Bonus Episode: Who’s Running the Business?

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren feldin this week in a special bonus episode we talked to Steve KW and Dan golden co-founders of be found online a digital marketing agency based in Chicago in the second quarter of 2020 as Co hit and their clients stopped advertising crawling golden watched helplessly as their agency lost 40% of its revenue and then things got much worse by the end of the year both of their wives would be diagnosed with cancer this is a conversation about how crawl and golden have coped with matters big and small personal and professional throughout an experience they compare to being in a knife fight in the middle of a forest fire 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 same with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners and which you can subscribe to at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews the episode is titled who's running the business welcome Dan and Steve we're going to have a uh a business conversation here but it's not going to be your typical business conversation uh we're not going to talk about how to double your revenues or triple your profits or rise to the top of the Google rankings although these guys actually probably could help us with that last one there you can slide one of those questions in we wouldn't argue all right all right maybe we'll get to that but really instead this is going to be a conversation about kind of a an extreme Challenge of work life balance last year both Dan's wife and Steve's wife diagnosed with stage four cancer um let's start with the obvious um what are their names and how are they doing maybe Steve you first roxan was diagnosed in April of last year with stage four colon cancer with metastasises to the liver and the parium uh at one point a doctor called it perianal something or other and I completely freaked out um because I just just you read about these things um long story short after chemo and uh a very invasive surgery and and lots of other follow-ups Roxanne had no evidence of disease in three consecutive scans so she's doing marvelously at the moment well that's good to hear Dan so my wife relle was diagnosed coming up on a year ago uh at the very end of 2020 um we knew she had stage four lung cancer some of some kind um and in January towards the end of January we got even worse news than that uh that it is a nut carcinoma extremely like 20 to 30 cases a year in the US um and an average life expectancy of six months um so it was a brutal year um she's here she's doing better than she has all year um we're kind of uh I use a I use a forest analogy um you know there half of this year we were you know in the middle of a forest fire in the middle of a knife fight in the forest fire uh you know and um we're certainly not out of the woods um and there's smoke around but um you know we've kind of had a bit of a a clearing um and you know there's this asterisk to you know the how's it going question is like the I hate that question it's so like it's the reason I've been off LinkedIn all year uh and because it it's such a loaded question because I you know for people that know what's going on with me um I have a lot of really good days you know I I'm you know to to add to the list here um I the baby was four months old uh our third baby was four months old when she was diagnosed adding to just just the logistics of um you know running a household while she spent the first six months of the year half the time in the hospital and when she was out of the hospital taking care of her and the kids um you know to to answer your question to the podcast who's running the business right now Steve and i' I've said it before I'll say it on this podcast uh thank you um you know I'm is I I could give you the woe as me list and it's pretty big and legitimate in my humble opinion um but I'm really lucky in that uh I've got a supportive team that stepped in everywhere when I said we got the call from the doctor telling us the the worst news of prognosis and everything about two hours before I was signed up to do a webinar in January with 100 attendees dfo's first of the year um I tried really hard to compartmentalize and it went okay I like you did a great job you did a great jobar those of those of us who knew were were were concerned for you and I wasn't worried about the webinar at all we we could have we could have taken a left turn on that but just watching you and how you Rose to that occasion was was impressive given given the kick and the nuts that you got that is amazing and let me just say I I really admire you guys for doing this today it's something you don't have to do when we take a step back for a moment tell us a little bit about the business that you guys started and built uh how how did you come to start a business together the short version of it is Dan and I worked alongside one another very nearly 20 years ago um Dan was an undergrad student at Northwestern and got himself an internship it was between digital marketing and this gigar store and he chose digital marketing and and as they say the rest is history anyhow I was liberated after an acquisition in early 2006 I had zero agency experience and I hadn't had a job in digital marketing and I said I've got a great idea I'm gonna start an agency so I did and wouldn't you know that uh over the course of a couple of years Dan and I kept running into each other because I was doing organic or SEO and web strategy and Dan was Moonlighting doing local search and paage search and there was always this crossover need and we kept running into each other kept having a need and then um over time there are a few things that happened and I'll let Dan tell the next story about how bfo really came to me because he was running a place called beon local in a spare time I was running the Crow group and we had a really really good reason to sort of turn everything everything into bfo back in 2009 go ahead Dan we co-founded a company because we hated accountant and in September and we had been working together all year and Shar it just whoever had gotten the client