Employees Still Have the Leverage

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week jols Liz picarazzi and William Vander bluman discuss how business is holding up and whether they've gotten past the labor shortage short answer no the conversation veers into a discussion of how to finance growth and what to do when your bank is unresponsive and then Liz explains her intense distaste for dealing with lawyers accountants and insurance agents and how she is trying to cope with it believe me responds Jay I haven't paid enough attention to certain things that I should have and it's cost me but yeah we can't every day just do the inspiring cool fun oh my God we had the big sale look at the problem I solved thing it's all part of the package 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 magazine recently named the best newsletter for business owners and 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 Jay goz whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason home Liz picarazzi who is CEO of City bin which is based in Brooklyn New York and makes trash enclosures and package bins and will William Vander bluman who is CEO of Vander blumen Search Group a houston-based recruiting firm that works with churches and other faith-based organizations the episode is titled employees still have the leverage welcome Jay Liz and William it's great to have you all here somehow we managed to have uh completed half of this year so I'm kind of curious to check in and see how's business how things are going especially with everybody predicting uh recession looming William how about you well Lauren this I'm going to risk alienating clients saying this but a good bit of our work is with churches and uh one of the more craft things that's been said over the years is you know churches and liquor stores both do well in Bull markets and recessions everybody needs you know Comfort or religion or Security in in turbulent times and in times of Plenty and and uh I don't want to jinx things but historically when the economy is down our church clients are actually busier uh which is a good thing and that can often lead to uh needing more staff more help the church moves a little slower than the business world and it's it's still coming out of whatever kind of lockdowns and pandemic things that uh the rest of the world's kind of come out a little quicker so I'm cautiously optimistic that things are really good are you seeing any signs of change at all you know is there anything uh evolving there that you're concerned about uh well I'm always concerned we're a startup we took the kids to uh Europe this was our spring break 2020 trip it got reworked to 21 and then reworked to later 21 and we finally went in 22 we had dinner in a restaurant that started in 803 and was you know toward the end of June and we sat around and our kids are you know old enough to have a real conversation and we talked about how we really are the great experiment as a country I mean we really have not been around very long and then you think about my business well yeah 14 years that's not that long so am I concerned I'm always concerned it we're still an experiment as a company in a country that's kind of still an experiment so I think the day I quit being concerned I ought to get really concerned but you're not seeing any signs of recession not yet I mean it'll be interesting to see what happens if we really do enter a recession which maybe we do maybe we don't um education so private school particularly on a secondary level has across the board been in the biggest uh Rush of new business that they've had in my lifetime I I think no matter where people were on opinions about mask or no mask or VX or no vax or the one thing everybody really agreed upon is the public school system failed children during the pandemic badly and so there's a lot of people like you know it really would be worth the money to get into a private school where there's a little more latitude to make decisions independently and uh if we go into a severe recession or maybe even a a moderate recession maybe those dollars won't be available to do private school um that would be the place that I'd see you know hard harder times um on the nonprofit side I I don't know how to predict I I've seen so many studies that show that the most generous America ever was in terms of charitable giving was in the early 1930s so I don't know maybe I'm being polanish but will people have money to pay private school tuition that's probably a place that that uh we ought to keep an eye on Liz you told us a few months ago that you were seeing some softening that was fairly early so with the residential segment we felt it um in terms of you know numbers on it I would say it's maybe between 15 and 20% reduction but meanwhile we've had a lot of growth among two other segments one is repeat customers so we tend to work multiple times with property managers Architects developers they've continued to order from us we haven't seen any softening in that and we've also focused on that really generating more revenue from that segment and this second one as I've discussed on here is any sort of government work so the business Improvement districts um in New York City that are doing the trash containerization um which is a department of sanitation um project you know we're rolling that out to multiple neighborhoods in New York City and it's just kind of the beginning and in addition Nationwide any other cities that saw those articles and there were many of them when the mayor announced it in April have contacted us as well so you know we're working with Hoboken in Philadelphia and DC and Chicago Jay you'll find that interesting Chicago contacted us really so in some of that's definitely made up for the softening in regular residential and some but that was also not sort of a spontaneous thing I've had an obsession with this clean curbs program in New York for over two years since it was announced pre- pandemic and we did a lot of