Business Brain, episode 638, for Wednesday, April 9th, International ASMR Day, 2025! 25! Ha, ha, ha, ha, dude.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
It's so weird. What? Woo! Sorry if I blew your ear drums out there, folks. What is that?
That's so strange.
Freaking out. Welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take some ideas, we dissect them, we crunch them, we analyze them, we use them to tune all of our business brains collectively each and every time we get together. Our sponsor for this episode is MacAudio.com slash brain, where you can use coupon code brain to save 20% on anything that Rogue Amoeba offers. Great apps for audio on your Mac. We'll talk more about that in a little bit.
For now, back here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.
And still here out in Northern California, I'm Shannon Jean. What does ASMR stand for? I guess I could chat GPT it.
Yeah, no, it's, yeah, autonomous sensory meridian response. And it is the thing that, like, causes, what's the right way to describe it? Oh, people sometimes describe it as like you feel tickles triggered by someone running their fingers through your hair, right? Like those kinds of things. And sound is a big part of it, obviously. Ah, yes, yes, yes. But a lot of it is just like the noises of just like. You know, people rubbing their hands together.
I went to a...
Nails on a chalkboard. Yes, yes. You know, maybe not so good.
I went to an audio experience thing in San Francisco one time that had like, I don't know, hundreds of speakers right over our heads as we sat and did this audio thing. It was crazy. I mean, it would raise the hairs on your arm, right? You hear certain things.
People love this ASMR thing. But yeah, I'm back from... It's pretty popular. I'm back from Podcast Movement Evolutions, which I was out in Chicago for. And I have lots of things, of course, that I'd learned in meetings, and it was great. One thing I did learn, though, is a piece of sort of generic advice. Find out which, where your industry hangs out on social media.
Oh, okay.
Because I, and I've known for a long time that the podcast advertising industry tends to hang out on LinkedIn. And I thought it makes sense. Yeah. But like not every industry hangs out on LinkedIn. No. Right. You know, but but this one does. And I'm sure we could dissect why, but it doesn't matter. It does. And I have a presence on LinkedIn. I have tons of followers on LinkedIn, but I generally don't spend a lot of time on LinkedIn or at least I didn't. But about a month ago, I thought,
you know, like this conference is coming up. I got a lot of good meetings happening. I want to make sure I stay in touch with these people. I think I'm going to experiment. And it paid off in droves because I just got involved in the conversations on LinkedIn, you know, commenting on people's posts, doing the things that you do. Not anything ham-fisted, hopefully not anything ham-fisted. Just just joining conversations and being reply guy and then also doing my own posts here and there.
And and it was fantastic because it's great. The conversation was already happening when I met with these people. It wasn't like, hey, it's nice to see you. The last time we saw you was a year ago or six months ago. It was like, hey, definitely. Remember that funny thing we were talking about? Right. And it was just like it was the it was an extension of the conversation, not a rekindling of the conversation. conversation. And it made things so much more relaxed, so much easier to get into.
And, you know, I always say that conferences, the best part about them, industry conferences, is it gives us the opportunity to remind each other that we're humans. And, you know, seeing each other, sharing space, having a drink together, whatever. Just hanging out, even if it's the hallway track where there was one company.
They had to cancel their meeting with me because they had a meeting with a it was an ad agency that canceled their meeting with me because they had a meeting with a buyer like with a you know like a company that might want to buy ads and i was like oh by all means yeah to do that instead of meeting with me like we all make money from that but i ran into them in the hallway at one point and i was very i knew their schedules were packed and i was very like hey just
want to come up there was one person i hadn't seen yet we were all kind of running into each other it was one person there there was the whole group of them but one person i hadn't seen yet and i just wanted to give her a quick hug and say hello and then i was like all right i'll leave you to it like i know you're you're packed and they're like no no no no we're just chit-chatting hanging out stay with us and that turned into like 15 minutes which is like the most i would have gotten out of
them if we had a scheduled meeting right so yes super powerful yes for that business but yeah find where your business is yeah
Any any uh getting involved in that conversation i i give people the same uh you know instructions when they're like i don't know how to get nobody talks to me i still on ebay nobody talks i'm like okay well where are they at well are you connected with the category manager on linkedin and they say inevitably no right well let's go find them and then you get in and you know don't even ask to connect just start talking in the their posts about what's going on.