was the one getting paid and we just hadn't done any math um and you know decided to join join forces at the beginning of 2009 and um spent one weekend with the bottle of whiskey and some paper napkins and figured out what was fair and um went at it in in uh right after a recession the Great Recession started uh but it turns out we were on the right side of marketing in what sense in a difficult business climate you know but you know when the recession hits and when the next one hits there's going to be a lot of people that say stop spending money on marketing and agencies the work that we do search Performance Marketing I'm I'm you know sells itself sells itself uh and right so Brands were shifting dollars to what we were doing uh you know during a very difficult time right um and so uh you know we we've got our fair share of business War Stories and you know confounding the the the two big ones we're talking about today was covid happening in the middle of all of this how far had you gotten when Co hit that's like like 10 year you're 10 years into it um how big was the business and what was working what wasn't working we were I think in 20 2019 we were 5 A5 million at that point and we had shrunken a little bit and we had some challenges that we were facing and we're looking at 2020 with sort of eyes wide open a chance to reboot we were making some changes to the infrastructure of the company trying to reboot a little bit of the culture and and here we were we were going to set sale The Good Ship bfo on sale for yet another tour and wouldn't you know um in my my story a little bit starts as though my wife had had some issues and she went to get a colonoscopy and they put it off because of covid they started closing the hospitals and postponing treatments and the doctor said well we can't do any of that we consider it elective at this point because there was no reason to believe she had cancer so fast forward to February and we hadn't shut down for covid yet we're still a month away and we get a report back from the doc it says removed pop likely malignant and um there's sort of the HM and then there's the oh and there's the what does that mean and then you get the call and it says we'd like you to talk to this person and this person and this person and a few of these people and by then you sort of know all bets are off like you're not just having a a simple pop removed you're going to get more so there was the colon resection surgery and then boom boom boom before you know what it's April and she's diagnosed so covid hit we shut down stuff what was it March 13th uh was the date that I remember and we nobody came to the office and we went into panic mode we went into crisis mode trying to figure out which clients were going to keep the lights on which clients were going to turn the lights off it was it was a Nutty time and all the while you you get this it it's a little black raincloud that you can't leave behind so to the same point where Dan said who's running the company now I wasn't running the company then um hats off to Dan and and the other wonderful folks who are running bfo because I would sit at the keyboard and I couldn't do a damn thing there was nothing to do so starting in April when she was diagnosed I was trying to work and I was Vapor locked so I was kind of half in half out I think our friend Michael Goldberg would call that half pregnant Dan and and there's no such thing so it it just it was this crazy point where both of those things smacked at the same time um and then my own role coaster added to the roller coaster was I lost both parents that summer too oh so wife starts chemotherapy in June ma uh dad passes away in late May early June mom passes away in August and and and you've got all this covid so you can't see people you can't you can't get together you can barely you can barely mourn your parents as as this is happening it was just oh was insanely nutty that's unbelievable you talk about you know not being able to work and initially at that stage Dan kind of was running things how did it work before Co how did you guys manage the business together as co-founders how did Stan cren function we tried a lot of different ways you know for for for being two co-founders right there's usually the yin and the Yang and we're like two yangs in a lot of um you know we've uh it depends on the year on the walls of bf's conference room every which way we could design an org chart has been you know tried and um you know I I think what worked best I think eventually what we got to was sort of um Dan pointing out more and Steve pointing in more if there's a way to generalize you know kind of our um where our roles had had evolved to I'm not sure I know what that means you know thought doing webinars going to conferences yeah we're not talking about belly buttons yeah um you know Steve Steve's got a much better operational mind than I do and you know put putting us where we add the most value and where we each have um you know have fun before the pandemic I spent all day on Zoom meetings sometimes I just did it from the office with people here too you were doing that before the pandemic yeah I mean I knew people all over the place and you know wow um networking selling doing pitches meeting people you know I belong to a lot of you know I thrive on on meeting people people and having you know authentic interactions and you know when the pandemic was hitting like I I would be selling someone but I would also have the laundry in the background and you know just being authentic you were ready you had a very authentic beard for quite a while there too squirly I mean I I you know when she first got diagnosed I did I had already not sh shap but I I basically looked how I felt which was not good I did the same thing I had I had this crazy beard down to here and I just like I don't care anymore um it's tough to reach out to um you know I make real I have friends that you know we do business with I you know and you know to reach out and be like hey how's your SEO doing this year also my wife is cancer what's uh you know your mobile site is a little bit slow and my think