Dashboard: Gene Marks Has One Piece of Tech Advice

[Music] welcome to another 21 hats dashboard I'm Lauren Felman I'm here with genan marks to talk about the stories and issues we think business owners should be following this week welcome Jean hey Lauren good to speak with you great to have you back as usual Jean you've been writing about issues that matter to business owners uh I want to start with a piece you wrote very recently about Buy sell agreements which I guess are important to to most business owners unless you own the the whole shebang you probably need to know about a buy sell agreement am I right yeah you know it's funny I usually I write uh you know this was for the inquire the Philadelphia inquire wrote it for it and uh usually I try to take like a a news story you know and then turn that into some type of advice column you know like just use it to you know launch it some advice there was no really like news about Buy sell agreements because you know there's a lot of other interesting things to write about and yet I I had to write about it because I started thinking about um succession planning issues and there's there's news around you know bus you know business owners getting older and selling their business getting older and trying to sell their businesses and not being able to yeah trying to sell it right and having a succession plan and you know and and so that's actually going to be a whole other thing I'm going to write about but the the the buy sell agreement became such a big part of that topic you know and it is listen it's like a it's like an estate planning document a will for your business you know I mean it is you know and you said it when you introducing this if you've got more than one owner I mean if it's just it's really designed for for businesses it's got Partners it's just you know everything starts out great and Rosy and then so often things turn to and when people are you know when the circumstances change and you know for all those kinds of things so it's really really important you talk to any attorney or accountant advising a business owner with more than one partner and they will say you've got to have a buy sell agreement it's just a road map Lauren you know that if something happens with one of the partners I don't know they they get divorced they uh they commit a crime getting divorc is a big one I mean that happens fairly regularly and yeah what happens when suddenly you're in business with the person's spouse you know I mean you know youo say they they get sued for some sexual harassment thing you know or or they just want out they want to sell their shares or they die there's like all these different circumstances where a business can can break up and all you want to do is you want to be like okay this thing happened let's pull out the buy sell agreement it's the Playbook and then here's the steps that we need to take to make sure that we everything is kosher and Equitable between you know me and the other partner or Partners that's all it is and you just want to think it all out in advance um you don't want to have those discussions when the hits the fan do you know what I mean that's why it's so important to have you know it's funny I I recently had a conversation on this podcast with two business owners who had really difficult partner situ situations develop uh they were both 50/50 partner deals and in both cases it got ugly it got a little bit nasty um and and when I asked him about it neither of them they both had uh both had a partner agreements neither one had any idea what was in the agreement neither one had looked at it and I think part of the problem was because it was it was 5050 and they kind of felt like they just had a wing it um Can Can U can one of these agreements absolutely I mean that's the whole point of the agreements so even if it's you know it by all means if it's a 50-50 relationship you should you should have that agreement in place you know so it's absolutely something that um um needs to be thought about in advance it's just you know and it is part of succession planning as well because succession planning is not just um you selling your business to somebody else um but it might involve you know transitioning your business down to your kids oh what about your partner and and and and that partner's kids you know how does that all figure and you got to think about these things in advance my wife told me years ago never have a partner in your business because we don't trust people so you know wait your wife is your partner right she is not no she is not she is not so it's my business is 100% owned by me and you know she is um um you know she's on our board as it is um but she doesn't you know she doesn't have any equity in the business you know but obviously all my assets are her assets but it's just if I had Partners it would you know it's just something that I would definitely want to have what do you think of I think they call it a shotgun Clause uh to to resolve a situation where one owner wants out and you have to figure out a sale price is is that something you're familiar with I don't know if I've ever heard the the the the term shotgun Clause but like if one owner wants out that that happens all the time in a buy sell agreement it's like okay so if you want out um we need to get an independent valuation done um that's all agreed on in advance you have the valuation done and you know you work up a sales price based on that and the uh you know the percentage that the owner earns you know so you know it's just imagine if you never buy sale agreement and some owner like I want out and I've been contributing 90% of the value of this business I demand to be paid for 90% of you know what this business is worth which happens every day yeah so that kind of stuff has to be addressed well in advance all right next topic you wrote recently as well that business owners should expect to pay more soon in overtime pay because the rules are changing what what's changing the Department of Labor said earlier this year that it's working on changes to overtime rules um hasn't