Can an Entrepreneur Raise an Entrepreneur?

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week in episode 77 Jay gos and Diana Lee discussed the dangers of mixing entrepreneurship and parenting years ago when Chris Rock was asked in an interview about his relationship with his children he responded my kids are rich I have nothing in common with them obviously that's an extreme example played for Laughs by a comedian but you don't have to be a celebrity to wonder about the difference between your upbringing and your kids upbringing as it happens Jay and Diana were both raised in family businesses but they offer contrasting thoughts on the challenges of raising a family and building a business at the same time plus we also talk about what the upheaval in the Auto industry means for Diana how to think about the president's vaccine mandate and whether Jay has resolved his crazy double billing problem with AT&T even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will let own know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners 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 and please stick around at the end of the podcast for a new feature Steve K's marketing minute joining me this week on the podcast our regulars Jay gz whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and and a home furnishing store Jason home and Diana Lee who is CEO of constellation agency a new york-based digital marketing firm the episode is titled can an entrepreneur raise an entrepreneur welcome Jay and Diana can an entrepreneur raise an entrepreneur Jay what do you think I only obviously have my own sampling of three children who are now 39 36 and 31 and I believe that it is largely genetic one of my kids is extremely entrepreneurial one of them is largely entrepreneurial and the other one doesn't seem to be entrepreneurial at all whatever that word well I'll have to Define that meaning taking risk being optimistic seeing things as opportunities instead of problems um I so yeah I I don't know that uh it's something that you can uh Inspire or teach to a kid I I think there's many other parenting issues as like just how do you navigate running a business when you're trying to raise kids that's a whole another thing are we going to talk about that sure okay I got plenty to say on that subject before we get there dianae how about you do have you thought about this I have and it's it's weird that you asked Lauren because so my parents were entrepreneurs but they actually came from a very poor country South Korea um and we moved to the US in 1974 when I was 5 years old so um they had a very hard time you know with all the businesses that they had because they self-funded everything and they were working you know 15 18-hour days just to get by and make enough money they came from like pretty desperate times and you know my parents were held up in gunpoint multiple times uh while I was growing up running their you know convenience stores their fish markets or whatever they actually owned at the time uh many of the reasons were because they had to actually open it in pretty bad locations or locations where they can afford it but uh obviously they weren't in the best places watching them throughout the years they would come home and they would have a bag of cash uh afterwards because obviously they'd have to take the money out of the registers and they would count the money you know soon as they got home and then they count the coupons of what they actually had to apply everything to and I watched it my whole life and as many times that I could say Lauren that I said I don't want to turn out like them where I'm working 15-hour days not sleeping much working all the time and completely ignoring me or their child I ended up repeating the same identical thing but in a bigger way tell us about that when when did you realize that you were repeating I started the business when I was 47 years old so it was 5 years ago I'm 52 now and my kids were in high school then so my husband had said to me if you're going to actually you know build a business you should do it now because our kids are in high school they don't really want you around as much and they don't want to be controlled Diana so at the end you're going to have a better relationship if you just go to work more so I was like okay fine I'll do it and you know because I'm a control freak I wanted to make sure everybody's okay all the time and I was you know over controlling about what they ate how they dressed all of those things that I think you know most mothers are with their children and then soon as I start the business I am so overc consumed and now I have employees I have people I have to support that I feel like they're my children as well and I end up putting all this energy knowing that my kids want me to have less control of their lives so that's how it all started it was all for the benefit of them to have a better relationship with them the business starts doubling year over-year and I just get more and more sucked in more and more consumed um you know having a hundred employees now it's just every hour of my day has been consumed with work um so they recently all left for college you know I have two freshman year I have one my in his senior year and I just feel like I haven't been around for them at all for the last four or five years because of the business and I feel guilty but I ended up repeating the same thing my parents