Do You Really Want That Shiny Object?

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Laura Xander tells sha busy and Jay goz about her 8-month roller coaster ride pursuing an acquisition the deal would bring a new brand and profitable Revenue at a reasonable price to Laura the creative Challenge and opportunity are exciting really really exciting but the financials are a concern do I do this she yes is it worth it and then there's the broker whose numbers don't add up and who wants to collect his fee including his piece of the earnout immediately plus Sean explains how the rise of inexpensive design contractors forced his company to become a better business even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners in 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 joining me this week on the podcast are regulars Shan busy CEO of Kinesis which is based in Portland Oregon and works with small businesses on marketing culture and strategy Jay gos whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason home and Laura Xander who is CEO of Jimmy beans wolf a digital yarn store based in Reno Nevada and mine Tosh a yarn supplier based in Fort Worth Texas the episode is titled do you really want that shiny object welcome Sean Jay and Laura great to have you here today Laura we haven't been able to talk to you in a while cuz you've been busy uh chasing another acquisition how's that going oh what a great roller coaster ride it has been a six month 8mon Journey you know I was approached by a broker who said that there was someone in our space that was looking to get you know looking to get out and I told him no I said I'm not interested wow I don't want to take something else on you know I'm finally starting to be able to get my life back you know Huck is 12 years old starting to spend some time with him blah blah blah so I said no probably four or five times you know and then I talked to my team about it and we you know and we had just moved into a new building and you know it's just too much um and it just wasn't worth it Laura you said that this uh business is in your space you're in a number of spaces which which which space are you referring to in the yarn industry and I don't want to get too specific you know because it is a small industry but you know it's it's an area that we have now some experience with and you know and it was a family run business so anyway you know we after a few months this January or February I finally kind of was beat down and was just like look sure we'll take it but this is all we can afford to pay for it this is all we're willing to pay for it you know we don't want to go into debt to buy this we don't want to take the risk you know cuz we just don't know it's it's a business that's been declining for a while and so you know we think that we can turn it around but you know we didn't want to put the rest of the businesses at risk as as well as you know a ton of money and blah blah blah and there's definitely like an ego play and an ego part of this that oh my gosh I could be the hero again you know and I could jump in and I could Flex my muscles and and use our team and we could show what we could really do so there's an ego part of it there was also you know an intellectual challenge you know I just I've for the last couple of years particularly the last year as we've really built the team that is managing the business in Texas the last like 6 n months or so that's been going really well and so I'm feeling pretty empty you know and I'm like what do I have to do empty yeah wait what what does that mean well I'm just feeling you know a little purposeless I don't have challenges I don't I mean I I haven't created challenges I mean business the teams are running really well and they're running really well on their own and they don't need me um and so I'm like huh well you know what's my purpose you know what's what am I supposed to be doing you know I went and visited Jay one time and I saw that like he does crossword puzzles and he I don't know if he does crosswords but he reads the obituaries and he goes into the office and he's just there and I'm like oh so is this my job is just to kind of be there and be supportive and a cheerleader anyway you know having a bit of a midlife work crisis where and crisis is too strong of a word I don't mean it that way I just mean um this opportunity was like huh okay maybe this is something I could dig my you know dig my brain or dig my claws into and and really take on and make an impact and try to turn this around and it was really exciting to think about um really really exciting what she's described I've lived through numerous times the whole thing with oh I can do more and oh it's oh what a good deal oh I got to take advantage of this that whole she described exactly where I've been Laura can you tell whether this company was more like your company in Texas which makes yarn or more like Jimmy Bean wool which sells it over the internet I just want to understand why it appealed to you and what it would have done for your business it would have increased Revenue yeah so it we would have increased Revenue it's in the yarn industry so there's obviously the creative side of it you know designing patterns working with um you know it's selling yarn selling design or creating designs selling and working with you know just working with the whole industry again super Small industry so there's a lot of crossover there are a lot of people that do all kinds of things um there's wholesale there's e-commerce there's retail can you give us some sense of why this was worth buying as opposed to emulating