my right like forcing that upon someone but also just interacting like everything's fine it's hard and I know so many people go through like this uh and and have to pretend in this slice of their world you don't want to wear it on your sleeve but you also don't want to hide from it I I've never wanted it I I don't want to use it to evoke sympathy you know I I I want people to understand the situation but I I don't lean into it but it's that loaded question hey Steve how are things going I'm like I look at him I say remember you're the one that asked now do you really want to know well that's especially fraught dealing with employees I would think how did you guys decide to handle that were you immediately open with them or how did that evolve that was a tear jerker for me um standing up in front of the team letting him know the situation man remember it's hard um no we were coed we were coed we were still learning how these these boxes work you were standing up in front of the team on Zoom um yeah it was it was tough it it's tough just thinking about talking about it even when when you're in that situation because you don't know I'm in a much better place now certainly because of of rox's current circumstances but there and I I didn't realize this and I I want this for Dan and it'll happen soon enough is that you don't realize that the weight's lifted until the weight's lifted and and you realize just what you've been pulling around that that little black raincloud that you can't get rid of and it was truly sort of this this Reawakening for me when when we started getting more good news it's like this idea like oh wait a minute you mean oh I can be myself a little bit but um in terms of talking to the team I gave the team regular updates uh along the way tried to keep them informed what was going even when I was out I took three or four months off last year and and Dan was gracious enough to cover for me then little did I know I'd be repaying him this year like what what where and it's just it's this crazy thing but the weirdest thing happened along the way because we're similarly Afflicted in this circumstance it actually strengthened our relationship as co-owners wow and I want to say that in the past 12 months it's not that Dan and I are liars cheats and thieves we're very transparent we're very honest but I think even with each other we've become more vulnerable and more transparent over the course of the last N9 to 12 months and it's been phenomenal we haven't seen each other as much and that may be helping the relationship too well I got to think it it has to have helped to some extent that you each had someone you were close to who was familiar with these circumstances and you didn't have to go looking for for somebody who understood the same doctors now too do Dan's taught me words that I had like I thought I I knew a decent amount about cancer I learned lots of new words just talking to Dan and and back in for it there have been a few bottles of whiskey in between us along the way no doubt you know under normal circumstances you can't hide something like this I mean if you're just going to be out of the office uh dealing with this issue uh people are going to figure out something's going on but working remotely there's some chance that you could have faked it for a while I suspect did E were either of you inclined to try to do that no I'm too stupid to do that you know I'm still working on my LinkedIn posts uh announcing a personal update since April um it's you know it's hard and part of that is uh by the time I you know I got the courage to finish a draft and sleep on it we got some new shitty news the next day and I'm like oh you know even this thing I you know I uh I saw the email again and we we got the last scans and the first doctor said she was happy and then I said hell yes guys let's let's do this on the 14th uh and then you know a few days later we meet another Doc and we've got scans on January 3rd now you know it's uh it's tough to predict the one thing that I I take out of this is I want to say that bfo has always been this company that would support one another to support the team I never thought I'd be the person that needed it right or that Dan would and that we'd be providing that support for others and the thing that most amazed me in this is is even if I I didn't see all of that that the team just didn't just step up the team jumped up to to help us to support us and and I I can't be more grateful for the support that we've received Dan myself relle Roxanne along the last two years it's been a crazy tumultuous journey and like everybody else in Co you're dealing with a shift in business right we lost was it 40% of our business last year in Q2 it just sort of went really great concentration at the time yeah um and and we we we lost some folks to the great resignation some some of that pent up demand that you've talked about a lot with um what's his name the recruiter in Texas on your podcast William vanderlan William yeah he talks about that pent up desire to leave and and we had we had some of that go on but I'm just so grateful even even some of the people that left wouldve been very gracious in their departures supporting us as much as they can as they leave and we know that people have they they need to grow they need to move and we support that now I don't want to I don't want to lose people I love everybody I work with but the way that the team has stepped up and continued to to take take charge and be accountable has been amazing to me how many employees did you have when covid hit 20ish 25ish somewhere around there and today 20ish 25ish somewhere around have there been periods where both of you have sort of been unavailable at the same time it's funny we always thought the grand experiment would be when you and I could go to Burning Man for a week and the company would still be standing when we got home that would have been much more fun it would have been a lot more fun next time um I don't I don't think so I think I was hit or miss for a large part of last year ultimately I I took off in July and came back in October is right and well