Have We Been Too Generous With Employees?

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren feldin this week Mel Gravely Jackie Russo and William Vander Blum and talk about the possibility that after several years of the Great resignation and the labor shortage some owners may have given away the store we all know the risks of not offering employees enough what are the risks of offering too much how do you even know when you've crossed the line the owners also discuss why this might be a good time to consider a iring other businesses I think this is a time to Double Down says Mel and Jackie explains how she and her team are reviewing everything the company does to see if AI can be employed to improve each and every process oh and one last thing how exactly in this day and age are business owners supposed to keep track of all of the subscriptions and all the subscription logins that they and their employees have acquired through the years how much money are they spending on stuff they no longer use thanks a lot response I'm starting to sweat even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations brought to you by our principal sponsor the great game of business will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which Inc magazine named the best newsletter for business owners and which you can subscribe to for free at 21 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 Mel Gravely CEO of triversity construction a construction business based in Cincinnati Jackie Russo CEO of brand Russo a marketing agency based in Lafayette Louisiana and William Vander blumen CEO of Vander blumen Search Group a houston-based recruiting firm that works with churches and other faith-based organizations the episode is titled have we been too generous with our employe [Music] please welcome Mel Jackie and William it's great to have you here in our email exchanges this week Jackie you you raised an intriguing question I don't want to put words in your mouth but what I read into your question was this we've been through this really interesting period a challenging time with the pandemic the great resignation the labor shortage which I'm not sure is completely over yet but in trying to build a culture at a business through all of that uh one that attracts and retains employees how do you know if you've gone too far is is that a fair reading of the question you were raising that is a very fair reading and I would add to that you know I'm in Lafayette Louisiana and so from a salary perspective we skew lower than National averages even State averages and so you know is it enough to meet the state average do I need to get all the way the national average where is the line for fair and Equitable these days and how am I building the culture or being taken advantage of is this primarily an issue of the pay dollars or is it all of the it's all of the above we've always had a flexible schedule uh from when we started in 2001 you could work from home work from the office and it's about being a mature adult and knowing what you needed and and taking care of it so there were very few rules around that we moved into Co and so that became even more so we've always had unlimited paid time off and really 23 years in at worked very well I can think of one time when I felt like that was maybe a little bit taken advantage of but so then coming through Co we've now added to that a 4-day work week pretty impressive increases in Pay um a paid professional development trainer who comes to us once a month uh paid one-on-one coaching and so I'm thinking am I adding more stuff have I added too much when do I know that I reached the line did something trigger this thought I think that I can attribute part of My Success to the fact that I'm always asking the questions am I doing enough how can I do more where's the right balance and but now it's am I doing too much right now that is the question have I reached The Sweet Spot or have I gone too far past the sweet spot so nothing's wrong I just sat down and analyzed the numbers from last year and everybody did their um salary wishes you know this is what I would love to be making and I'm thinking you know if I can afford it do I push to it if I can't afford it do I find a way to push to it where's the line interesting Mel William have either of you fought along these lines at all oh that's the tension I think everybody that I'm working with is is facing so I don't I would I don't know if it's helpful or if it's discouraging but I would uh I I would say Jackie that you shouldn't feel alone and I and I think particularly what we're seeing is you know as we deal with the reality of hybrid is probably here to stay some kind of remote work and also the tension that there's a whole lot of productivity that happens with people in the office I think the Dilemma that I sense business owners facing is if I'm going to ask people to be in the office it better be the best office ever and it better be someplace people want to come so they focus on building culture and they raise pay and then they put in a Miss Pac-Man machine or whatever the thing is that makes people feel like it's fun um and then it's like when is it too much and I'm a huge proponent of Millennials gen Z and now gen a I just think they're I'm very bullish on our future with them but there is that that common uh perception that I've heard for years that well they're entitled now maybe that's because they got a participation trophy for everything ever they got titles way before they should have but I do think it becomes a bit of a black hole the more you feed this into the culture here's something I'm entitled to the more it becomes uh a problem so man I wish I had the magic formula to tell you how to figure out how far is too far but you are not alone and that is the tension I hear a lot of leaders managing right now I will say looking at jobs reports unemployment rates all the things that have been a wreck since the great resignation I think that's over now and the Pendulum uh which had swung hard toward the employees holding most of the leverage in uh negotiations is swinging back toward employers it's not as easy to go get a job as it was so that may mean that you don't have to pour as much into culture and then having said that the longer you can keep