is it a brand or you know there's a a brand there's a presence there's you know a customer list there's uh there are relationships there's intellectual property stuff that you know they've created over the years that's been fantastic and would be really helpful this business would have been helpful to all aspects of our business partially financially you know hopefully if we could get it back on track but also creatively you know it would just give us another it would tap into a customer base that we're not currently tapped into you know if you use the hotel I guess analogy Jimmy beans is a very like standard kind of Fairfield in Marriott it's nice but it's not the top end it's not the bottom end mateline TSH is this very very quirky kind of brand so it's more zat or you know the boutique hotels that are interesting and fun and this brand was neither of those and so you know it would introduce us to a different audience that crosses over some again you know there's the financial side of it obviously has to work work um otherwise it's just not worth it the creative side was really appealing and interesting um and I thought that our current team our current employees would really enjoy working on something different and fresh cuz they're creatives and um and you know it's something that's that's made a mark on the yarn industry and we didn't want it to go away you know there's a little part of that it became a really good deal a really really really appealing deal like my God how do I not do this deal totally it didn't start out that way so that's the point we get sucked into these things yeah that's a great Point okay so it sounds like there was real Advantage maybe financially sounds like there especially because the cost of money is low right now sounds like it would have expanded your market share that's a good thing what was your take on culture fit and Alignment between your organization and their organization that is something that started to get a little more complicated at the end but it's not a huge company so that wasn't a primary concern we would absorb a lot of it we would be able to save a lot of money by doing things kind of our way and doing things inhouse so even if the revenue was the same amount we could take it from not being profitable to being super profitable not super profitable but but profitable they have relied over the years on a lot of consultants and looking through through their books and getting to know them and the people that they work with I am just reminded of how many consultants there are that come out of the Woodworks that charge ridiculous prices and don't do anything to really help the business and so by not spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on things that they don't need and they don't realize that they actually intuitively have the intelligence to do a lot of this stuff themselves I think that we could make it a much healthier business you know I've hired really terrible consultants and I've hired really fantastic consultants and I'm curious how you're able to discern between that by looking at the p&l I don't know I mean the p&l is a story you know and I'm looking at the p&l for years and years and years and you know you see where spending is increasing and decreasing and I don't know I can just read it you know you can tell exactly what's happening you can tell are you saying you saw the expense but you didn't see any results from the Consulting work yeah yeah what kind of Consulting was it all kinds I mean multiple Avenues of Consulting you know from HR to legal to marketing to website to accounting and I just I think you know they're just being taken advantage of honestly Laura when you said that it was like a six or eight month roller coaster um did that time pass because of what you described the deal getting better and you getting more enticed and more interested that's a good question I think the length of time and the reason that it took so long to go through this process honestly I think that's probably normal that's been the case with you know some of the other stuff that we've done you know there's just back and forth but a lot of that part of it was you know me being presented with the numbers in the beginning and questioning the numbers and finding out the numbers aren't accurate you know the numbers that the broker put together and so then I'm like well if you can't give me accurate numbers to begin with then how do I trust any of the numbers down the road me saying no not interested okay well let me come back with some better numbers okay different numbers you know I'll go get the other numbers she got a punch lined as hell here and this isn't it Laura can you tell us how did you figure out that the numbers weren't right I don't know I just know I mean you just look at it but they just didn't they didn't look legit no they're just not right they're like you know here's what our average purchase is and I've you know after 20 years I know what the average yarn consumer spends I mean I've seen all kinds of data I know all kinds of shops I know all kinds of Manufacturers I mean I know what the range is you just looked at them on their face knew that it didn't make sense absolutely did you feel like they were inflated Laura I mean like no way this is their average customer value no on that specific number no it was the reverse it was way too low but then it becomes things like you know we have and I'm just making numbers up but we have 10 customers we have 10 people on our email newsletter list so we have 10 customers and I'm like 10 people on your newsletter list doesn't mean you have