Beyond Trust Falls: An Event Planner Plans an Offsite

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Shan busy Jay goz and Jennifer Karen talk about what it takes to plan and execute an employee Retreat especially in our postco more remote environment do you go offsite do you take everybody do you delegate the planning do you try to measure the ROI Jennifer tells us about the interesting responses she got when she encouraged her employees at her retreat to ask her anything Sean explains why he let his leadership team do all the planning and didn't set a budget Jay meanwhile offers a slightly different perspective my company Retreat he tells us is I cut back on my advertising that's my retreat plus how well does the eth hold up as a playbook for business owners is it still relevant or was it written for a type of business that is far less prevalent today and Jay tells us what he thinks of Wayfair opening a massive brick and mortar furniture store right down the expressway from his furniture store even in Good Times owning or 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 idea 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 tapping the wisdom of this very impressive crowd step one is to sign up for 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 just Google 21 hats Morning Report to subscribe joining me this week on the podcast are regulars sha busy CEO of Kinesis which is based in Portland Oregon and works with small businesses on marketing culture and strategy Jay gos a CEO of the gos group whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason home and Jennifer Karen who is CEO of SB Expos and events and events management business based near Baltimore the episode is titled Beyond trust Falls an event planner plans and [Music] offsite before we get started I want to play part of an interview I did with Steve Baker who is a vice president with our sponsor the great game of business I talked to Steve about why he thinks the term open book management is often misunderstood listeners to this podcast are uh well aware of the great game of business and if they know anything about it they know that you guys encourage companies to practice uh what is known as open book management can you just give us a a real quick primer on uh how you guys view that what what open book management is yeah absolutely in fact I'm glad you brought it up because uh it's a huge misnomer for us open book management that's like what we're known for we're the open book people and Jack Stack Inc magazine in 2009 called him the father of open book management I'm just going to put it out there if Jack were on the uh podcast with us now he would say I don't really like that term that much because see what happens Lauren is people uh hear it and they assume if they open their financials someone's going to magically care you know I like they're going to somehow be interested or even understand it and so let's go back in history a little bit I mentioned before that Jack has used this analogy of a game for 40 years in reality he didn't even uh name it great game of business um in the beginning it was just this analogy of a game and those principles that I laid out no and teach the rules follow the action and keep score and provide a stake in the outcome all encircling a team goal well as they got more and more coverage at RC through the 80s and into the 90s when the book finally came out uh I believe it was Lucian rhods at Inc magazine that helped to coin that term John case uh another Inc writer at the time who wrote uh open book management the coming Revolution a lot of that was about SRC he actually coined the term open book management uh and then Bo Burlingham from Inc uh co-wrote the original book with Jack and is still a very dear friend and uh and close uh partner of the game what I'm trying to say is that it you know I love all that collaboration but through the years when you simplify something down and it gets hung with a a marketing moniker you know sometimes it doesn't describe it the best way possible I was just on the plane back from Anchorage last night you know and somebody next to me what do you do and I was so tempted to say well I'm the open book management guy but instead I decided to to kind of peel it back just a little bit and say well what's what's keeping you up at night and this particular person went on to tell me about you know ah everybody wants to work from home they want a limited vacation you know boning kind of the nextg workers and I said what would happen if you could align everyone to a common goal and get them talking about things in a different way and actually believe that they could move the number you worry about most and for him it was talent and cash I'm just going to be honest and he was just absolutely blown away that someone could do I'm afraid if I would have started with open book management that he would have shut down put on his Bose noise cancelling earphones and left me alone but the key is I stopped for a second and listened and said what is your biggest problem rather than leading with we want you to open your financials and go open kimono with all of your people that isn't the point it's let's teach them some of the things you know and over time we'll give them more and more not only exposure and education it's not just about transparency because that's worthless without education right but also more responsibility and accountability hey if this is your number tell me how you can actually move it and then we'll give you a piece of the action we'll give you some skin in the game so you're saying you you do open the books that's true it's just that there's a lot more to it than that yeah I think that it's the the simplification of it to open book management that really rallies people who know us but repels people who don't you can read a text version of my entire interview with Steve at 21h hats.com and now on to Today's Show welcome Shan Jay and Jennifer it's great to