been a whole lot of information about it but just like I told you God laen I don't know a year ago that worker classification rules were going to change and then like just a couple weeks ago those new rules came out I'm telling you now that overtime rules are going to be changing next year the Department's working on it and right now if you employ somebody that is salaried um not supervising anybody this is General general you know definitions okay there's some more specific ones like salespeople and whatever but just a salaried worker that's not supervising anybody and if they're making more than about $35,000 a year you don't have to pay them any overtime okay so it is they can work 60 hours a week you don't owe them any overtime that's being readdressed now the Obama Administration tried to up that salary level before and they failed they ran out of time and when the Trump Administration took over they abandoned it um but the Biden Administration and the labor department under secretary Walsh they're going to be they're going to be bumping it up they that salary level now some people talk about bumping up as high as $80,000 a year you know which sounds pretty high um I think it's going to be more in the $50 to $60,000 range which basically means that that same employe employe if they're now making less than say 60,000 a year again the final number hasn't been determined yet you're going to you're going to have to pay that person overtime and you know for time and a half for any hour work over 40 hours and don't even think that you canot do it uh yeah the Department of Labor is not going to audit you but I can assure you that that employee will report you to the Department of Labor because they people read and if they know that they're not going to get you know overtime you know that they're entitled to that's not the kind of PR that you want to have so it's this is an issue that's going to happen and you need to start thinking about it now if any of your employees are in that category especially if we're still experiencing a labor shortage correct I mean if you're in a labor shortage right now I mean it is I mean listen we have enough issues right now paying raises to our employees and and finding employees and retaining them and all of that um now this is going to be I think an added burden on a lot of small businesses uh because this will apply to all businesses by the way um there won't be an exemption um plus you know the the Department of Labor no exemption no matter it's all businesses no matter how small all businesses and and the Department of Labor is also looking at at maybe even readdressing some of the job responsibilities they might redefine them which would make more people entitled to overtime um it's just been a you know it's a very Pro worker Administration right now and they believe that workers need more protections and more ability they're not being compensated fairly and the Department of Labor is is going to step in and make some changes the Obama Administration wanted to raise it to about $48,000 but this was like six years ago um you know that number is probably going to be higher now all right is there anything you can do to prepare for it yeah um first of all you need to make sure that you are in compliance with the current rules and that you've also made your short list of employees that might fall into that category of of of people that are you're going to have to compensate for overtime and start being start thinking about it like what are we going to do about those employees I don't know maybe you turn them into hourly workers or bump up you know be prepared to just bump up their salary above that limit so that you don't have to worry about overtime it's just all there I don't know uh but you need to you need to be prepared and the first thing you want to do is make sure you're in compliance with the current rules a lot of businesses aren't even doing that they should be do you know what the penalties are if you don't pay attention not specifically not specifically I mean it's it's like any a violation of any federal rule uh you know it's civil if it's it's just a mistake that you're making but if it's if it's determined that you're willfully averting ping overtime and violating the rules it could be criminal so um that you but I don't know the exact amount of any find penalties we're paying attention to it really is all right next you wrote recently about the biggest challenge most companies face with their uh customer relations management software uh what's the biggest challenge so this comes after years of implementing CRM software Lauren and nobody uses it you know it's like you know this is you and I have talked about this topic this kind of topic so many times and it's so fascinating to me because it's such a powerful tool when it works right but there's so many issues with it including just getting people to use it it's it's kind of amazing it is really amazing it's because it's not an accounting system so like you don't need it to do invoices or cash receipts or payroll or you know pay your vendors so um but yet you know the companies that use them really well get like a huge return on investment from them but it's just making people use it and and say you've got a highly performing person A salesperson and they refuse to use your CRM system what do you do you know I mean do you do you do you fire that person just because they won't use the you know the application so it's a real challenge for a lot of my clients what do you do you know so that's what I outlined in the article is a piece that I wrote for Forbes and I'm saying listen I just you know you you need to you know obviously give them support I mean I have found in my in my lifetime of dealing with CRM clients that the users they break down into three categories you got the 20% of users who are power users and fantastic you've got the 60% of users that are you know with a little training a little TLC they'll be fine you know and then you've got the 20% of users that like can't even turn on their TV set you know and like so you got to