somebody and not have to hire me as a search firm the better off you are and if if spending some on culture keeps people a little longer then I think retention and the value creation of retention is what I hear Business Leaders wrestling with as they manage this tension does that make sense it makes perfect sense and and I I love the way you said about getting them back into the office we just invested heavily into taking what was a pretty cool Ad Agency office Vibe we have both Miss Pac-Man and Galaga and uh and but we expanded it and so we've built you know our our creative team was like Hey we've done this open Office Vibe for you know two decades now we want rooms we want our own offices and so we built independent individual 10 offices 11 offices so that each of the graphic designers has the their own space but it's no ceiling and so it is both still open and a unique an individual and so that seems to be making them want to be here and so retention is my word because I want to make sure we're retaining good people we've got the greatest team we've ever had how do I keep them happy and I guess that's why I'm asking the question what's far enough what's too far where's middle yeah I I don't know how many people you have but um just a couple things came came to my mind the way I see this because I think we lean in pretty hard people first as well and retention is a Big Driver behind that but it's also we've got other things to our culture that we want to be intentional about so it's not just to retain it's to retain and to support collaboration it's to retain and to support uh high performance it's to retain and to support our inclusive environment it's to retain and to support high levels of customer satisfaction and so we try to get very specific about the why of culture not just good culture so people say you know I just want to have a good culture well yeah but like let's define specifically what good is and then to me you take a long-term view like you would a portfolio of Investments so you named a bunch of things and I would call that the portfolio pay work conditions office environment flexibility all that stuff right paternity leave maternity leave all all that stuff is the portfolio of stuff and the question is and I think this changes over time which instruments in that portfolio are providing return because some of them don't matter I'll give you an example we've got a division in our business that they do not value long-term incentives at all oh they they just don't care about long-term incentive totally agree with that so the portfolio including long-term incentive for them they're like okay I'll take it but could you give me two more bucks an hour cuz that's really what I care about so figuring out and making sure you stay contemporary around your portfolio balancing if you see it as a portfolio then you can you can kind of manage it that way and checking in regularly Employee Engagement surveys if your team's small enough I just talk to them and find out in our in my one-on On's like what matters and what you're like yeah I'll take it but I don't really care because it's all costing money right and so I take away the things they don't care about and double down on the things they do care about and 3 years that'll probably change that's my thought Mel is that are you referring to like a retirement plan uh is that the kind of thing that's too distant for them to be concerned about yeah for some for some of my employees even the yearly profit sharing is too far out wow but for sure you know if I enhanced our 401K match they'd be like okay that's cool but they don't care I mean they just don't care and I'm not judging them what we of to do is create the portfolio based on what we value and I think we got to ask our people if it really is about them what do you value and then how do I create that portfolio for them although way creates an interesting uh tension there because you may think they're valuing things incorrectly and that they really need the retirement plan uh how do you think about that yeah uh and so in this scenario what we've done is made sure we retained a retirement plan for them but we've changed we treat it differently than we treat another division in our company because they value the long-term piece of this so we didn't take it completely away Lauren but we've bifurcated the two organizations enough so that we can tailor it toward what those organizations like and appreciate it is unfair and it it is against one of our values of kind of valuing the individual to tell them what they should value I'm not allowed to tell people what they what they value I've I've got to listen to what they say and value what they value because they may be in the Life circumstance that you know they're right check I'm curious It's kind of obvious what the risk is if you don't do enough um you could have an empty office what do you perceive as the risk if you're doing too much that's a great question um I don't think that I would ever be accused of not doing enough I'm I'm a lot I'm a lot every day and so the doing too much for me it's about I don't want to create a sense of entitlement I which I don't think this this team is are those people I am um always cautious in because we're getting ready to gear up our interview Cycles again and so I want to make sure I'm not um attracting people who are coming just for the benefits and are going to be a bad culture fit with the rest of the team I don't want to bring in any toxic people and I want to make sure that we're all in a good place and I I'm really listening uh to what Mel just said about making sure that um we have the um I love the way you said it and I'm I don't want to I can't repeat it so I'm trying to paraphrase it I'm just about making sure we've got all those right fits together because it's like how do I make sure I'm giving them the short-term that they want and the longterm that they need because I'm a fair believer in the long term we do 401K match and vest from day one because I I that is so important to me I think maybe I care more about them saving for their retirement than they do and I'm okay with that um but then I think about oh wait you don't want profit sharing and commission and bonuses you just want a bigger salary well then are you really invested