leg work and marketing to the bids as well as to the city so that when the the program actually took off we were really the main player in the space so you know I'm not feeling worried about a recession because you know whether it be our hard work in advance or some sort of higher power at the time we needed it we are feeling like we're in a good place right now and I know in in down times having government contracts is always the way to go um and that also comes out of my time at AMX I know that you know in the 2008 2009 time FR time frame we did a lot of marketing and and program work with businesses that wanted to get government contracts because it's a more reliable source of Revenue and I always kind of had that in the back of my head if if I can go out there and get some government contracts in downtimes that's going to help me don't you have tremendous exposure though with getting paid from this because I just I know people that are waiting for money from the city and it's bad I mean isn't that a huge potential problem ah yes it is it is we're we're we actually have submitted our first invoices and we are U wrestling with not only their policies but also their actual payment technology systems will the bank lend you money against that no um I already tried that as well so I got a a very wimpy line of credit you know it's like $200,000 so we're dipping into that to finance the production which is on its way with our Factory are you with a big bank no I'm with a local bank and I switch to them because I experienced the BS from Chase and thought that if I went with a local bank I could avoid that but they're just as procedural they just plug numbers into their program and it spits out what you're eligible for I even asked them if I bring in a PO from the city of New York would you be able to raise this and they said no we for no reason we need to wait for your 2022 tax returns I have a lot of experience with the whole Bank thing and I can tell you it's a it's it's a job which isn't terrible to just you gotta shop Banks there's you made a good move from going from the big bank it's Chase is not in the business of helping small business they might say they are in their ads but that's not where they make their money they're in retail and they do huge business okay so there's a ton of banks though out there not ton there's there's usually in every city at least in Chicago I'll just talk about Chicago there's eight banks in Chicago that are hungry for small business because that's where they make their living and depends on where they're at and what cycle and what how how well they're doing how busy they are but it's it's you got to work them all and one of them Rises to the top and says yeah we want that business so I'm not I I think you can find a bank that will be more flexible because you got the money's coming it's a city contract I I would put that on your to-do list of just checking some other Banks out I think you're going to need it I think yeah I guess I just get so discouraged from the attempts that I've made and talking to other small businesses that also tried to make a move to a smaller Bank um and I can't find anybody who's had a good experience like literally not one small business and I know many of them okay you're talking to one people get discouraged and they stop you have to say to yourself okay I'm just going to talk to four Banks and one of them is gon and that's exact I just helped a guy I know in a business group he had three different bank he's got this incredible opportunity he does business online he needed a huge line and he told me the three Banks he was dealing with and I said yeah they're going to play nice with you and they're going to leave you at the they're going to leave you at the altar and exactly what I thought was going to happen he called me I called The One bank I know who's aggressive that's looking for business boom he got the loan I mean there's a bank out there that's looking for business you just might not be at that bank so you don't get discouraged is my point there's always a bank looking for business usually I've never experienced that hunger from them well you because you haven't talked to that many banks that's my point by the way it doesn't necessarily have to be a bank in your location um Ami casar the finance expert who's been on this uh podcast talked uh about how he for years told people to bank with small Banks but didn't follow his own advice until he got uh the runaround from uh his big bank and finally gave up on them and found another bank that's on the other side of the country and is banking with them and having a very good experience so that's one other person L you got to find a bank that doesn't just check the boxes because lots of them that's all they do they just check the boxes and there's no personal judgment and I'm not talking about oh I'm a good guy you should let me know you know I'm talking about you've got a contract that's worth money somebody should lend against that if you didn't have that I'd say yeah you're you got a problem but I don't think you're going to have a problem finding a bank that's going to say wow that's good good she's got all these government contracts she'll get paid Liz how are you doing with uh Supply you've had uh supply chain issues uh throughout this period uh it sounds like you now have a lot of business in the works are you able to get enough product to uh to deliver on all these new clients so I think that we did a better job of purchasing inventory the last time we did which I think was in like March we're going to be getting a very big shipment in August to four containers coming over do you know for sure they're going to arrive in August I feel fairly certain that they are I don't know any businesses that are clogged up and I'm really surprised by that because our Factory was shut down for four weeks in Shanghai right in Shanghai yeah so the other reason why Supply hasn't been as much of an issue is that I won the argument