Dashboard: Looking for Answers

[Music] welcome to another 21 hats dashboard every Monday Gene marks and I talk about the issues we think business owners should be monitoring this week Jean is president of the marks group a consulting firm that advises small businesses especially about their technology needs he also hosts his own podcast small Biz ahead with the Hartford Insurance you can find it at SBA harford.edu thank you Jean and thankfully it's not yet another birthday um they come all too quickly they do uh Jean there's so many stories to talk about uh this week I'd love to start with one about car dealers yeah um there was a story in uh the morning Brew about how there are car dealers who are actually benefiting from the chip shortage which seems really counterintuitive can you explain that sure by the way like to give a shout out to the morning Brew it's a really good newsletter not as good as yours yours is smaller than but morning Brew is more you know wider stuff that's it's very very good but yeah mine's more focused on the entrepreneur yes it is it is there is a little bit more General business but as you said a very good newslet it's very good um your um but the story was fascinating it was all about how auto dealers many auto dealers um are actually doing pretty good during these times These are times where like when you read about the Auto industry there are significant challenges that the industry is going through right now because there's such an enormous shortage of chips which as we know goes into so many of our you know all the cars that we buy so there's been factories that have been shut down and the industry is reporting much lower sales but but yet you know in this morning Brew article the reporting was that there were you know auto dealerships that were actually not only doing just okay but even better than they were were and and it's just a it's it's like their revenue is down but they've figured out smarter way to operate and they're still making a profit yeah it's it's and and I love that like for example which which I it makes me somebody who like hates people you know they they they talk about now customer servic has become so much easier it's my kind of customer service customer walks into the auto showroom now the salesperson shows the customer the car the customer's like oh I don't like this I want it in a different color or I wanted in you know I need the you know whatever they some special feature or whatever and the salesman's like well tough dude it's all we got so take it or leave it and then the customer's like okay I guess I got to buy it or otherwise it's just going to be gone I won't have any car I love that I wish it was always like that you know I don't understand how these people deal with consumers and all of their pretty annoying questions you know so and apparently I'm not the only one because I think the auto dealers are also saying it's great you know well they're very happy because it takes a lot less time to sell somebody um and also they're carrying a lot less inventory which uh saves the money they you know they've learned that people are willing to come in uh look at a model buy it and wait two months or whatever it takes tur and it's turning so you know I mean one of the biggest issues in running a car dealership is that you know you have to buy inventory you're buying it on credit so you've got the cost of capital there and then the cars are sitting on your lot and you're hoping that people are going to come in and buy it and that's you know your your profits are completely dependent on that now they you know there's less inventory they buy what they need it comes in it goes off the lot cuz there's that demand for it and they're like wow this is this is great the other thing I saw in the article was about um marketing expenses that you know they're spending Less on marketing because there's a shortage of cars there was a there's I guess there's a certain percentage of the population are always going to need cars for whatever reason so people are just coming in you know and um so they're they're cutting costs there as well it's hilarious isn't it it is it is so one of the things I've I've loved doing over the past few months is is finding businesses in different industries that are figuring out ways to do things that they probably should have been doing all along they're they're forced out of their usual patterns they're trying different stuff and some of it's working and some of it I think they're going to keep doing long after this pandemic is over if it's ever over um do you think there lessons being learned here by the car dealers that they will stick to there is um I don't know in this industry if it's going to continue on like this I mean I I still say if you were to ask car dealers would you rather have this situation or 2019 they're going to say 2019 so you know I I think that when demand when when when the chip shortage gets resolved and it will get resolved and when more cars were available customers are going to come on back and they're going to be back to being again and then you know the car salesman are going to have to you know whatever deal with that but the good news is I'm starting to understand why you're not in a retail business oh I would be absolutely terrible in a retail world that but you you know but listen I mean these sales people they this is what their job is it's just been a lot easier for them so I I think the inventory issues are going to come back as well because the competition is going to come back they're going to have to start spending