customers you telling me that every single one of those people on your email newsletter list buys from you every year like Define customer to me so it just was a lack of understanding and I'm not some like I don't know what I'm doing either you know but I I can compare it to to the data this isn't even like they were necessarily trying to deceive her it really was in probably they just had bad internal people that were giving them bad number I mean I get them here once in a while that I think wait this can't be right oh I forgot to put the blah blah blah it's just bad numb bad numbers which to me was indicative of a lack of understanding of the business primarily from the broker side you know but from the broker side and from you know and from the owner side as well if you're not comfortable saying this that's totally legit but is this a sub $2 million business it is now yes yeah yeah okay it the reason I ask is like there's this there's this kind of echelon you know of business operation that I think Jay really understands really well right the 250,000 to 2 million dollar business or even $1 million business where it's just so hard to get good advice it's so hard to know what you're doing yes you're struggling to just sort of like make it in the world and you're doing everything yourself it's almost a profession right you never quite got the the hiring management corre infrastructure you don't have to you can you can be running around doing everything and that's part of what was attractive is that we have the infrastructure on both sides the people that own this business like I I adore them you know and I respect them in a lot of ways they have a lot of talents that that I don't have or will never have and so that was part of the interest you know is that there was a lot of synergy and complimentary skills but from a infrastructure they were in a bad spot because it they're just too small for some things and too big for other things it's kind of like um when Paul talks about the independent cabinet maker in his industry like there's just so many of those types of owners and and they might do stuff with like cash and like you know they're not paying themselves a fair wage and they're putting things on the business that shouldn't be you know all yeah yeah like they you know like their Netflix subscription is a business expense and all kinds of weird stuff yep totally so the roller coaster really happened you know after I'm like look we'll take it on but again we're not taking any risk we're not taking on any debt I'm not taking a loan out here's how much money we have in the bank you can have this and then we'll pay you you know over the next few years of percentage of sales and the broker came to us and said we need to close this thing and we're thinking we're going to close in like May or whatever I mean we had so much stuff going on and February and March I mean that's like the you know the busy season for our our world and he came to me March 1ish I think and said we need to close this sooner rather than later and I'm like uh okay I'm like are you thinking 60 days and he's like uh I'm like 30 days he's like no 15 and I'm like well you know like I mean not to get too personal but like Doug was about to go out of town for two weeks I'm um we have a trade show that we're going to I've got this kid that somebody's supposed to watch apparently like 12 years old he's not supposed to stay at home by himself for a week so I'm like okay he's like there you know it's it just needs to happen it needs to happen it's got to happen in the next 15 days what was his reason um you know what's interesting is the reason that he gave me so I went and visited and he's telling me that they really want they need to close this sooner rather than later and I get there and they're like uh we thought you wanted to close sooner rather than later oh is is that the punchline it feels like a punchline no that's that's the sub punch line so I you know lost it just a little bit so then I find out I just find out some more details on the engagements that they have made with Consultants you know and with people who are helping and I'm seeing them being taken advantage of and they're great people and I'm really frustrated and so I'm like it's not right you know the broker wanted to be paid on the down payment basically they he wanted to be paid on the amount the cash that we were going to give plus future royalties for the next five years but he wanted to be paid that day and I'm just like is that the punchline no no he had this in inflated super inflated number you know to make it look like they're getting a really great deal and I'm like I can't I'm not going to promise that this these are the sales that we can do and that these are the royalties we can generate I don't I'm not going to do it I don't feel good about it I don't like it did you challenge him did you yeah and and how did he respond well it's just it turned into they didn't end up talking to their broker anymore so then I became the negotiator and so I'm negotiating between them and their broker on his fees and and you know the legal stuff and blah blah it just turned into a show it just got really really really messy we decided on the 15th we're like you know what no we've got to pause we can't do this like it doesn't feel right we don't even really know what our agreement is um you know I've we've sent stuff to their lawyers we've sent stuff to our lawyers so we decide we're going to push it back to the first and then you know we get close to the first and the way that the deal was structured the broker had not created it just got