have you here as it happens coincidentally I think uh we haven't heard from either Shawn or Jennifer in a little while in part because you both had employee Retreats recently which is something I've kind of been curious about anyway obviously there was a period after the pandemic where very few of any companies were doing Retreats and I'm sort of wondering to what extent they're back and whether they've changed whether the goals and you know the way they're used has changed um maybe Jennifer could you start and tell us what you guys did sure absolutely it was extraordinary we're a fully remote company and because of that we're on a lot of Zoom calls and those are fantastic and efficient but it's hard to develop camaraderie it's hard to do some training it's hard to have just those if when you're sitting in a room that osmosis and that feeling of giving in take and brainstorming we often go on show sites uh for our clients for conventions and so some of that camaraderie depending on the team you're working at is developed there but we decided um last year that we were going to put into our budget a full staff Retreat and it was tremendous we did four days the first day was what we call in our line of work right we're convention planners the General Session everybody was in one room we had some invited speakers we had a facilitator and a theme on that General Session day then the next day was what we called Department day so each of the Departments got together and had a series of you know goals for that meeting the third day was int Department day so that the different departments could meet with each other for like two hours and talk about handoffs any challenges that they're facing or just learn about the other departments um and then they all went home that night the next day was our senior management team uh we had a full day of Management training as well as planning for the future sprinkled throughout were team building exercises lots of intend engagement a lot of prizes throughout I think a couple of the big things we did that was fun for engagement the first one was we went to a conference center which is very different than a hotel and a conference center why that's unique and perfect for staff Retreat is it combined the hotel rooms the meeting rooms and food and beverage because there's a cafeteria in the room all in one price in one location so all of my employees were captive uh they didn't go out to a different restaurant but it was so easy from a meeting planning and so easy for all of them there that's what they do all day nobody had to think you got up you had breakfast you went to the event you could have lunch in the cafeteria that fit your day it was really perfect but we did two things one was a culinary challenge we divided into teams of four and they had fruits and vegetables they had to create uh some sort of vehicle that would go down the slide and the fastest team won prizes so that was a big hit just and we put people that never work with each other so they had to do some team building we gave out prizes for that it was just a lot of fun the second thing we did was um red yellow and green Post-its and so they were given a notebook and a stack of red yellow and green poits and throughout the couple days they had to write down if they had an aha moment of something they should stop doing that was written on the red Post-it something that they had to think and consider that one on the yellow posted something they should start doing they had not yet done on the green Post-it and on the last day in the last hour everybody had to pick the top one and we put them on uh large those giant large poster boards everybody put one red the next poster board had the yellows and the greens we took pictures we're going to hold everybody accountable for next year to see how they did for next year's Retreat and then the final was the blue potit they all got blue Post-its we had Swag Bags right they got Swag Bags tons of company swag but the blue Post-it was we didn't ask me anything so that's what they could do throughout the three days they could ask write down anonymously on the blue Post-it put it in a jar at the back of the room and then I answered all of the questions um that were Anonymous from stuff it was really eye opening their questions and I think they got a lot out of it so that's Austin and nutshell we did a survey beforehand to ask what their top uh needs were and we incorporated in the programming and then we've done a post Retreat survey to see how we did and everyone said it far far exceeded their expectations and they were incredibly happy we did it so that was a long answer Lauren but I hope that that helped explain what we did absolutely that's a lot uh I have some questions I'm sure uh Sean and Jay uh do too couple things first you told us about it uh this before um you held it and you told us where the conference center was but remind me where is it it was the National Conference Center in leeburg Virginia they did an amazing amazing job it's right by Dallas airport and you said this was full staff you invited everybody yeah 31 staff members came wow can you give us an idea what that cost wait let me guess let me guess 40 grand 50 okay yep you were right on 50,000 uh that included we had two Consultants come in um a lot of the prizes okay I didn't include consults okay yeah the Consultants of prizes we gave away um prizes we did a poll at the end for like best engagement best you know we did we gave probably $2,000 in prizes throughout the four days and I'm curious about the uh the blue poit questions that you got of what kind of nature were they you know they tough questions were they silly questions what what did you get there was a combination some of them I expected uh there were a lot about when is the 401K plan coming in effect and so I signed off it just takes a while to set up on the back end so we've set it up at the end of August to have the planning conversation so there