Dashboard: The Benefits of Childcare, AI, and Silly Marketing

[Music] welcome to another 21 hats dashboard brought to you by our sponsor the great game of business I'm Lauren Feldman I'm here with Gene marks welcome Jean hell Lauren how are you I'm doing great you Phillies are winning so I'm feeling better all right uh let's hope that continues hope I continue Jean last week you wrote a piece uh that kind of took me by surprise you suggested that businesses should offer child care to their employees and not just because it's a good thing to do but because it'll drive the growth of the business yeah that doesn't really sound like you uh what's going on here Jean no no no I mean I mean when you say it doesn't sound like me I mean I think providing those kinds of benefits are good things and um you know we talk about uh when I go and I speak to different groups I like because I write about this you know a lot for the guardian about you know workplace stuff and uh always on the lookout for sort of hot benefits and uh obviously healthc care is big and retirement is big and flexibility is big and flexibility now starts to overlap with with child care and dependent care and there have been you know numerous studies and one that I cited in a inquir piece I did last week where uh it showed that you know you know um not only is child care benefits hugely in demand from employees but um you they benefit employers because it makes people more productive and you know that so I went out and I talked to a few you know employers and um they agreed I mean you know it's you really when you when your employees come to work you want your whole employee to be there not a half an employee because he or she is worried about you know some some Child Care issue going on at home and um that happens a lot you know teacher meetings sick kids schools being out whatever um so there are firms that do this stuff and um they invest in child care benefits and they they said across the board that it it is huge benefit uh for not only their employees but but themselves as well and it's not just uh having the full person at work it's also the issue of retention um not having to replace employees who have to figure out some other solution um but I'm curious you you talked to a number of businesses of various sizes the the solutions obviously depend on the resources available to a given business uh in some cases I think you're talking about like a business actually opening up on-site child care no I mean that's an option and you get a massive uh tax credit if you were to build your own child care facility but uh in reality the businesses I talk to um they they contract with an existing Child Care Facility you know and uh and then they Pro they you know they they allow their employees to go there at a much you know lower cost so if you're a small business you can do a lot of the same things for example um you know okay say you've got a a child care facility that you find and you'd like to pay for uh so that your your employees can use that facility at a much lower cost well well I realize that's not cheap but you can always partner um with other businesses in your area so and I have a couple clients that have done this before where you have three or four companies that get together and they share the cost of Contracting with the child care facility for they're all their combined employees and obviously that significantly reduces the cost the other thing is is that if you do it the right way um you can reimburse employees for their child care expenses through a flexible savings accounts and you get tax deductions for doing that as well and the employees don't get taxed for doing that so that's another option um other things I've seen employers do is they offer flexibil more just more flexibility so it gets back to the whole paid time off plans and um you know you know judgment left to the employee when they take time off and what for um the more flexibility you can give in your PTO plans so that people can take some time off for an after school meeting or a sick kid that also helps um and then the other thing I found in this piece I did is there's a number of employers that hire or retain HR people or accountants or and you know like a you know advisors like you know they pay for it um and then what happens is that they they let all their employees get access to this person and this person um it provides them advice as to what the best child care options are for them how to fully take advantage of the Child Care Credit because it's like you need a PhD to be able to understand this calculation for the Child Care Credit um you know and how to fully maximize their flexible spending benefits as well it's complicated stuff and a lot of people can't get their arms around it but if you've got a paid for advisor by the company that can give you know that help to the employees uh it it winds up being like a real you know benefit to those people and again the the less they have to worry about their kids then the more they can focus on their work and that's the whole point of doing this stuff and were you convinced by the study that you really can tie this directly to the growth of the business yeah I mean I I think that it's very very tough to qualitate quantitatively connect that to growth I do think that um it is a benefit that um will keep your employees more focused and productive obviously can help you retain existing employees and attract good employees as well because you're offering these kinds of benefits um and I you there's a lot of different choices you know now my weirdly enough my 10 people um I only have one of them that has kids so you know they're just like an older demographic um where it's not as much of an issue when I say kids I mean kids very young age that need right you know kind of care most of my employees they have kids middle school high school or older where it's it's not as much of an issue um but I mean if you're if your demographic is