With Business.com’s Chad Brooks on BDC+ and new research

0:00You are listening to and watching Builders where I interview CEOs, authors and leaders about building businesses and careers. And today I speak with a colleague. His name's Chad Brooks. He's the editor-in-chief of business.com. And Chad's been covering and talking to small businesses for 20 years. And I wanted to speak with him about new research he and his team have done on small business productivity, where the research finds there's a productivity crisis. At the end of the episode, we talk about a new program for small businesses that is intended to alleviate some of this pain. It's called business.com plus.

0:34And also as an anecdote, if you care about the Chicago Cubs, Chad and I hit that topic for a few minutes at the end. If small business research is your thing, I'd encourage you to check out a few earlier episodes. Episode 75 covers small businesses, adoption of AI. Episode 33 covers black owned businesses and mending the trust gap. And episode 55 covers funding. So we've got a lot of good content in past episodes related to the subject. Thanks for listening.

1:08Hey, Chad, how are you? Good to see you. I'm great, John. Thanks for having me. I'm a longtime listener of the podcast, so excited to be here. Thanks. I appreciate that. Well, let the audience know who you are, what your role is at business.com and your mission on the site. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Chad Brooks. I'm the editor-in-chief of business.com. I started as a freelance writer almost 15 years ago. So I worked my way up and we've been covering small businesses. I've been working with small businesses in this capacity and other capacities for nearly 20 years. So I have a deep knowledge of this space.

1:43I think what I love about business.com is our mission. We're dedicated to helping small businesses succeed in the simplest of terms. But we've spent decades educating entrepreneurs about the ins and outs of launching and growing their businesses. also a key factor of thing that we do is we connect them with the tools, the software, the services that they need to run a thriving company. That's a great explanation. We've sort of covered on this podcast, listeners will know we jump around on topics, but we cover small business research and what's behind small business motivations on the podcast quite a lot.

2:19We've talked about the happiness of business owners, adoption of AI, challenges that minority owners have with funding. And I mentioned some of those episodes in the intro, but Chad, you've recently published information, new research about where business owners spend their time. And if that time is useful. Before getting into the findings, like what you found, can you talk a little bit about the process of doing the research? Who'd you talk to? Where did the data come from? Yeah, absolutely. So we surveyed 550 business owners and business leaders via our new platform, business.com plus. And these range from all ages.

2:59So 18 to 83, they run businesses anywhere with five employees to 249 employees. And what we found was pretty eyeopening. It turns out a lot of small business leaders are spending more time kind of fighting the fires as opposed to really driving their business forward. And I'm excited to talk about kind of more about what we found. That's interesting, too. Obviously, as a small business owner, I think you want to think about growth. You want to think about expansion. But you phrase this, I think is how you phrase it in the research, a small business productivity crisis. What does this mean? How do you define that?

3:39To understand a crisis, it has to be at scale, right? And I think to understand about what we're talking about, we need to know how many people this is impacting. And small businesses are enormous in this country. There's 33 million small businesses. They make up 99.9 % of all firms. They employ 60 million people. So when we're talking about small businesses, this isn't just the mom and pop that you see everywhere. These are all over. They're in every community. And so I think when we talk about a small business productivity crisis, we're not talking about a lack of work. And I think that's an important thing to mention here is we're not talking about productivity isn't getting done.

4:20It's just where people are spending their time isn't where they want to be spending their time. You know, they're busy. They're putting in 45, 50 hours a week, but they're not putting it in towards growing their business. They're putting it into the day to day tasks. And we found a key stat that we uncovered was 41 % of the small business owners we spoke with said growth is their top priority, but only 35 % of them are actually spending time on it. And when they do, it's only four hours a week. And when you compare that to the other places they're spending their time, that four hours a week gets really buried in the weeds.