are a lot about that there were simple ones about dress code they talked about dress code um there were some really good ones is that dress code when you guys are on site cuz you're a remote company that's right well and even when we're remote I have a requirement that when you're on Zoom calls with a client you can't wear shirts that have logos or sayings on it they have to be empty right I don't want any anything from the waist up that's visible on Zoom I have a dress code for that that makes sense yep and then onsite one of the questions that was really interesting they asked what my succession plan was wow um I thought that was really interesting yeah right was that from your number two no no but I think it had to do with they were um some of them are fearful I'm going to sell the company and they are all I got great feedback they are inspired by my vision so that was fantastic feedback but then they're fearful they don't want to they don't want to put in a lot of effort if they think I'm going to sell it next year so it was less succession and more I think the question went towards am I selling it and I said no I'm not selling is it possible that came from your husband it could be yeah it could be yeah that's a great point I'm trying to think of what what what were some of the but those are the ones that stand out to me that I thought were were insightful and interesting and you know some questions very few about the future of the industry but one that stood out was what do you think is happening with hybrid events and that one we had a good conversation about because I still think I feel very strongly that the word hybrid it it's still happening it's just changing what what the new normal is and hybrid means a lot of different things a lot of different of our clients but it's still happening so we talked a little bit about that about an industry Trend was this the first time you've done something as ambitious as this absolutely so we've grown a lot in 2019 we had six employees and I did a retreat but it was six employees and the quality and ability they were fantastic employees but it was a very different size company right we've CR but on size and so that's sitting around a living room talking about training right not big picture conversations and not planning the management training was really fantastic we had a consultant come in and one of the questions was as the company grows what are the opportunities from for people that are coordinators and managers so also seeing what's their personal growth plan in this company they were really good questions they really thought about them it sounds like somebody put a lot of thought into this was it you or did you delegate planning how how did this come to be um I ran it this year because I had a vision what this would be but I'm turning it over to to my meetings department and my senior leaders I had asked for different thoughts and advice so the person who thought of the surveys great idea because we pulled information it one of my other directors came up with the Post-its they all came with ideas I drove it for the vision but I'm handing it off next year to our director of meetings I also drove the location at the conference center because I think Conference Center is a really great locations for Retreats it just makes it easier um to ask me anything I think was just as a result from Reddit and um oh there was a great question I thought was really interesting because we have a lot of people under 30 they said why won't you allow us to discuss our salaries with each other great question right and I said when did I ever tell you you're not allowed to discuss salar wow that's amazing and they all looked at me and I said I legally cannot tell you not to discuss salaries all I can tell is if you're a manager respons ible for people under you you can't discuss their salaries but feel free to discuss your salaries but if you do please know that you are possibly opening Pandora's Box that either you're going to be unhappy or they're going to be unhappy and be prepared for that I can't stop you um and there was a lot of conversation under that it was very interesting because the people over 35 are like I'm not discussing why would you discuss your salary and the people under 30 they'd already shared it yeah right it was a very um that was a very interesting question that was good advice you gave them because you're right it's a Pandora's Box yeah you can't get back you can't get it back in the box after it's out so that's right that's right all right I have two questions sure one is you don't normally work with all these people face to face was there some people out of that 31 after the three days that you were less than impressed with yes I would assume so cuz yeah speak up enough didn't okay and the second one is and this could just be me of course but I cringe whenever I hear Anonymous anything because I want to have a company where people are grown-ups and go ahead and stand behind their question and do you think about not making it Anonymous that my argument is boy if they don't got the self-confidence or whatever to go ahead and ask a question and put their name on I don't really like Anonymous stuff I just find it to be lack of courage and lack of just I just don't like the corporate culture part of that what do you think of that that is a very interesting thought it never occurred to me not to make it Anonymous I wanted people to feel comfortable asking me anything and I answered every single question in there and I was worried especially the people under 30 the people that have been here for a while people are older I don't think would have a problem putting their name I wanted the younger people to feel com comtable that look I'm the CEO I will answer it you may not like my answer one of them about the dress code I said straight up you may not like my answer but this is my company and I have a vision for our brand and our brand and is what you wear on show