focus on that bottom 20 can they be helped yeah I mean the other thing is that you can't just you know put a gun to their head or pound him in you know pound him in the back with a hammer I mean you know there's only so much people can do so you have to meet people halfway and I told the story in the com about one one client of mine I've told you I forget if I told you the story before it's a they sell deli meats you know they like they had a bunch of old salespeople on their you know on their team and the salespeople themselves some of them were not using the CRM system and they set up a voicemail box and they said listen you don't have to worry about sending in you know your your your updating the application just call and leave a message and they have like a college kid check the voice spell every night and key it into the CRM system and it got them to where they wanted to get to you know what I mean that's a strikes me as a really smart solution it's you know kind of under the category of you can't get blood from a stone if if you have people that just are not going to do it you need to find another way around it in the end it's all about getting the data right you need your reports you need your analytics you need your you automation but they're all these tools now they're always talking about AI like you know just it can scan your email and fill out your CRM and you don't have to think about it that stuff doesn't work yeah I mean it's it's getting there it's getting there but it is remember a lot of the AI that you know it triggers workflows but it triggers it off of data I mean you have to have data in the system to get it going do you know what I mean so you know AI works really well when you've got something in the system and then something's not happening or deadline's coming up or some requests get comes in you know about that data then AI can can can do a decent job of analyzing it and automatically responding or updating people or learning people but it's all about data entry and and how do you get that data in and getting these guys using it well you know like I said you got to meet them halfway so the deli meet people you know there was a voicemail box other clients they step up their support I mean they they train a couple of Administrators and they have the administrators diaper these guys and wipe their noses so that they do what they got to do to get the data into you know into the system um you just have to empathize I mean you know there are people that are just not technology people but they're very good sales people those people yeah so okay that's cool we want you for sales we do need our data so let's see if we can come to some common ground and that's what I've seen work pretty well well the last topic I want to ask you about is very much related um which is kind of Technology uh overload a p it's based on a p that ran in uh on bloomberg.com this week uh it basically asked whether software product productivity tools it didn't refer specifically to CRM but it was more about Zoom slack teams that kind of thing but but all of it together uh do those product productivity tools actually help or hurt productivity that was the basic question uh of the piece I'm curious you're an expert in this stuff what do you think it depends how's that for an answer for you you know I should have known there are productivity tools that that are that do help with productivity and people will mention them it is what I have seen is this proliferation of features and apps and you know you know and Hardware developments and you know Automation and Ai and all that kind of stuff that professes to help people do their jobs quicker and better and faster and all of that and um it just has sporadic results it really kind of depends on you know on the people do you know what I mean so it is um you know I I I it's hard to come to say like yeah they work and no they don't work because they work for some people and they don't work for other people I have some people that use the CRM systems that we Implement Lauren and they really take advantage of some of the advanced features to help them do things automatically autor respond to emails or alert them when something becomes overdue or you know and or or set up you know self- responses if like a client calls in and then works great and then I have other people that just can't adopt to it it doesn't help them or they don't want to take the time to you know but even people who can I mean it's it's just the proliferation of apps um and part of it is I think some companies feel like it they can't just make this decision for themselves because they have clients or vendors or whatever it is and they sort of have to be on everything so they can deal with everybody you know because these things aren't you know they don't talk to each other it's true it's true you know I I remember what it was like when these tools didn't exist and and I don't want to go back to that um that said it can really be a mess there was a quote in the Bloomberg piece from someone who runs a digital marketing agency and his quote was there are always messages going back and forth internally asking where different things are for different clients is it in a Google doc is it on email is it in Dropbox is in slack it could be anywhere they can't keep track of their most important information cuz people are using all the these different systems and in some cases it's it's not really their fault it's because that's what the client wants and they feel like they have to to do it the way the client wants is there an answer to that there really isn't there really isn't but I I think the I think the best solution that I have for people is is to change where they're spending their money um for the past decade or so since the since the iPhone came out we've spent all this money on apps and cloud-based you know programs um you know because we're just eating the dog food that the the tech companies are selling to us every client I talk to Lauren I mean I'll use Microsoft as an example hundreds of millions of users of Microsoft Office everybody I