in the growth of the company and then should I care about that because you don't own it so should you care about as much as I do no so these are the things that swirl in my head yeah I think those are all the right things though right and and that's why I like to look at this thing as a portfolio because it can be balanced I can make decisions to move money from here or there but Lauren you asked an interesting question is there is there a risk of doing too much or what is the risk and I think there's absolutely a risk of doing too much and has nothing in my mind to do with entitlement although that could be one of the outcomes to me the risk is uh it it could make you uncompetitive so something has to give you're only able to build a customer what you can build a customer and imagining that your fees and and your value proposition are lined up then there's only so much margin to be spent on people and if I get it out of whack I can either become uncompetitive with my customer or become uncompetitive with my ability to make money and my ability to reinvest in the organization not just as people but in Innovation and other technologies that I might need or R&D and and over time I can erode my ability to be competitive so I am worried about doing too much not because I don't want to care too much it's just because there's only a dollar to go around right that's smart William I think I heard you agreeing with Mel about the uh the issue of people not thinking long term how do you deal with the question of whether you give people what you think they should have or what they think they should have well I'm learning as I go Lauren two things that I have found personally that help and I've heard from colleagues that also own businesses that you know they have the same uh learning one is anytime I'm about to add a benefit or a piece of culture to the office even down to do I sign the 10year lease on the you know nice office spase or not I I'm asking myself is this a oneway street and what I mean by that is there there's some benefits that I've seen in business that are very very hard to revoke here in Houston we have uh massive turnover within the energy industry everybody kind of bounces around once bonuses pay out for the prior year sometime in March the energy recruiters go crazy because everybody's ready to move to the next thing so there's always like the retention question and one of the things that the oil and gas industry instituted many years ago and and it may be in other places as well but it's called the 980 work week is that a term you guys know no tell me okay so the idea was look it's kind of the predecessor to remote work or hybrid or take all the vacation you want all there are a lot of iterations of this get your job done and we don't care if you're here kind of uh Mantra so 980 meant we're going to work 80 hours two weeks and we're going to get it done in 9 days and every other Friday you have off and half of the company is the a team and half the company's the B Team not by value just like grouping and half of you off this Friday the other half are off the next Friday and you know it sounded great uh the byproduct was the team that was there on Friday wasn't getting anything done a lot of them were using their PTO for the Fridays they didn't have off and there was no policy in place for you can't keep taking Friday as your day off off and then uh years later when this became kind of untenable for a few companies they tried to take it back and they put pay raises in they put better food in the cafeteria and it didn't matter the 980 was kind of a one-way Street and the company that was a really good company that tried to revoke it couldn't get anybody to come work for him so the question I'm asking in my mind is is the benefit I'm offering going to be harder to undo than it than the benefit that it re for doing it and I I like I say I'm still figuring that out we've tried to gamify everything U my coo did a wonderful job you know the the a lot of our work is very collaborative and very difficult to do remotely so we we have Consultants on the road but the in-house team they really benefit by being together but you got to do something remote so Jennifer our Co so what if we did this we've got five core teams in the office we'll set stretch goals for them every month and like real stretch goals not fake ones and if the team hits their goal for the month the next month they can do Wednesday's remote until they don't hit the next month's goal so she found a way to keep it from being a permanent uh fixture in our culture and more of an earned reward and that's worked really well for us so is ending it going to be more painful than the good that I get from instituting it would be the the kind of the Baseline question uh that I ask when I'm trying to figure out how do we do this and is this too much Jackie did you worry about that when you went to the 4-day work week oh well I I did a lot um because I knew that once we started it we weren't going to get it back and so we and Michael my business partner and husband was adamantly opposed to it like oh interesting absolutely not we are not doing this this is a mistake I'm like okay let's just try it for three months and see how it goes and so but we had real clear unation with everybody but you knew you couldn't do that I think you just said well yeah but that's how I got him to agree to it are you not married you not understand the way people work together come on um yes that's how I got my way but so we did communicate with everybody it was a three-month trial we were gonna you know test it out and I've mentioned this on the show before I went to the two people who have the hardest time with deadlines and constantly say I've got two much I've got too much and said hey I'm about to take a whole work day away from you before I can finish the sentence we can do it and I said but you're nope we can do it and to their credit neither of them have missed a deadline needed to punt a project they have managed to get done in four days what they could not do in five days before Mel I'm curious how when you're thinking about these kinds of issues and other issues managing a business you factor in the role of your economic Outlook I don't think any of us are economists and no need to pretend