did for me Jay you grew up in your father's Dime Store and and you've often credited that with that experience with helping you learn important lessons like I know it was a very different kind of business but you learned how to treat customers did your sons grow up working in your business at all no not really I mean I have my businesses in the city and my kids were in the suburbs and and back when I was a kid you know I had to go to work on Saturdays cuz that was the big business day and then what during the holidays I actually took off some time in high school you know I got I didn't I took a couple days out of high school to help out of the store because you know it was it was you know Christmas rush so um but my father was home every night at4 to 7 I wouldn't say he was consumed by it he worked six days a week um I grew up never seeing my father you know my father Works six days a week I also work six days a week uh my whole life and you know I would say to people you know there's that old story about there's no old person laying on their deathbed wishing they would have spend more time with their business I tell everyone that's not really the right Parable the right Parable is the day they leave for college that they're walking away from the car you want to vomit and you say oh my God was I home enough my kids's grown up it's over sounds like Diana just had that experience well yeah and here's the difference though see when you're on your deathbed you're going be dead in a few days couple days of suffering here you get another 30 years hopefully to to to torture yourself over that you screwed up so I warn people well if you screwed up well there there's different levels of screwing up I I think this whole concept of balance when it comes to owning a business is is laughable I yeah I call it tolerable you know to tolerable sacrifice I mean I I was home I was home Sunday usually was I home enough not terrible if I had it through all over again I probably would have been home a little more but the biggest thing I've learned and of course I learned it too late is I call it um having Al you know alignment meaning if you make a decision I really want to be there for my kids a decent amount maybe you don't open that one extra store maybe you don't open that extra office maybe and I wasn't thinking about that so I did in fact expanded probably bigger than I needed to entrepreneurship is intoxicating and you you know and you're not thinking about it and you think oh I'll take that vacation next year this year I'm too busy and then whoos your kids are out of the house so and I said this to you in particular uh probably five years ago I said you know I'm more s way more successful than I thought I would be I think if I would have worked 10% less I would have been home more and it would have been a better you know outcome for for being home with my kids but then you said yeah maybe you'd be broke you don't know that doing 10% less work means 10% less results yeah it's not necessar a linear relationship maybe that 10% less work maybe the business wouldn't who knows so It's Tricky Diana do you have would you do it differently if you had it to do over I don't think you can as a startup entrepreneur there is no such word as work life balance that like if you want work life balance don't open up a business that's what I would say because it is going to consume you and just like what Jay said it's intoxicating and what's crazy about it is it becomes more and more intoxicating every time that you're more successful so you whatever the the goal is the goal continues to just go higher and higher year over year it's never good enough and people around you say oh it's great but at the end can you get here can you get here well the company would be worth so much more if you could get here well if you went into another vertical you'd actually have to do this and for whatever reason in so many ways I feel like I'm a professional athlete like it's like good is never good enough and at the end they want you to perform you're like a performance pretty much and the goal always ends up changing to another level you feel that way even though you don't have investors or Outsiders who are driving performance that's all self-inflicted obviously self-inflicted but there's always people that's making an evaluation of your company I don't care who it is because if you're successful uccessful everybody is waiting for you to be more successful and everybody is watching you so like you know we win whatever Inc 5000 number 65 or we're sa fastest growing company a woman Le number 10 I have Goldman Sachs contacting me non-stop I have Moran Stanley contact me nonstop I have JP Morgan contact me nonstop I have you know I have Bankers I have lawyers I have every body wants to be your friend and at the end of the day they're watching to see what you do because they want to represent you and it gets more and more intoxicating can I help you with this they don't want to be your friend they want to make money off of you of course you know as I'm listening to you I'm thinking like unleash yourself unte tether yourself from these people because i' I just learned like what you're saying doesn't really make any sense people are watching you so you need to keep pushing the business to a limit to where you're exhausted I think so and that's a difference between my age and your age I I you what you just said is all in your head it's self