From high-achieving corporate professional to entrepreneur with David Shriner-Cahn

00;00;00;16 – 00;00;15;06

David Crysler

Hello and welcome to the Everyday Business Problems podcast, I’m your host, Dave Crysler. In each episode, we talk to business owners and leaders to learn about their story, their business, the challenges they’ve overcome, and the challenges they still face. You’ll hear fresh insights, real talk, and get inspiration to grow your business.

00;00;15;22 – 00;00;37;25

David Crysler

Hey, everybody, I am so excited today to welcome David Shriner-Cahn to the podcast. After 28 years as a highly-skilled employee, David was told that his job was over. Despite the immediate trauma and fear knew that his next step he’d rather work for himself and have more control over his destiny; that was in 2006.

00;00;37;25 – 00;00;58;22

David Crysler

Today, David is a thriving entrepreneur, podcaster, and speaker. He helps high-achieving professionals who have had a late-career job loss build their consulting or coaching business so they can do what they love and get paid what they’re worth consistently.

00;00;59;12 – 00;01;05;04

David Crysler

Welcome, David. Thank you for joining us on the Everyday Business Problems podcast. So happy to have you with us.

00;01;05;21 – 00;01;07;19

David Shriner-Cahn

Thank you so much, David. Glad to be here.

00;01;08;13 – 00;01;25;07

David Crysler

Yeah, you’ve got quite a tremendous story, so I’m excited to have this conversation with you and kind of jumping right in one of the first things that I just wanted to get your takeaway on; you know, there’s a lot of people that have gone through job loss.

00;01;25;15 – 00;01;53;24

David Crysler

I feel like we are in a situation right now where there is a lot of people contemplating what their job and their career means to them. The pandemic, I feel like, has pushed that forward. What were those feelings like? Take us back to that time because I think for so many people that are where in your particular situation and people that are kind of contemplating this change, I think those feelings are the same. What was that like for you? Can you walk us through that a little bit?

00;01;53;25 – 00;02;14;11

David Shriner-Cahn

Yeah, sure. So, David, the first thing I want to mention is; I actually had a plan that I was ready to pull the trigger on when I was notified that my job was ending. And part of that stems from the fact that much earlier in my career when I was in my twenties, I also experienced job loss, and at that point, it came quite suddenly.

00;02;15;08 – 00;02;46;28

David Shriner-Cahn

I was not prepared for it and ended up spending a good bit of time doing some soul searching, self-reflection. I did a fair amount of market research about where I thought I might like to invest my time as part of my career.

00;02;46;29 – 00;03;07;10

David Shriner-Cahn

I was trained as an engineer and, I’d been working about four or five years at that point. And the company I work for had lost a huge percentage of its business and ended up firing about half the staff, including me.

00;03;08;04 – 00;03;25;09

David Shriner-Cahn

One of the things that I realized coming out of that was how important it is to have alternatives and to always be ready to pursue one, if whatever your primary objective doesn’t really pan out.

00;03;25;09 – 00;03;44;23

David Shriner-Cahn

Whether you’re an employee, whether you’re an entrepreneur, frankly, whatever you’re doing in life, that’s important. It’s always important. I think it’s important to have alternatives and the time to think about the alternatives is not when the house is on fire.

00;03;44;23 – 00;04;31;23

David Shriner-Cahn

You don’t. You don’t try to figure out where the exit is when there’s a fire, you think about it beforehand, you have a fire drill regularly so that when there’s an emergency, you don’t have to think because thinking takes time and energy and brainpower. You want to just move when there’s an emergency. So the same thing is true with a career. There are choices we have control over. There are things that we can be proactive about, and then there are things that we end up needing to react to because they’re out of our control. And, you know, a job loss is one of those things where, you know, if you choose to leave on your own, then you have control. But if the employer tells you the job is over, then obviously you don’t have control over that decision or the timing.