that we are but the expectations for the economy have been bouncing around so weirdly the last couple of years we've been sure a recession is coming it's never come and you know in talking about the risks of going too far here obviously the risk get greater if the economy uh struggles how do you think about that at a time like this planning for for the year ahead yeah a great segue um I I try we try not to plan too shortsighted so what I mean by that is we wouldn't not bring a new uh employee opportunity to our team because we were worried about the next year we might make less money that next year but our our Horizon is so much longer that we're okay with a tough year and I don't mean losing money but I mean you know maybe not hitting our growth objectives not maybe not maximizing our profitability we'll trade off in other areas but we wouldn't pull back on a on an employee benefit we wouldn't not make it decision to employ one because of the economy at all that I've never been in a conversation in our company where someone said we better not do that now because of aling something else and I think that's the advantage of having a longer term perspective and and since we're privately held I control most of the shares if I'm if I'm willing to say well let's just make less money next year then that usually makes the conversation much more um strategic you probably didn't say that earlier in your term as owner of the business I'm guessing I'm not sure you know we've never lost money either so it does make it easier so but I I you know I I was I was older when I started this Laur or when I bought it and so I do think early on we made really long-term decisions and believed that they were going to overtime work out for us and there were many years where we just decided okay we're just going to make less money and U but what we want to do is so important for who we want to be that we can't not do it how about you William how do you think about the economy when assessing your hopes for the the coming year most of our work is executive search for faith-based organizations so churches faith-based schools faith-based nonprofits even the faith-based for-profits of the world like Chick-fil-A so in the faith-based world the old joke is the only thing more Recession Proof than religion is alcohol so I don't know if that's true or not and and maybe it's because it started in the fall of 2008 which was a stupid time to start a business but we haven't had a oh crap the external factors of the economy have vastly shifted our forecast for the year maybe it'll happen maybe it'll happen this year or next but to me uh wait it happened during Co right uh well that would be the one exception I didn't go to business school but I learned a lesson during Co if all of your clients close in definitely it will change your calendar and your p&l so which I kind of laughingly say we we had to make a massive reduction as Lauren knows during 2020 we still you know did not lose money that year we and that's a whole another podcast but since then 21 was our best year ever 22 was better than that 23 was massively better than any year we've ever had so wow we've just been very fortunate and and I might not be the right guy to ask because we have introduced new idea into our potential client base so we're kind of a new I don't want to say new industry but a new Option and it is very quickly gaining traction as the normal way to do things so maybe if that already saturated the market the economy would make me go oh gosh we're going to you know 10% of our customers but we have so many new clients every year that that I don't know that I have the most sober view of what the economic Outlook does to our planning does that make sense sure yeah by the way I want to add that caveat of course we paused every thought during Co so you're you're thanks William for reminding me about that and you know it does matter when you start I mean I bought this company in 2009 so it was as bad as it could get in 2009 so I've only seen Improvement not steady but General Improvement in in construction volume and our ability to attract new customers so I'm with William I've not seen a really really bad storm so Lauren my mind might change if I do are any of you thinking of making serious investments in your business uh this year and is that related to the economy or just related to your position in your various markets anybody we are we've looked at um acquiring another agency and so we're continuing to evaluate options like that we think it's a good time to grow we had the the great Fortune of growing during covid and the next year and the next year and so you know we've just finished our fifth straight year of growth and time's ticking I'm only going to be around so much longer so I want to make sure I'm maximizing every opportunity I've got uh I'm with I'm with Jackie though I I think this is the time to double down I think and I think there going to be more opportunities I think people are going to be parachuting out of their businesses they got kind of happy over the last few years I think reality will start to set in over the next few and um The Grind will start again and I think there'll be some opportunities for acquisitions we are almost constantly working on a deal or two right now and U you know they don't all uh work out they don't all close but um we think it's a good time too we particularly want to come out of the next three years with just a whole lot more capability forget size but we want more capability and with that we'll probably come size two but its capabilities to do a broader set of things is what we're after so not size just for the sake of size but buying skills Tech uh people with talents that you don't currently have y and some vertical integration so we can do a little more self- performance and control our own destiny in some areas and um but yeah not growth like I don't know if we'd buy a company that that had a profile just like ours I'm not saying we wouldn't but it just wouldn't be as attractive as it would be to buy a subcontractor or something that's that um enhances our cap Jackie have you ever bought a business before I have no freaking idea what I'm doing but I'm going to figure it out can you tell us where you stand how far along is this oh no no this is all