site and that's final so I wanted them comfortable it honestly Jay it never occurred to me that that not to make it Anonymous well the other thing you could do next time is do the same way and then at the end of the like the addess code say would anybody like to own their question and just give them an opportunity say yeah that was my question showing them like yeah go ahead like it's okay to put your name on it it it's just I just like I said I just have a problem with people hiding in the shadows you know if you're 23 or 24 you're a really smart curious and I want you to grow your career here at this company I'm okay if they're too afraid to ask in front of everybody I'm okay with it being anonymous for that age maybe you're right I I got it yeah Jay the the succession question it seems to me might fall into that category somebody might not want to stand up in front of everyone and say so are you going to sell the business um oh so my combo plate would simply be if you don't feel comfortable you don't have to put your name on it but I certainly would appreciate it you know so I give have a follow-up conversation with you so put your name on it if you're comfortable if not you don't have to but I I think that's a good compromise that at least they know that they could have put their name on it would it Jennifer kind of speaking of these you know hard questions uh you said that they were really excited about your vision and that they also wanted to know if you're going to sell the business and you said that you weren't going to sell the business what what did you fill that space with in terms of where the organization is headed and what your plans are so I told them I said listen I'm 55 you have me five to six seven years I said at some point I do have to think about retirement and that may not be full-fledged retirement that may be I step back from the dayto day and just provide strategic Vision that may mean I acquire another company and get a president that may mean I decide to sell I don't know so but here's where I see the future of this company I sort of pivoted to how big I see the growth plan for it what we plan to do and I want you to be a part of it so what I tried to do is look I'm here we have now made a small company into a strong foundation and a a an amazing possibility for future I want them to still believe in that and I'm here to see it to the next stage but the next stage may or may not include me full-time but the vision will continue we're going to stay with Association conventions and what we call nones Revenue we're going to stay in that world and if you want to be a part of that we'd love you to to be a part of it we're not going to change that but you know the next phase I have five years figure out the next phase good for you I mean it's and it was honest too you know because in 5 years if you did sell you could look back and go you know this is one of the things that's possible and it happened and there won't be a sense of betrayal hopefully at that point did you try to reassure them in some way that if you did sell your vision would still Prevail you know what that there's probably only two people in the company that need that Assurance the rest of them they have not been with me for a long time they don't know me so the company stands on its own we're past the point where myself as the founder is the point for the entire company and the vision there is a concept out there and Sean might be able to talk to this more about making the owner the founder the brand of the company around them and I have tried very hard not to make it about me to make it about the company and the people that work here so there's not a cult of personality for me here is there a little bit right because I started sure but I'm trying to actively get away from that so I think there's probably only a couple people that that was most of the people really are very okay with this that there was not any push back to be honest the push back was a little bit more about the dress code I think you're 98% there can I just give you some input that you said absolutely you said something I would never say to employees you said just now you said it's not about you blah blah blah but then when they asked about the dress code you just said well it's my company I know good point I would have skipped the my company thing and just said you know it's about our brand that's our brand professionalism you don't need to throw in they all know it's your company I I've never in all these years told my employees well here's what we're gonna do because it's my company I just think it's a bad kickoff you know what J it's that's a very very good insight and it what's interesting I think that's the only time I slightly felt defensive the entire time when they were asking me about and salary succession plan I think that's the only only time and you're right now that I hear you say that you're right I should not have said that okay I'm glad I'm still providing some value at my old age yes you are all right Sean it's your turn can you top that no I think we need to move on I mean it's really impressive you know when you when you ask an event planner to organize an event um you know it's it's pretty impressive so yeah that's that's awesome Jennifer yeah uh so ours was quite quite a bit different um you know I've been doing offsites for oh gez I don't know probably started doing them 15 years ago or so and I think they've changed pretty dramatically as a result of being a hybrid company in remote work so in the early days of offsites it was really more about planning and setting goals and getting aligned on what we're going to do over the coming year and then usually there was some sort of like fun activity or something like that and in the last I don't know three or four years I I've really pivoted from an emphasis on what's the plan for the coming year to um building relationships with each other and I found that because we're working much more