00;04;32;00 – 00;05;19;24

David Shriner-Cahn

But you still need to take action and if you have a plan, it’s a lot easier to take action. And it ends up, you know, in terms of how I felt about it, how one feels about it; it’s traumatic enough and it is difficult enough, even if you have a plan. But if you have a plan, it does make it a little easier. So my case, I sort of knew that there was going to be duplication with my skill set and that it was probably going to end in my job being considered redundant. And I kind of knew that about a year before it happened. So I, you know, I started thinking about, well, what do I want to do next? And the, you know, the linear path would have been for me to get another similar kind of job.

00;05;19;25 – 00;05;38;09

David Shriner-Cahn

I was in the not-for-profit space in an executive role, and I could have gone on to try to run another organization. But I decided I really wanted to have more control and kind of do my own thing, which meant the most logical and easiest way to do that would be to become a consultant.

00;05;38;18 – 00;05;54;02

David Shriner-Cahn

So that was the path I had in mind. The reality was, although I had the idea in mind, I didn’t actually have a concrete plan. I didn’t have a business that I had started on the side. I didn’t have any clients lined up.

00;05;54;28 – 00;06;52;18

David Shriner-Cahn

I just knew the direction I wanted to go in and even though I had thought about this quite a lot for probably like I said, probably about a year, it was actually quite dramatic. The day that I was told that my job was over, I was a lot more upset about it than I thought I would be. And you know, one of the things I felt and a lot of people feel is, you know, in addition to the trauma, and I do describe it as trauma because I think that it is a traumatic incident because we’re our self-identity is so tied to what we get paid to do, especially in the U.S., that when somebody else tells you that that’s not true anymore, it can be very traumatic. There is, you know, job loss, actually, it’s like a grieving process you need to go through. Often there is [the feeling of] shame; a lot of people don’t talk about job loss.

00;06;52;18 – 00;07;07;08

David Shriner-Cahn

I know when I started my second podcast two years ago, Going Solo, one of the things I discovered is there were all these consultants that I knew. Who ran great businesses and had been consultants for, you know, a good bit of time.

00;07;07;23 – 00;07;22;14

David Shriner-Cahn

But they had a corporate career before that. And the reason they started their consulting business was because they got fired. And so I discovered how many people I knew didn’t talk about the fact that they got fired before they started their consulting business.

00;07;23;04 – 00;07;43;12

David Shriner-Cahn

So there’s this sort of aura of shame, especially again, especially in the U.S. it’s very common. And then there’s fear, you know, particularly for folks that are mid-career and later your lifestyle. You’ve been supporting your lifestyle for a long time.

00;07;43;13 – 00;08;13;01

David Shriner-Cahn

Your lifestyle, especially at that stage in life, often carries with it, you know, a fair amount of fixed expenses. And there’s fear, you know, even if you have you’ve built up cash and investments and if you have even if you have an exit package, there can be fear that you’re not going to be able to maintain your lifestyle.

00;08;14;28 – 00;08;32;20

David Shriner-Cahn

There’s fear that you may not be able to work in the same capacity again or do work that is as well-recognized. Or perhaps you if you really loved what you were doing. You may fear that you might not find anything quite as meaningful again.

00;08;32;20 – 00;08;36;20

David Shriner-Cahn

So there’s a lot of very strong emotions that go along with it.

00;08;37;26 – 00;09;25;17

David Crysler

Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot to unpack in what you just said, one of the things that kind of strikes me because I agree with a lot of what you said, what was, from a timeline standpoint, how long do you feel like that kind of grieving process, I mean, what was that like for you? I know you talk to a ton of other coaches and consultants and entrepreneurs in general. So is there kind of a consensus of, you know, even for me, I was in control of when I personally left my corporate role, but I would still say that it’s that change. It’s different, even though I was more in control than maybe the situation that you find yourself in. I still feel like there was that period of time that you kind of had to do some reflection kind of go through those emotions.

00;09;25;17 – 00;09;31;28

David Crysler

Would you say that there’s been any sort of consensus? I mean, I know it’s going to be different for different people, but what was that like?