I was also having a baby in that's right right oh yeah you were we were at we were out at the same time then you had a baby and I had chemotherapy so yeah we were out at the same time for probably a few weeks there last summer and did that our team knows what to do you know they running yeah I mean well it taught me to get out of the way me too well that's I mean they talk about it a lot right set the vision and get out of the way that's one of the mantras of BOS if you I talk I talk to a lot of successful entrepreneurs they say the day your business is most successful is the day that you can take two steps back and not worry about it and this forced and I always thought that I was doing some of that and and I'm sure Dan felt that way too but this was that wedge that just said I just need to I need to be back here and I couldn't participate um I had to watch the Band-Aid can come off and it doesn't take all the hairs and damn it if I knew that I would have taken like a legit sabatical one of these years if I I mean that's hey that's one lesson that's why we're doing this thing if you're watching this and you're not in the middle of some shitty situation like this and you own a business um set things up so that if something like this happens uh you have the kind of team that's going to jump in and you know Steve and I always prioritized spending whatever we needed to to make sure we had really good insurance for the team back to the lucky lists you know I'm in Chicago we have good health care coverage um you know there's a lot of people dealing with 800,000 people people who lost someone over the last two years and um I I couldn't imagine certainly having to go to work like leave the I know that leaving the house is hard for all of us now but you know having to um having to work a full-time job while in the middle of something like this yeah I'm extraordinarily grateful that we have the flexibility I know people who've gone through chemotherapy and held down a full-time job and their husbands couldn't take the time off to go to and from chemo or to dance Point his wife at inpatient chemotherapy and he was spent a lot of time in the hospital often times Miss like three days and that was just as of covid risk oftentimes that person has to continue working because they're the insurance coverage and I'm just so grateful and thankful for for what we've been able to to do and build and the insurance that we had and just the ability to have choices and the way the way everything sort of came together it the the situation is horrible and to the point Dan I think was going after is that if you're an go to Burning Man don't wait for this to happen grab your co-founder or two whatever how many co-founders you have and and cut out go to burning man take everybody take two weeks let your clients know that you're not going to be there and let the inmates run the Asylum um and just just let that happen and and come back and appreciate what you see and what you have in the humans that are there and and what they'll be willing to do to support one another and ultimately this supported Dan and I in this was there a learning curve in terms of stepping away during those periods when you had to step away I mean you had no choice I understand that but I'm wondering if you were initially were you trying to keep up with email were you trying to stay involved in certain decisions or did you just have to let it all go you know I floundered for a month there was times where it became hard to her cancer is so rare like she she's been my client this year learning about this we have like I have doctors in Europe learning how they do it and getting them to talk to us doctors and replicating treatments because like this is I'm using all my business collaboration skills you know all everything I learned from like running big accounts you know sending emails looping in all the different Specialists asking for other opinion sharing information I've got a Google Drive that's more organized than the medical systems at the hospital I couldn't get myself to write to respond back about a webinar or a Blog if I have a doctor I need to write or right I'm like I need to do these things in general I in business I can juggle 10,000 Things in blogs and clients fire drills and whatever like we we're a marketing agency like that's it's what we do um you know with something like this how could I spend an hour talking on Zoom to a stranger how about you Steve was was it hard for you to uh step away it was initially I would I would Echo what Dan said it was probably about a month of floundering um and I made the mistake if you will of of saying there were a couple things I wanted to stay in the loop on which meant that I had to sort of keep my hand in there looking at stuff and you don't have the capacity for it the other thing you don't have is the patience for it either so you find that you're that the fuse get shorter and shorter for stuff that has has become less important it was more important two weeks ago than it is now and it probably wasn't that important before but I assigned it a higher priority that understanding over time to just finally there was there were a few Letting Go moments that I just sort of had to turn around and if you will walk away from from bfo and all of that responsibility for a period of time uh so that I could focus that I could keep my energy in the right place so that I could keep my energy focused on rocks and help her get better cuz she could see me wearing some of bfo when I was you know being the taxi service and or she was lying in bed for three days after chemo and not wanting to move and and she could see me wearing it and I didn't want to wear it anymore and there's this point that I reached that said you know what I'm in really good hands here and I'm going to let that go I'm going to let it roll and Things Are going to work out and if they don't work out we'll deal with that but I'm going to be here and I'm going to be present for her and I'm stop I'm going to stop trying to fix all the things and I'm GNA fix the one de and at that point Dan I guess you probably had to start pointing