really complicated and our accountants were like no this does not work I would not recommend this I would not suggest you know entering into this type of agreement blah blah blah blah blah their lawyer put something in at the last minute and um you know and he's just trying to protect them I mean it wasn't malicious or deceptive it was now they have this lawyer who's jumping in and doing all these things cuz the broker didn't really take care of all these things and didn't communicate it cuz he just you know want is check wait you left the part out I've been waiting for you to tell the one part that I think's relevant that this is also not the punchline the guy hung up on him tell him that H because I think that really gives you the flavor of just what's going on here yeah so you know they decide that you know they were going to have a zoom with their broker and I'm invited to be there to discuss his fee you know and how this is going to work out and they start to argue you know during this zoom and it's some point the broker just hangs up but he's the one who leads you know who was the the host of the zoom so he just gets pissed off and he hangs up and I'm like whoa like the whole Zoom just goes away I mean this just so incredibly unprofessional that it's just like he doesn't deserve to get a commission on this is terrible who does that yeah I know apparently they've been working together for a couple years so who knows what the relationship has been before that I mean I've only got my perspective but my perspective was was they're being sold they're being told that they're going to make X number of dollars at the end of the day and I'm not comfortable with that because I don't think that's realistic and he's wanting to get paid on those X dollar and they're being told that they have to pay taxes on that dollar figure that he's going to get paid on right from the start or that could be tax evasion because that's what the deal is worth and now I've got to pay now I got to depreciate blah blah blah blah blah it just got it was not structured well I mean it just wasn't structured well and so we just decided you know we got on a call and we're like we're just going to pause let's take a pause um and think about this for a few days and then we came back and you know they're just like you know what we don't really want to sell anyway you know we want to figure it out ourselves and let's partner you know we have a great relationship so let's partner in some other ways down the line and and I've offered you know I'm like look I will come up there cuz we spent a ton of time together and I'm like I know your p&l I know what you guys are doing I can help you make money you know let me come up there and we'll just I can tell you where to cut your spending where to increase it you know I mean that's what I'm decent at would you be doing that because you're a nice person or is there a business interest in you're doing that I mean I don't know that I'm a nice person but let's take a vote I believe you've left the punch line out to this you simply don't need the aggravation from this yes am I wrong no you are not wrong and that's through the this whole process I mean for six months I mean I've called Jay and I'm like okay you know you've got the crystal ball you're 20 years farther down the road than I am you know what it's like um your kid is 20 years older than mine is do I do this is it worth it but it sounds like they were the ones who said no no we decided together so I called um so I called J again you know as usual thank God he doesn't charge me by the hour but I called him and I'm like what do I do you know like there's a part of me there's a part of me that wants this challenge you know and that's really interested and it is a good business decision but there's another part of me that I just want to go for a run this summer like I finally have gotten back in shape I'm starting to cook again I'm starting to like I might decorate my house I haven't we've lived in this house for four years I haven't put a picture up ouch no pictures which means no framing ouch that's messed up so I'm like I you know what do I do you know is it worth it I mean sure we'll make some extra money uh and Jay's just like you have enough money you're fine like spend the time with your son spend the time with your son because if you don't you know you're going to regret it and you only have six years left with him before he goes to college yeah yeah this isn't a case of she needs this to be successful she's successful right she just is so it was very easy for me cuz I've been through it and I'm living through the 20 or later regrets of gee I could have should have would have I think that was the punchline the punchline is she really doesn't need this it's not as simple as it would looked in the beginning and it's just going to make her life more difficult yeah and and the benefit to it doesn't outweigh the cost but you know what's really cool about this Laura is you know if I think back to all the moments in my business career where something has been really hard or bad often times those are the the times when look back and go wow I'm really fortunate that that happened to me and I think that this has the potential you know 5 years from now 10 years from now who knows where you could have a new relationship that's deeper and more meaningful you could have helped this company out and they may come around to you again but like in a way better state where like you know their numbers they know their numbers and this jerk loser of a of a broker is not in the picture Lori you you've bought a number of