it's totally self you've put this in your own head like what if you slowed your growth down just so you could have more time one I don't think you and I I think we're probably close in age I'm 52 how old are you I'm 15 I'm 65 okay so we're not that far apart no but but I've also been in business for 43 years yes yes so that is a big difference I think for me I think it has to do with the fact that I entered the type of Industry that I entered into right which is Technical and then so there's a lot of fast growth in the technical Industries uh the multiples are through the roof when you actually do a technology business I'm sure um and so it's not really all those people that pressure me I don't feel any pressure from them it's my employees that I feel the most pressure for all right there's something to that no there's something to that I I give you that yeah it's not I don't care about the bankers I don't care because at the end they're basically kissing up to you to do business with you and make money off of you it's the employees they left whatever organization because of your vision that you promised for them all right I give you that there's there I don't have that that issue because I'm not a technology company I you've you've you've got a good point with that I I can only tell you Lauren you were there with me we were at an conference 10 years ago sitting at a table there's a woman there who's M maybe late 30s 40 six months pregnant she mentioned dinner that she had been up in her room for the last two days not at the conference but she was up in her room doing proposals and they're opening another office and she's got two other kids at home and she's in the middle of divorce and I just say to myself that's not a good picture like opening more offices getting divorced having her third kid like how's that story working I I I I and I think that there's there's tens of thousands of people out there that are like that that are just out of what I'm using the word out of alignment like are they going to get what they want and um and I've been looking at this for 30 I've been asking people I've been watching people in business groups watching you know raising kids the one here was the one moment that really gave me some clarity it was a long time ago I was probably 34 or something and there's a guy in the business group that's in technology and he's going to Europe all the time and he's got a custom made mercedesbenz that he flew in from Germany that no one else has here and he's this big hitter and i' gotten to know him a little bit at that point I just had my third kid and I was trying to figure out how do you navigate this whole thing so I say to him is it difficult that you're going to Europe all the time and you're leaving your wife home with four kids and you're growing this business and he turned to me and he said quote unquote I couldn't make this up he goes my children have eaten in the finest restaurants in the world and I said to myself you are really screwed up and I didn't ask anything more that's all I had to hear so then 3 four months later there's the holiday party and the the spouses were invited and I happen to be standing there waiting for a drink at the bar with the wife and I had to go back to the scene of the crime I had to ask her so I just said you had to ask her I had to ask her cuz I'm just fascinated by this whole thing I said is it hard you know raising four kids when you know your husband's you know traveling a lot and she looks at me St cold and she goes yeah I'll tell you a story um a couple of months ago my son dropped out of high school this is in a very affluent area like they probably don't have a lot of dropouts my son dropped out of high school and I had to put put him into drug re rehab and when my husband got home he was Furious he said if I was home this wouldn't have happened yeah that's probably true if he was home it probably would it sounds like he didn't really realize what he was saying no I don't even know that she realized when she said that to me like I said I'm not the go not the go to writer I couldn't write the this stuff that well I I and so I don't know where they all ended up I I just know there's a lot of really screwed up entrepreneurs out there and most of them are in the magazines just read about their lives and like I don't want any part of that so I've tried to navigate it so I think that what you're saying might be logical but I would disagree with you on something and and this is it for me me is our business is not a me business it's not about me it doesn't even make any sense for me even if I own most of the shares of the business it's not me it's a we business so for us it's whether we all make it and everybody is basically striving for the evaluation of the company everybody wants that and at the end I have to deliver that experience period And so when you get sucked into this type of situation um and it's not a me business I don't own 100% I've got to deliver it for the employees that actually own percentages of the business wait now that part I didn't know anything about walk is because that's totally different than my situate what how much of the business do do you own compared to these other people so we have what's called Equity rights Jay so Equity rights basically means that you have Equity rights that you've given your employees but they have no ownership interest at a percentage level um you know as stock so