remote we have employees who are kind of flung across the country um like Jennifer that the importance of building camaraderie and I just say Vibe is just way way way higher than it used to be and so our emphasis was much more on that the kind of things we did were you know on the first day we did kind of a fun uh process where we broke into groups of three or four and then each uh group did a presentation on um what what they saw was important to the company and what What mattered in the coming years and the group that uh I was part of we talked a lot about leadership and how the kind of work we're doing now is we've moved from you know doing a lot of brand and brand strategy work into more like organizational development um leadership structure uh even like what does the future of the company look like and how does how does it get shaped as we do more and more of that work we've come to realize that the Persona of the leader really really matters and we could we could do brand work pretty well with a with a leader that wasn't the strongest leader but we're learning that it's really hard to do this other type of work with leaders who aren't really in it to win it and so we talked a lot about that we talked a lot about how do we get the right types of leaders as our customers um so that we can do the best work we can possibly do you know because the the interesting thing about being a professional service providers you can have two clients that are really similar in size and revenue and even maybe kind of a similar business model you can have the same team working with those two clients and one client experiences tremendous results and the other client is dissatisfied and gets nothing out of it you know that's that's kind of extreme case and so what's the difference you know if you've got the same team doing the work if you've got a similar process you know it's often boils down to the leader investment in the effort so that was something we spent a lot of time on and it I think it was really really valuable and we started talking about like what makes a really good customer and how do we message and communicate to those types of businesses and then um the other thing we did that I think is really important and often missed in a in an offsite I think Jennifer did a good job of this is that we have we had activities that weren't just like trust Falls or you know like whitewater rafting or jumping out of airplanes all of which we have done in the past but they were more like creative problem solving you know kind of coming together to um do things as a group and that aren't necessarily related to the work so you know Jennifer's example was like this cooking event uh we did some stuff with a ceramic Studio where we all kind of worked on these you know kind of pottery exercises and it was super fun uh so that idea of people coming together doing something creative that gets them solving problems together in a way that's really outside the business helps expose employees to each other in a in a new way and kind of a vulnerable way and I found that that type of activity which you know on its surface they like oh you went to a clay Studio you know that's so frivolous it's actually really deeper than that in terms of um finding out who people really are and so our our emphasis was really I mean I would say 10x on you know bonding and connection and communication and a lot less about solving the problems for the business in a in a real kind of plan oriented way um and and I I think that was the right call because I think the team really needed that connection Sean remind me how large your stuff is we're 11 and how long were you guys together um two two and a half days yeah yeah so two dinner two full days and then two dinners yeahh yeah did you go somewhere or did you do it out of your office or uh combination so day one we met at the office we did the we did the kind of creative presentation project which looked a lot like making art and presenting stuff um and that was you know maybe three or four hours of of time together and then we went to dinner at a really nice restaurant here in Portland's got great great food so um much better than Chicago baby so uh yeah yeah and then um the next day I think we went out to lunch uh we had the ceramic thing we went out to dinner yeah so just a lot of time together and and I think you need that to offset the amount of video time together because I think video time does not it it doesn't move a relationship forward in the same way being in person does Sean what was your call to actions afterwards you know we didn't have any you know it that the team really wanted to emphasize connection and um reinvigoration and that was uh you know I didn't do any of the planning for this this one this was this was all you know I'm in the I'm in a stage of you know my career where I'm letting people do work that I typically would do and um you know that that was the message that the leadership team came to me with is like we really want this to be an emphasis on connection and you know shared celebration and I let him do it and I think it was absolutely the right decision um did they ask you your succession plan we're real transparent here you know um my goal is to turn Kinesis into an employee owned company in some way or the other and I'm not you know not quite sure what that path is going to be but um it yeah that that didn't that didn't come up salaries don't come up you know we do open book management so we have transparent salaries so it's a different need but you know in the past I've had uh offsites that are very very similar to what Jennifer outlined and so I I think we've just really shifted in terms of of this one what it's going to be now we facilitate offsites for our clients and we've LED them and many of them often look a lot more planny plan plan plan plan um so uh so this was new for me but uh but I I I support what they decided to do yeah did you give your planning team a budget