with Frank about how much to purchase that's your husband Frank is my husband he usually comes to me with a a buying plan and I look at it and I usually say double it and sometimes triple it you know we argue about it for a little bit then I remind him about the impact of being sold out to customers that want to buy um and just it's not just the potential loss business it's the time that gets sucked up of Staff time chasing the factory chasing containers you know going through customs every little thing when you're in a supply chain clog is also timec consuming for the business so right now we're not experiencing that those blockages at least we haven't detected it yet we actually placed another order this week that's going to be delivered in November and we once again had uh a little bit of a quarrel about quantities and this time I think he actually kind of won it for a number of reasons why' you let him win I mean I'm still feeling a little bit cautious I I'm still feeling like it's been just a year and a half or so since we kind of got out of the pandemic from a business perspective that I thought you know what if people want to order and they have to wait two to three months let's do that people are willing to wait we really don't have any competitors we did it for over a year during the pandemic people were paying us 100% in full and not getting their bins for six months and we weren't losing business over that Lauren there's another answer to that which we just talked about she doesn't have an unlimited Fountain of money so she could end up with tons of inventory and not be able to pay her bills so it is a it is a balancing act you you got to have inventory but you also have to be able to pay your bills so that's why I'm saying all part of it is if you could find a good bank that'll that'll lend on contracts you'll have some more cash but that's a constant problem in business luckily for you your product doesn't get stale which in some businesses it does you buy the spring look at what happened to Target and everybody they bought all their spring merchandise and oops they got too much your boxes aren't going to go out of fashion in three months how are you doing in terms of shipping is that still as expensive and fraught as it had been no it's it's been completely liberated I actually have no worries about it the price of containers has come down at one point we were paying 32,000 per container and on our most recent buy it was about 11,000 per container wow it's insane how much the cost has come down and the 32,000 per container also was with a really long wait time and you know getting caught up in the shipyards and in in tariffs and so I'm feeling a lot better about shipping um we're not getting the runaround from all the intermediaries like we were getting before Liz what was the prepandemic cost of the container pre pandemic was about what it is now actually so it's not even it's not even really affected by inflation it isn't and it's also weirdly not affected by uh China shutting down or Shanghai area shutting down for four weeks it's simple supply and demand they had more people that needed the containers than they could take care of so somebody there just figured what the hell let's triple the price and they got away with it how are you doing Jay clearly business is getting a little softer and I'm just uh paying attention to the details because what I've learned is when you're in a recession nothing really changes uh in except doing stupid stuff what do you mean nothing really changes nothing really changes in that you still got to take care of customers you still have to take care of employees well if your bu if your business softens that's a change yeah but I'm saying I I I it's a change except that doesn't mean if I wanted to good service before recession I can just throw up my hands and go well it's a recession we don't have to worry about taking care of customers anymore and I see lots of companies that make what could be fatal errors going along and you know in the three buckets I'll just give one example from each on on the marketing side if your marketing was working before if you can afford to keep doing it cash flow wise I've never cut by I usually just keep doing it because if you built up a market presence in a certain medium and and it was working cutting that off for a year or two could be could be very costly so I'm still spending money on advertising on the management side this is where people make mistakes of oh I'm not giving any raises out um you can lose some great employees like that and and we this is a bizarre maybe recession in that I'm still having an extremely difficult time finding people to work in my warehouse like and I can't figure out why they call they make an appointment to come in for the interview and they don't show up so so at the same time the labor shortage is still profound yeah I don't think you're alone with that well two years ago we thought it was the we thought it was the unemployment payments that people were sitting out well those are all dried up now so I have no explanation for it anymore William are you seeing anything like that everywhere and I and I don't know quite how to make sense of it uh I do know that you know talking with some friends that are in banking that the whatever the right words for the debt to asset ratio for households right now is the lowest has been in a long time people just aren't in debt like they used to be I don't know if that's lower credit card spending or if Dave Ramsey's actually making a dent in budgeting problem people face but there's not a man I gotta I got to make that payment that's going on and maybe that's part of on the higher end I I do hear people we still get the I can work from home or I want this many PTO hours or I want this many amenities at the office the pendulum of the employer having leverage or the employee having Leverage is still definitely on the employee side right now it seems like Jay I'm with you I don't