if there is basically a future transaction then they would get a percentage of whatever the equity rights were and then I would dilute and my partner would dilute um based on the equity rights So 20% of our business is owned by our employees through Equity rights so they don't actually have voting power but they actually have the rights to the stock wait and I didn't know you had a partner that's all news to me and and so so at the end of the day how much is this is you and how much is this everyone else because that's news to me I thought you owned 100% so I have a partner he's the 20 years younger than I am and I met him on LinkedIn and it's a funny story uh because I had to deliver a social media campaign for fiser pharmaceuticals about seven or eight years ago prior to to launch in consolation and be being 52 what do I know about technology how am I going to launch a you know campaign like this um I'm just a good salesperson so I end up selling and um by that time I had to actually execute this thing so I went on LinkedIn and tried to find a social strategist and found Matt and he is a social strategist for ooia matters at Social Labs he was the number one employee that actually got hired at Social labs in New York um after they acquired social Labs Omnicom acquired social Labs so he ends up running and executing this campaign and I realize that there's all these things that are happening technologically that have missed but I understand clients and I understand how to sell and I understand operations that's my strength so I said why don't you partner with me to launch constellation agency and that was the birth of constellation so that was uh 5 years ago I did it with a complete stranger I know that sounds really weird and he always says I think I got struck by lightning Diana I got struck by lightning nobody walks into your life and basically offers you Equity of something and then blows it out out of the water and you know you end up becoming a millionaire overnight and that's pretty much what happened to Matt so Matt is um 32 I'm 52 he owns uh you know obviously I own majority share and he owns minority shares okay so when you say you disagree age with me that's not really accurate you're in a very different situation than I'm in I have no Partners I don't have anybody who's counting on me selling the company and retiring so we're just in this is typical in entrepreneurship people are in very different situations in your situation you've done a good job of explaining why you're in that situation I get it you know so in your situation I understand that you do have expectations to meet for other people I don't so it's just different right but you're in a very different but lucky situation so all I'm saying is you can't judge other people based on their circumstances because they could be in a very difficult situation yeah for sure I'm not judging anybody I'm telling you my own story Diana you um you kind of said you in some ways you've already blown it out of the water but you're concerned about not hitting valuations and the impact that would have on your employees you've already done so well what's the scenario that concerns you what are you afraid could happen so as an entrepreneur and and this is the analogy that I used make is I always feel like I'm going into a boxing ring I'm the boxer and there's going to be a fighter that comes in and every day it's a different fight every month it's a different fight so Delta variant covid chip shortage in the Auto industry uh data restrictions cookist future iOS 14 changes I don't care what it is every year there's something that I can't predict that basically happens so when I put an evaluation of what we're going to do and a prediction of what we're going to do something always goes wrong I don't care what it is in the 5 years there's never been a year where basically everything went the way it was supposed to and so in this it's like the fighter comes in I've got to basically punch and pivot and I can't get knocked out that's how I I believe but I know there's going to be another fight another boxers coming into the ring to take me out whether it's this year next year or whatever and and I got to figure out a way to stay in the battle not get knocked out and still win that round that's how I feel I see so just to tie up this conversation about parenting it it occurs to me listening to the two of you that I I might have started with the wrong question I I asked you can an entrepreneur uh raise an entrepreneur maybe the first question should have been do you care if you raise entrepreneurs or not is that something that's important to you does it matter Jay what do you think I want to have happy kids and I'm not about to put that that that um responsibility on any I want to have happy kids if they want to be an entrepreneur great if they want to go teach School great if they want to become an accountant great I I just want happy kids and I take back what I said I'm not judging anyone I am judging someone I'm going to judge someone who grows the business at the expense of their children and leaves this world with some really messed up kids which I've seen close up and it's horrible and and um I say if you don't want to pay attention to your kids and you want to just go to work and rationalize that I'm just making a living and never be home um don't have kids do yourself a favor do the kids a favor it's not easy being an a I'm not saying