4:55We're talking eight hours a week on email alone, just reading email, responding to emails and organizing inboxes. Another five hours a week on unnecessary meetings that could be provided maybe in an email or in some other fashion. we're talking. The biggest one to me is also context switching, which is huge for me. I don't know about you, but I have little pop-ups that pop up on my screen when I get an email or something. And, you know, I could be in the middle of a task and, you know, my eyes immediately dart to what even the subject of that email is. And now I'm intrigued and my brain has now turned off what I was focused on.

5:34And now I'm thinking about something else. So there's a massive disconnect between what leaders want to be doing each day and each week and what they're actually doing. And I think some of this, what you uncovered in the research is it pertains to some of this anyway, not checking and reading email, but pertains to figuring out the right vendors, the right services, whatever that can help you with your business. I'm an expert in coffee roasting in my coffee shop, not necessarily, should I use this provider to check out customers or that provider? Yeah, absolutely. 50 % of the people we talked to said they have trouble choosing the right technical solutions.

6:19And we think about tech as what's supposed to be helping us get our jobs done and make things easier for us. But when you're spending that much time just trying to choose the right one, it actually is making things more difficult for people because they're in the weeds. And, you know, who wants to spend all their time comparing and contrasting CRM, the features of a CRM system? You know, you can easily get lost in the weeds there. And we're hearing from small business owners and leaders that they certainly are. Yeah, that's funny. I'm like a digital marketer by trade and I have freaking problems doing that.

6:51Like imagine again, you know, coffee roaster or whatever, printing shop, name your small business. Did you get a chance in the research to measure the impact? I mean, it's one thing to say, it's one thing to be like, wow, I have to check email eight hours a week. But I mean, we all have busy work. Did you get a sense of how to quantify this? It's hard to look at a bottom line, per se, and see this on your spreadsheet or on your Excel sheet of how much money this is costing you or how much. It's really impacting the bottom line. I think there's an opportunity cost here, right? If you're only spending four hours a week on strategy, it's going to be hard to grow.

7:26You're going to get stuck just doing the same thing over and over again. and that ties into another piece here. So we have the opportunity costs, but there's also the human costs, right? It's gonna lead to burnout. Over all the years, I've talked to many small business owners and what drives them is the unknown. It's like, I'm growing this business. I wanna, who knows what's next around the corner. But when you're fighting those fires on a day-to-day basis, you're more focused on just getting from day-to-day instead of doing the cool things about what it is to be a small business owner and dream about what's possible and what's next And how do I get from A to B to C?

8:00And you're just still in A or you're still in B. You're not moving forward. So you're burning yourself out. It's given, you know, that's going to take a toll on you as a person, your staff, your team. And you might get by day to day and be running a successful business, but you're not going to get to the things that you really want to do. And that's grow the business and think about what's next and all the exciting opportunities that are out there because you're wearing all these hats. You're fighting all these fires on a day-to-day basis. Let me ask a little bit of a naive question, which is, why are business owners bad at this?

8:37Did you get into that at all? Or can you theorize on that? Do they not delegate, not hire, something else? I think it's all of the above, John. I think we look at, first, hiring. Hiring is a real issue for small businesses. Out of the small businesses that we spoke with, 80 % said they're understaffed. So only 20 % feel that they're at a proper staffing level. The other 80 % say they could use at least five more employees. So it's hard to find the right fit for those five employees. You know, 42 % say they're identifying staffing trouble as a major challenge. They're at 68 % say hiring is difficult due to the current talent pool that they're seeing out there.

9:16So even if business owners wanted to delegate, and I'll get to that in a second, if they wanted to delegate, they can't. There's no one to delegate to. But the problem is, is even those that want to delegate are having trouble doing so. We saw 25 % say they self-report themselves as micromanagers because, you know, small business owning is very personal. You know, this is your baby. This is your thing. And it's hard to turn over those reins to someone else. So even if you want to do it, there's a fear that small business owners have. We talked to people that said, and I'm quoting here, learning what not to do is a real skill for leaders.