know how do people feed themselves right no no that makes you're right with the pensional thing the part I don't get is why did you call for the job have a pleasant conversation on the phone say okay I'll come in for an interview and then not come in for the I don't understand why people are or get all the way just had this happen in a really big search for a very high level position all the way down reference checks background checks done done done done and then at the last minute the uh candidate wanted double the salary that was you know put through the whole interview process and when the employers we can't do that they said okay well I'm out and I mean that's still happening so it's just I don't I don't know how to explain it Jay I got to think that like you say supply and demand eventually people's personal supply and demand will warrant them not being so uh demanding I just hired back somebody who left to go to work at a big company he needed you know he needed to pay off his school loans he hated the lead but they offered him way more money he's coming back for a pay cut for a substantial pay cut because he wants to work here so it's not all bad it's just the warehouse in particular though I is where my problem is and then the third category of the recession bad bad ideas is to stop spending money on stuff that you should be spending money on maybe your truck looks terrible and you think oh we shouldn't buy a new truck well if you need a new truck you need a new truck so if you're I've got a issue with I I need a Mason to come out and fix some of the bricks on the building and my kid says to me well maybe we should wait till you know business is better I go the leak doesn't know the difference whether there's a recession or not we don't need a leaky brick or or leaky roof or so I think you still have to think I'm confident you still need to maintain your buildings and maintain your business but every one of those categories whether it's management Finance or marketing I see companies making mistakes William about uh I think six months ago before the year began you introduced us to the memorable phrase the vomit list and you talked about being proactive about trying to lock up your most uh important employees I'm curious halfway through the year with the labor shortage continued has that strategy worked for you so far so good uh it's not not bulletproof remind us quickly what you did yeah so well what is the vomit list is ask yourself this question you anybody who owns a business with employees has had the employee walk in and say hey can we talk for a minute it won't take long and it's usually at the end of the day and you go oh man okay or maybe you say oh finally I don't know but what what would happen if someone walked in your office to resign who in your company when they said I want to resign would make you want to First thing reach for a trash can and throw up because it's like oh boy this is really going to be bad it's probably not a long list it's probably two or three people and my suggestion was figure out what that list is and do whatever you can to lock them down for whatever period of time you need to be able to uh find the replacement so maybe it's like for me it was sales I really needed my head of sales to stay through the end of 2021 and I paid her a retention bonus to stay through 2021 and I knew it probably wouldn't last and on about January 3rd of 2022 she came to the office and said okay I'm leaving and she's going to work for a mission agency she's actually taking a pay cut we're still very good friends she still trains my salespeople but but it got me through the date that I knew I needed so that worked well even though she left other people it has worked well and they've stayed uh because uh I think the the whole looking for other jobs is sometimes like dating around and then you you know kind of Don't Know What You Got Till It's Gone sometimes people look around and they end up coming back saying you know this is better than I thought it was that's what Jay just said my guy did my my guy loved working here and he was sick leaving but they offered him so much money he he he owed a bunch of he had to leave and I got it and I called him he's thrilled to come back that's the that's the the kicker you know I lost a a head of marketing who did a fabulous job for me for a long long time but another company that really needed a marketing person was like we're just going to pay anything to get her and they did and I don't really falter for leaving I hate it but I couldn't have kept her so so I don't you say how's it working I think it's about as well as it can um and and I'm not looking to like sew people up forever with me no one's a permanent employee and my goodness I've had to learned they're not my employees right they're humans that have their own lives and their own Dynamics I think what I'm trying to do with with the vomit list suggestion is just plant an idea in my own mind first and then in other business owners Minds what do I do to keep people long enough to create room for a replacement strategy because every employee is an interim employee okay wait I got to stop you on that that's simply not true I have lots of people I have I have 15 people that have been here for 20 some years that will be here till the day they retire so I don't buy that that everyone's interim and then they will retire well okay that's true that's true they will no I always liked your line that every clergy is interim that was brilliant no okay you're right they will but I'm just saying there are people that will stay with you their whole career and then their career ends you're right you're right you're right I'm rebuilding my lead team I lost a couple of them during the pandemic and and no bad leaves you know I'd serve as a reference for every one of them uh but uh in rebuilding I've been very intentional saying okay we're not going to discriminate but if I have a chance to build out a younger team I will because everybody