‘Being Civilized Ain’t Gonna Do It’

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Sean busy and Jay Golds talk about the trendy job interview strategy of trying to get Beyond canned responses by asking candidates unexpected questions along the lines of if you were a superhero what powers would you have and why or what animal best represents you as a person not surprisingly Jay isn't a big fan of those questions and he offers an alternative strategy that features four questions of his own design Sean does like to ask unexpected questions but specifically those that help them figure out whether a candidate is likely to work well with others plus Sean talks about what it was like attending the recent going out of business sale of a company he had declined to take on as a client three separate times also Sean and Jay respond to a Reddit post where a business owner asks what he can do about a large commercial client who simply refuses to pay A40 ,000 Bill did I just learn a $40,000 lesson the devastated owner asks what now even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges in fact that's the whole point behind the 21 hats Community engaging with other owners to get the kinds of insights only another entrepreneur can offer if you're interested in learning more step one is to sign up for the free trial of the Morning Report which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners so you don't have to go looking for it step two is to get on our slack Channel where you can ask questions get vendor recommendations and tap the wisdom of a very impressive crowd just search the 21 hats Morning Report to subscribe joining me this week on the podcast are regulars Sean busy CEO of Kinesis which is based in Portland Oregon and works with small businesses on marketing culture and strategy and J gos CEO of the gos group whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason home the episode is titled being civilized ain't going to do it welcome Sean and Jay great to have you here I want to talk about job interviews today specifically the kinds of questions you use to better assess a job C I started thinking about this because of an article I read and highlighted in the morning report recently it offered a few suggestions the article said that hiring managers have been having a harder time of late getting past the canned overly prepped answers that some candidates given J interviews first of all I want to ask do you guys by that premise do you think it's gotten harder to avoid the rehearsed response that some candidates give uh I can tell you we're having horrible problems with you call them you set up a time and they blow you off that's a different thing I know I'm just saying that's the problem as far as canned things I wish they were smart enough to do canned things I haven't seen that at all that surprises me maybe in the tech world that's what's going on but not in my world Sean have you seen it I mean I haven't done a lot of hiring in the last year or so but I mean it's always been a problem I I kind of think that that's a way to get a a news headline but it's always been a problem that candidates rehearse their answers even when I was you know in my 20s and I was you know looking to apply for jobs I was you know practicing different answers and told oh you'll get asked the question what's your greatest weakness and what's your greatest strength and so you'd practice that so I don't know that that's necessarily new maybe the maybe the uh you know access to what the potential questions are is higher because of social media well that also it's easier to get advice now for sure you know whether chat GPT or on you know websites the coaching is out there now that I think does Point people in that direction right yeah okay so next whether it's gotten worse or not assuming you do want to try to dig a little bit deeper and get to know a candidate a little better here's one of the questions the article suggests that you ask if you were a superhero what powers would you have and why so first Sean I don't know what the last time was that you were in a job interview but if you got asked that if you can imagine if you can remember what it was like to do that how would you have answered that question yeah I mean I mean what are I I guess you know what are they trying to get at right they're trying to get at um you know creative thinking and you know kind of underlying motivations so you know how would I answer that question you know I I don't know I this is why I don't make a good employee I I just I I think that the idea of asking unexpected questions is a good idea let's just say that um I know I'm not answer answer your question let me answer it I'm not criticizing anyone if that works for him great I want nothing to do with this whole line of questioning what animal would you want to be in the zoo or in the jungle I don't want anything to do with those questions I want to get down to real business stuff and talk to people about real stuff and I just for right or wrong we just don't do that stuff and if it works for people more power to you I have no interest in getting into these what seems to me to be silly questions but like I said maybe it works for people I suspect I personally have been a job candidate in a job interview way more times than either of you but together if somebody asked me that question I think I would have just sputtered I just wouldn't have known where to go with it I saw the article you you were talking about and and actually one of those questions is a question I asked in an interview I think Jay and I are going to part ways on this and I part ways with the article I actually think the problem with some of these questions is it's actually measuring somebody's ability to think quickly uh and on their you know on their feet and there are some jobs where that's relevant the the questions that I like that are unconventional and unprepared are more about things that they may have actually thought about in the past that are unrelated to work and so I like like for example one of the questions was like you win the