more and marketing I just think it's going to all go back now although you know what they're doing now is kind of like the Tesla Model and it's it's working for Tesla yeah well yes and no I mean I I I just don't think that um it's it's going to have that big an impact on this IND IND listen like so many other things maybe I'm wrong um but I tell you what you know you use the example of like business the best biggest example of course is work from home you know I mean how many of my clients refuse to listen to their younger employees and you know have work from home benefits and then you know pandemic comes and they all learn like ah I guess we could have this and it works and it's an attractive benefit to offer or restaurants that are offering you know more delivery services and contactless ordering and you I always wondered Lauren when I go to order a meal at a restaurant you you've been to England right like I right I mean you in London and you order a meal the the the server comes to your thing with a mobile device this this for years and you just pay at the table and you're out of there and in the US it's never like that until the pandemic came and now everybody's digitizing so I do think you're right the pandemic will change a lot has changed a lot of businesses I'm not sure about Auto the Auto industry though all right next story uh this week or last week we experienced this uh Facebook outing uh which is kind of amazing uh Facebook Instagram WhatsApp all went down some important lessons I think in that for businesses that use those platforms what do you think yeah I mean I think that um listen Facebook is controlled by the Russians so avoid it that's the lesson no just kidding of course uh the the biggest issue with Facebook of course is that it is uh it's it's vulnerable they're all vulnerable and this wasn't just Facebook it was you know it was this was self-inflicted it wasn't even a hack yeah I mean happened I mean this is you know even people think that these companies are impenetrable and that is just not the case I mean there is there are thousands of satellites flying on top of us you know right now and you know again I read all the time about some solar storm or some you know you Comet that's going to fly by Earth and you're going to render our satellites you know ineffective or whatever you know I mean that we it is a very fragile system that we are all relying on um the internet is very fra there are a lot of things that can take it down self-inflicted as well as external forces and if you're running a business you have to keep that you know in mind you've got to have a backup plan have you ever heard of you've heard of telegram right I've heard of it I don't know much about it it is a encrypted messaging act that competes with WhatsApp and apparently on the day that WhatsApp couldn't be used 70 million people signed up for telegram you know and I think some of them were Facebook employees in the headquarters it could have been I mean it's it's just a um you know you know there are alternatives that are out there a lot of people just don't think twice about it they rely on on WhatsApp um but you know then when it goes down luckily enough they could turn to you know to you know to you know telegram um if the entire internet goes down worldwide that's another issue alog together so listen these platforms have their own rules and they have their own guidelines they're inconsistently applied and they are also vulnerable and we have to be aware of that are there still businesses I'm assume none of your clients but I'm pretty sure there's still businesses that rely entirely on Facebook as if it's their website yeah there are and um there are if you if you look at like businesses that are banned from Facebook that list grows all the time you know people selling weapons people selling same day loans people selling uh you know Nutri nutrients things like that um you know if you're basing your entire business in livelihood around Facebook or Instagram um if you rely on the advertising that you do there um or if you use WhatsApp as as messaging for your you know for your business um you have to have a backup plan you have to have an alternative uh platform to go to because these things are going to happen and and even if you're just using it for advertising if that's the way you reach your customers if that's the way you reach your customers You're vulnerable yep that's exactly right so you know got listen there are stories all around the world of small businesses that were you know that were down for an entire day when Facebook was down and they're complaining and they're you know concerned about it a lot of these businesses don't even have websites you know I mean come on man you got to you got to have a backup plan you know it's funny I say that Lauren meanwhile like I use like my CRM system is Zoho which is great and we completely rely on it and like Jesus you know when that goes down we're stuck you know this is the this is the problem of being in the cloud is that um we are vulnerable to these things and every business has got to have a plan as to what they're going to do mine is just to open up a bottle of Daniels Jean you wrote about uh crms this week you said there's a new development that could be something of a game Cher for smaller companies tell us about that yeah I think it is the listen you know most companies many have CRM customer relationship management software some of the more popular ones are like Salesforce Microsoft Dynamics Zoho I mentioned before it's a bunch of great ones that are out there