in more than you had been you probably had to assume responsibility for employees and issues that you hadn't been so much previously yes but delicately right that that's always the balance as you know as Leaders is not to like I'm stepping up and taking over all those things I'm in charge here right because we still want to we still want to empower the team and meanwhile um we're in the middle of like do we get PPP funding you know we're two months in where some of our biggest clients like all of our clients were fured and you know in the middle like in the middle of the the pandemic show really it's giving the team space to step up I don't know I'm looking back trying to tell this story it it's a blur it's really interesting Dan to hear you say that because the conversation is just picked up on things that I I put away in my memory I oh yeah I remember that now I I it's yeah I mean it's you know the Amnesia this stuff I um you know back in the in the in the middle of the forest fire I I it seems like it's forever ago um but it's months ago well you know you can forget at this point you know p P did happen and uh your business obviously survived but going back to that second quarter of 2020 when you know your clients were running in the other direction were were you concerned about whether the business was going to make it or not at that point we're always I mean look we're in a client services business so we're always concerned about that um but it wasn't I don't believe that it was like this existential threat we get one of those every two years when a big client leaves or some hits the fan we were concerned about um staying strong staying afloat you know not knowing how long this was you know we we also one one piece of advice that I think is is practical that we did during during all the covid pivots and you know Banning everybody together is separate the conversations of offense versus defense because it's really easy to go to like what do we cut what do we hold what do we do how do we Hunker but you know we knew that something was going to come roaring back I I I think we all wish it wouldn't have taken so long but we'd been through crises before as a business and I think we were very well prepared and we also had a good 2019 which made us well prepared uh for for what hit us um and you know in as much as we could you know we had also uh completed with you know most uh Steve carrying the torch on this one kind of red documenting Ouran vision and the things you know we had this kind of fresh document that we could sort of keep pointing back to like let's let's let this guide us through and I can't tell you where um you know how many people just pick you know picked up the torch because they've done it before do you guys have thoughts about whether you want to go back into an office at some point or you're not even thinking about that yet so our landlord has been awesome through this so our landlord owns a lot of ril space a lot of bars and restaurants and some breweries and he's always been very nice guy very fair guy so early on in the pandemic he got kicked around quite a bit as you might imagine um he had people not paying rent uh for long periods of time he had a couple of buildings under construction some other things he's been very very gracious our lease ran through July of 21 along the way there were variety of negotiations and one of those was we gave him back about 25% of the space that he turned into one apartment he cut our rent accordingly and then as we finished up our lease he gave us a really really sweet deal to stay we didn't need all the space anymore because we're not forcing anybody back in the office the office is optional and where we landed was he was going to try and rent the entire space which is about 5,500 square feet and he asked if we would stay and I said well sure what's it going to cost me and he said well give me a number so we talked about that we bounced it back and forth got he was very generous very gracious but he said I'd rather have I'd rather try and rent a place that has a tenant in it than try to rent an empty place and I could absolutely understand that and then he said if I can't rent it we might break it up into individual offices we we'll we'll update the floor plan and I said well great if you do that could you put a wall right here and then talk to me about this part and wouldn't you know just a couple of weeks ago he shows up with a floor plan we'll cut the kitchen in half and we'll get the front half by the Fishbowl D and we s the Fishbowl that makes a ton of sense yeah I'm gonna have to move my again aren't I anyway he's going to start construction in February he's going to add the wall and we'll add we'll get other tenants next to us but we're gonna stay because it's a great deal and we have one of our teams that likes going to the office a couple of days a week and one of the guys is in the office three or four days a week I go in the office a couple of days a week now we're not mandating it we used to try and because we because we were paying 15 grand a month and and utilities and such we used to try to say hey we need three days a week in the office the worst part of that thinking this is me waking up to saying boy I could have been a better leader then is is that the manager of half of those people was a remote employee why on Earth would I insist that they come to the office three days a week when their boss lives somewhere else so you you guys both talked before about how you kind of dread the hous of going question especially having to calculate all right how much information does this person actually want to hear uh do you have any advice for employees for people talking to someone who's going through something like this what do you want to talk about it do you not want to talk about it how would you like people to approach it I'll start this one Dan um so we've got friends on both sides of the spectrum friends who are are knocking on the door all the time to check how you're doing how doing how you're doing there were points when I I could get a little tired of talking about it but I'm always respectful