lottery what would you do with the proceeds a lot of people have thought about what would they do if they came into a lot of money and I actually like that question because I think it tells you a lot about what their motivations are how they think about other people all right I don't hate that one as much as if you were an animal that one I don't mind I don't mind that one the others are terrible yeah they were terrible you know I started reading the article I was like oh I kind of I'm kind of down with this I mean it's a strategy I have used for years with great effect and then I read the questions and I was like these are terrible questions so it's sort of like the the article is sort of half right uh in terms of well I think it's right in the premise that people do want to try to get a little bit deeper and yeah you know you hear the cliche all the time that you should hire for culture for fit and not for skills because you can teach skills but you can't teach someone to be a good colleague but how do you figure out if someone's going to be a good colleague or not I think that's the goal I have a different approach I certainly the skills is worth something but I I want to see their mentality and given that I'm largely in retail I have a question that gets to the heart of that so just tell me when you want me to I have four questions I gu just tell me when go for it Jay all right so wait before Jay answers it sounds like both of us hate at least three out of the four questions in the article yeah uh I like one of them and I and I guess I would add that what is valuable about the article is the idea of getting to the values that the person has at their heart of s who are they as a human being and there are a lot of ways to do that right you can ask some situational questions that are relevant to your industry I think an HR person would tell you that's a better path because there's less risk of all kinds of lawsuits and stuff but I I think fundamentally there's some problems with those like what animal are you I it's like come on that's just ridiculous versus actually asking them something either relevant to the work or relevant to their life that they can they can they can reflect on right if you're hiring someone to do something involving animal behavior it's probably a very good question sure I'll give them the benefit maybe there's people maybe it works for Amazon I'm not critic maybe it works for Amazon I don't know all I know is I'd be embarrassed nobody has more turnover than Amazon so maybe it doesn't work for Amazon I I just don't I'd be embarrassed to ask somebody that Sean can you tell us the question that you like about what would you do if you came into a lot of money can you give us some examples of the kinds of responses you've gotten to that yeah so the the responses I've gotten that I really like are the very first thing the person thinks about is somebody else you know so oh you know first thing I would do I would pay off my parents mortgage um first thing I would do is you know I would set up an endowment for this or I would make a big donation to my college because it was it was transformational in my life they gave me a huge scholarship I'm looking for do they think of others first you know and and that's a leading indicator to me in terms of are they team-based mindset or are they individualistic you know the answers I get that you know cause me to pause are ones that are like oh you know I take a big vacation and I buy a big house for myself and those are all fine you know it's not that that's wrong um you know a lot of people have worked really hard you know and they might like a big vacation but if they don't ever turn the conversation towards others that can be a red flag for me in that kind of a conversation um so really I'm looking for like their values are they team oriented are they selfless do they think of the long term right that's another thing I've had people say oh well you know I would put it in this this investment vehicle because then the interest on it I could live off of and then I could also pay for my parents house and my kids educa you know so like they're and I wouldn't have to work for you that's all right you know like I I mean I'm not looking for somebody who says they don't ever want to work again I'm just looking for somebody who cares about others than themselves eles and the other questions I ask tend to be oriented towards that so you know I'll often ask if they've played a sport in their life and then you know ideally they they're familiar with a team sport or if they haven't played a sport they follow a sport and then I'll ask them what their favorite position is and why they like that position I think the difference between my Approach and the article is that I'm trying to get to things they're familiar with so I'm not putting them on the spot for some crazy thing that they have to like come up with a thoughtful answer but then I'm asking them something they're not expecting in a job interview so that they don't have the can answer so I think that's the difference in my framework versus what the article is proposing so have you hired a bunch of point guards you know uh I very rarely have got somebody who comes in with basketball um I've gotten a lot of folks who know soccer I I usually hire nerds the sports they're familiar often they aren't that familiar with sports so that could be and I'm hiring many people of art degrees so I just don't think yeah they don't know Sports either well some I just don't yeah I so what are your questions Jay thank you for asking you gotta recognize when you're hiring a third of the people out there approximately are really bad employees which is why they're looking for a job this is like not just a third of people are bad employees no a third of people looking for jobs are bad employees like how many alcoholics are there in a bar far more than they would be walking down the street so you have to recognize we need to avoid the bad employees who got fired so I I I want to know are they still working and I tell them you're going to get extra credit