you're supposed to be home every Saturday and Sunday be home at 5 o'clock for dinner I'm saying that there are some people who absolutely are are they're Workaholics and the true definition of a workaholic they're never home they leave their spouse with the kids if they have a spouse left and it's pretty brutal and I just think for the children of the world they deserve they have a parent that's around at least some I mean enough whatever the word enough is I don't know what that is but uh uh it's it's it's not an easy trip and um it's difficult and I by no means I understand in the startup phase there are absolutely times where you just have to say at work I get it I mean you have to you can't just go up I'm out of here um it's it's not that simple it's it's a difficult uh and and in my case my wife was home with the kids so it worked I if I had a working wife I don't know that I could have done what I did Diana do you care if your kids are entrepreneurial no I feel that part I I agree with Jay is that I want my kids to be happy and whatever their passion is is what I've always said you know it never feels like work to me because I am passionate about what I do and I want them to find what their passions are in life whatever it may be um so that part I completely agree with Jay all right uh I want to change topic I want to talk a little bit about the car industry which happens to be the industry Diana that you built your business on uh but first we're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor work better now which connects entrepreneurs like you guys with virtual assistance okay I'm here with Rob Levan who is co-founder of work better now which provides business owners with virtual assistance how's it work rob you know as well as anybody Lauren that the pace of change in business has never been faster today's business owner has more to do than ever and if you don't focus on important stuff like Business Development and your next product and service and your customer experience and your team it's impossible to keep up much less to grow your business an assistant could do the one thing that everybody thought was impossible to do which is to give you more time in your day by taking all of the administrative tasks off of your plate how much does it cost it's $1,750 for a full-time dedicated assistant and fellow listeners of the 21 hats podcast can save $150 for the first 3 months by mentioning the word Warren all right to learn more work better now.com that's it work better now.com and we're back Diana you did build your business by helping car dealers with their marketing um but right now between Tesla and the pandemic and the inability to get cars cuz there no computer computer chips that industry is is truly in turmoil so first question is that a problem for you oh yeah that's totally a problem for me that's one of the boxers that's com to the ring gotta um and mainly because the auto dealerships are having an alltime gross High meaning they could make the most amount of money on a car that they've never been able to do in the last 25 years because there's such a shortage of vehicles right now and so why would they advertise right why does anybody want to Market there are no incentives there's no manufacturers that are basically coming out and say oh you got $3,000 rebate no no no such a thing they don't have to put a rebate dealerships have two cars on the lot right now on on new so they don't have to put any incentives on so why would you ever have to advertise right now so think about the entire marketing side of Auto it's pretty much taking a hit pretty bad I actually went out to buy a car and like they're asking $33,000 they call it a market adjustment and um yeah to your point I've never seen anyone get away with that but they are and I just decide okay we'll just wait until that catches up because uh I'm not paying $3,000 now if I had to I guess you have no choice but I do have a choice Diana I get I get your point about they're not being a need for them to market right now but some of them are facing an existential crisis I mean a lot of dealers are selling to to larger dealer groups or oh yes oh yeah yep because they're not sure they can make it in the in in the new world especially with more manufacturers planning on um selling direct and with everybody uh moving towards selling online especially since the pandemic can you help with that so this is the interesting thing right now Lauren that's happening in in the Auto industry um it's being re U disrupted right now so you've got the electric vehicles you got rivan pstar Lucent you have t that all can sell direct to Consumers right from the website so you can go on any of those websites and buy a car and they'll ship it to you and they'll arrive in like 6 weeks all the traditional automakers in this country have basically a law here that says that you cannot sell a car directly to consumers in the US all of the traditional auto makers the 25 of them so these are like Toyota General Motors Ford so on and so forth all have to sell a car through franchises and so because of this law they cannot sell direct to Consumer this is a big problem so now the oems uh the traditional automakers are now having to deal with this dilemma that they have to sell it through a franchise and because of that marketing is becoming very very ineffective why because in the traditional way you go on any um automaker website let's say