9:56And so that can be difficult for people. You can't delegate, first of all, to people that you don't have. And you can't delegate if you don't want to delegate. And so we're seeing that. Another small business owner we talked to, Karina Riviere, she said, delegation isn't about handing things off perfectly. It's about creating space to lead better and focus on what you can do. So I think small business owners ideally need to find some comfort and need to say, okay, if I'm doing it, it's 100 % perfect. But if I'm delegating, maybe it's only 90 % perfect, but that's okay because I've now freed up time to do something else.

10:33And ideally, it's focused on that growth or that growth piece and how I move the business forward. And that other task that you've now delegated hopefully is being done well, but maybe not perfect in your eyes, but good enough. It sounds like you did a lot more than have people fill out a survey. There were conversations or free-form answers where you got a lot of in-depth stuff. In the show notes, we'll put a link to the specific URL for the research so listeners can read further and in detail if they want to. I know you also, Business.com is launching or has launched a brand new program for small businesses aimed to help with some of this stuff.

11:12It's called Business.com Plus. Could you explain what that is? Yeah, absolutely. So as I mentioned, you know, 50 % of the people that we spoke with struggle with tool selection. 45 % said they have trouble cutting through that marketing hype. So technology should be a solution, but it's becoming a stressor. The biggest thing is don't try to do it alone. And ideally, that's where business.com plus is coming into the mix here. Business.com Plus is taking what we do at business.com. We're spending hundreds of hours each year researching all of them, testing, reviewing business software and services.

11:49So you don't have to. You, the business owner, don't have to. We're going to tell you what we think is best. And, you know, ideally, we're giving you the recommendations that make sense for your business. With business.com Plus, we're kind of taking this another step further. And this is a free membership program. So no commitment that you're making. It's a free program. And what it gives you is access to advisors and pre-negotiated deals and savings and ongoing support that's going to help make your lives easier. That's going to cut down on that marketing hype. Ideally, Business.com Plus is taking the pain out of choosing those software and services that so many are saying they're having trouble identifying which is right for them.

12:31So imagine you sign up for this. you're going to be able to speak to a dedicated advisor who you're going to be able to explain, this is my business and this is what I'm going through. And this is why I need a new credit card processing service, or this is why I need a new phone system. And they're going to be able to talk to you and listen to what your specific needs are and recommend the tool or software that's going to be right for you. And the best part is, is it's going to come with savings and who doesn't love a good deal. And those deals are built in. We've worked to find the best deal with the best products and services.

13:04I like that it's free. Is there any catch to it? Can you cancel any time? Yeah, there's no catch to it. I mean, if you say, I'm not interested, you can cancel, but you're not really making a commitment. You're providing your email address and your phone number and you're talking to someone. And if you would rather not speak to someone and you don't want the advisor portion, you can use our database and our platform to look at the deals and read through them yourselves. I would encourage people to talk to our advisors because they will help you kind of get through that marketing hype that so many have said that they're struggling with.

13:37But if you don't like to talk to people on the phone and you'd rather do it yourself, then there's an option for you. So there is no commitment. It's as simple as putting in your email address and phone number, telling us a little bit about your business, and we're off and running. In the show notes, we'll put information on how you can go check out the program yourself audience, but Chad, you're, you're a journalist, you're in media and I have a hard hitting question to, uh, to exit the show. I live in Seattle, but I grew up in your hometown. And so I'd like a feet on the ground assessment of the Cubs this year.

14:15Have you been to any games? Um, what's your feeling on the team? How optimistic are you? Yeah. So this is a, this is a great question. Probably the best one you've asked so far, but I have not been to any games this year. I'm sure you'll be surprised to know that in the spring, I felt it was too cold to go to games. And now it is 110 degrees and who wants to sit in that? But I'm very optimistic about the team. I know you guys got the better of us last weekend. You took two of three. The Mariners beat us a little bit there, but I'm very optimistic. We've seen a lot of bad baseball over the past couple years and we've got some exciting players and it's fun to watch.

14:52Nothing makes the summer go by better when the Cubs are winning. And I have plans to get out there later this month. And so I'm excited to see Wrigley in all of its glory and fly that W flag. Right on. Thanks, Chad, for joining me today. Thanks, John.

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