for being brutally honest I believe that people leave jobs for a reason and i' like to understand why you're leaving this job so tell me and I know people probably told you don't say anything bad about your last job that makes no sense you're looking for a job so I'm presuming there's something that you don't love about your existing job and I frequently get an honest answer out of them here was one was years ago graphic designer she goes it's too corporate I said what does that mean well you have to have a key to get into the bathroom really you're looking for a job because you I mean it made no sense and she didn't tell me the truth this is the key I want someone that will speak the truth to me because I'm not good at reading minds and I want to hire an employee who's going to walk into my office and just lay it on me and tell me the truth and my guess was she was working for a big real estate firm she did graphic design she had seven different people giving her stuff to do and I'm sure they were all saying oh no this is more important forget about and I wish I would have respected if she said frankly I've got seven bosses and it's making me nuts great that's what she wouldn't break wouldn't wouldn't break told me it was because it's two corporate so I didn't hire her because I don't want to have to figure out whether someone's upset about something I want them to say what's on their mind and then I want to say to them did you talk to someone about this at work and if they say ah they never listen to anybody I want to hear someone say actually I did I talked to three different people and frankly it's not changing and it's not going to change I want to hear an honest answer that gets them a lot of points on the board the next one being in retail tell me about a difficult customer situation you had yeah that's a great question the right person is either going to be proud as could be that they fixed it and they turned it around and they're hero or the pain comes back and they Grimace and they go H and they're still looking their wounds from it and I want to hear an honesty how they handle it now let me tell you the answer we just got like a couple of months ago from someone tell us about um you know if you have any problem with customers oh you know sometimes when we have nothing to do we go on Yelp we laugh at what people put on there great when can you start I mean how dumb is that to go tell a prospective employer this person was working in a company people were really upset with them and they thought it was funny three is obviously figuring out skills you know blah blah blah but here's the one that people are going to be surprised by I believe I know that the common notion out there now is people don't stay at jobs blah blah blah okay I I I fully recognize that people probably hang around at their job less than they used to but I just want to give you some statistics I looked up I got about 120 people working here 52 of them have been here more than 10 years 44 have been here 20 years and eight of them have been here 30 years so I'm in a little bit of a complicated business it's much better for me if I hire someone and they hang around for 10 or 20 years so I try to to sus out of them like tell me why you're here what did you what what do you find appealing about this job I'm looking for people that are enthusiastic about what they do and that gave me a reason why they're applying for the job you certainly can't guarantee someone's going to be here a long time but why not try is my only why not try so one of my goals is to try to figure out could this piece person be here a long time are these POS positions you're hiring for Jay generally entry level and you're growing them up or is it a mix of like hey we could be hiring a CFO and we'll ask him or her the same question most of my managers were homegrown I had the 22-year-old kid who's Now 49 running the whole place so most of them are homegrown I did hire um someone to be the controller CFO and it was a disaster and I didn't get involved with the interview and I all on me I should have been involved I should have asked better questions and I'm paying the price for it do you feel like your approach and question Set uh if you had delivered it would have worked on that senior position not necessarily no it's much trickier you know you can't ask anybody now what they made at their last job that is really a handicap because there's controllers making a 100 Grand a year and there's controllers making 200 Grand a year and like if you could find out what they made at least to see what was someone else thought they were it would be helpful and like I think I was paying her way more than she made at her last job and when I said to her near the end of the uh time she was here I said did you have any idea what you're getting into she goes no way shape or form she said and when I fired her she said I understand you're right great but I screwed that one up big time Sean do you feel that not being able to ask about salary history is as big a hindrance as Jay does no I don't think it's handicapped me I think there are plenty of ways you can get to a a person's success in Prior jobs one of which which you've talked about on several shows which is the radical importance of calling references yeah and and I would even say a not like uh unknown references is a really good strategy for me so if you're blessed like I am and you have a big Network in a in a you know Regional Community almost anybody that's in this community I can connect to them somehow um I can go on to LinkedIn and I can find somebody who knows this person and it's amazing what you can learn by calling somebody and say hey I see you're connected to so and so candidate has no idea you're looking into them with this within this Channel and you just leave it open-ended hey what do you think about them you know what would make them successful in this job what do you think uh are their challenges what am I going to have to coach them to do and I've had it go both ways you know I've had those reference checks you know go really well where the