00;09;33;03 – 00;10;18;06

David Shriner-Cahn

Yeah, I do. I do ask this question a lot of other people and I know what I personally experienced and let me just say this; it’s definitely not days, it’s not weeks, it’s more like months, and I would say if you have the ability to and I describe this as a sabbatical because sabbatical is a word that has a positive connotation, whereas a lot of people talk, it’s hard to describe it as taking time off time off in the work world because it can have a negative connotation, say if you have the wherewithal to be able to take a sabbatical for six to twelve months.

00;10;18;06 – 00;10;43;03

David Shriner-Cahn

I think that’s that’s actually ideal. That gives you a lot of space to do self-reflection and to test some things out because you are going to need to test things out. If you can’t, just keep in mind that it’s probably going to take you a few months at a minimum to really overcome some of the more significant elements of grief.

00;10;44;05 – 00;11;01;12

David Crysler

Yeah, those are really wise words, because this is obviously going to have a huge impact on what you do moving forward. So to be able to, kind of, to your point, take that time to do reflection and to also test, I mean, that’s a huge part of becoming a coach and consultant.

00;11;01;12 – 00;11;16;23

David Crysler

There’s a lot of intricacies and things that you maybe haven’t given full consideration to kind of back to your earlier point about having an idea of what you wanted to do, but not necessarily having a hard and fast plan that you were ready to execute against.

00;11;16;23 – 00;11;27;25

David Crysler

Some of that is testing. Some of that is kind of really finding your spot in your niche, in your lane, and exactly what you want to do to connect with people. So I think you’re wise to say that.

00;11;29;17 – 00;11;44;24

David Crysler

So what would you say David, has been one of the better or bigger lessons you’ve learned since you’ve struck out on your own in comparison to kind of your corporate job, your work career prior to?

00;11;45;28 – 00;12;04;18

David Shriner-Cahn

Well, one of the things when you’re self-employed running your own business, you get to decide what success means to you. And for the work that you do. So one of the things that I learned is you need to define what success means to you.

00;12;04;18 – 00;12;19;14

David Shriner-Cahn

And to me, success is a scale. It’s not an absolute. It’s like when you think about wanting to achieve something, success is a scale you can do better or you can do worse relative to your objectives.

00;12;23;06 – 00;12;41;08

David Shriner-Cahn

Whereas something that that I describe as a goal is something that’s fairly specific, so you know, when you’re working towards it, but you’re never done. Whereas an objective is very concrete, you know? You know, when you get there.

00;12;41;10 – 00;13;05;16

David Shriner-Cahn

And I think for success, you need to understand what it means to you and how you will know how successful you are, particularly when it comes to concrete objectives. So think about, you know, if you wanted to get from where you are in, let’s say you’ve just lost your job, you’re starting a consulting business.

00;13;06;21 – 00;13;31;04

David Shriner-Cahn

How would you measure success of your consulting business in twelve months? And revenue, obviously is a big number. I would say that profit is an even more important number because you are going to have expenses, so whatever you know is on the bottom line is the most important when it comes to finances.

00;13;31;11 – 00;13;45;24

David Shriner-Cahn

But there are lots of other metrics. What kind of work do you want to do? You will find that if you’re a consultant for a long time, that there are certain kinds of clients that you really love serving and their other clients that you want to run away from.

00;13;46;17 – 00;14;01;18

David Shriner-Cahn

So, how would you define a great client? And one of the things I discovered in my business was how important recurring revenue is. And my initial business model had nothing to do with recurring revenue, and I learned the hard way.

00;14;02;07 – 00;14;39;25

David Shriner-Cahn

Actually, this was kind of a couple of years into the 2008 recession when I found that it was harder to close deals. I realized how important being able to solve recurring problems for clients were had good relationships. How important that was because you can work something out even when the client is facing financial distress to continue the relationship and hopefully you’ll be getting paid every month along the way. But yeah, so you got to really understand. And this is one of the big lessons I learned understanding what success looks like, how you’d measure it.

00;14;40;23 – 00;14;59;19

David Crysler

Yeah, that’s great, because when you work for somebody else, you’ve got somebody else not only defining [success] but then telling you how successful you are to that definition. And sometimes, at least in my experience, sometimes that definition or those goalposts, they change, and sometimes during the game!

