The How of Business - How to start, run, grow and exit a small business.

Time value of money for small business owners: why waiting to pay cash can cost you far more than the interest on the right loan. Show Notes Page: https://www.thehowofbusiness.com/625-time-value-of-money/ Paying cash for everything is great personal finance advice, but in business, it can be the very thing that keeps you small. Henry Lopez explains the time value of money and why leverage is a key to entrepreneurship. In this episode of The How of Business, Henry goes one level deeper than episode 566, "Good Debt, Bad Debt," into the why behind smart business borrowing. With a simple example, he shows why putting all cash in, or waiting until you have the cash, can give you the worst return, even after paying interest on a loan. Henry starts with a practical test: something is an asset if it generates income, and we should only borrow to build or buy assets. A profitable small business is an asset. He also shares Harvard professor Howard Stevenson's definition of entrepreneurship: "the pursuit of opportunity beyond resources controlled." By that definition, entrepreneurs go after opportunities bigger than the cash they have. The core idea is simple. A dollar today is worth more than a dollar in the future. Henry walks through a $100,000 piece of equipment that produces $30,000 a year in added profit. Paid in all cash, it returns 30% cash-on-cash. Put 20% down and finance the rest at 9%, and the return on your cash rises to 50%, even after the loan payments, while you keep $80,000 for working capital or the next opportunity. Then there's the cost of waiting. Saving for five years to pay cash means giving up roughly $150,000 in profit to avoid about $19,600 in interest. As Henry puts it, "Borrowing is buying time." The biggest cost isn't interest. It's waiting. Key takeaways: - Your personal finance mindset can hold your business back. - Only borrow to build or buy assets that generate income. - A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. - Measure your cash-on-cash return, not just the interest you pay. - Waiting has a cost: the profit you don't earn while you save. - Never borrow to fix a broken business model. - Know your debt capacity: many lenders look for a debt service coverage ratio of at least 1.25. - Be clear-eyed about the risk, including personal guarantees on SBA loans. Before your next growth decision, ask three questions: Am I building an asset? What does waiting cost me? Do I have the capacity to borrow? This episode is hosted by Henry Lopez. The How of Business podcast focuses on helping you start, run, grow and exit your small business. The How of Business is a top-rated podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Find the best podcast, small business coaching, resources and trusted service partners for small business owners and entrepreneurs at our website https://TheHowOfBusiness.com

The way we speak, from formality and filler words to conversation styles and accents, shapes how customers, employees, and job candidates see us, and linguist Daniel Hieber explains how small business owners can recognize those perceptions and communicate more effectively. Show Notes Page: https://www.thehowofbusiness.com/r428-daniel-hieber-language-perception/ Research linguist Daniel Hieber, founder of Linguistic Discovery, shows small business owners how the way we speak shapes how others see us, and how to use that awareness to lead, sell, and hire more effectively. Every interaction in your business runs on language: a sales call, a customer complaint, a new hire's first day, an email to a client. How formal we are, how we take turns in a conversation, how direct we are, and how we sound all send signals. Most of us read those signals without realizing it. For a small business owner, a misread can strain a customer relationship, create friction on a small team, or cost you a great hire. In this episode of The How of Business, Henry Lopez is joined by Daniel Hieber to look at linguistics, the study of human language, as a small business topic. Henry calls it "a completely different topic than I've ever addressed over 400-plus episodes." Danny got hooked on languages as a kid. He learned Spanish, Latin, and Swahili, studied abroad in Kenya, and found linguistics in a William & Mary course catalog. He knew right away: "That's what I'm doing with the rest of my life." He spent five years with Rosetta Stone's Endangered Language Program, earned his PhD at UC Santa Barbara, and works today with the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana to revitalize their once-dormant language. Danny opens by rejecting the idea that language works differently at work and in social settings. "Business is a social context," he says. All day long we move between formal and informal registers, adjusting to the person, the relationship, and even the room. Problems start when two people read the situation differently. A small business owner may keep things casual to welcome a new hire, while that new hire, nervous on day one, is actually looking for structure. The same thing happens with conversation styles. High-involvement speakers jump in to show they're engaged. High-considerateness speakers wait their turn. Each can read the other as rude or disengaged. Even filler words have a job: they signal you have more to say. Henry shares how his direct South Florida style came across as brusque to customers in Texas, and how he learned to "speak toward" the point. Accents raise the biggest blind spots. Danny cites studies in which people were turned away based only on how they sounded, often by people who didn't realize they were doing it. He reminds us that everybody speaks with an accent, and that an accent says little about education or ability. The conversation closes on writing, which Danny treats differently from speech. Standard written conventions matter for credibility, and they can be taught. As Danny puts it: "Your attitudes about the way people speak are never really attitudes about language. They're always attitudes about people." This episode is hosted by Henry Lopez. The How of Business podcast focuses on helping you start, run, grow and exit your small business. The How of Business is a top-rated podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Find the best podcast, small business coaching, resources and trusted service partners for small business owners and entrepreneurs at our website https://TheHowOfBusiness.com