you know the person said my gosh you got to hire this person right now and then I've also had it go where holy cow you need to stay away from them like radioactive nuclear material right and the misconception out there is when I ask people oh do you check no I don't bother they just you their friends I have had people tell me stuff you think to yourself do you not have a lawyer have you ever heard of an employee lawsuit against I mean they say stuff that you're taking a back and my belief is people don't want to lie for people they just don't the issue of calling up people who have not been listed as uh a reference I think is kind of interesting you are running the risk that you're spreading the word that this person is out looking for a job that's puts the job candidate at some risk are you concerned about that I think you got to treat it very carefully so I'm not just calling anybody willy-nilly I'm also making sure that that conversation wouldn't come back to them in some way and harm them in some way but how can you do that to Lauren's Point how can you guarantee they're not going to call up their last boss and go hey you hear Bob's looking for a job how do you know they're not going to do that I mean there's just there's a lot of ways I can handle it you know it just depends on the situation you know um if the person for example isn't employed then that's easy you know you can just have that conversation um you can ask the person the candidate you be like oh hey I see you and I both know Marcela would you mind if I reached out to her and and just talk to her about you know kind of your your relationship with each other that solves it it solves it you know so you have to treat it like a very spec all of these things do not work as a oh this is a scalable thing you can you know deploy you know within an Enterprise and just do over and over and over again right you're already seen like everything is very very custom you know that is our advantage as small business owners right we can do things at Large corporations cannot do whether because they're afraid legally or because once you start deploying them at scale people screw them up how about the ones you ever get the notices you get an email or a thing in the mail here fill this out about the employee why bother oh gosh oh yeah no they call they have reference checking companies they hire and they ask nothing and you say to yourself seriously is there anything they were why would you fill out a form and put it in print like it's just it's silly and it's an easy way out for people to do reference checking but I got to believe it's extremely uneffective you know I want to Circle back to what I heard when Jay was talking about the questions he asked you know Jay's questions are quite a bit different than mine if I'm reading between the lines What I Hear Jay you're looking for is somebody who is uh upfront and honest and candid right yes and willing willing to have a truthful even hard conversation if if it need be and that makes sense you know I've known you a while now and it's like you are a straight shooter right you're never not going to say what you believe right you're not going to couch it in you know soft terms and try to protect my feelings and I I suspect you've tried to build that as a culture in your company right is that fair yeah I just I think the phrase oh I have an open door policy is laughable people aren't going to come up to you most of the time I I totally respect and appreciate if someone says you know Jay that thing you sent out last week I got to tell you I totally appreciate someone giving me honest feedback whether it's me or somebody else so yes that's absolutely important part of the program and so like if you look at the kind of questions I'm asking Lauren right what are they about they're about like teamwork you know we haven't gotten into great depth but I'm looking for things like teamwork deep introspection you know um creative thinking I'm not pushing hard on the stuff Jay really cares about and I I guess I say this to say that every business has the things that really matter to the organization and getting to the questions that drive towards those things you know let's call them values that is the trick and that that's why you can't just apply the you know that article here's four questions that you could apply to your hiring process maybe you know maybe but you got to really figure out how do the questions relate to the values and the culture you're trying to build my guess is Jay's culture is far more Chicago than Sean's culture Which is far more Oregon you know and that's fine you know like we're growing different cultures that you know Jay's got a tremendous tenure track record with his employees and so do I well you're also hiring different kinds of employees too yes we are H we are hiring different time but see that that just further makes my case like you have to build your own system in a way that makes sense for your company and part of that is having Clarity on your values and what kind of culture you're trying to build so that you ask the right questions and that's why these the articles that are like one size fits all here's 10 things you can do it kind of makes me chuckle because it's sort of like saying well if you want a really well-tailored suit you know just start sewing you know it's just like well okay well you know in my case the key is I'm not going to change someone's mentality like I want someone who enjoys and want to take good care of customers and gets personal satisfaction out it that's what I need either they get it or they I can't train him into that and the framing industry part of the reason I grew so fast was that I totally respect and appreciate customers and a lot of the people that used to be in the framing industry came from the art side and when you think about it being an artist is not being customer-driven you do your arts and if someone doesn't like it they don't like it versus what does the customer want so I managed to bring the two things together to be both art driven in respect art but also respect the