gets older and everybody's in room so when I have a chance to replace I want to replace with someone give somebody a chance that might not have as much experience and and rebuild something that might last a little longer next time can you talk about wanting to hire younger people William can I talk about it you mean legally can I talk about yes that's my question I don't know the answer to that I'm gonna say no I'm gonna say I'm gonna say you can't make it a statement that I'm going to hire younger people because that implies you're not going to hire older people I tried to couch it very carefully you failed I'm not going to discriminate well it's how is that any different how is that any different than saying I'm not going to discriminate but if I have a chance to add diversity I will it's no different that's an interesting question that's I'm not going to discriminate but if I have a chance to give a younger person a chance and build a younger team I will I think just saying I'm going to try to get a a young person that I give a chance to okay that makes sense and certainly I find this interesting if you look at my company all these long-term employees I got every one of them at 22 23 years old I grew them all none of them came from the corporate world and came here and made the conversion let me interrupt you Jay and say one of the biggest nightmares we have in succession is when I I'll use the church as an example a senior pastor comes in young and does a 32 35 year run all the way to retirement hires young friends with them they all age together and the entire ecosystem has to get replaced when the pastor retirees that's a mess absolutely no for sure if you're not constantly rebuilding and replenishing your team with people that will last you're doing a disservice to your company no question no and I I do have different layers of well I have the ones that are in their 50s now or 40s I also have some in their 30s that are coming up so no you're 100% right Liz have you had issues with labor um no not really actually um and I have hired four people in the last couple of months because of the growth in the government work we've hired a couple of installers and um I have had a lot of I don't want to say luck but with I have a couple of employees that are from Venezuela who have a ton of friends that have also moved to the US um like all completely legally completely on the books but um what I found is that most of these men and they are men coming from Venezuela have um technical handy skills that the average American man doesn't have and so I essentially have an employee that's recruiting people who have been incredibly reliable require very little training and actually are very loyal because they like working together um it's also a way that we can give them better work than maybe they would have gotten if they were doing like seamless deliveries you know some of them had been before so I think there will come a time when my uh this sounds awful but I'm going to say it anyways like my Venezuelan pipeline it's G to go but for the last few years we've gotten some incredibly good employees through um employee referrals some business owners worry about taking recommendations of friends I think the concern is that if uh you hire too many people who are friends you risk the situation where if you annoy one of them or have a problem with one of them you end up having a problem with uh several people have you had any concerns about that very little I think that in some of the issues that we've had we've just been able to deal with them through like better communication and you know kind of playing the hierarchy card so if one of my managers is having an issue with one of the installers he can bump them up to talk to me and that you know that means something if Liz needs to step in and kind of reprimand or look over things that's been pretty effective I can tell you I've been living that world for 40 years and I have lots of family members working for me and while there can be an occasional problem the upside is way bigger than the downside and if you run the company properly which I'm not saying I always did they know when someone's doing something they shouldn't be doing and you know they don't just stick with him because it's their brother they know the guy didn't show up on time he didn't do a good job I've managed it and it's worked out just fine I have lots of people working for me that you know we fired their brother but they know their brother wasn't doing what they were supposed to be doing so I believe if you have a strong corporate culture of they all understand what you need to do for the business to be successful and they bought into that that they might not be thrilled you fire their brother but they understand and accept it and I think the I've heard people say oh I never hire relatives wow if that was the case in my case I I'd say a third of my employees have a relative working here William do you agree with that um you know the bulk of the US economy is built on family businesses so I have a client who hired a nephew and he told the rest of his team uh I told Josh I said Josh it's only nepotism if you suck smart that's a good line I am learning that there's a a higher uh probability of of I'll call it familial myopia uh everyone thinks their son is awesome because their son is a direct reflection on their own Gene pools so I there's maybe a need for it sounds like sales but outside Council to take a look at Family candidates and give you not a hire or don't hire but more like a he the the known strengths and hear the risks you need to work around if you're going to make this move I want to move to another topic Liz during the week we emailed and you uh talked about an issue that you have that you sometimes uh to your detriment in your words try to avoid doing certain tasks can you tell us what you were referring to and why it's an issue sure so in both of my businesses as all businesses need to do you need to talk to