Ebay don't make don't
Ask don't ask for anything correct start telling tell this oh great congratulations yada yada yada then connect and then you've you start working your way up the food chain you're in this discussion stream of uh you know what's going on and it it's so.
Simple but it's so powerful because of that i have three conversations going directly with brands that buy podcast ads that I would not have going otherwise. That's one month's worth. Well, one month ago, I decided to prioritize this. I've been building my LinkedIn network for decades.
Of course, of course. How much time per day have you spent up there to do this?
I mean, it's probably 30 minutes a day.
Yeah, that's pretty good.
Yeah, I definitely am taking some time away. What's interesting, and I know I just, you know, I try to be self-aware. And what I noticed is I go to LinkedIn now before I go to, it is the first place that I go. You go. Yeah. Yeah, that's smart. Which is interesting. Yeah. It's like, oh, okay.
That's where the people hang out that you're doing business with.
That's way better than going to Facebook where I'm definitely not making money from anything on Facebook. Yeah. I mean, I am. Like, that's not, that's unfair to say.
Well, no, that's part of your, it's part of the, where you're going to spend time at some point during the day doing certain things. But identifying where the people are that you need to be talking to, that's just a great tip.
I have another tip, though, related to that. If you're connected with somebody on LinkedIn and you've messaged them and they don't reply because most the messages on LinkedIn are a dumpster fire. Yeah. Because there's just so much spam. So I get it why people that might even want to talk with you wouldn't ever just see your direct message on LinkedIn, even if you're connected with them. So the trick is find their email address and send them an email.
How do you find their email address? I am finding that seamless.ai, S-E-A-M, I'll put a link in the show notes of businessbrain.show. Perfect. Seamless.ai is spectacular at finding email addresses. You get 50 lookups for free and then they start to squeeze you, which is fine. Like if you're using it correctly, by the time you've churned up your 50, you've made more than an, make sure you make more than enough from those 50 to pay for a year subscription to seamless.ai.
That's cool, man. Yeah. I love it.
Yeah. Which is, I mean, it's probably like a grand or something, but like if you're using it the right way, that's, it's totally worth it for a year.
Oh yeah. Yeah. It's, I always, uh, there's no pricing on the website for that.
Of course not.
But you're probably right. But that's smart. Free, 50 credits, I think that's great.
And when you do your first lookup, you get five more credits free. They know how to do it, which is great. I have one more tip for us in this intro section, Shannon. We did this again starting about six weeks ago. Add 3% to all of your business's credit card transactions and make the buyer pay the fee. And all you have to do is tell people we're adding 3% to cover credit card fees. We have had zero people even flinch at this now.
It's been a practice for a little while. We held off on doing it for our B2B stuff at Backbeat. But we started – I think it was after – I bought a car recently, and I put down like, I don't know, $15,000 as a down payment. They gave me an interest rate that was too good to – it was fascinating. They said, do you want to do this interest rate? It was like 2.9% or something, which was like, okay, great. That's really good. Yeah, right now.
They're like, do you want to do that for three years, four years, five years, or six years? And I'm like, well, does the interest rate change? No. Is there a prepayment penalty? No. Great. Six years. Yes. Yes. Obviously. I'll take the cheap money, man. So but I put down 15 K and I was going to write him a check or do whatever you do. And I was like, wait a minute. Let me look up what I you know, what do I earn for this with my Bonvoy card?
OK, so I get forty five thousand points. OK, what's the value of forty five thousand points versus what's the cost? It was going to be, what's 15,000 times three? It was going to be $450, right, for their fee. I'm like, oh, well, 45,000 points. I know how to make 45,000 points at Bonvoy worth way more than $450. Yeah, that's right. Because I save them for the rooms that are super expensive but come down. And so I was like, oh, yeah, I want to pay for that.