such your employees have you know uh you know younger children and there's these Child Care needs you know are there I don't know I just think in 2024 it's it's something that you've got to address it's a popular thing and if you don't you know you might potentially lose talent to companies that are focusing on on that more well this has probably been true for a long time but it's especially true now because there's definitely been a shortage of um Child Care opportunities um there fewer places to go they have trouble finding employees uh it's just been a tough time all around for that yeah I was just talking to some woman who um like and this is happening around the country her kid goes to um uh she's from Texas and her kid goes to like a private school in Texas and they're going to a 4-day work week you know so expanded days on four days and then Monday through Thursday and then Friday there's no school Friday Saturday and Sunday and the school's doing that because it helps to attract teachers because you know school systems have this issue as well which is all well and good but then she's like well what the hell do I do now I mean I've got like you know I gotta provide who's gonna look after my kid on Friday I gotta come to work you know what I mean yeah so and I think this you know this kind of thing is on the rise around the country and I think that people need to you know better understand that uh this child care stuff is is becoming more of an issue and employers have to be more uh more involved in this issue if they want to retain good people all right next topic um artificial intelligence Gan you've been spending a lot of time looking at AI tools and what's available that businesses can actually make productive use of um have you spent any time thinking about whatever dangers AI might present uh I'm asking because the Wall Street Journal ran a kind of provocative story last week that I want to ask you about but is this is this something that you've considered yeah 100% when I when I do my pre it's funny that you you also bring it up um like so last year I did a number of presentations and throughout this year on AI and um you know I I always mention like sort of the risks about Ai and I'm actually putting together I'm speaking to the North Carolina uh CPAs in September and um on AI and I'm like updating that list um you know there there's a ton of risks and I think that you know you can't talk about AI without talking about what those risks are and it's everything from AI taking control of military equipment to uh which is exciting uh and I've got all these articles that you know you know like you know Ukraine flying bombers like drones that are completely um controlled by Ai and not by humans I mean just to really feel you nice and warm and comfy when you go to bed at night uh as well as you know AI you know replacing jobs as well as AI uh invading and proprietary intellectual property as well it is a big issue I get asked that question all the time when yeah it is an issue maybe it's more so than you think or maybe it's what you would think Lauren but you know I was kind of disregarding this issue to some extent I mean I know there have been a lot of stories about it I've read some of them it all sounds like you know science fiction and I want you know I got enough to worry about the day without about that uh but then I read this Wall Street Journal story uh last week it's about legislation that's working its way through the California legislature and this description got to me uh let me read it to you the California bill called SB 1047 requires that developers of large AI models conduct safety tests to reduce the risks of catastrophic harm from their technology which it defines as cyber attacks that cause at least $500 million in damage or mass casualties the developers also must ensure their AI can be shut down by a human if it starts behaving dangerously that that got my attention I didn't realize we would be talking about those kinds of stakes this quickly well it's Terminator stuff right you know what I mean that's what it is so uh and and there is that risk that's out there I mean right now the the risk of that happening right now is is smaller but you can I mean anybody can see that that that risk is going to grow over over time what makes me laugh about a bill like this is that like what happens if that happens what happens if somebody developed Ai and it causes Mass casualties what is the government gonna California going to sue them then like oh that was bad we're taking you to court you know like million people are dead so well I think the hope is that they will comply with the rules and that's the hope and avoid the situation right that's the hope I mean you know any law needs people you know certain Buy in that people will comply with it the tech companies aren't thrown about it they're they're pushing against it fighting this and that's a little scary too yeah I mean there you know it limits you know them on what they can do and it adds more costs and you know you know it is the the the catastrophic ends of AI are you know that risk is there more so from a business standpoint the questions I get when it comes to risks of AI isn't about Arnold Schwarzenegger you know you know attacking you know the world it is more like um security over their data you know like like the big risk that that a lot of businesses are concerned about is that you're relying on Microsoft co-pilot you're relying on Google gemni or chat GPT or any of these other uh AI platforms for them to do their job that they have to use your data and you are you you're usually uploading this data because their platforms are in the cloud they're not running locally right so you're uploading this data to these companies you know like open Ai and Microsoft and trust me when I tell I look around the room people are like we don't trust those guys do you so you know they're they're concerned like what happens to our data and how secure and