talk to admits that they're using like 10 to 20% of what it does you know so so really in 2023 if you really want to try and improve your productivity instead of investing in more software and Hardware um invest in some training get some you know get an expert in in whatever application or platform that your company is using and have that expert point out to you all the things that you could be doing to improve productivity with that application that you're probably not and then pick and choose what you think makes sense and have them train you and your team and your employees to make the best use of it I you know I when I speak about technology to different groups I was just in Florida yesterday speaking a bunch of credit union managers about technology I pointed out like eight things in Microsoft Office that they didn't even know existed you know there's like real-time translation and you can set up multiactor authentication on an individual document and they have a walkie-talkie feature now you know people like don't even know that exists you know and I said you you already have office you're paying for it it's like you're driving around in a car that has air conditioning but you're not using it because you don't know where the button is you know do you think those eight things are really useful to most of their clients that's up to them to decide and that's a great question and and so what I you know my advice was the best I could say is listen hire a Microsoft Consultants you know pay a grand or whatever get them in there for a day or two have them review your office system super to nuts and and how you're using it and then make recommendations what you could be doing that makes the most sense for you maybe using the walkie-talkie isn't really good for you guys but using the internal video capabilities that it has could really improve you know you know productivity in the company you know let that consultant make that recommendations and then you say as a group yeah I like that come on back here and train us how to use it so we can really get up more of the system you have so stop buying the technology and the software and the applic we've already subscribed to it so we're we're stuck but these vendors want us to keep using it push your vendors to come out and teach you how to use the stuff you already own better it's in both of your best interests to make sure that you're using these applications as good as you can be you know Jade I think that's the gene marks column I want to read it's like the these are the features you are already paying for that you should be using and obviously you can't know for every reader but you could go through the features that you know about that aren't generally getting the use they should and tell us who they make sense for done I want that column it's a great idea it is a great idea I mean I I can put that column together and I'm making a note to write about that as well I'll I'll pick office only because there's so many users but this applies to G suite and slack and box and you know all these platforms but like can pick on office say like here's 10 things you probably even know you own in your office system and you're not using them and here's you know here's what they do um you know but then my takeaway is going to be I don't know what's best for you but I'm sure some of these are so get an you know get an expert in and invest in them because you're already investing in it'll make the point even if you don't hit the ones that are right for a particular reader they're going to understand that there's stuff going on here that they might want to look into that is correct and then you know and the message is get some training man get some Consulting so that you can use what you've got that much better and you know it's just kind of irresponsible not to do that do you use slack I'm only part of a slack group for my uh squash not business because you use teams I use teams yeah we're an office you know we're we're an office thing and we're using 10% of what team does I mean we're we're just as guilty as everybody else interesting interesting you need to hire someone to look at that Jean I know I need to set up and do that and you by the way you know just speaking speak as a business owner myself I'm like uh I've got all these other things to do maybe we're fine with teams it's okay you know what I mean and I shouldn't have that attitude I because I'm sure if I spent a few hours with somebody who really no teams I would walk away from that conversation saying Jesus Christ I can't believe I've been doing it this way all this time we could be saving so much time doing it that way you know what I mean you know the thing is it doesn't really address the issue that Bloomberg raised it's in a way it's it's compounding the problem uh by giving people more options more things that should be that they should be doing I mean you know for me even something is basic when I work for companies have slack and email there are people the at the companies that only use slack and there people at the companies that only use email and it's it's just it you can't remember where stuff is you can't remember you know who to have a conversation with where it it it just it drove me crazy I I hated that and I I have no idea what the answer to that might be yep I agree I agree there is no real answer but there has to be an answer it just depends but it it the answer is going to depend on what you want to be using this application for but I I don't think there's a single one of your listeners that would disagree that they're underusing the platform they have I'm sure that's true especially it's if it's true of you oh yeah oh yeah Gene marks is a CPA who writes weekly on small business for the guardian the hill the Philadelphia inquire the Washington Times Forbes and entrepreneur you can also hear him on ABC radio's ey on the world with John Bachelor Jean hosts two small business podcast with paychecks Corporation and the hardford thank you Jean thank you Lauren we we'll see you next week always a pleasure have a great week everyone