lawyers accountants and insurance agents and as I've grown I realize there's more and more need to talk to those people and um I find it really unpleasant to talk to people who are going to remind me of the risks of being in business business it's it's definitely a little bit of I don't know maturity it's kind of a juvenile reaction but when I meet with a lawyer or an insurance agent those two in particular I have um I sometimes have such an adverse re reaction then I need to go home and take a nap like it's so draining to me literally literally like in my old business everyone knew if Liz meets with an insurance agent she's going to be exhausted and check out early and that's why I say it's juvenile to have such a visceral reaction to having a conversation with someone about your risks and I know that they're only doing their job they're talking about the worst case scenario but I compare that to the feeling of like this morning I went over to Queens to talk to someone that we're working with on locks and various hardware and I so enjoyed that that it like put me in a good mood because it was creative it was problem solving it was moving forward I recently had an experience where I needed a fairly simple subcontract done and the people I talked to seemed very salesy and I I often have not thought that lawyers are that way but when I really look at it and I look at some past experiences I do realize they sometimes sell you more than you really need or they freak you out to the point that you're willing to almost pay anything and I that was such a Negative feeling um this is what a lawy laer that I haven't dealt with yet so it was a new person but I felt like there was potentially some like overselling but you need to get it done so then you feel like you're forking over the money and you have a bad taste in your mouth and then that lingers for a while listen I give you credit for you recognize there's an issue with this and it's a problem so good for you you're halfway there the question is that's this is the symptom of the problem and what's the real problem so in my own I'm not a psychiatrist but I'll I play one on TV Are you a control freak that you is when you call yourself control freak and you can't deal with stuff that you can't control is that is that a possibility I got two options I don't think it's that I think it's more let me try the second one okay go to the second one okay so the second one with the lawyer in particular um lawyers I found are not particularly good salespeople but they spend their entire days dealing with problems so for them oh my God you know what just happened my other that's all they see is problems which is why you got to be careful to take advice from a lawyer because all they ever see is problems because that's what they do for a living I don't think they were selling you I think they're just telling you look at all the problems I'm dealing with I mean if if you worked in an emergency room you probably would never ride a motorcycle as my guess because you'd be seeing all the people coming in so if you're a lawyer and you see all these problems that's all they ever see so I think they're telling you they that but they don't see the pro the people that don't have any problems because they're not calling on them I mean they the guy that didn't get sued from employ employee is not a client of theirs all they have every single one of their clients if they're a labor attorney is somebody's being sued from an employee so they think that all employees sue people um so I don't think they're selling they're just I think you got to get perspective of yeah whatever I mean with this recent interaction I think I kind of was I could just kind of tell by their intake process that there was a little bit of like here's what we're going to do first and then you're going to need this second bit of work too but we'll get to it later and they wanted me to kind of commit to that second level of work and I didn't want to I really wanted to just see how the first level went and that made me feel like it was kind of you know a cell and then the other thing I don't like and I'm sure we've all experienced this is that there's sometimes a front person from The Firm that brings in the business does the sale and then they firm the workout to some subcontractor and God knows where and then suddenly that's the person that you're dealing with on your patent which is expensive and timec consuming uming and you want to have done completely right I mean I know that's the way that they do their business but like I would love it if I could go to one firm and have all of my contractual employment all of my IP all done in one place like if someone as a business idea could make that happen I think they would do really really well I think that ex I don't I'm I don't done I hav done this a lot but I think that exists you you probably know more about it than I do I I'm surprised that that doesn't exist because I just for the first time ever hired a trademark copyright IP guy and he seems to be taking care of everything maybe I'm dumb and he's farming it out I never thought that was a possibility um let me ask you this I get a third this is my third one do you have trust issues do you think yeah I think a little bit I definitely have that a little bit because I have been kind of swindled by people in the past I mean I think the core issue I don't know if it's exactly any of those three maybe a little bit of each I think that I just as an entrepreneur I like to be in a certain headspace and I hate it when my headspace is robbed by tasks like renewing your insurance policy like it affects me so much more than it should it's not a productive activity you you're not advancing the cause of the business in a tangible way I mean you have to do it but it's it's not fun it's not creative it's not leading to the outcomes you're most okay so that number four I'm on for is you haven't accepted yet that yeah all part of the entrepreneur thing I mean