Getting started with Claude Code and agentic AI doesn't require a technical background, as Henry Lopez and applied AI specialist Colin Rhoades explain the shift from AI chatbots to AI agents that complete tasks for your small business. Show Notes Page: https://www.thehowofbusiness.com/622-claude-code-agentic-ai/ You don't need a technical background, or to have ever written a line of code, to get started with agentic AI. Henry Lopez is joined again by his son-in-law Colin Rhoades, a corporate AI and data analytics specialist, for a primer on the shift from AI chatbots to AI agents that can actually get work done for your small business. Most business owners have tried ChatGPT, Claude Chat, or Gemini by now, and those tools are genuinely useful. But there's a newer, less familiar layer: Agentic AI, tools that don't just answer a question but go do the work to implement it. Understanding the difference, and knowing how to take the first step, matters right now, because the businesses that start experimenting are the ones that will get the leverage first. Colin's analogy captures the shift well: chatbot AI is like having a very smart consultant or research assistant at your fingertips, while agentic AI is more like giving that consultant a desk, access to your tools, and an assignment to go do. An AI chat gives you answers. Agentic AI gets things done. The clearest example in the episode is Henry's daughter Makena's business, Final Curtain Finishing, a needlepoint finishing service with a Shopify ecommerce site. Native Shopify isn't built for configured products, so the site needed custom HTML code. Makena has no coding background, but using ChatGPT and then Claude Code, she generated that code herself with plain English instructions. This was work that otherwise would have cost thousands of dollars in outside development. Now that Claude Code is connected directly to her Shopify account through a connector, it can read the site's configuration and make changes on its own based on her instructions. That connection is the real unlock: Agentic AI plugged into or connected to your systems (a CRM, email, a Shopify store, QuickBooks) can do its own lookups and extracts instead of you exporting reports and pasting screenshots into a chat window. Colin saw this firsthand the first week he connected Claude Code to his company's CRM: the manual process of finding a report, exporting it, and cleaning the data disappeared, and he could go straight to deciding what the data meant. But getting started doesn't mean diving in blind. Henry and Colin both stress starting with controlled access and a human in the loop, the same way you'd onboard a new employee, and expanding autonomy only as trust builds. As Colin put it, "the goal isn't AI can do everything, it's having an AI that you can trust to do one defined task well." And getting started is simpler than it sounds: pick one repetitive task you already understand, document it (even just by speaking it into Claude), and teach the AI that one process first. This episode is hosted by Henry Lopez. The How of Business podcast focuses on helping you start, run, grow and exit your small business. The How of Business is a top-rated podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Find the best podcast, small business coaching, resources and trusted service partners for small business owners and entrepreneurs at our website https://TheHowOfBusiness.com