customers and that sounds simple but I got to tell you that's not going to help you when it comes to hiring a CFO no absolutely and I I didn't get involved enough and yeah I majorly screwed that up I want to get to a couple other topics before we finish today Sean I gather you recently uh attended a going out of business sale that had something of an impact on you can you tell us about that yeah a friend of mine who's an engineer forwarded me uh an for machine parts and uh I I have a hobby making things so I have a I have a small machine shop in my in my studio and and do woodworking as well and uh and it was like whoa that's just down the street from us and then I realized oh wow this is a company that you know had interviewed us to hire us I think three times maybe just twice but it I think it was three times the business had been around over 60 years you know it had been familyowned and founded and then like just overnight poof they were they were gone and it was it was it was a weird experience you know the street they were on was named after the company you know going into the facility they had a big banner on the wall that said you know chosen by The Oregonian as the best place to work in 2022 that was weird to see I just thought about you know there probably 7500 people had been working there and it just kind of overnight shut down success takes years failure takes 90 days yeah yeah you could do enough bad stuff in 90 days to pretty much put yourself out of business do you know what happened Sean I don't know for sure you know I I can surmise though and and you know we we actually turned them down as a client uh all three times why you know um there were a couple factors um one was Vibe uh when I met with the CEO I really didn't trust him my gut was just telling me that this person is just not somebody that's trustworthy was he the son of the founder he was not he was a quote unquote professional CEO who had been brought in from the outside you know honestly and this relates to hiring too my gut has served me really well over the years whenever I get a Vibe about somebody as you know an employee that we're going to hire both ways good or bad I really need to listen to that and it usually is right the things he was he was saying they were things like oh yeah we've we've got this we've got this figured out we just need to do a little bit of marketing to you know really make it work and and I looked around and I was like wow the equipment is all old the lighting in here is dingy and dark people are working in a crappy environment the Machinery that they were using uh was a commodity meaning that anybody could buy that machine and start up a shop and compete with them um and then he you know kind of fundamentally just kind of diminished the the size of the challenge you know I looked I'm like man you've got a business CH a business model challenge you have a marketing challenge you don't know how to get new customers and the kind of amount of investment he wanted to make was just almost inconsequential um so he did he truly didn't value the size of the problem I think trying to hire someone to take over a family business is very very challenging that I mean there's a reason why most businesses don't get to the second generation there it is yeah I I think it's it's really telling you know there's a lot of lessons here one is what Jay talks about which is the challenge of legacy and and transitioning from an owner founder to somebody else you know and I've seen that fail so many times Lauren you know it's it's just a really hard move to make i' I've seen it work but I've I also see seen it fail probably more than I've seen it work and then the other piece too about like business model change you know they had been they were first to Market Market when they had founded the business right they were doing work that was really Innovative and new 60 years ago and what they were doing when I looked at them was like not Innovative and new and like easy to be copied by lots of other people including the entire country of China so yeah those are all like good lessons like just because you were Innovative once doesn't mean you're Innovative forever they had a ton of marketing debt they just they had not spent any money on marketing like ever and and so what do you mean by marketing debt marketing debt is a term I use when I come into a company let's say let's say this is a $10 million company right and their marketing budget historically has been zero like literally zero because they've essentially just been order takers you know they've had Legacy customers they've had they have the 800 pound gorilla problem meaning they have a big client my guess is they had a big client that sent them a lot of work for many many years my guess is that it was probably Boeing because they are in the Machining business so uh we we've seen what's happened to Boeing over the last you know five years or so it's a total disaster so my guess is that when Boeing kind of fell apart they didn't have another customer that they could fall back on in any meaningful way and then they didn't have any marketing right so they had debt from doing marketing for years and years and years and years and years and so then when they finally realize oh we better do some marketing they're only willing to spend a tiny little fraction of what's necessary versus a company that's been doing marketing their whole existence right that that there's just so much debt there it's like deferred maintenance on a house you know if you don't paint your house you know every five or 10 years now you got to replace all the siding you know and and oh also the boards underneath are rotten so a company with Big Marketing debt often underestimates how much cost there is to catch up listen it it gets back to 21 hats you can't ignore any of the hats and certainly not the marketing hat that you need to be somewhat of a marketer even in a small degree but to your point to just ignore it because you got one big customer you can't make it up in a year so no no and then then they then I think they had Innovation