nope did they exceed it nope I don't even know what they spent really nope didn't ask those questions I just trusted them to use their best judgment interesting yeah I I mean I run things differently than a lot of businesses you know I think there's probably there isn't infinite money you can spend on these types of things but I think you can spend a lot of money and it's still well well well worth it you know if you look at the data Employee Engagement has not moved at all like it it's it's terrible Employee Engagement across the board is terrible and I've just been thinking a lot about that lately like why you're not talking about in your business you're talking about in general I'm talking about in general where does that data come from where where does where did you get that g been tracking it forever um you know it's like a third of employees are dis like disengaged you know wait do you not think there's a difference between a large publicly held Corporation and small business as far as the engagement oh for sure I I know the data is skewed on that one um in terms of where they're getting the information from but I also think that a lot of small businesses take their cues whether whether deliberately or inadvertently from large corporations you know if you think about business books and where the advice that comes out of them comes from it's usually from research in Academia that's done on large corporations and so what happens is is the way things are run and the way things are done often are these um kind of trickle down versions of large corporations uh hierarchical organizations stratification salary uh secrecy etc etc Etc and so I am convinced the longer I get into my career and the more I watch things the more we do work that the untapped potential in organizations is is in the people and how do you invest in people in ways that get them to be really excited and working you know really putting our all into it and I've seen that with with our company I agree with your conclusion now I agree that getting people more engaged is is is where the payoff is I'm not at all convinced that the reason why these companies are doing it is because they read some book from an academic or they followed some bit I think it's more of a natural they just haven't figured it out I I don't know that they're gleaning this from books and they're bringing a big business into it no I I'll give you let me let me give you an example jay most entrepreneurs have read the book The emth it's a great example right okay true eth has some wonderful guidance in it it talks about like the different types of entrepreneurs and what motivates people to become an entrepreneur and that piece I actually tend to agree with but there's also a lot of guidance in the book about running your company and making it all about systems and one of the kind of core precepts in it is you know you want your business to be like McDonald's where an employee cannot show for work and you can replace them with another employee right away that's a general like corporate mentality is we don't want any one individual to be critical to the business because that's a threat and so that book if you talk to almost any entrepreneur they've read it and most entrepreneurs be like I love the emth I love the emth I think that's an exag first of all how old's that book 30 years old at this point it was written it was written in 95 I think yeah so it's 30 years ago I certainly don't think that mosters have read it some but you know what's interesting I read emth and I absolutely bought into that years ago and I have come to the conclusion that what we do as a company and and this staff retreat was a turning point is the people that are doing the best in this company are the people that are curious and who don't want to work in a systemic driven company and I have revised the type of hiring I need to do you need to understand events or want to be in events of course but I want people that are curious and it is antithetical to that book and I don't think I even realized it Sean till you said it cuz when I was floundering I didn't know what to do someone gave me emth I read it I was like oh great it's a Playbook it's a Playbook right Y and I'm like okay it has good it has some good points that you need some systems but if you try and at least my type of company and make it so system driven those people I need more Curious people to make decisions on the Fly and to be more thoughtful and creative then I need systems driven people and that's so interesting you brought that up but it's a little aha moment in my head right now listen I can't argue with any of that and and believe me when I read it I there was a couple of Concepts in it but that was about it but I could name you 10 books I read that was just so here how about this one can you explain the one minute manager how that turned into this hot book did you read it the one minute manager that's a little too old for me I think after reading emth I I wasn't I didn't have any syst and I swung the pendulum too far and what I need to do is level it out and come back to the middle you need to have some systems you cannot run a company that's that's a Consulting agency of independent Consultants but then you can't I am not a manufacturing company that's a systemic driven company and even people in manufacturing need to be problem solvers and curiosity right the the designers and everything so um I emth goes a little bit too far at least I took that premise too far and I I need to recalibrate most people do it's not just emth you know if you look at a lot of like colins books which I used to love love love love love good to Great etc etc you if you dig deeper and once you've had some lived experiences and run a business long enough you start to see cracks in the foundation of these books and and of larger business principles and and I'm not just saying like this from a theoretical case like I've seen this in the journey of running