Stephen V. Smith

Have you ever found a snake in your kitchen floor? Of course you haven't. Neither have I. But for some reason, every morning when I walk into the dark kitchen, I flip on the lights and think, "Is there a snake? No? Good."

@FrogandToadbot This account is the only reason I still Twitter

Toad sipped his tea. 'Frog,' he asked, 'are you making this up?' 'Maybe yes and maybe no,' said Frog.

Will @PLAUDAI integrate with my existing @ChatGPTapp account?

@Lilacmess What brand did you switch to?

That’s one ugly truck, but one crazy marketing idea … You can win a brand-new $80,000 @Tesla Cybertruck. 🤯 It's 100% free to enter. 🏆 #giveaways #win #free kingsumo.com/g/9ks86q/win-a…

I’m in Paducah, looking up. Where is @photographerjon today? #SolarEclipse2024

X says I’ve been on the platform 14 years. Seems appropriate, as 2010 was a pivotal year for my small business and my career in general. #MyXAnniversary

@caleb_caudle Can’t wait to hear your new material!

I’ve got a new EP coming out on Friday. It’s my first EP ever! We recorded it live at the Cash Cabin. I hope you’ll click play on it. 🖤

@jspector buildararebusiness.com

Free Coaching Time! I want to help you improve one page on your website today by making one simple change. Reply with a link to the page you want me to give you a suggestion for and I will.

Hats off to Butts County, Georgia, for taking a potential liability and turning it into a branding asset. What’s something about your small business you should embrace instead of cover up?

On our drive to Orlando for the Value Builder Summit, my wife asked a great question. "So, what are you hoping to get from this conference?" My initial answer was, "I'm looking forward to the results of the pricing models survey." But then I remembered the real value of attending such events — meeting quality people with similar interests and goals. For a number of reasons, it's been a few years since I've attended any sort of conference. I'm excited to learn, but even more excited about doing so among other advisors and hearing their stories. Yes, I hope to come home with greater knowledge of the value-building industry and business coaching in general. But beyond that, l plan to leave the summit having made new friends so we can learn from one another and encourage one another as we help business owners across North America.

Always curious about pricing models, I have a question for hoteliers: What is the concept behind charging $36/day for valet parking when that’s the only parking option, as opposed to providing free valet parking & accounting for that expense in your room rates? (Fresh on my mind after checking in last night …)

@jayclouse But do podcasters even wear pants?

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but… If you find a pair of pants you love, just buy a second pair.

Adopt 14 as part of your mind shift for 2024. And practice 20 every day. It works, but you have to practice it to become comfortable.

The Value Builder program calls this the “Switzerland Structure,” one of the 8 key drivers of value in a business. Concentration is not only dangerous in client mix, but we can also find ourselves too dependent on a vendor or employee. Thanks for sharing your example, Matt, glad it worked out for you!

This common mistake can make your Small Business go out of business. If you don't know what concentration risk is (or how to solve it) keep reading: Last year, I was still in the building phase of Margin and everything was going well. I was about to hire my first full-time employee. But I had a problem that was always on my mind. It was all I could think about. I was plagued by the realization that I had a heavy customer concentration problem. 1-2 customers made up a significant portion of my revenue (think 50%+). If they went away, I would be in trouble. Separately, I knew I needed help to fulfill the growing workload. So the question for my business was: 1. Do I hire a full-time employee or 2. Do I go seek help from a 1099 contractor? Back to what I did in a second… These types of questions are the ones that a CFO can help a business answer when it pops up. Before starting Margin, I worked with a business that sold multiple products, but that one product made up a stupid portion of their revenue. They didn’t have customer concentration risk but they did have “product concentration risk”. If something regulatory happened for that product or industry, they’d be out of business in a heartbeat. All their eggs were in one basket. Not to mention the total addressable market for that one product might not be as big as you think. In their case, we (the finance team) urged them to allocate marketing spend toward other products to spread the risk. For my business, I decided to go the 1099 route. I didn't want to HAVE to let go of an employee if one of the whale customers churned. Months later, both of the whale customers had to reduce their engagement with us. We're still engaged, but their scope decreased, and so did the revenue. If I had decided to hire a full-time person, things would have hurt. I would have had to make a difficult decision. But because I hired 1099 help, I avoided the pain. The lesson I learned was: I needed to go and sell to eliminate customer concentration risk. Selling was my biggest goal in 2023 and everything else was secondary. Eventually, things worked out fine, and I ended up hiring a full-time person for that specific role, but I did it at the right time (when I had addressed my concentration risk issue). Having someone like a CFO in your ear to make these important decisions is massively helpful for SMB owners. If you need help with your business finances, DM me.

@ClintFiore @DSweetTexas Great point ... I've too often been guilty of trying to force "good" things to happen, missing the opportunity for them to be "great" things. Your patience and balance are solid examples.

I often get intrusive thoughts like this trying to scheme ways to pull the cabin closer to the present... but I know it would become a distraction and too much work and not truly the peaceful blessing I want it to be if I've got to spin a bunch of plates with a bunch of partners and renters to make it happen.