of my friends because they're truly interested they want to know and then you have friends who are really afraid of your situation and are scared to ask about it and that's fine too and and we need to hold space for them as well I'm of a mind that says let's talk about it because what I find talking about it does there's this weird coincidence um Dan and I share a mutual friend who's an agency owner up here in the North Shore of Chicago I met with George I met him for drinks and dinner I don't know six nine months ago and we got to chatting and he kind of asked the hey how's it going Bush and I don't know I didn't know George all that well we got to know each other a lot better that night and wouldn't you know it George was the introduction to the crazy vaccines that Dan is trying right now so I'm of a mind that says vaccines for cancer yes so that led to that so I'm a big fan of of talking about it and sharing and even if you're that uncomfortable friend that doesn't know what to say I can tell you this much you're not going to be judged by by by somebody by somebody who's in think of it there will be no judgment say what you feel be true to yourself and and and be that friend because we truly appreciate it we might hear it too much but we can't feel enough love nobody wants to add to the burden I think that's part of it you know um reach out without expecting anything I I've um well you know it's uh it's so tough the how you know when when the when the how's it going is right at the end of the thing I'm just like thank you I see everything I appreciate everything to those listening that have sent me notes that have been in the know like um we can't get enough love in this situation um and you know telling people reminding people you don't expect a response is helpful even though I'm like I don't give a anymore I'm like you know yeah it took us a lot of time to even start sharing it you know between the different circles and you know setting up a Caring Bridge and you know my wife is also very private and doesn't you know there there's a lot of lot that I always have to consider in in Sharing um so you know I I I'll can tell you with a couple tiny exceptions nobody's it up and we I've SE right there's a lot of people that are afraid you know relle um with nut carcinoma this super super rare she you know she calls him her nut buddy uh who also has this and is also beating the odds he's at two years W um and you know she's been in contact with him and you know her her realization she's like I don't know what the to say to him like I don't you know she's fight like the one person and he also has small kids and like we don't know what to say nobody does yep you just got to talk yeah and it's tough do I want to talk about it it depends on the day you know it depends on the hour in the day and um it's weird where I find it's awkward on my end is when I do want to talk about it but not bring it up and then it's you know it's um it's weird you know like I I I think Co made all of us awkward when we started seeing people again like hi person let's do FIS thing or elbows you know but with this it's sort of it's weird and it's um you know I find it easy when people know what's going on and then I could say it's been a good day or a bad day without having to go too deep into it as you guys have said you're at different points in your journey with this um so this question probably only makes sense for Steve have you been able to get excited about getting back involved with the business uh or does that still feel like a lesser you know a far lesser priority than it once did no it's it's um I'm getting energy gaining energy from the business um I'm gaining energy from sharing my experience Now versus doing things so I hope the perspective that I gained is sticking in terms of working with the team and there's some old faces and some new faces and it's one of those where I'm excited by the decisions that are being made as a group I'm decided I'm excited by the decision being made as an individual yeah there's certainly days that are still Goos that's just life and times of any business this whole thing if if anything it's taught me is that life is going to keep coming at you and sometimes I was wildly distracted and I still am if you if you catch me three or four days leading up to roxan scans even though knock on wood we we believe they're going to be clean because they have been she's a wreck and and I'm I'm equally a wreck just because you you know what you're hoping for but there no guarantees and you have to go through it to to know and so now I I have a different perspective and a different sort of energy for the business but I've come back to appreciate it a little differently than maybe at the point where I was out last year and then even even to say when when Dan left I think my my perspective has changed too because there was some overlap there where the first four to four months of this year um Rox and Michelle were both fighting a forest fire and and and Dan and I were in there at the same time and then Rock sort of found her little way out of the woods um and we've had three scans since and and I keep hoping and and praying for Dan and Michelle to find that way out of the woods but but that overlap time Dan and I were I he was gone and I was probably a bit of a an empty chair at times and maybe for a large part of that so um to say I leaned on the team would probably be an understatement um and to say that they delivered is probably also an understatement it may be too soon for you guys to even think about this let alone talk publicly about it but has it in any way changed the way you're thinking about the future of the business and what you want to do with it down the road I've never been good at articulating the three to fiveyear plan that everybody's supposed to be ble to say you know and we've done that as a business we have our you know so it's not entirely true like I've I've been able to do that um you know now it's it's damn near andoss but I'm doing it in compartmentalized ways right of you know I think about every scenario in my life I think about um you know one of