businesses in the past and and I know that on at least one of them you had a very difficult situation with someone who was advising you on your end of the acquisition I I guess I'm asking you do you think this is a problem that smaller businesses face trying to do Acquisitions yes um and I think it's not just m&a it's in all the spaces that small business owners attract other small business owners who don't go work for Goldman Sachs and maybe sometime s don't know what they're doing and there are good ones I mean there are good consultants and there are good m&a guys um it's just it's more challenging to find them especially when you're smaller because if they're that smart they're not dealing with you and me they're dealing with $200 million companies and making a fortune I think Laura talks about a a larger a larger problem in the small business space which is it's very difficult to have a small business customer be profitable and so what happens is is that the large ler firms that might have the Acumen and skill generally won't take on the work if they do take on the work they give it to the B team or the C team because they're taking it just because they can add a little bit more Revenue not because it's their right fit customer and then you get the other situation where if somebody's in that space all the time they often haven't figured out a good model to make it profitable so they get like pretty weak employees or inexperienced employees working for them and so the work product is pretty poor so it's it's a real challenge I have had that exact situation numerous times so I believe that's just the nature of the Beast and I would say I would like to add to this segment because I think in the big picture here's the message there's a book written by the guy that started Vanguard the Vanguard fund called enough and there's a scene he talks about they're having a party at this huge hedge fund Mansion you know the guy's got a helicopter pad and swimming pools just an unbelievable spread there's two guys there one is Kurt vaget the writer and Joseph heler who wrote you know catch22 and Joseph heler says to Kurt vaget he goes can you believe this house did you see the helicopter pad and he goes yeah but I've got something that this guy will never have what's that enough and that's the name of the book and the fact is Laura has enough and I'm not saying she should stop growing but but when you have enough it it should change the way you think about things do you need to bring more you know Laura has enough because I know what she has she's got enough she's there she's her business is big enough Laura will never be wanting for money she's in good shape I'm not saying she should stop working I'm not saying she should stop growing it but to go take on something that's going to add nothing but aggravation to her life and very little money just is bad alignment it just doesn't make any sense Laura do you have enough yes we have enough Doug and I are Savers we've been Savers since we met we're Thrifty I me we haven't bought a sofa we don't have furniture oh first she had to go after picture framing now you're not buying sofas either wow no so we live a very Spartan lifestyle we have a nice house but we have enough you know I I'm not wanting for anything Laura last question on this and then we're going to go to another topic but are you at all concerned that you're going to have second thoughts about this or is this done in your mind no all right let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor and then I want to talk about the difference between hiring employees and hiring contractors and how that keeps evolving I'm here with Rob Levan co-founder of work better now which provides businesses with highly talented virtual assistance Rob I've noticed that owners tend to have certain questions about virtual assistance for example what exactly can they do yeah Lauren we get this question all the time uh because people really know deep down that they need an assistant but they're not exactly sure how it works and what they can do for them I would say that our clients use our assistance in one of two ways they will either use them much like I've been using my assistant for the past eight years as an executive assistant handling my calendar which takes up so much time email management database file management personal tasks creating documents for me and then a lot of our clients basically operationalize our assistance so we have assistance with titles like project manager marketing associate operations manager and customer service representative I think some owners worry they'll spend more time managing their assistant than it would have taken them just to do the test themselves how do you respond to that right right right this is a deadly trap not only with assistant but really with any employees which is oh I can do it faster myself and the reality is you might be able to do it faster yourself of course it's impossible to grow your business if you're doing everything yourself I was very much uh of a similar mindset and what I did with my assistant is I basically told him what needs to be done and had them document it I hate documenting tasks but I know that processes are so important now we have a manual full of my uh tasks I only had to tell him once that he can follow time and time again and if he's out somebody else can follow and also think about it this way if you're a business owner making something like let's say $200,000 a year which is about $100 an hour you're basically paying somebody to do administrative work at $100 an hour if you're doing these tasks yourself