My "yacht" is going to be an incredible mountain cabin. We'll host family gatherings with all our kids and grandkids someday and have unforgettable Christmases there. We'll host business retreats for CEOs we've invested in or are mentoring in some form or fashion to help them relax, enjoy their journeys, and dial in their big-picture visions and annual strategies. We'll host spiritual retreats for small groups wanting to go deeper in their walks with the Lord, and couples wanting to improve their marriages. One situated near a ski area and close to a private airport that I can easily fly people in and out on a turboprop aircraft that serves this vision. I'm currently not close to financially being able to fulfill this vision, but seeing it clearly, ~10 years away, challenges me to think bigger and work hard on a strategy that could make this a reality.

@ClintFiore I love this vision so much, Clint. We have similar ideas (but without the skiing and flying). This inspires me to get more strategic about our short-term rental cabin here in the mountains of NE Alabama. Thanks for sharing this and encouraging others. atmentone.com/stay/eagles-cr…

I love it when a non-profit board understands the value of strategic planning! Had a great time last week leading this wonderful group of volunteers through an offsite board of directors strategic planning retreat. Excited to see them power through their goals in 2024!

This is a perfect example of an argument that applies to so many things: I agree that government is not the answer to most of society’s ills, BUT how our society is structured is always going to benefit certain groups or demographics more than others. Even when we say “we want small government, and the lowest tax rates as possible,” we’re still advocating for policies that will benefit someone. The question then becomes “who among us do we believe should be the benefactor of this or that policy stance?” Democracy is a grand experiment, a game that has rules. And how those rules are written determine the kind of society we want to build. In your example, the winners are families and children foremost, but by extension SMBs and even the government. I wish more people could see that logic.

The Case for Government Subsidized Childcare and Preschool (from a 'small government' guy who hates advocating for government "solutions"): I'm not a woman, but I do think it's wild we essentially give free, all-day childcare for children, completely paid for by the government (public schooling), but only from ages 5-18. Women, who are traditionally primary early-ages child-raisers by software (natural wiring/temperament) as well as breastfeeding hardware, are extremely more likely to take responsibility for the childcare needs of a family while the kids are 0-5 and not subsidized. Private childcare is so expensive, many women leave the workforce as it doesn't make sense to fork over ALL (or almost all) of what they make (since most mothers are young-ish and not at their peak earnings years yet) just so they can pay someone else to take care of their kids all day. This means massive amounts of women have 5-10 year holes in their work experience if they have even just 1-2 kids, potentially crippling their earnings power for life. Even when they place all kids in public schools, it's hard to catch up to men on a career track that never had that gap. If public schooling costs taxpayers like ~$14K/kid/year, that means government is already paying ~$182,000 in "childcare" costs for all moms that send their kids to public school for K-12 ages. I'm not a Big Government dude, but we're already committing those kinds of resources to public school, and to me, it just makes sense to go "all the way" with it and offer government subsidies for childcare for the 0-5 age range for women that want it. It makes sense because I think it would pay for itself, give women more of equal footing opportunity-wise with careers with men without making them choose delaying or not having kids until they sufficiently advance their careers. Rough math: Government is now paying $220K "childcare" per kid instead of $182K per kid up until they're 18. For that add'l ~40K of investment, the working woman is going to pay waaaaaay more than 40K in taxes from not only more income they make when their kids are in their preschool years, but also for being higher earners their whole lives because they didn't put careers on hold for 5-10 years. I totally support women being stay at home moms, and homeschooling, or whatever they want to do. (we have been blessed to be able to do stay-home and homeschool with zero subsidies for our kids' childcare or education at any ages). So don't get me wrong that I'm advocating for women to not raise their own kids that want to or are blessed by their husbands' making enough income to be able to. BUT, for the career-path women, which are most nowadays, government subsidy of childcare to me makes total sense. And I think it would have the following desirable effects: - increased births (our birth rate is below replacement, which is a systemic problem for our country) - better for government budget / spending (because income taxes gained would exceed childcare subsidies) - increased lifetime productivity and economic contribution of working women, growing the nation's GDP as a whole from more workers now, and more kids meaning more future workers (a rising tide lifts all ships) - small business friendly two ways 1) because SMBs have trouble competing with global mega corporation on what childcare benefits we can offer and 2) SMBs could pop up to receive the subsidies and provide the childcare (doesn't have to be government as the provider, I would prefer free market SMB providers the government writes checks to for best results for moms and kids) So if we're already paying for 80% of a kids' lifetime childcare needs... why not just do 100% so as not to completely disrupt the career paths of half our population? /end super curious to hear y'alls feedback on this

Think through your reaction to possible challenges that could hit your small business. Then you won't be surprised when a snake greets you in the kitchen one morning.

There's a fine line between thinking about potential disruptions and obsessing over negative outcomes. Small business owners will benefit from finding that balance. Play "what if," even have a little fun with it.

I've encountered my fair share of snakes, the biggest of which being a health crisis that could have tanked my business. Instead, I reinvented my operation from an ICU bed and a few years later we landed on the Inc. 5000 list and sold to a strategic acquirer.