuickBooks these are challenges we didn't expect to have we think we found them though we think we think we got it but yeah it was the miscommunication was frustrating yeah it's one of the things we don't think about this people know what they want in general and we put in stuff and usually we were like who gets your laser printer when you said printers no no you didn't say dot mate to them they don't know the difference and I guess we don't think to explain to us who in a dot matrix printer and a laser printer but these are things we do and I'm not making fun of the client they they literally have a very successful company I've known the owners and some of the things they do their their charitable people or great people they're doing a lot of cool stuff they're very successful this is also the weird part about Denver is how many business owners like I like it one customer I've been to his house to fix his kids computer and I'd ask the question I'm like which yacht is yours and it said both because there was two yachts they live on the water and there's no technology in her house none these beautiful big there's they don't use the owner of the company other time on their yachts yeah and it's really an interesting thing I mean they're we get so focused on all the technology and the guy doesn't have a smartphone he's they don't have a need for it and runs a very very big company that does have computers and technology in it but they don't depend on it as much their graphics design people are for some what they do but it's really interesting dynamic because they're such a big company to employees that they probably have 200 employees so I won't say the name of the company yeah yeah and but technology is such a secondary thought to them it's not core to their business they're able to oh man I'm gonna guess their their revenues have to be in a 50 million based on their two locations they have easily and if not more it's it's just amazing they're you think they're a cool client as a flagship to say we have them as client and we list our clients on their way just won't talk to specifics about what we're doing for all of them unless we get permission but it's amazing I mean they technology such a secondary thought for that yeah yeah it really is and and when you deal with things like that like this other client we were talking about they like Tom said this other client it's it's the first time they've gotten new computers in the millennium possibly yeah and so you know they said we need new computers well to them that meant computer screen printer like to them that meant the whole package you know well it's it's kind of a different language thing sometimes you know they said computers we got your computer you know they also had our time understanding why we couldn't do the QuickBooks support right because we are not QuickBooks experts they want to be trained they had a ledger problem with their old QuickBooks and he did it said well old QuickBooks it turns out it wasn't QuickBooks it was Peachtree yeah but they they go well you're all just computer people and I I broke it down that's right there because they they're and they do a specific piece of of industry as as a component of a larger industry I said well you guys only fix this part you don't fix the other part related to this industry and you're like well that's a good point but we don't see that is different with you it's just all technology computer guys where you guys need to tell us this and be more clear about it I'm like I guess because physically you see the industrial thing you do but yeah they like is it the technology is not part of their life at all and technically this was this was brokered by the the middleman so that's another thing too this you know we it wasn't a direct thing what we you know we were contacted to provide these things like by a middleman so yeah you know who's helping them out with their financials so we all started with an accountant an accounting firm helping them and then contracting us so it's a whole there's a lot to this project it's not as it's not as easy of direct you wouldn't think you wouldn't think put in you to two new computers would have been such a there's such a project you know on our side there's a lot of billblowers so far so because it's all this is all time of materials clients you're not going to go for any man of services they're not into paying recurring things related to technology there they know we remind you that they needed dot matrix yes dot matrix for four four to print carbon copies yep also nothing's as critical to them and they don't really use the internet shocker right they're not really worried about viruses because the internet's not a necessary thing for them they had to get the internet on the other computer because you have to activate QuickBooks and back it up but not because they needed to use anything and they mostly prefer to print all their checks for clients so yeah but I will get into more business talking stuff we'll do more of that I definitely there's specific topics so I can get started on those topics if no problem listening suggestions if not I'll come up with them I know some of the bidding stuff people want to know and I've done one on cable bidding and you know there's so many people that get have convoluted or complicated ways to do it we've always broken it down to very very simple and I think what I'm actually do is to show how crazy simple some of our stuff is I'm really going to show you invoices we did for jobs that were 30 40 50 thousand dollars in here like Tom it's a page yes it is there's a reason for that the client understands what we're doing we understand we have detailed scope of work if needed and this client didn't it was like putting in 300 drops and mounting 20 TVs or whatever for the wiring that's it there does not need to be I don't need to tell them what screws they use and we've seen the person bidding against it created this multi-page crazy proposal the client's going I don't know you're charging me for each mud ring and wall plate like they break down everything to the component level and hand them every little detail now if they ask us what we're using we absolutely are open about that and we will list that to them but why would you just try to convolut it like that and it's that's something about bidding it may be a $30,000 invoice but it does not need to be multiple pages