How to Build Trust Fast. Trust runs every small business relationship. One simple formula, the trust equation, shows small business owners how to earn it faster without faking it. Show Notes Page: https://www.thehowofbusiness.com/620-the-trust-factor/ On this short episode Henry Lopez shares his thoughts and experiences related to why trust matters so much in business relationships, and one variable or technique that can have significant positive impact on how quickly people trust you. People don't buy from, partner with, or make deals with people they don't trust. That's often true even when you have the better product or the better price. Most small businesses don't have a big brand name doing the work for them. The owner or a key employee is the face of the business, and word of mouth and referrals, the lifeblood of new opportunities, depend on trust. The challenge is that trust takes time to build. You often get only one sales call, one first meeting, or one negotiation to start. In this episode of The How of Business, Henry Lopez explains the trust equation from The Trusted Advisor by David Maister, Charles Green, and Robert Galford. Henry taught this book throughout his sales training and enablement career. He also covers the one variable in the equation that can speed up trust more than any other. The formula is simple. Trustworthiness equals credibility plus reliability plus intimacy, divided by self-orientation. Credibility asks, "Can I believe what you say?" Reliability asks, "Can I count on you to do what you say?" Intimacy asks, "Do I feel safe sharing my real problem, budget, and concerns with you?" Self-orientation asks, "Whose interests are you really focused on?" This episode is hosted by Henry Lopez. The How of Business podcast focuses on helping you start, run, grow and exit your small business. The How of Business is a top-rated podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Find the best podcast, small business coaching, resources and trusted service partners for small business owners and entrepreneurs at our website https://TheHowOfBusiness.com

Increase Close Rates with consistent, professional in-home sales presentations for home improvement and home services businesses, and Dean Curtis of Ingage shares the principles and tools that help small operators win more deals at the kitchen table. Show Notes Page: https://www.thehowofbusiness.com/619-dean-curtis-presentarions-close-deals/ SPECIAL OFFER: 10% OFF the Ingage Pro when you use the code "HOWOFBUSINESS". For home services businesses, the sale is often won or lost at the customer's kitchen table and Dean Curtis, CEO of Ingage, joins the show to explain how a more consistent, professional in-home presentation can dramatically improve close rates, with client case studies to back it up. If you sell at the customer's home (roofing, windows, doors, siding, gutters, baths, etc.) then you're trying to convince a homeowner that you're the right person to solve their problem, and that process is highly educational. Too often the materials salespeople bring to present are off-brand, out of order, and different for every salesperson. That inconsistency costs deals. When the content is consistent, on-brand, and matched to a proven sales process, close rates go up. In this episode of The How of Business, Henry Lopez is joined by Dean Curtis to explore why consistency, trust, and preparation drive home services sales and how the right content levels the playing field so even a one-person shop can look and perform like a 100-person company. The discussion opens on consistency. In the replacement remodeling market, the same products are sold over and over, the objections are common, and the more consistent a rep's approach, the higher they close. But consistent doesn't mean rigid. Dean uses a bingo-board analogy to explain why the best sales reps move dynamically to answer whatever the customer raises. As he puts it, borrowing from Mike Tyson: "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." From there the conversation turns to trust, which Dean breaks into three drivers: brand (a homeowner judges you within a fraction of a second), personalization (put the customer's own house and name on the first screen), and education (be the guide who makes the homeowner the hero). "No one cares what you can sell, what you can install if they don't trust you," Dean explains. Dean then shares what separates the teams that win: they train, they practice, and they coach. They don't hand sales teams content and wish them luck. Instead, they build a feedback loop, using analytics to see what's working and coaching reps without it feeling like Big Brother. He also cautions that content is a tool inside the conversation, not a replacement for it. The episode closes with two grounding reminders for any small business owner: do the same thing every time so you can actually learn what works, and remember that technology is never a silver bullet — start with the problem, not the shiny object. Or as Dean sums up trust: little deposits in the trust bank go a long way. This episode is hosted by Henry Lopez. The How of Business podcast focuses on helping you start, run, grow and exit your small business. The How of Business is a top-rated podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Find the best podcast, small business coaching, resources and trusted service partners for small business owners and entrepreneurs at our website https://TheHowOfBusiness.com