Kinesis and then helping clients and so as an example you know for a long time as a consultancy I was given the message of you know the most important thing is utilization rates meaning the time you're your your employees work on client work and getting that number as high as possible and to reward the mo people doing the most amount of work on customer work and I ran that and I ran that I ran that and then sure enough wow look at the I'm profitable now like I never was before and the profits keep going up keep going up keep going up but then I started to see all these weird side effects and I'm like wait the books don't talk about this stuff you know like people being really anxious people you know whose rates weren't as high as other people uh feeling insufficient and insecure people quitting because the anxiety created from these things and and in hindsight what I've come to realize is that the overarching concepts in business business like setting aside emth but most business is to build your business like a machine or a factory and that makes sense because our heritage is in industrial manufacturing I mean we've been doing it really well for many many years but we are in a time of not only service-based businesses but volatility and massive change and changing customer desires so what you actually need are not people who can do the same thing over and over over again you need people who are Dynamic and can adapt and even Jay your business which tends to do a lot of the same things over and over again I'm guessing a big part of your success is that you helped your people understand the value of being Nimble to your customer and what goes on I 100% agree with every single thing you're saying and I would add that the problem is also to compete with big corporations that have the systems you do have to be nimble and innov and find opportunities that is the core competencies of a successful entrepreneur because the big business has got all those systems in place you're not going to out system them but you can outthink them yeah that's right that's right I would like to follow up with Jay on that on that point on the point of competing with big corporations Jay we've talked from time to time over the past couple of years about how your home store kind of competes with some very big companies out there including Wayfair which uh has traditionally I don't know if traditional is the right word for Wayfair but they've been selling online interestingly they just opened a huge new store that I drive by twice a day every day down to Eden's Expressway every day I I get to look at it yes I'm curious what you think of that has it had an impact on you their revenue last year this is all public information so this is accurate their revenue in 2023 was $12 billion the entire Furniture Home Furniture industry is 63 billion which means they have an 18.8% share of the business which you could certainly call disruptive the other interesting part is they lost $738 million which is 6% of sales now as someone who owns a Furniture business who who does a good amount of online shipping I got to tell you if I wouldn't be telling you to buy the stock because they got three issues you got Freight expenses free freight you got to give free freight you got the discounting to get them to your site in the first place and to sell it and then you got returns they've got the triple threat of freight keeps going up and shipping Furniture is a major M this isn't sending a box of shoes you're talking about a coffee table a sofa I mean I'm in that world the freight is as much as the product sometimes so like I gave up on the free freight and everything thing we cut that out so between the free free freight and the tremendous returns and the discounting I'm not sure they're going to pull this off I think that's a big gamble well and then there's there's other challenges too which is like you know buying cheap crap from China is getting pretty out of vote pretty in in lots of ways right you know cost of Transit you know carbon footprint just on and on and on I mean and not to mention nationalism right so let me put my other hat on not the not the internet hat now I'll put my ret killer had on I went into the store and I'm confused like wait I thought I was in a furniture store am I in Ikea they're selling plastic bins and hangers and laundry baskets what where am I and then I read that they apparently that was their strategy to go after Ikea well let's look at Ikea for a moment it was started in 1943 they do$ 47 billion doll a year and they showed a 3% profit I don't think on my list of things to do would be I think I want to compete with Ikea you talk about a company that's got their their their act together so this could be the next big blowup in in the out there in the business world of at some point I think correct me if I'm wrong I think at some point a company's gonna have to show a profit so the question is how long can this go on and and like I said it's only getting harder with freight cost they going up and up and up and up and and people are conditioned out it oh oh I don't know if I like the color that tape I'm gonna send it back and they pay for the freight back so jury's out so every day though I get a wakeup call coming to work and going home from work I get to look at their gigantic wafer sign on the gigantic building the building is about 200 ft from the expressway so you get to look at it every day so does it hurt my business I sell interesting furnishings and accessories but I'm sure there's somebody buying something from Wayfair including out anonymously one of my daughter-in-laws so actually two of my not gonna tell you which ones but two out of my three daughter-in-laws I mean yeah hey where did you get that rug oh I got oh okay great did did I mention that I own a furniture store and a you know I don't really care how much money Wayfair loses I have no sympathy or empathy for them but it has impact on lots of others absolutely