00;15;00;27 – 00;15;59;23

David Crysler

And so I think that’s great advice. It’s a great lesson to have learned, and it’s different for everybody. That’s what I tell people. I mean, for me personally, I know being able to spend time with my family at different intervals and not having the same kind of rigorous travel schedule and things like that, all of those differences between working for somebody and working for yourself. To me, that goes into what does success look like? And it’s not always a financial goal to your point, although that’s important, right? We all have to eat and keep the lights on, but I think those are wise words, especially for people just starting out, because that can be very intimidating to feel the burden of saying I have to replace my income, I have to replace my lifestyle and to identify steps along the way. And kind of to your point, what does that success look like to you? I think that’s really great takeaway for a lot of people.

00;15;59;23 – 00;16;17;23

David Crysler

So now that you’ve had this business, David, for quite a few years, what’s something that keeps you up at night? Early on, you said it was about trying to figure out this recurring revenue model and testing that and doing some changes.

00;16;17;24 – 00;16;20;10

David Crysler

What today keeps you up at night with your business?

00;16;21;23 – 00;17;04;12

David Shriner-Cahn

Honestly, one of the things that keeps me up at night is worrying about my clients. I really do care about their success. You know, so things like the solo consultant who says that he wants to either start doing some consistent content marketing or up his game with content marketing, but continually fails to create a content calendar because one of the things that I’ve learned about content creation is that consistency and frequency are actually a lot more important than quality. People notice when you produce something consistently, it’s interesting now that, you know you and I are both podcasters.

00;17;05;02 – 00;18;26;08

David Shriner-Cahn

So podcasting has really taken over from broadcast radio, and it’s interesting that with broadcast, you had to follow a schedule because otherwise, people wouldn’t know when to listen. With podcasting, you don’t. But it’s interesting that most people that do it successfully follow a schedule and they produce like, you know, you and I both produce shows on a weekly basis. So, you know, so the fact that I have a client that wants to do content marketing but is not quite getting it now, trying to figure out how can I, and I can’t change somebody else’s behavior, but I can prompt them with things that are going to make them think about it more seriously and may lead them to want to make some changes in their behavior. Or like the business owner who has cash flow issues, and I know what I would do if I were running the business because one of the things you can like, you can’t always control your revenue like your revenue is what you hope for. And if you’re able to build up a consistent revenue stream, particularly if you’re able to build up some multiple revenue streams to provide even greater protection against the risk of case, one of them falls off.

00;18;26;24 – 00;18;41;05

David Shriner-Cahn

But what you can control is your expenses and that we all know there are lots of expenses that we incur that we don’t actually have to incur. Like you said, we need to put food on the table and we need to keep the lights on.

00;18;41;15 – 00;18;54;00

David Shriner-Cahn

But there are lots of different kinds of food you can buy just to be well-nourished. You could spend a lot of money on food or you can have a great diet without, you know, breaking the bank.

00;18;54;16 – 00;19;08;07

David Shriner-Cahn

Same thing with keeping the lights on. You can live in a palace or you can live in something that’s very modest and the same thing is true, you know, lots of expense. So I would, you know, I know, would I what I would do?

00;19;08;07 – 00;19;34;18

David Shriner-Cahn

But you know, again, I can’t change my client’s behavior, but I can, you know, take on the role of providing some, some signs that might lead him to think about expenses. So, you know, just making sure that we sit down and talk about the P&L and the balance sheet on a regular basis can do a lot

00;19;34;26 – 00;19;47;10

David Shriner-Cahn

because I can’t tell you how many, and you may know; that’s how many business owners don’t look at their P&L or their balance sheet. It’s amazing that they stay in business, you know, but if they’re really good at sales, they can.

00;19;47;10 – 00;19;50;17

David Shriner-Cahn

They can often do it anyway.

00;19;51;11 – 00;20;09;24

David Crysler

I agree with you there. I kind of say this is from the operations side, but sales won’t solve all of your problems. I mean, because you still have to look at that bottom line is, still have to look at what’s going on and you need to understand your overall financial picture.