that makes a lot of sense what does it cost the cost is $1900 a month and as you know Lauren we are offering 21 hats readers and listeners $150 off per month for 3 months just by mentioning the word Lauren there are no contracts also very important for people to know can you promise a return on that investment if you're not getting a return something's not going right all of our clients are not only getting a return with the first assistant they've hired but many of our clients are now on their second third and fourth assistant where can we learn more work better now.com and again when you sign up for a 15minute consult just mention the word Lauren we'll make sure to give that $150 off for each of the first 3 months thanks Rob and we're back so the rules have been changing a lot on contractors and I'm curious if any of you feel your businesses have been affected by that I don't think right now I'm feeling the impact of it that impact happened years ago you know so when kesa started we were you know for back lack of a better description we were a graphic design and brand development shop and you know this is 2000 so you know the the Advent of the personal computer and and desktop publishing was sort of in its early days I mean I got my start using xacto knives all right so like it used to be that those who worked on brand and design were really artists who found a commercial job and then the commoditization of design began in earnest as the as the um internet took over and you started to see sort of the first wave which was stock photography so you had you know an Outsourcing of what what used to be a really highly creative expert field into you know sort of cheap and high volume and then graphic design started to get commoditized you know whether that was uh you know overseas work or um contractors or templates you know so so it's been happening in my industry for a long time what did you have to do to adapt you really had to become um much more bespoke you know so you you could no longer just be a production company right you could no longer just like crank out newsletters and make three-page folders you actually had to help companies solve much harder strategic problems that couldn't be answered over the Internet through a you know really inexpensive contractor and other country you really had to become a strategist you could no longer just be a graphic designer I mean you hit the nail on the head when you talk it turned into a commodity you needed to get into stuff that wasn't a commodity yeah I mean that's been our journey is to become much more of a strategic partner and and we still do that work but it's like in service to the strategy it's in service to the business model iteration of companies it's in service to growth and you know positioning in different ways it's sort of like you know the the industry in large has become Walmart and Target all right you you know cheap everybody can get it it's if you want to be friendly you could say it's been democratized and so what we've had to become is we've had to become you know for lack of a better comparison you know Jay's framing shop right like we've had to become that company where you come to us with a specific need and you're not going to get it solved by going to Target or Walmart it sounds like it it forced you to be a better business oh absolutely absolutely um no question um but it's it's also um it's had a lot of consequences what are you referring to well I would just say that the last 40 Years of globalization just sort of on a macro level uh it has taken a lot of jobs and made them far far far less valuable a lot of jobs um are no longer a path to sort of middle class existence um so those jobs they've really become compressed and pushed overseas so we've had to go Upstream to make it work it's as simple as you know things aren't made here anymore you know used to get picture frame molding was made in the United States now it's not well now because of the internet they figured out a way of oh wait we don't need to pay graphic designer $60 an hour we can pay $14 an hour from someone in wherever they are they've outsourced just like manufacturing it the internet is made a global competition and it's going to the lowest pric people in the world well have you done that too Sean have you hired contractors uh where you once might have had employees we work with contractors um not extensively like a lot of agencies do um because we've gone into the Strategic realm I need my entire team to understand the business as if we are an employee of the business but where how we think of contractors not as C savings we think of it as expertise so you know if we need a client to have really great photography of their team you know illustrating the culture and what it's like to work there there is no stock photo that can capture that so we need a we need a photographer we got to bring in somebody who's actually really good at capturing that and it's expensive but it's it's like a totally different product than going to Target or Walmart um so so it's good for us in that way but but a lot of folks do use contractors as a cost Savings in in our in our related Industries there are some contractors who really do enjoy the freedom that being a a free agent affords them and there are other contractors that looks a little bit less romantic like you know maybe being uh an Uber driver it sounds like you're working more with the the first type the kind of people who have an expertise and and a benefit from being able to uh sell that expertise to multiple places yeah that's that's been our strategy and part of it is that we want