Like, I'll take those points. That's worth it to me. and i think everybody is looking at it the same way yeah so
Especially b b to b i think it's in a lot of b to c it's a little tougher the car thing with the high dollar amount i totally get it, But I think you just, especially if you can just add a different payment method that doesn't cost anything. It's like, here, go right here and do an ACH, right? Just write to us. It costs nothing.
It costs nothing.
It comes right out of your account. You can still do it electronically or whatever. Yep. I agree. You should not be eating that if you don't have to.
No, it used to be against policies to charge more
For a credit card. It was against the law. Yeah, exactly.
And they did away with that. And I think I've even seen it at restaurants. I've seen it for B2C stuff.
Gas, for sure. Gas in California.
Absolutely. Gas has been that way for a while.
If you use your car, it's 10 cents a gallon more. And the discounts that you can offer. I think we can have the big box stores, Target, Walmart, and somebody else to thank for getting rid of that law.
I agree. It wasn't the little guys, man. No, no.
Yeah. But yeah, I agree. If there's opportunities that you can do that with, it's not going to add friction to your thing. It is definitely more acceptable now than it ever was.
Yeah, totally. Totally. So test it in your business and let us know. Feedback at businessbrain.show. All right. So I want to take a minute and talk about our sponsor here because this show is powered by hustle, ideas, and no less than three apps from our sponsor, Rogue Amoeba. Really? Audio Hijack captures and processes our audio, records it for us. It is the thing that records the file that you're hearing.
Loopback wires it all together behind the scenes. And Farago brings in our music and any, you know, fun little sound effects that we might need in the show. Rogamiba makes the best audio tools for the Mac hands down. Their latest Audio Hijack update includes the Whisper AI-powered transcribe block, which creates fast, efficient, locally processed transcripts. If you can hear it, Audio Hijack can record it. If Rogue Amoeba made a CRM, I'd trust it to manage my contacts and water my
plants, because that's something CRMs do, right? Grab free trials and save 20% through the end of May at MacAudio.com slash brain with code brain. That's MacAudio.com slash brain because great audio is part of living your charmed life. And our thanks to Rogue Amoeba for doing what they do and for sponsoring this episode. So before we get to our next pro tip, Shannon, because this seems to be an episode of pro tips.
I want to share a review that came in from KDU472, five stars, on point all the time. Besides new ideas on how to use AI, Dave and Shannon often simply remind us of things we should be doing. It is great to have them there to nudge us and steer us when we are heads down in the weeds. I love it. Thank you, KDU472 from the United States. That's outstanding. And you can review Business Brain by going to businessbrain.show slash review.
And when you do that and when we read it on the show, KDU472 was just entered into our drawing for a MacBook this year. And you can be too. So, please.
That's awesome. We appreciate those reviews.
100%.
It's crucial for us.
It is. It's engagement. It shows the engagement. Yeah.
Absolutely. Tell us all the podcast apps that you actually like listening to us.
It tells us that you like listening to us. It's really great.
Yeah, that's important too. Yeah. We were just talking about that before we started recording today. Speaking of important things, you know, sometimes you get an opportunity to talk to people that maybe you otherwise wouldn't and get different perspectives on things. And I had a conversation a while back with someone and just a super great person. And it turns out I was told before I met this person that they were a billionaire, okay? Okay. Which is kind of cool. It's like, wow, that's awesome.
You don't run into too many of those. I know.
No. No. I was like, wow, this is a really cool, very great guy.
I like when I find out after the fact that someone's a billionaire. Yeah. Like, that's really fun. Yeah. Like, wait, what?
This guy was super nice. And I found, I was at an event with him at a party and it was late. And we had both been, both had a few beers or a glass of wine or whatever.
And we're just chatting. And, he was like uh he was talking about his his business because i'm full of questions and it was very complex the way he made his money and i was like man this guy obviously is just on another level and doing all these complex things and and so after i you know one big thing i i do notice about people i because i love asking questions about what you do tell me your story it's very noticeable when they don't ask you back
right when they don't it's like tennis i serve i would like to learn about you yes well to keep the conversation going typically you would ask about me hey.
I want to know
About you know each other yeah and so in this case it was awesome because he's like hey what do you do man how do you know so and so and what do you do so i started talking about my life compared to his which i've i felt was like yeah.