in the early planning stages um been doing due diligence research have found a a really great company to help me do some evaluation because I don't know what I'm doing and uh figure out some of the nuances but again it's about do you have a Target um no no you know not that far yet your inner reporter is coming out Lauren you want to break you want to break a story right here on the podcast no but we would we would leak it to Lauren first like if you're going to break a story Lauren felman's the guy you go to of course no right now it's it's really about what does that what would that look like am I the leader who can take that on what gaps do I want to fill I know that we have some deficits in some of our abilities you know some things we sub out so what would it look like if we were able to handle it all in house that's an exciting idea to me actually the reason I ask is because it it relates directly to the conversation we started with about culture CU you're going to bring in a group of people who are used to a different system and you're going to have to decide where to move them exactly and you know when people talk about rebranding it makes me laugh because they're always I think referring to Brand identities and logos which we do but that is the least important aspect of combining companies um or acquiring a company it's all about the culture the processes everybody understand how they fit into this new entity that is way more important than what color the new logo is Mel I think that's what you told us essentially when you talked about your rebranding yeah absolutely and you know we did an acquisition in 2014 and they just now I mean I would say in the last 18 months became a part of our company right wow it just takes a lot of time and a lot of intentional and I think the Rebrand was our opportunity to actually include them in a real way it made them feel like it but expectations and metrics and culture and all of that stuff is just so different when you bring somebody else in did you learn anything going through that process that you think if you were doing it again you could speed it up a little bit uh yes I would have probably exited um uh some of the the senior team faster nicely said yeah I love I love them and and they're great people but um you know they just was struggling with change which made it hard to get the rest of the organization to their organization to change and and I felt loyal to them that's just my tendency and I would have probably moved faster um to to find a way to to get them to another place William have you ever considered buying another business um yes I have and just considered two yesterday uh you know when I was nine I was a paper boy and lawren heard this story but there was one road that had one customer that paid me $2 every two weeks and they had a Rottweiler with no leash and and he I was his daily highlight he waited on me all day to chase me on my bike at 9 years old and so I finally realized the routes around me were very poorly organized they're probably just randomly drawn I got to know my three buddies that had the routes around me I bought them all out redistributed the routes in a denser way kept the denser better one and sold off the rest which included the dog so that's my most successful Venture I should have quit at nine I I pee at nine I bought a competitor about a year and a half into our search firm start because they were really good and frankly I'd rather them work alongside me than against me I bought another small company halfway between now and then to enhance our work and and uh I looked at uh two other firms just in the last week that are in a position to sell and do we want to do that or not I think the answer is no for a lot of different reasons but the short answer is yes I've considered it and what's the appeal because I I'm sure you're acutely aware of the risks um I think that there a lot of risks and I'm I'm pretty picky but um you know growth can happen organically or through m&a and all of ours with the exception of purchasing two companies over the years has been uh organic and frankly search firms during the pandemic remind me I think it's a Warren Buffett quote he may have quoted someone else that said you know big recessions and depressions that's when you see you know when the tide goes out is when you see who's been swimming naked and uh a lot of guys were swimming naked in my world and they're just not in great shape right now and uh they might be a good asset if they could come up under our umbrella and use some of the things we built out that could uh U make them a more profitable uh option yeah I think we're going to see more and more of that that these companies that ate too much um and it wasn't healthy food and they're going to start getting a little sickly and I think it'll be some opportunities here I agree William have you thought about the I'm sure you have um the culture aspect of bringing in another group at this point yeah that's actually I I just said no to a company um yesterday today and you know maybe that'll change but two things were the issue uh one back to Mel's point that they had paid their people so well they weren't competitive as a company interesting and so there iida was way outside the Fairway that we've set for what works and what doesn't and for us to get them in that Fairway would require I mean there's probably a nicer way of saying it but gutting a lot of the people and changing the salary structures and that's a problem and that's lead to bad culture but then the second piece was these are wonderful people love them um they operate very differently than we do and I don't know how much we would be able to pull them into our culture um and and we're not really interested in changing into their culture so those were the two reasons I passed culture and then they just weren't as profitable as they should be and to fix that would be even more detrimental to the already culture match I hear a lot of business owners say that it just makes sense to to focus on the things you can control you can't control the fed you can't control the economy look at your own business make your decisions based on what you see in your own world but there's got to be a line there somewhere when you just keep hearing recession recession recession