it's Audi you go on audi.com you can't buy a car you got to go to audi.com then Audi offers.com which is based on the region then you got to find a dealer that actually has the inventory but you're the one that actually has to do all the work to find out whether the dealer has the inventory or not you go on Tesla you can find the inventory and you can purchase it right then and there so because of that that part of it is being completely disrupted but the other part that Lauren that you're saying is this is an opportunity for Co and I know that this is going to sound really crazy but I believe this is a way for automakers to choke off the franchises they don't in the end they're the ones that decide whether they want to give actually inventory to the franchises if they don't want to give the inventory to the franchises the franchises will die so you know you have this chip shortage how much of it is going to affect which franchise they're going to actually give the inventory to and which ones they won't give the inventory to and the ones that don't get the inventory better sell ASAP because the franchise markets are going to di diminish in the US it's going to get smaller smaller and smaller to some point that I believe the automakers is going to make a point to try to overturn that law to sell uh two franchises I believe that's going to happen so does all of that mean that you're not no longer going to be able to rely on the car industry for the bulk of your business no so because of the Innovation that we have we're able to actually go and work with the automakers but we can also work with the agencies of record as well as the franchise markets so we can position many different ways um and so we we definitely have done that which has helped us a lot in addition to that 30% of my business is DDC direct to Consumer Brands and that side keeps growing so even though the auto side has been terrible this year the other side has made up for the side that I wasn't able to get next topic it's been uh it's been about a week now since President Biden announced his vaccine and testing mandate which uh applies to all businesses with more than 100 employees 100 or more and uh both of you fall into that category you've had a little bit of time to think about it I'm wondering what impact you think this is going to have I'm trying not to think that's my new thing I'm trying to just not think um I I just I'm just waiting to see how it flushes out I mean almost everybody who works for me in the retail side in the offices is vaccinated the people that I have working in the factory numerous um people there are not vaccinated they're all wearing masks and I don't know I don't know we going to lose any people um I've got I've got a some really long-term people that really don't want to do it so is that your biggest concern because I I know some business owners are very happy about this in the sense that they want their people to be vaccinated and they're happy to have uh Joe Biden be the bad guy in this scenario and they don't have to mandate it cuz he did what's your concern I don't know I I my concern is that a few people quit and I've got some people yeah and I've got people that one guy he's been here for 20 years and he's very valuable do you have reason to believe he will in fact quit um I really have not I decided at this stage I did not want to interrogate anybody but I did just say to him Hey listen is there any chance you're going to get a vaccination he said no now that was before the Mandate thing that was about a month ago so I don't know how are you thinking about it Diana yeah so in New York City it's impossible to go anywhere indoors without actually a vaccination card so they've mandated it it's the law here to actually be vaccinated even in a store in a restaurant not necessarily a store but if you want to eat in a restaurant you have to show your vaccination card oh it's not like that here H yeah so here um I mandated vaccinations a little over a month ago and it was because I was moving into the new space I signed the lease shortly after that I find out that one World um Trade Center has also mandated vaccinations they were one of the first to do it in New York City and so once I found that out I realized uh I have this incredibly giant space now I can't bring my employees in unless they're vaccin unless they're vaccinated and so that was super depressing for me so at that moment I mandated vaccinations because I needed to come back to office so they come back Monday Tuesday and Thursday how did they respond only one quit and I mean amazingly because they were so excited about the new space and how beautiful and everything it was that they didn't it was a complete distraction and so for them I had almost everybody vaccinated I had about four people uh in total that was going back and forth one person quit the other three didn't vaccinate because of me but vaccinated because of the new office space they said they love the office and they're coming to the new office no matter what and so they vaccinated so the one that quit did anybody have what was what was the reasoning why they quit I mean did you know so they spoke to our HR team and um they apparently she had mentioned that she felt very uncomfortable about getting vaccinated she was scared about what was inside the vaccine she was very very skeptical in terms of whether we had enough scientific proof whether it was safe or not so