debt too right so they hadn't bought new equipment they hadn't figured out how to do things that the market needed that was new you know so you've got marketing debt you've got Innovation debt you got business model problems and I walk in the door and he's like yeah I've got you know maybe $100,000 to to do all this stuff and I just look at it and go like I can't take your money in like good conscience because this is not a $100,000 problem this is half a million dollar problem see here's what I find a little interesting do I think if I had nothing to do I could have gone in there and saved that company maybe because I'm an entrepreneur this guy's a CEO it ain't the same thing yeah that's the problem with I always say oh you're going to hire someone who's going to be you do you know what they call those people entrepreneurs they don't need you so the question is what kind of pool of candidates is out there that is going to walk into a situation like that that's going to have the skill set to turn something like that that's a tough that's a tough hire well and it's not just a hire is the structure is problematic because my suspicion is the CEO is compensated based B on iida right or or net operating income so he gets bonuses if the company makes more money so how do you make more money right well you don't buy new machines you know you don't innovate you don't pay for marketing you don't invest in the company so in the short term you make more money as the CEO and the owners are happy because you're throwing off money but without those Investments what happens to your company over time I think that's the difference between an entrepreneur and and sometimes the professional like really good professional CEOs get this and they tell the owners you have to invest here's the problem though think about it you said they were doing 10 million they can't afford to hire the person and pay them what they need to pay that's the problem if this was a $50 million company they could have brought somebody in who's super smart that had a great record and paid them 600 Grand a year or something but you can't pay that kind of money on a $10 million business so that's a problem that's a good point you know I do think there are certain sizes of business where they're kind of in a No Man's Land you know or the Death Valley that we've talked about and then the owners had exited the business some years ago so if you think about what their motivation is right they love this business just throwing off cash to them the owners had exited managing the business or owning the business managing the business all right so they were they were shareholders essentially taking home a check from from what I understand I don't know all the Dynamics but it was clear that the CEO was not a Founder was not part of the family um and by looking around I could see there had not been any Investments made in the company and and here's something really fascinating to me is I bought a couple of tool chests on auction I got them for so cheap it was crazy when I get to pick them up I open the door drawers and they are full of tools tools that had never been used and and I start looking online like there's this thing called a floating tap holder if any nerds are listening to the show uh it was a $1500 tool brand new sitting in this cabinet with no like Inventory management on it right I don't know what I'm going to do with it but every drawer was filled I started looking up these like these like uh it's called a floating Ramer it's a $700 tool I I did the quick math that one cabinet was filled with probably 20 to $30,000 in tooling if it were purchased new and now to be fair the company needs that stuff to run the machines right but what was obvious to me was like operationally like nobody was really kind of minding the store right things were just being ordered they were being put in drawers whatever whatever whatever and so you had top to bottom problems all right I want to hit one more thing before we go this come comes from the small business subreddit uh a situation that I'd like to run by you a small business owner writes I have a larger commercial client that has decided that they aren't going to pay for the services they received even though my invoices were approved by their team and even rated positive for my small business this has been devastating as they owe me $40,000 I've been combating this for months call after call email after email and I'm essentially being told to shove it I attempted to get legal help for this and I was told it's too much for small claims and not worthwhile for a lawyer to pursue and I'd end up with virtually nothing anyway after the case wins to add to the horror I did a deep dive on this company they have a history of non-payment with employees and vendors alike even their Google reviews are filled with angry vendors and employees that work for the restaurants they own and have not been paid and this is going back like six years ug did I just learn a $4,000 lesson what now well Guerilla Warfare he could go set up in front of one of the restaurants with a big sign and you laugh I've had three collection cases where I've actually showed up at the place there was a law firm class action law firm they had someone embezzling from them and they were pissed about they bought a bunch of art for the offices it was on the walls but they sent me a this is back on faxes by the way they sent the fax saying she wasn't authorized to buy this if you'd like to pick up the feel free to okay so I put a little blue suit on I show up I go to the front desk and I say um I'm here about the I knew her name I'm here about the Wilson situation and the two managing Partners came out because they thought I was with the FBI or something so they whisk me into the office and I I said you probably didn't recognize my name I own blah blah blah I sold you this artwork and I said what are you doing and I shamed him to pay me so I there is stuff you can do than just sit back I went into another a restaurant stuck me one time I walked in there a Friday night at 6:00 and said you can