everybody's got one now right I mean a lot of people do not that they're using them so well but that's a whole other issue I mean you know right there're out there a lot of the issues that small businesses have with crms is um is customizations I mean for the most part the mainstream crms really do a good job of doing the basic you know most of the stuff a small business wants to do but there are countless small businesses that have unique needs and they needed to be customized and when they need to do that they got to hire a programmer and you know these programmers right I mean they sneeze and they've incurred four hours you know can you give us an example what's a unique need so you're a business and you're selling equipment and you want to have all of the equipment in your CRM system and then and then match it up to the customers that own it and then you want to make sure you get alerted whenever there is like a maintenance need specific for that equipment and you know and so these are all sort of like specific things now some of the serum systems can accommodate most of that right but others like okay you're going to have to create a separate you know part of that CRM system a part a separate module uh to accommodate that so that you can you know have equipment as well as customers in your database right so to do that you got to hire a programmer and and you know it you hire programmers and they're expensive and then they build stuff and then of course then you know an upgrade happens and then it breaks and you got to bring them back to do more work and then it needs maintenance it needs upgrades there's this new you with CRM the new generation of crms I wrote about a company called creatio c e a Tio um they're called Low code crms which means that they come with all of these blocks all of these tools um for doing all these customizations like built-in code already written for you that you can you can change just through the interface of the CRM and then launch it yourself and they're designed for the Layman so that you don't have to hire a developer to come in and do the work really for a Layman no not at all there's no way you're doing it Lauren and there's no way I'm doing it to be honest but I'll tell you this much Lauren okay if you know if you do need it you can you would still need to hire one of those developer guys or at least somebody familiar with the application yeah you're going to be paying them a million dollars an hour or whatever they charge but it should be a lot less time they take rather than writing something up from scratch do you know what I mean and I think that that's where we're going is these low code applications are providing all the Snippets of code all the tools and functionality so that either developer or an advanced user can make the customizations in these crms without having to go into a whole development project is this available now it is I mean Creo Creo is one of the applications uh they have a handful of competitors right now they are being used mostly by Enterprises larger companies or software companies that are more complex small businesses that are a little bit more complex but it it'll it'll like everything else it'll start trickling down the food chain to uh me and you and the common small business owner so is this something that should be of most interest to somebody with one of those unique situations you described or if you need if you if you're looking at CRM systems and you find that you need your needs are such that it's going to require a lot of customization and development um I gave you one example but there are hundreds um of examples why you're just not going to get what you need out of the box from your CRM then you might want to really consider one of these low code offerings so you can get those customizations done for a lot less money all right last issue uh we've talked about the vaccination mandate uh handed down by President Biden here uh a few times there have been a couple of interesting developments or or really just one in one continuing situation the interesting development to my mind is I was intrigued by uh a story last week about United Airlines which uh announced that it had received 20,000 applications for about 2,000 flight attendant positions which is a much higher ratio than their used to and they attributed it to the fact that they had mandated vaccines let me tell you something I I I I got to jump out and say this I the the three worst jobs in the world is being a dental hygienist being a proctologist and being a flight attendant on an airline who wants that job the it's j I'm not sure you're the right person to make that Destin you already told us dealing with people yeah well I would be terrible with that cuz I would look awful in one of those outfits but it it is such a demanding un you know oh my God the way some passengers behave it just seems so exhausting but 20,000 applicants for 2,000 positions is first of all I'm thrilled to hear that because the world needs more flight attendance but wow um but your point somewhat counterintuitive I mean I think the expectation was that uh Airlines might be desperate if they actually exercise the Mandate that's what I thought as well and you know it it really opens your eyes you're like hey you know what um you know if you're a small business and you're competing for you know employees let's not forget half of the workforce out there are millennials and younger so you know this generation has been you know really hysterical about covid they're concerned um so for you to advertise and say we require mandates