00;20;09;24 – 00;20;29;08

David Crysler

But yeah, there’s a lot of people that still managed to do it right there with you on that. And you know, in terms of kind of business owners in general, I would say even outside of the coaching and consulting space, I think you know what I’ve seen, at least on my kind of entrepreneurial journey.

00;20;29;18 – 00;20;43;01

David Crysler

Nobody shows up and does the work for you, right? You, you either outsource it or you’re doing it yourself. I mean, even if you have a team, you’re still, you know, in my kind of sense, outsourcing a particular task or project.

00;20;43;01 – 00;20;56;21

David Crysler

And I think that can be a difficult transition for people that are coming out of a more of a corporate environment where they’re surrounded with a lot of infrastructure and teammates and kind of people to do the heavy lifting right.

00;20;56;21 – 00;21;13;09

David Crysler

And when you go out on your own, especially early on until you’ve figured some of that out, it can be easy to fall into this thought process of, yeah, I’m doing it, but you’re not really doing it to your point about the content creation.

00;21;13;26 – 00;21;29;21

David Crysler

You know, if you don’t have a schedule, if you don’t have something that’s prompting you if you have a blocked off time to do the creative part, nobody’s showing up for you. And then it’s very easy to spiral into a situation of, well, it’s not getting any engagement, it’s not doing this.

00;21;29;21 – 00;21;43;13

David Crysler

It’s not doing that. Why am I wasting my time? And then you move on to kind of the next shiny object, at least from what I see in the coaching and consulting space. So yeah, those are wise words there.

00;21;45;11 – 00;22;04;18

David Crysler

So what would you say, over the course of time, David, has been a piece of advice that you have picked up along the way that you would share to somebody that is maybe newly starting out as a coach or consultant, maybe newly starting out, kind of as an entrepreneur, some early lessons.

00;22;04;19 – 00;22;14;00

David Crysler

You know, I always say if you could go back in time and tell yourself something from ten years ago, that piece of advice to share with somebody, what would that be for you?

00;22;15;03 – 00;22;28;21

David Shriner-Cahn

That’s actually a really great question, Dave, and I think this is something that is really important for people that are in the early stages of their consulting business, especially for those that had a long career as an employed professional beforehand.

00;22;29;06 – 00;23;04;11

David Shriner-Cahn

Tom Ferentz, who was a professor at the Columbia Business School and a mentor of mine, said to me early on in my business, David, there’s going to come to a point when someone may offer you a job, could be somebody who’s a consulting client, and you’re going to need to make a decision, especially if your business is not that robust yet. You need to make a decision about whether or not you’re going to want to pursue the job opportunity or whether you’re going to go all-in on your consulting business. And that was actually very wise.

00;23;04;11 – 00;23;26;20

David Shriner-Cahn

It did. It did actually happen to me. Not that long after I heard that from Tom. And one of the things that I see with people that are going into consulting is; especially somebody who has a long job history there.

00;23;26;21 – 00;24;44;04

David Shriner-Cahn

They’re used to looking for a job when the current one doesn’t work anymore. And there’s some comfort in the job hunting process, particularly if you’ve never run a business before. Entrepreneurship is also, I think it’s a lot harder than being an employee certainly takes a much greater level of focus and energy than a job does even a high pressure, high powered job there. And in any case, if you’re not all in in your business, your business is going to suffer. And the more you’re all in, the better one. Which reminds me of one of my podcast guests, Lorraine von Speake, who was working for and a very successful paid speaker and author for many years and the person she worked for, unexpectedly to Lorraine, had to close the business. Lorraine was out of a job at age 60 and living in Los Angeles, which is, as she describes it, the youth capital of America.

00;24;44;20 – 00;25;10;02

David Shriner-Cahn

And she started applying for jobs and realized that it was pretty hard for somebody aged 60 to get another job. So she started looking for some consulting work and ended up, actually getting more traction with her business than she was with the job search.

00;25;11;09 – 00;25;48;15

David Shriner-Cahn

But when she finally gave up, the job search completely went all-in on her business, her business really took off and she was making more money within a year than she had in her job, which, you know, is a testament to the fact that she went all in and also the way she put the effort into her business. But it’s really important to, if you’re going to do it, do it way more than 100%. Don’t try to have one foot in your business and one foot looking for a job.