one of the things and I got a couple of trial runs at this when I had the first couple of kids when the fir Jacob who who's turning eight in next march arrived um I was very much Steve and I both were you know we grew up in the business because we created the business right and that transitioned to Leading or right you know there's it's not there's no clear transitions in any of this stuff but I was much more entangled and um you know we went through a a process I actually in in we're migrating Dropbox to Google I'm finding a bunch of old stuff and there was the Dan baby Band-Aid plan of like ripping off the Band-Aid when I had the baby and what were the things being juggled and um you know there there was a uh you know I learned some great lessons at that point because when I took off of everything when I came back and I didn't just jump back into doing everything I picked what I was better at and stopped doing some things where I was really just causing you know issues or was unnecessary and other people could handle like you know using that time when you come back to to think about what you want to be doing um you know right now um when I get time and space and I've had a little bit of it recently um it's super exciting when I can do things professionally and you know I did a webinar a little while ago um you know for for me um it is it has been exciting getting back into you know any anything professional that's different than cancer um but I also recognize you know when I don't want to do is just step back into things where I can let the team down next month if we have to change treatment and you know um so it has certainly changed my risk profile and kind of how I think about um what's important to me it's you know it's it's kind of an impossible time though to really plan all right we're uh we're just about out of time is there anything that either of you or both of you would say to someone else in a in your position or a similar position any advice or guidance that you would offer that we haven't covered yet I would say that you never know when you're going to hit by get hit by the proverbial 2x4 and in this case it wasn't me getting hit it was my family getting hit make sure your house is in order in terms of your company finances even if you're the smallest company you can have clean finances don't have get things lined up understand what your cash flow looks like um basic cash flow reports out of most accounting softwares are horrible get get an accountant or a bookkeeper understands cash flow understand how much money you have understand what your business run rate is understand where you are at a point in time because when we started covid before Dan and I got on our goofy marryg go rounds um we were financially prepared for a downturn because we're expecting a recession and so we had put some money in the bank and we were ideally we were hoping to say hey let's go buy a business or two uh depressed assets well Uncle Sam saved everybody and that's wonderful too but we decided Well we should hunker down instead because of Co and let's see if we can preserve Capital so we can maintain our team was became the goal and I think that having clean finances with an understanding of that which everybody we all say we do but I don't know that we all really do it so and and not saying dive in and own it yourself but make sure there's a clear understanding and a path to having cash in the bank so that when you do because you will get hit by a 2x4 of some sort whether it's a downturn in your business or it's a circumstance like Dan and I are facing you're going to need to know that you're solvent and that there's money there for you to keep a business running and understanding where you can tighten and where you can loosen and what you can do and having adding the you know the team the more stuff you can give away there's there's a million business reasons why you want to do that as well um boy practical advice here's here's one um we were about to sign up for a million-dollar life insurance policy and we put it off for a few months before getting the diagnosis have all your insurance stuff in order because the worst can happen at any point um good advice don't put off get your house in order certainly um you know lean on the people around you it's tough to talk about this stuff and a lot of people don't H you don't have to be crazy like and volunteer to do this conversation publicly um but there's a lot of people out there that have been through stuff and um and want to help I can't even remember when during the forest fire but I'm pretty sure everybody every family at my kids school fed us at one point um competitors uh that I know from different business circles volunteer to take over my pitches and take over your clients no like Ser they're like seriously like whatever whatever you need you I had a friend reach out and ask if he could step in and help lead the business he said I'll I'll put some of my stuff on mothballs and and help bfo if you need it wow say yes when people you know because a lot of people actually mean it when they offer and a lot of people don't know how to help and that's okay too but yeah take people up on it that is good advice all right uh thank you um I appreciate your volunteering to have this conversation all of our thoughts are with relle and Roxanne uh our best to them um thank you both Dan golden and Steve KW thank you Lauren if anybody listening wants to talk about this at all if they're in s similar circumstances feel free to reach out um this about sharing your experience because only by sharing that can we can we help our loved ones if you need help reaching Steve you can go through me I'm Lauren 21h hats.com and I'll connect you we can be found online it's kind of our thing well said thank you both and take [Music] care wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's l r n at 21h hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think you can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcasts follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by Jess Theron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]