for our employees we are a covid safe workplace uh and this is you know so you need to be mandated turns out that's like a plus that's like for some people not for everybody but for some but I mean it turns out that that that be um that could be an interesting thing now again maybe if you're if you're running a business in lynberg Tennessee maybe that's not a plus that you're requiring vaccinated employees you know but if you're running a business in New York City or San Francisco uh you know you you can attract more employees that way because it you know it's more of a demographic of people that are getting vaccinated what can I say do you know where United is located I do not but I mean you know I mean my my my my best um evaluation of the companies that they're located all around the world cuz that's where the planes are flying right so it can happen anywhere anywhere um when we first talked about this you raised some excellent questions you pointed out that you know kind of the devil's in the details it depends on how this is handled and here we are two or three weeks later and I think we're still in the same situation in fact the US Chamber of Commerce put out a list of questions this week that had some really good questions on it including um you know will it be 100 employees for the entire business or 100 employees per location how do you count independent contractors uh I I was curious what what if you have 100 employees and you're you have to follow the Mandate but you lose 10% of your employees as a result of following the Mandate right then what happens do you no longer have to follow the Mandate yeah that's I mean first of all um I just want to say I I did not raise those questions these questions are raised by my clients I am just the vessel I don't I can't I'm not enough to come up with that stuff on my own and these are all the things they're saying like what are we going to do OSHA has not published the rules yet so that's an issue and here's but here's the here's the thing the first thing that came to my mind when when you know President Biden said oh you know it's 100 employees or less and you know there's going to be these rules I'm like okay I remember when the paycheck Protection Program came out the the machinations the teeth grinding and the Hand ringing over how do you even Define an employee Lauren you know still figuring out those rules they're still figuring out is it 30 uh you part-time equivalent hours a week or is it 40 hours a week but what happens if you ever a seasonal business or what happens if you're you know your employees just just defining an employee let alone all the other rules and the exemptions and the penalties and how it's going to be enfor I'm like good luck man I mean that is going to be and I got news for you that is why um I I have had more than a handful of my clients say we're just ignoring it we're just ignoring it because we don't you know we clients with more than 100 employees clients with more than 100 employees are just they're just moving on uh because they're they'll they'll show a face for it and other words they're going to go through the motions of asking for your vaccination proof or uh you know you know asking their employees to get tested but you know I had one one client it was just last week was saying to me what am I going to send my office manager to chase down some guy in the warehouse if he got his uh if he got his testing that week I mean we got better things to do I'm not going to do it so just telling you and I know how they're going to be enforced you know well those are all really good questions I will say this the the data that's come in so far suggests that a lot of people have gotten vaccinated as a result of the Mandate that isn't actually even being enforced yet yeah I and and I think that's what it's all about so um I hope that you know that that Trend continues you know I really do wonder and you and I are not science guys but you know the FDA announced or is it fiser that announced saying that they expect to get uh you know you know authorization for children you know between 5 and 12 uh I think by like the end of Halloween November time frame um I think one kids can get vaccinated I wonder if that you know makes an impact because that's the biggest worry of people that are unvc you know they're going to walk around and infect you know children you know what I mean so their children yeah their children and other people's children so I don't know it's just uh it's a big issue and on top of all of that I mean the whole vaccination mandate is so mirrored in other issues Lauren I mean there's Hippa and privacy violations you're like asking people about their their their health activities you know like you know it has nothing to do with what OSHA does um you know it's supposed to be the safety of the workplace apparently the rules do you have to require vaccination of somebody that's working from home you know I mean what does it have to do with OSHA in the work that is one of those details that has not been determined there's going to be lawsuits all over the place which is why I've got you know I've got clients and and readers business owners are just like forget it man we're not this is going to be overturned we've got a business to run I can't sit there and you know go too crazy over this just just saying what I'm saying thank you Gan marks always great speaking with you always great luren we'll talk to you next we you can learn more about Jean's business at markgr group.net and you can hear his weekly podcast small Biz ahead at sb. harford.edu