00;25;48;24 – 00;25;52;19

David Shriner-Cahn

It will just dilute your energy, your effort, and your success.

00;25;53;15 – 00;26;12;01

David Crysler

Yeah, that’s I mean, that is really great advice. I appreciate you sharing that and kind of being in that position. I can see how challenging it is for people. But to go ahead to your point and double down on that is really going to make the difference in the long run.

00;26;12;11 – 00;26;47;05

David Crysler

And you know, the other thing I tell people, it’s OK to have to change. You know, it’s OK to change your mind, it’s OK to change, to course-correct and to go in a different direction. All of those things are fine, but if you’re going down to your point if you’re going down those two paths simultaneously, never necessarily giving one or the other your full attention, it can be really challenging to decide, Well, at what point should I stop and make a course correction or this isn’t working the way that I’d like it to. Let’s go ahead and make a change.

00;26;47;05 – 00;26;48;19

David Crysler

So I appreciate you sharing that.

00;26;48;29 – 00;27;04;21

David Shriner-Cahn

You know, and by the way, did I just want to reflect on that, which it’s really true when it comes to defining your target market. It’s one of the things I see with consultants that are starting out as they don’t know who’s going to buy from them, like they have all this experience.

00;27;20;08 – 00;27;40;22

David Shriner-Cahn

And the reality is the narrower your target market, the greater you’re going to be able to attract people and so the fear that consultants have in that stage is that they’re going to be missing out on an opportunity.

00;27;40;23 – 00;27;55;08

David Shriner-Cahn

And the reality is it’s OK to put a stake in the ground and say, I’m going to be focused only on that out there. But as you just mentioned, you can change that at any point in time. Right?

00;27;55;10 – 00;28;23;00

David Shriner-Cahn

If you realize that, you know, let’s say you’re marketing to; I don’t know, Tech startups within the first year, right? And you find that, they just don’t have the bandwidth or the resources to bring somebody on with your skillset, then you can say, OK, I’m going to change my target market.

00;28;23;23 – 00;28;25;18

David Shriner-Cahn

But unless you try it, you’re not going to know.

00;28;26;03 – 00;29;05;01

David Crysler

Yeah, that’s I mean, it’s kind of, having lived that firsthand, I mean, I felt that for a long time it took me, personally with my consulting business, what I feel like, was a really long time to settle into who ultimately, not only did I want to define as kind of my dream customer or client, but who else I could bring the biggest impact, the biggest results to and to your point, I think when you’re first starting out, you do not want to miss out on an opportunity and you have a diverse background and you’ve done all these different things.

00;29;05;01 – 00;29;21;15

David Crysler

You’ve been responsible for so many different areas or departments or initiatives and across many different either sectors or what have you. And it’s difficult to define when you’re first starting out because I think it’s a process of testing.

00;29;21;15 – 00;29;42;24

David Crysler

It’s a process of self-reflection and it really is a journey that you’re going on. And again, to kind of wrap this up and make it full circle for me. If you are not necessarily going all in and trying to test and then redirect, but you’re skirting the line of saying, Well, I’m still open to opportunities for

00;29;42;24 – 00;29;55;09

David Crysler

you, going to look for a job or what have you. All of that then, can just continue to blur the lines, and it makes it even more challenging to get to that spot where you’re going to make a course correction and say, You know what?

00;29;55;09 – 00;30;09;09

David Crysler

These aren’t the right people that I should be marketing to. There isn’t a market here for me. I can take my skill set and apply it to X Y Z, so it’s a great, great, great way to wrap up that part of the conversation.

00;30;10;17 – 00;30;28;13

David Crysler

The kind of looking forward, David, I’m curious, you’ve had a tremendous kind of corporate career and are now a very successful entrepreneur looking towards the future for you. What kind of a dream that you’ve yet to achieve? What’s in store for you and what are you working on?

00;30;28;14 – 00;30;29;10

David Crysler

I’d love to hear that.