are there other independent furniture stores in Chicago are there many aside from yours or is it are they mostly competing with uh big chains Restoration Hardware oh no no no there's there's a chain here it's been here since the 40s they got 10 stores there's half a dozen privately owned or or probably more than that I'm not thinking about one stores but there's three stores five stores there's plenty of a privately owned the furniture industry is not like a lot of Industries where there's just a couple of big companies in it so no there's plenty of people and I know for a fact that one of the bigger ones because I just went out with my rep from place that I advertise in and she told me they're cutting back on all their advertising because uh business is not good I mean if this is my guess now if 40% of the furniture sold in America was sold because you just moved and interest rates being so high if moving is down by 50% which I think it is there's 20% of your Market boom that's what I hear when you talk to people in the industry everybody says everyone's off 20 30 per. it's pretty brutal right now this High interest rates has a lot of effect on other things than just selling houses so it's it's not a party time right now so when you talk about company Retreat my company Retreat is I've cut back in my advertising that's my retreat or my retreating well now that you bring it up Jay have you ever done an employee retreat no it's I'm in retail I'm in manufacturing you done like a summer picnic or something oh yes I used to have those regularly but it got more difficult when I opened Jason 24 years ago we're open Sundays now I'm open seven days a week and it's getting harder to schedule something that you know so I haven't had one in a long time do I think it would be good to have something yes absolutely so I probably need to get back to that but um yeah it's uh it's not easy I've seen it done we've helped with with some of this too in in some kind of sideways ways but like there's stuff you can do with larger organizations where you do a lot of stuff kind of offline first I mean surveys conversations Etc small group stuff and then you can you can find ways to do it it's it's hard but but I think you could do it and it's probably worth it I do have you know what I take it back I do have lunches that we pay for lunch but I separate you know I've got the framing Factory I do it over there and that's the other weird thing I've got different companies somebody was telling me they're at a party talking to another person they just met at the party oh where do you work oh I work at Jason and this is an artist frame Service employee they work in my other company right next door they never even met each other I mean would you ever close for the day I mean we had to shut down for four days that would be really is a retailer that just is kind of heresy to me I I I just I'd have a real hard time with putting a note sorry we're having our company event today and on top of which like I said the problem is I've got about 35 people working for Jason I've got about 50 people working in the framing business I've got you know 12 in the wholesale business so they're all there some of them are even in the same building but they're not the same comp and then just just it's so many people at this point I got 130 employees what if you did it by area by the warehouse had their Retreat the the retail store yes I do need to do that no argument there I need to do that consider it done I would say it was well worth the money Jay I you know it's a big expense sure I had a vision for it but it was really nice the feedback I got from our survey is is they felt it was incredibly successful Jennifer did you think it had an impact on you being closed for four days like that no because we told we told um clients starting uh in late April that we were going to close that in order for us to be SU successful for them we needed to take some uh time apart to learn best practices come together as a team to develop expertise which corresponded very nicely to say we're going to come together in a face-to-face event so we can help you develop your face to-face event so no it it tied in very nicely with what our clients expect from us there was absolutely no push back as a matter of fact when I put it on linkon I can't tell you how many clients congratulated us for doing it and and said it was a great job so no push back whatsoever I think about you know let's say you have a leadership team of five people let's say you just stick with a leadership team right let's say each one of those PR people make I don't know $200,000 right there's a million dollars in salary there anything you can do to get that group 2% more efficient right 3% more efficient 5% more efficient 2% more connected to each other 10% less likely to quit these are just hidden opportunities within the business that's why like when you ask well what was your budget I don't care you know like I promise you I could have spent $100,000 on that Retreat and I guarantee you it will pay for itself many times over so that would be the challenge I have for you Jay is like your scale is such size now like tiny little moves could actually have a pretty big effect on things so I I think it's exciting that you're open to it and I think you could really see something exciting from that and really energize people Lauren if you want to have a retreat in your back I'll come over I I'll get my planning committee on it and I will get you a date my thanks to Sean busy Jay goz and Jennifer Karen and to our sponsor the great game of business which helps businesses use an open book management system to build healthier your companies you can learn more at Great game.com thanks everybody one thing before you go everything we do at 21 hats is created by entrepreneurs for Entre R preneurs 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 thubron founder of blank word Productions thanks for listening everyone [Music]