on unless the client really request detail and as a business owner I don't want the detail like the snowplow guy I like this is they're like I did a push on this day this day and they started detailing out all the pounds of salt they laid and I'm like how much is it and he's like oh like $80 because we share it with the instrument I'm like here's 80 you know I said it I see salt I see it done I said I I'm gonna get back to work I mean thank you and I if I was concerned about the price that I paid for my snow plow removal I would and $80 is not a substantial and in terms of business I'm like 80 bucks is 80 bucks to someone and to me personally but to the size of the company $80 get our parking lot clear is not the thing I should focus on because I'm focusing on a if it kept me from sending a large wiring bit or a large proposal to a client over $80 these are the rational decisions you have to stop and go and I see some business owners get so hung up on that stupid stuff like that they are so like yeah you're charging me this much how much salt did you throw down oh my gosh so I had a business partner in one of my ventures briefly I may just do a show about that I may even bring him on the show he is legit crazy and angry and just nuts and I didn't know any of this he started as a silent partner of me transitioning out buying out the business and turn into he's crazy I won't lie I'll say it to him there's so many stories I have of this things that went on that I was like what like this isn't rational ways for humans to behave although it was entertaining that's the important that's the important part I watched him lose his mind over Jeff not asking we told Jeff he get coffee was one of the staff at the time at that company and Jeff went and got coffee and didn't write a note that he bought 50 cents worth of coffee now we said he could go get it but he had to write the note that he took 50 cents out of the door like we knew we took it we told him to go do it he goes back and doesn't write the note and he loses his mind Ronnie loses his mind over the guy and just like so angry screaming like it became he wants a lecture for 10 years I'm like there's really everything Jeff said he was doing it I'm sure he wrote the note later but those are the kind of weird things that people get hung up on all these little piddly things of this and that and it doesn't matter like it's whatever it's a couple bucks you move on I've had staff and I'm not happy when something gets broken may cost me money or whatever but the other side of it is I don't dwell on it all day you move on it you're like you did you do it on purpose knows a mistake all right the mistake costs us like this much money whatever we actually broke whatever it was this especially when I had the electronic repair company this was a bigger issue because you would accidentally damage a small circuit that while you're putting in these are delicate electronics and I knew it was complete mistake it did cost me like $20 for the little circuit thing that broke but whatever I said you know we talk about it we're not gonna do it again right you know all right cool Ronnie screaming we're taking out of here paycheck god damn it you broke this that's $20 out of my mouth and blah blah blah and then I mean he would just lose his mind over things occasionally you're just like and I see some business owners like that they're just so focused on every little penny and they end up sometimes out of business they're just they're not looking at the big picture all the time and being calm and rational and yeah so and you wise pound fool if I can help someone who's starting a business learn to that because even myself years later and I was a insane over hours working person I still kind of am obsessive but I do know when to quit it's when all the links and editor purple I'm looking at memes I'm like wait a minute why am I working I'm I have productivity has reached a new low shut the light off and get out of here it's time to get out and it doesn't you just kind of have to reach it at some point you're not being effective that's that's the important part yeah we'll leave you with this what time are we at well we've been talking for like 25 minutes okay plus the initial video so this is a long one today this is a long one day this way we get the new camera so we'll leave you with this because talk about productivity coming down to a crash I'm gonna put this picture up and what picture would be right here Marvin I'm not sure I'm positive you will laugh okay this is a and we talked about this yesterday it's when Tom reached at the end of production I'm leaving it up here so you guys can stare at this photo there's a Mexican restaurant this is where this is all about business working with what you have so and I don't know the name of the restaurant this is on Reddit I'll leave a link below because the discussion only gets better and yes and this is a Mexican restaurant that took over it out of business Chinese restaurant and instead of redecorating they they put some burrows on pandas which makes me so happy they replace their bamboo sticks with tacos and they put yes the bamboo sticks have taught are not tacos and they drew little mustaches on them and one of them what's the little thing they play I can't remember the name of that well it's not a ukulele but yeah it looks like a ukulele but it's a different phrase for me the way this is this is how business works sometimes you're gonna let you have to like look where we're moving a Mexican restaurant into a Chinese restaurant yeah and we don't have money for murals we're gonna paint some burrows on pandas and they did a great job they're great we're I like this photo so much and it just brought me joy and it also was the point when I realized I'm not being productive sound feel good even now and I was really not feeling great last night when I sent that to everyone I'm like I'm I'm gonna be productive but I want you guys all to laugh with me here this is our distraction for this end of the day it was like 6 o'clock and I was like I'm done for the day but some burrows on pandas made me smile wonderful hopefully makes you smile too all right thanks for watching like subscribe all that fun stuff and let me know what you think of business talks and if there's some specific topics but don't worry if you come up with nothing I come up with something it's true I just see you