00;30;29;26 – 00;30;49;27

David Shriner-Cahn

Yeah. And thanks for asking that, David. So as you know, my primary focus is working with consultants and coaches that are building their business, particularly following a long career as an employee professional, whether it, whether they’ve been pushed out or they left on their own.

00;30;50;24 – 00;31;07;02

David Shriner-Cahn

It’s a very challenging transition. And, you know, in addition to focusing on it on my podcast, Smashing the Plateau, and Going Solo, and working with existing clients on it, I would like I would love to be able to serve more people.

00;31;07;21 – 00;31;53;18

David Shriner-Cahn

And I think this is actually a growing need right now with what we’ve seen in the last year and a half and in the world, I think that the shift to self-employment is going to be even greater. And I’m planning to start a membership community because one of the big challenges when you leave the corporate space is your social network has been disrupted in a major way. So you may, may, or may not realize that you have all these people that you would speak to regularly about your work and you would also have all these informal conversations, many of which would be of a supportive nature.

00;31;53;26 – 00;32;12;22

David Shriner-Cahn

And when you become an entrepreneur it is a very lonely position. Even if you end up as the CEO of a company with a lot of people, you’re the only one in that role. And so you don’t have colleagues in your company that you can talk to about what’s really challenging, what’s really keeping you up at

00;32;12;22 – 00;32;31;29

David Shriner-Cahn

night. And so one of the things I have found when I’m in that position is the importance of a community that provides a safe space for meaningful conversations as well as resources to help solve current problems. And a membership community is a great way to do that.

00;32;31;29 – 00;32;44;12

David Shriner-Cahn

And particularly in today’s world there, there are so many tools available to be able to do this in an online format that it’s something that that I’ve been thinking about for a long time and will be coming soon.

00;32;45;08 – 00;33;00;22

David Crysler

Fantastic. Well, I look forward to that and I agree with you. It’s much needed. I would say again, personally, my personal experience, it’s one of the things I miss most about my corporate life and now being an entrepreneur.

00;33;00;22 – 00;33;44;01

David Crysler

And you know, I have many friends that are business owners and all different types of industries. And so there’s some commonalities and camaraderie and the ability to bounce ideas off and such, but it’s no replacement for the support, I use that word just for me personally, but there’s no replacement for the support and kind of guidance that I felt when I had my corporate job and just the sheer number of people that you could contact. Run an idea by that of either already gone through this particular experience or what have you. So I’m excited for that for you and look forward to seeing that rollout in the future.

00;33;44;14 – 00;33;56;09

David Crysler

So, David, if people are interested in learning more about the podcasts that you have or any of the service offerings that you have, where’s the best place to find you?

00;33;57;19 – 00;34;22;15

David Shriner-Cahn

The best place is smashing the plateau dot com, smashing the plateau is the hub for everything about what, what I do and what my business does, what we offer. We have literally, many hundreds of podcasts episodes available on pretty much any topic that someone who is running a small business needs, particularly consultants and coaches.

00;34;22;27 – 00;34;39;19

David Shriner-Cahn

And anybody wants to get in touch with me and go to smashing the plateau dot com and just its contact form there. And you can actually even call our office. We have live humans that answer the phone Monday to Friday, nine to five eastern.

00;34;40;03 – 00;34;41;16

David Crysler

Well, that is totally different!

00;34;42;12 – 00;34;45;03

David Shriner-Cahn

Yeah, that is it. That’s an underutilized tool – the telephone!

00;34;45;11 – 00;34;59;17

David Crysler

Yeah, right. I really love that. And I’ll make sure to add that into the show notes as well. David, thank you so much for joining us on the Everyday Business Problems podcast. It’s been a real pleasure. Appreciate your insight and your sharing your story with us.

00;35;00;07 – 00;35;04;03

David Shriner-Cahn

Thank you, David.

00;35;04;21 – 00;35;19;04

David Crysler

Thank you so much for listening today. If we brought you any value, please rate, subscribe, and share our podcast. Also, be sure to connect with us on social media by searching at the Crysler Club. Until next week, I’m your host, Dave Crysler.