Just talk about the imposter syndrome I'm creeping in, right?
Dude, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. I'm thinking, well, I know nothing, man. I'm just a guy that buys and sells things and runs these companies and builds these things and, you know, I talk on my podcast. But, you know, I talked about lifestyle. We talk about lifestyle businesses a lot and how, you know, they kind of have people like, you know, I don't know, really, lots of people, oh, that's just a lifestyle business. You're just buying a job.
People dismiss them. And I love that. Me too. Because there's a lot of smart people that could be competing with us and they don't because of their emotions. And I love that.
And we've spent our life stacking up these lifestyle business to build wealth and it's amazing. And I explained this to him and I was like, yeah, you know, it's like as I built these companies, I have a lot of freedom. I get to hunt all the time. I go fish. I spend tons of time with my kids, all this kind of stuff. And he stopped me and he reached out and put his hand on my arm and he's like, Shannon, you have an amazing life.
My first thought, instant thought in my head was like, dude, you're a billionaire, right? And I realized it was, I was totally, you know, yes, he had an amazing life too.
Don't get me wrong. Also, it's not a non-zero-sum game. Correct. Right. Correct.
But it just really made me think about perspective. You know, you need to get some perspective on your life and not think always the grass is greener. and that uh.
He was thinking the grass is greener on
My side on.
Your side
Correct when i told him i'm like oh yeah we take our dogs to work every day we do this thing he was like what wait.
What you
Know how do you do this and what's going on and this guy he was you know pretty traditional business.
He'd probably be willing to shave a couple of zeros now that he's there maybe maybe maybe i don't i can't speak for this guy but i have i've met a few billionaires that i've actually gotten to know and you know when i tell them oh yeah you know i do my podcasts i play in bands i'd like rock out or whatever they're always like wait how
Yeah wait a minute.
Huh you still get to do all i'm i traded that for zeros right and it's like okay but i like i don't have as many zeros as you but i have enough like it's okay like it's I think
Your point is, it's very easy to get an imposter syndrome when you meet somebody who is, quote, much more successful.
They definitely have a bigger cushion than we do.
Yes, yes, that's right. But when you start to think about it, and it was just a great experience because instead of him just kind of brushing it off and being self-important or whatever, he was just totally cool. And he was just like, man, that's so amazing. I wish I could do that and this, this. and it was great.
Yeah.
You have to think about it and give yourself, you know, that perspective that what you have in your life, Many, many people do not. And the things that we take for granted every day, there's so many people striving to have it that it's just a reminder that we're all fortunate. Hopefully, you're fortunate at some level, and we're all good at certain things. But I thought it was definitely worth sharing on the show.
No, that's a great thank you. Because that imposter syndrome, I think it creeps in for me perhaps more than most, but I don't know that because I don't live in anyone else's head. Right. But when it does creep in, remembering stories like that and simply remembering that the only person I'm competing with is me in this realm. Like I just need to level me up and then that's it. Like whatever, I can learn how that guy leveled himself up. That's valuable.
But I don't need to obsess about replicating that.
No. I just need to take the- And don't compare yourself to it.
No, I don't want to compare myself to it. I just want to take what I can learn. How can I apply that to where I am and what I'm doing and then go? Yep. You know? And a lot of that, what I've learned, especially conversations with billionaires, is being as generous with what I do have. And I don't just mean money. I mean with like my time and what I've learned and all of those things. It's like, wait, I have value here. And I know that. We've been doing this show for 10 years.
Like I get it. But still, even though we've been doing this show for 10 years, sometimes I have imposter syndrome. You know, like right now.
Almost daily. You know, you run into it and start thinking of this or questioning yourself. And it's just a super common thing. You just constantly have to reframe how you present things to your brain because you're programming yourself. And one of the things we're going to talk about on.
Our Friday show. We have a good programming. Yes.
A tremendously important framework about learning that Dave is going to discuss and break down for us. And I'm really looking forward to hearing it. It's going to be great.
Same. Tune in on Friday. The best way to do that, subscribe to the show. Wherever you are, whatever app you're in, subscribe. We'll see you on Friday. Keep living that charmed life. And, yeah, we'll see you Friday.