Deciding between remote, hybrid, and in-office work is one of the toughest calls small business owners face today, and HR expert Claudia St. John shares how to choose the model that fits your team while staying legally compliant. Show Notes Page: https://www.thehowofbusiness.com/617-claudia-stjohn-remote-workers/ Small business owners are still wrestling with one of the most consequential management decisions of the modern workplace, and HR expert Claudia St. John, founder and CEO of The Workplace Advisors, returns to help them get it right. Remote, hybrid, in-office? Years after the pandemic forced the question, there is still no single right answer, and the wrong choice quietly costs businesses in productivity, culture, retention, and even legal exposure. What works for a large tech company may be exactly wrong for your small business, and copying someone else's policy is not a strategy. In this episode of The How of Business, Henry Lopez is joined by Claudia St. John to explore how small business owners should think through the remote-versus-hybrid-versus-office decision and how to make whichever model they choose actually work. Claudia is a keynote speaker, best-selling author, and the founder and CEO of The Workplace Advisors, an HR consulting, recruiting, and training firm that specializes in helping small businesses. As one of Henry's trusted service partners, she is who he refers his own clients to for HR support and compliance, which makes her a credible guide through a decision most owners are still making by gut feel. The conversation opens with the current state of work: a "frozen labor market" where economic uncertainty has businesses reluctant to hire but unwilling to lay off, sitting on top of a longer-term demographic squeeze as baby boomers exit and fewer younger workers replace them. Against that backdrop, Claudia unpacks what the data actually say about remote work including the finding that full-time remote employees are often more productive but noticeably less happy and more isolated. She and Henry dig into the human cost of going fully remote: the loss of collaboration, the subtle body-language signals a manager can't read over video, and how distance can quietly turn departments adversarial. "When you're not encountering each other regularly, you lose empathy toward what somebody else is experiencing," Claudia notes. A surprising theme emerges: the younger workers everyone assumes want to stay home actually crave connection and flexibility, not isolation. From there the discussion turns practical: why regular cadence meetings matter even when there's "nothing to talk about," why accountability is really a problem of clear expectations rather than physical presence, and the legal and compliance traps of employing people across multiple states. Claudia's throughline for owners still stuck on the question is simple — start by asking why, and listen from the bottom up." This episode is hosted by Henry Lopez. The How of Business podcast focuses on helping you start, run, grow and exit your small business. The How of Business is a top-rated podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Find the best podcast, small business coaching, resources and trusted service partners for small business owners and entrepreneurs at our website https://TheHowOfBusiness.com

Technology expert explains how small business owners can leverage AI as a force multiplier while protecting their data, systems, and intellectual property from emerging cybersecurity risks. Show Notes Page: https://www.thehowofbusiness.com/615-mordy-hackel-ai-cybersecurity / Artificial intelligence is creating enormous opportunities for small businesses—but it is also introducing new cybersecurity, data, and operational risks. In this episode of The How of Business, Henry Lopez is joined by technology entrepreneur and KJ Technology founder Mordy Hackel to explore how small business owners can embrace AI, use technology as a force multiplier, and protect their businesses as the technology landscape continues to change. Mordy shares his entrepreneurial journey from studying economics and working in technology for organizations including the NBA, Sony Music, and Citibank to building KJ Technology, a Manhattan-based managed IT services firm he has been growing since 1998. Henry Lopez and Mordy Hackel discuss why small businesses should not assume they are too small to be targets for cybercrime. AI is making phishing emails, voice impersonation, social engineering, and other attacks increasingly sophisticated. Small organizations may be particularly vulnerable when they lack established procedures for authorizing payments, sharing sensitive information, or granting access to systems. They also explore another increasingly important issue: employees using AI tools independently. When employees use personal ChatGPT, Claude, or other AI accounts for company work, businesses may expose confidential information or lose valuable intellectual property and institutional knowledge when those employees leave. But the message of this episode is not to be afraid of AI. Mordy believes the opportunities significantly outweigh the risks. The challenge is learning how to use the right technology for the right problem. AI can help business owners think creatively, analyze problems, overcome writer's block, develop workflows, prototype applications, and identify opportunities to improve how their businesses operate. This episode is hosted by Henry Lopez. The How of Business podcast focuses on helping you start, run, grow and exit your small business. The How of Business is a top-rated podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Find the best podcast, small business coaching, resources and trusted service partners for small business owners and entrepreneurs at our website https://TheHowOfBusiness.com