somebody that has actually decided they've embraced that lifestyle because honestly you build a relationship with them much like you would as an employee right and so you know I can go to Brian and say hey Brian I've got a photo shoot in three months can you make sure you're available and he will because we've committed to him for years and so that's that's a very different kind of contractor relationship than like what I would call a highly transactional one that you see I would say more often than not you know what I I I can only deal with my own business and I can tell you that that all businesses are not the same and if you want to provide a better product and a better service it's going to be by most likely having your own employees who you've trained who you kept who are on the same Mission with you in trying to go ahead and piece together a bunch of Freelancers to do that I just think you're getting a different level of end product and in some cases maybe it's fine but uh it's funny how business is business whether you're framing pictures or doing what Sean does yeah I do a better job framing pictures than going to a big chain that's got a bunch of minimum wage people who have been trained for about three hours yeah I mean sometimes it's a functional problem you know so coming out of the recession I watched like just marketer after marketer get fired and so the model we built in response to that ironically was a contractor model so we would go to small business and say look you had a marketing person you had one person but the truth is that one person can't do all of the marketing things that are needed from strategy to execution to social you actually need a team of people you can't afford a team of people you can't vet all these people on these freelance websites and find good ones let alone Corral them together so hire us we have a team it'll cost you a little bit more than that in one person but you'll get like 10x quality and that model was killer we grew 30 40% I mean we were kind of on the J trajectory in those days no that makes perfect sense that as a business owner I can't go hire people didn't I didn't understand you go on the internet oh I'll hire someone that knows how to do the internet no it's like six jobs literally it's the photographer it's the graphic designer you need people that can do each one of those six things and there's very few people on this Earth if there are any that are going to do all of them well all right we're just about out of time I want to come back to Laura one more time um and kind of the topic of whether you have enough or not Laura last week it was Shan Jay and Paul and I asked them about their philosophy about taking money out of the business when they have been able to versus reinvesting it all in the business and given where this conversation has gone today I'd like to ask you the same question have you been able to take money out of the business yeah yeah yeah yeah but then we put it back in if we need to that goes without saying yeah it just goes both ways so yeah there have been years where we've taken stuff out and what do you do with it when you take it out we invest it you know mutual funds whatever do you have a college fund for hu yeah we started that when he was born so that's done nice yeah Doug's really he's really good with money like I said you know we're really Frugal um in a lot of ways we will take money out and then if we need to we will put money right back in you know so when we bought the business in Texas I mean that just came from that was all of our liquidity personally I had no cash for until the last year or two for years I put it all back in and I don't regret it and I'm not gonna I wouldn't go and preach to someone oh you got to have some money on this if you can do it great it's a worthy goal it certainly it is but but if your business is growing and it's it's money's going into inventory and receivables and equipment and your business is successful and it's growing you know I don't regret what I did do I think the end goal should be to get more balance and have yeah absolutely but um that that's easier said than done sometimes well there's also I mean there's a really interesting conversation to be had around how you can build the model to ideally mitigate the cash flow problems you know so like the typical business right they sell especially B2B they'll sell a service and then they get some crazy terms like net 30 or net 60 you know so then cash is just a nightmare for those businesses and what a lot of businesses are starting to figure out is is how do we get the money faster um so that we can eliminate that growth uh bottleneck and I know that's a different thing in the space you're inj no it isn't though on some hand no no like for instance like we tell people would you like to pay for the whole thing now or half I mean we we get 50% deposits like that's the way it goes I think you're right I think that some consulting firms have figured out they need to get you know a retainer on the front end and that might solve their cash flow problems and if the person won't do it then maybe you just got to find someone that will all right my thanks to Sean busy Jay goz and Laura Xander as always guys thanks for sharing wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 20 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's l r n at21 hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think you can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcast follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by Jess thubron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]