I don't like doing it either but I do what I got to do you guys all find ways to delegate maybe the question Li is why hav you assigned these duties to Frank so that's something I'm in the process of doing um because he saw what a foul mood I was in for literally 3 days after my last interaction with the lawyer wow and um he knows that that's something that needs to come off of my plate or to at least us do it in tandem for a little bit and I mean he's aware that I guess I'm just sort of this entitled entrepreneur where I only want to be doing creative inspiring things aha the Breakthrough we've had a breakthrough yes that that's pretty much the story okay well what what does that suggest Jay and you know what I totally appreciate and respect that you know this about yourself that you know putting you in a funk but I'm hoping that you will process this you just said it you you have to accept whatever I'm going to have to deal with the lawyer and I mean it's it is what it is I mean I and I don't love that stuff either but I accept it's and believe me I haven't paid enough attention to certain things that I should have and it's cost me and I myself have to have to get pay more attention to that stuff but yeah we can't every day just do the inspiring cool fun oh my God we had a big sale look at the problem I solve thing yeah it's all part of the package yeah well maybe it's a mental health issue and I'm totally accepting of that but in my my brain chemistry is such that when I work with any of these people it can take up my brain for days yeah and if I could take a pill to get rid of that I would but it's the the nature of whatever it is I'm working on I'm really pretty obsessive and focused on it and I quite frankly I don't want to be Focus focused on you know my trademark or patent I mean I should be I should be I know that but I don't like my brain cycling on those issues let's me bring William into this are there parts of the job of being uh the the owner the boss that you just don't like dealing with oh it's easy being the owner and boss you just work whenever you want to you don't have to report to anybody it's play golf play golf throw that in no I you know it's such a tight rope walk Lauren it's the best job or position or role I've ever had and it's also one that there's never a uh a greater sense of freedom and at the same time responsibility um and humbling that you know the decisions I make are going to affect other people I don't think that there are things I don't like sounds arrogant but there are times where we hire an expert to help us with something and then Adrian and I sit down and end up figuring out a better way to do it Adrian's your wife yeah why are we the ones coming up with the best idea we have a religion degree and a biology degree this is so stupid why why is there not somebody smart you know that sounds to totally arrogant I guess what I'm saying is I love having people that are smarter than me and it's frustrating when we hire someone that doesn't come through on that promise yeah I've had that it's unbelievable that I've had to tell a lawyer wait why are we doing this and I was right I mean it blows my mind that yeah that does happen yeah I have a couple of instances where the lawyer wasn't very creative about Solutions and like for instance with my trademark there was someone that held a very similar trademark to the one that I wanted and we were going through all these legal means and the lawyer even wanted me to change the entire name of my business which had already been in operations for a while and I basically looked up the guy who owned the trademark contacted him on LinkedIn and he very graciously sold me his trademark which he wasn't using he knew how important that trademark was to me and I'll forever be grateful to him but the lawyer advised me not to do that um and then there was another spot where there was kind of a bump in the road with the US patent and trademark office and I just went in and I emailed the reviewer at the US PTO and asked my question the lawyer also didn't like that that I did that but I ended up moving the thing forward in a way that he didn't and so in both of those instances I did something that they wouldn't have advised and I got exactly the outcome I wanted I've had that exact same situation just last year and it was with a trademark thing wasted $8,000 in legal bills that I should have spent zero all right we're just about out of time I want to ask uh basically one more question which is William you you mentioned taking a vacation recently wait what's that what's that well that was my first question uh Jay Liz either of you taking vacations this summer I haven't had a vacation in three years why there's been this pandemic thing going on I heard about that uh yeah maybe two years are you thinking about it I am I'm going out I'm going out of the country in October hopefully good for you Liz well we did cancel the vacation we had this summer due to all the work we've we've brought on um but we have a trip plan for Japan around the holidays that keeps getting bumed because of Co and fingers crossed we're going to have it this year so we're all really looking forward to that um my 16-year-old daughter actually planned the whole thing you know found the flights found the airbnbs found you know the excursions were going to go on so she made it very easy for us to say yes to that vacation which is probably more expensive and more timec consuming that we would have planned but it it made it very easy there's your answer she needs to deal with the accountants and the lawyers and insurance done family business yeah all right my thanks to Jay goz Liz picarazzi and William vanderlan as always thanks for sharing guys wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's l o 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 podcasts follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by Jess Theron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone hey [Music]