that was her biggest fear I think so Diana it sounds like the president's mandate will have no impact on you whatsoever you're not going to have to test anybody or anything but uh but Jay you may have to test some people have you thought about how that would work I'm waiting to see what they're saying are they going to pay for this no did you hear is that a fact did that come out because up till now I've been told they haven't they haven't come out with the details yet that's what I was told yeah but I think it doesn't make any sense right like if they really want you to vaccinate they're going to make it super painful if you don't so they're going to make it inconvenient they're going to make it costly they're going to make sure that you know the person is going to try to pay Mo for most of it and I believe that's probably where it's headed that's actually what you're describing uh what Delta Airlines did you know they added a $200 a month health insurance supplement for people who aren't vaccinated and apparently it did prompt a lot of those people to go and get vaccinated exactly wait walk through that Delta is charging unvaccinated employees a $200 a month sirar charge for health insurance because their costs are higher when from people getting sick and that is having the intended uh effect of encouraging a lot of those people to go ahead and get vaccinated and I think that's right because at the end the business owner actually ends up having to pay for a lot of the health insurance um and so because of that the health policies are going to go higher that's a slippery slope so then if that makes sense should they be charging $200 a month for people that smoke people do do they that exists oh I didn't know that we're just about out of time I want to do one more thing real quickly I would be remiss if I did not follow up with you Jay last time you were here you told us a completely bizarre story about your dealings with your phone carrier AT&T they had managed to overbill you by I think you said between $80,000 and $100,000 yeah it was a six figureure number yeah and they were telling you they would work it out but ultimately you had to go to arbitration and they forced you to eat a percentage of it not a lot I think I got I think they refunded 90% well still but I still right no believe me didn't feel good not contesting the fact that they had just you know double builded you overcharged you for it and you it by telling us that it was happening again and that they were threatening to shut down your phone service no no they didn't threaten to shut it down they shut it off my phones got shut off one day so so have you sorted this out where do we stand this time they've got a manager on it they swear the re the the the credits coming and we just sit tight and they know about the other thing the part that I didn't fully understand when you asked me last time and I I didn't I don't know that I give a thorough answer your question was why not just change phone carriers yeah why are you still using the you got to understand I've got my showroom my offices in Lincoln Park and upscale part of Chicago and then I got the factory warehouse in a lower income area that doesn't have as much fiber optics that doesn't have the attention they get in the in this you know where I'm at here and and we've tried to go to Comcast and it fails so whether it's because of copper wires or infrastructure there's some there's some reason why we need to use AT&T because uh we did try to leave them but sure no believe me I nothing would make me happier but I I uh were stuck and I I kind of am sleeping at night they they this is it's got a manager on it they're giving us the refund I asked me in a month Diane have you ever heard anything like that I've never I probably would lose it it's funny you say that I said if I wasn't doing this for so long I would have lost it it's just like I've kind of gotten used to it is what it is like I I would have gone ballistic 30 years ago but like what am I going to do about it so it is what it is my thanks to Jay gz and Diana Lee as always thanks for sharing guys and here it is your marketing minute with Steve crawl has be found online here's today's question Steve how can I get more qualified leads wow there's a complicated answer here but I'm going to try and simplify it to get more qualified IED leads and I did a webinar on this just recently for B found online is to look at your personas and evolve your personas to the point where you're asking more questions about your customers what keeps them up at night what problems they're trying to solve if you can get to thinking about those questions and answering those questions for yourself in the personas and then evolving your content to include the answers to some of those questions so you're speaking to your customers more directly of about their true needs versus simply sell sell sell you're going to be closing the Gap by what you want to do which is sell and what they want to do which is buy and I'm here to tell you that buy and sell despite the fact that you think they're the same they're not there's a gap in between that you need to fill with quality content if you want more details look for Steve's marketing minute blog post at 21h hats.com [Music] 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 ren21 hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think he 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