private is it um and and those companies all swear up and down they don't use their your data and they don't make it available anywhere else and your data is your data and all of that and you know they all have a track record of of of violating those things or doing you know you know bad stuff they all do so that's why any smart business owner is concerned about it in the end when it comes to protecting your data or about the world being blown up because of NE VAR is AI it's all cost benefit Lauren that's the way I look at it I mean whenever people ask me about it I'm like you're going to upload your data to chat GPT trust me when I tell you you're taking a risk that it is exposed and not safe I mean I'm just that's a fact however the benefits you might be getting from this like anything else in business might significantly outweigh the potential risks you know and you as a business owner have got to make that decision and that's the same thing when it comes to AI on a catastrophic level like the military using AI you know people that are running the military are going to be deploying AI to autonomously run drones and robots and you know killer machines um and their their idea is they're doing this so they can defend their country but there is a risk that that AI might go out of control and and turn on you you know and we're all trying to mitigate and judge those rewards versus risks and that's going to be a continuing conversation that's never going to end not a conversation I ever expected to have on dashboard here we are here we are um all right last topic last week you wrote Love I'm struggling with the transition here I I love it well no here's the transition that last sucked and was depressing let's talk about something fun how does that sound thank you Jean yes I happen to have something bit based on an article that you wrote uh about a Chevy dealer in Upstate New York that's been doing ads that are parodies of the office tell us about that so this is I'm gonna interview this young woman her name is Grace Kerber she's like literally nine months out of college okay she graduates she becomes like a social media person at a Chevy dealership in upstate New York called Mohawk Chevrolet right she comes up with the idea of doing a Tik Tock series of little mini episodes just like the office and um you guys can watch it look it's called the dealership uh you can read my guardian column and there's links to it there where you can just Google the dealership on Tik Tok you'll find it I think she there there probably 10 or 11 or a dozen episodes now I think they were nine when I wrote this they're doing it like every other week uh they are they're about three to six minutes long more than six million views for this Chevy dealership and This Woman's become like a celebrity and the dealership itself has become like you know famous because that six million views so couple of comments on it the the the videos are adorable they're very funny she's very funny she looks really weird she looks like weirdly like Dawn who was the original receptionist in the Ricky derves office it's kind of a weird lookalike the British office the British office yeah um she involves all the employees or different employees she starts getting to know the employees and they they have little plot lines around you know things going on in the office it all takes place in you know in their dealership one episode they went and they visited like another dealership in Disguise they were wearing funny wigs and mustaches and uh you know to see what the competition was doing another episode took place when you remember when all those auto dealership um the uh Software System went down because of a ransomware attack sure sure yeah they were in the middle of that so they all went to paper so she made like a little funny episode like about that um they she has a a guy that helps her with this another employee so they bought like a nice camera they have everybody miked up the sound is good the the the video is good um and they you know the people are into it the employees are into it so the unsung hero in my opinion is the owner of of Mohawk Chevrolet right I mean imagine you're the owner of this business okay and by the way the guy's name is Andrew gure I hope I'm pronouncing his name right imagine you've got this this kid basically out of college coming to you and saying hey um I'd like to do this Tik Tock series it's going to portray us as kind of funny and dumb you know but endearing um I I need equipment I need microphones and I need uh you know I mean lab mics and wireless mics I need a the camera um I'm gonna be spending my time doing this and you're G to pay me for it we not just her you I'm gonna take a bunch of your people out of their work you'll see there she's they they do like these sort of meet their meetings and she's filming at the meetings and they're all joking around and the employees are having a blast doing it but like you know she's pulling them away from servicing customers and selling to customers imagine she's pitching this to the owner of the business the owner of the business is like are you are you [ __ ] kidding me I mean like you know that does lead to an obvious question do you think it sold any more cars yeah I I think it really I'll tell you what I'll tell you what I first of all I don't know although I did Focus um you there there's there's a um a column written by a blogger I'm trying to find her right now um yeah her is her name is Rachel carton she's a blogger she actually links to a couple things that that says that not only that their their website has received significant more hits and more activities um and they claim that it's having an impact on sales remember this is a private company so it's not like they're going to share what that impact is I tell the other impact that it has though um Lauren which is really impressive I mean it's it can't be easy attracting employees to a car dealership you know in Upstate New York you