either get me a check or do you see that artwork hanging over those people I'm gonna go in there and take it off the wall and feel free to call the police because I don't care I own my own business I could use the publicity gotta check oh wow so you know there is some stuff you can do being civilized ain't GNA do it though that's that's a terrible story and uh I think um I would make them really comfortable because I can tell you all the Civilized people are just throwing in the towel and going on yel I think you show up at the front of the restaurant and uh make a game out of it and see I'm not leaving until I get something Sean have you ever been stiffed on a Big Bill I have been stiff um twice in my career uh once was uh in the in the Great Recession I had a client who went bankrupt and I remember him calling me and I was I was a I was baby business owner the time he like yeah sorry you know we just can't pay it and then I kind of learned sort of how bankruptcy works and and you do kind of get screwed but it is I don't know it was just interesting I probably would have handled that differently today I don't know that you can call that being stiffed I mean you gave credit people do go and trust me I used to have a different view of it like people do go bankrupt I mean it's the nature of the beast but in this case for the person that wrote Into You Lauren doesn't sound like they're going bankrupt they just decided they're just not going to pay him and that's a whole different animal well there is another lesson here the guy did some research after this all happened and found out that there was a reputation there he probably should have done that research before correct and and and I mean especially if this is a new customer that he's not done business before I think there's a good lesson there of like smaller invoices more frequently determining you know figuring out is this a is this a reputable person are they going to pay me that5 invoice at the beginning of the relationship and if they don't then you know past is usually indicator of future do you guys do that kind of research into a new customer or client oh I made an edict years ago that if anybody's to get credit they have to fill out the credit form it's got to be checked and if it's some big company I said then get me to sign it but never again am I going to ship out an order without having assigned and it's never happened since so I haven't had a lot of problems with that I I would say the person needs to decide I just don't like getting taken advantage of I'm telling you what I do I go in front of that restaurant on a Friday night I'd get a card table chair and I'd sit out there and explain to every person coming in what loow life they are and then they're going to say we're going to call the police go ahead call the police looking forward to it like that's that is just it does seem that um the Avenue the traditional Avenues are dead ends you know clearly the lawyer thing is not going to work the small claims court one is interesting because you know wonder if you could take a portion of it to small claims court just to create the part of you know Jay's bad PR strategy right like hey you know what we're going to file three small claims for this these 40 $40,000 in total and then we're going to call the local news media and talk to them about this case and how unjust it is that a big company's taking advantage of it you know so I do think like you either have to decide you're going to be creative and go guilla or you just have to call it a less like for me my non-payment was a lesson and I switched my whole business model and now except yours is very different they legitimately went you don't know the full situation Jay but they did go bankrupt they did but it was a choice right like they kept their really nice house in the nice neighborhood they could have kept the business running and if they had you know weathered through they would have been fine but it was easier for them to go bankrupt like this is a very specific situation where like like whatever I'm just I I just know the situation better than you do because I was involved in it no no I'm not saying you could have done things differently I'm just say saying they didn't fact go bankrupt Thum their nose at you and saying yeah I'm just not gonna pay you true and and you know there there there's a gray zone of when bankruptcy is necessary and then there are those who say you know what I'm going to work really hard I'm going to make this business work and you know I'm going to struggle but I can do it and they they chose not to struggle and that's fine that's their choice but it did it did change my attitude about how I run my business and it was a good lesson because what I I did is uh I absolutely changed how I got paid and I also no longer um paid for people's Mater part of the problem was I had bought a bunch of printed stuff for them and I was left holding the bag on that and so I realized oh I'm just from here on out clients are going to pay vendors directly no more pass through stuff and so that was really good is that the change you referring to or did you also start insisting on being paid up front or something like that that too yeah I we we get paid when we start a relationship not after we've done the work um so that takes a degree of trust from the client of course um but we have a really good reputation now so it's it nobody ever really boxs at that anymore all right my thanks to Sean busy and Jay gz uh great conversation guys thanks for sharing [Music] one thing before you go everything we do at 21 hats is created by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs to help us all learn together so if you get something out of this podcast or out of the morning report please tell a friend tell an enemy tell every business owner you know your word of mouth entrepreneur to entrepreneur will always be the most effective way to build this community for all of us thank you it means a lot this episode was produced by another entrepreneur Jess dubron founder of blank word Productions thanks for listening everyone