know but when you watch these videos um you know it's a generally younger crowd it's Millennial gen you know gen Z crowd they they're having a great time these are people that you'd like to work with it's a nice place you know you're like you know if you're going to apply for a job or whatever you're like wow this looks like a cool company to work for you know like I think it would absolutely help them attract talent to their company as well and I think it's like a fun brand kind of thing if you're already an existing customer you know to share that and say like okay this I bought my car this is the dealership they're real people I like them I trust them I don't think they're messing me around when I go to buy a new car or get service I think all of that builds the you know the their brand credibility and helps with retention and recruiting as well I do think that there is that there's actual benefits for it the question is how do you measure it do you know what I mean um and how long does this does this guy go in with this you know this uh the business owner does he does he keep this going for a year or two years or six months or whatever those are decisions he'll have to make but I just I I give a lot of credit to um you know to to Grace to to the social media woman who sorry yeah Grace I mean because she really um yeah she has a lot of self-confidence to go and put herself out there and do this and uh she did a great job with it you know it's it's it's a real fun series and I think for other business owners that are looking to increase their brand or get some ideas I think it's a great example of how you can really leverage Tik Tok so I hope at some point we get some actual data I'd love to know how they're I mean it's imposs you know obviously even the raw numbers are not going to help because the the market comes and goes and interest rates for car loans and all those things change there are a lot of variables um but I you know I thought about this last year did you see the thing John Oliver did a show where he focused on a plumbing company I think in in Texas maybe in Austin radiant Plumbing this this company did um movie parodies as uh their marketing uh published them on on YouTube and um you know there were a lot of toilet jokes in them and you know just kind of slapsticky and funny but but really really serious attempts to parody well-known movies and John Oliver liked it so much that he challenged them to do one based on a movie that he picked and if they agreed to do it he would then promise to donate a bunch of money to a charity of their cause and um they they pic he picked they agreed to do it he picked the movie Magnolia I think their parody version was called Magnet toila or something like that and they did this this really involved sendoff that must have taken an incredible amount of time and in that case it involved all the top people at the company but again I have the same question got a ton of attention it was on John Oliver they were famous did it make any difference for the business so you know what's funny that that you're bringing up we're we're all trying to gauge like the value of social media you know like you know if if if you took if if Mohawk Chevrolet never had never hired this woman or just discontinued this Tik Tock campaign would it make any difference at all do you know what I mean like could they not have taken that same amount of money and spent it on local ads to draw people in or offer some kind of promotional discount to draw more customers and like like I don't think anybody's ever going to really know um but I don't you know I think it's fun you know and I also think like this plumbing company that you're using as an example it's for the employees that are there for their Community that's around them you know it's they on John Oliver they they're they're doing these funny you know parodies it's you know I realize there's a balance between work and play but gosh I mean how many times have you and I talked about you know how to make a a better workplace and how to attract and retain employees and Company culture and all that kind of stuff and I think that's like really fun stuff and and I think it keeps employees coming back and helps to you know attract new employees and just makes the day go better you're working for a plumbing company I mean you know you're dealing with a lot of [ __ ] both figuratively and literally so it's nice to have like something like that as a distraction I think um to keep you entertained you know what I mean so there's good so what sitcom or movie are you going to choose to parody when you do this for your business with mine I wish I could figure out so we're like this dysfunctional virtual company you know so I don't there's we don't even have an office to do to do this you from so I have I I have no idea I can't come up with anything off the top of my head sorry all right well I expect you to work on that um what else are you working on Jean what should we look for uh next week you know I'm gonna write uh write this week actually I'm going to be writing um uh for the inquire on uh the SBA is a new working capital Loan program they introduced and I talked to a couple of Bankers in the area to find out um why businesses would want to be you would be interested in it and uh so I'll be writing about that maybe we can talk about that next week sounds good Gene marks is a CPA who writes weekly on small business for the guardian the hill the Philadelphia inquire the watching in times the Chicago Daily Herald Forbes an entrepreneur you can hear him on ABC radio's eye on the world with John Bachelor Jean hosts two small business podcasts with paychecks Corporation and the Hartford this episode was brought to you by the great game of business which Shel businesses use an open book management system to help build healthier companies you can learn more at Great game.com sl21 hats thank you Jean thank you Lauren we will talk to you soon have a good week everybody