it's got to be hard to just ignore that yeah I I think you know let's just think about what can what can kill you right I've never seen a business go out of business because they under eight like like that they decided to grow a little slower I've never seen that be a problem I have seen it be a problem when someone says I'm going to grow 23% organically this year and they go out they price that way they hire that way and they treat their customers that way and so to me when there's question marks in the air you can't control them but you can't ignore them either and I say put your head down build a plan that is more conservative than it might normally be and then go get out after it and go get after it hard and expect to be successful don't talk yourself into a doom Loop or you suck because you said you would Jackie in one of your earlier appearances on the podcast you made a reference to how you as a marketing agency sometimes try things out in your own marketing of your own business before you try using them uh for your clients and I've been wanting to to follow up on that ever since uh I'm I'm curious if you're if you're trying anything now and learning anything about what's working right now we try everything out on ourselves first because I could never imagine gambling with my clients's investment and so I'm willing to gamble with my own but but not theirs and so if we're going to try out a new software or a new system or a new approach or some new way to configure the analytics of a series of digital ads I'm going to put my own money out there I'm going to see how it works for us and then learn from that to to to now say hey we did this thing and this is how it worked and so we want to do this thing with you I feel much better about that than saying I know we haven't tried it before but give me a bunch of money and we'll see how it goes um one of the things we're doing right now which we really started last year but we've um solidified it is we're taking every single thing we do in this company literally everything we do and we are finding which Ai and what set of PRS helps us do it better and we're creating a master document um to see obviously the humans need to be involved at every step I don't I don't see that changing anytime soon um but to see how can I go from typewriters to computers at every step along the way and some places we're finding immediate improvements some it's like that's that's not as good as it was before let's keep working on that one and So eventually we'll be able to use some of these tools for our client but right now we've got some people working on this full-time uh because we know it's important for us to continue to up our game so give us a little bit more like can you give us an example so that we could make it concrete because I I got a little excited yeah sure so okay uh one of the things that we do is a process that we you know that's really based on best practices but we made it our own and named it and and kind of said okay this is our version of how to do a strategic brand plan we call it razor branding it has four core elements Focus promise connection Harmony focus is who we're talking to promise is why they should listen to you connections what we're going to say to them and Harmon is where we're going to say it so when we're done we have a very robust plan nobody really wants a plan they want Solutions but this is how we get to the solution okay so each of those big headers has I'm going to say 15 sub points underneath it so I'll go to focus demographics well we have for years subscribed to a ton of research uh to give us a really good understanding of our target audience demographics I'm a media buyer in a past life so I live and die by that well it's been interesting that utilizing different AI platforms with a different series of prompts were able to sometimes enhance that data sometimes contradict it and almost every time improve it and so now as we're working up our demographic profiles with input from the the client because they have these customers and we're able to use this information for who else is out there that's a mirror um that we can kind of Clone their best um target audience right and so now it's like okay wait we have this whole other layer of analysis information that we can now put into it and I'm finding that those profiles are getting better they're getting deeper they're getting smarter and some of it's kind of you know a vate moment of oh gosh we should have thought of that but some of it's oh that's really good and so then we we run it through for the psychographics and so again it's data in data out there's only so much it can give it still needs us but we're better now yeah Jackie I I wonder your are your clients kind of Middle Market you know thinking I don't know make up a number 100 million to 3 billion in in size we're B2B U primarily okay and so uh we're Professional Service and and Manufacturing Professional Service we tend to skew asow is about 25 but yeah we hover in that 100 million um really to about 500 million the the the big publicly traded guys aren't as much fun and so they don't they don't move as fast I like a Nimble client I like a client who wants to grow I don't want the number one in the space I want the three to 10 because those guys are hungry and that's who I want and so then in manufacturing you know we skew a little higher there we're going to be 250 um up to probably about 3 billion but that's where we find the most they have budget that we can do some things but they're not so bloated that they don't want to change anything what you were describing that gives them the kind of data that those publicly traded big companies have yes and and you've provided it to them because they'd have no other way to get there so the value you create for them is enhanced by that correct yeah so what I think we're going to end up with is our same razor branding process but on steroids with a lot more Intel than they could have gotten or afforded on their own that we are now able to really leverage for them yeah you you know U I just spent a bunch of money with a um marketing firm which I never would have thought I would have done never would have thought it started out to be a $50,000 let's just kind of freshen up things and turn into much much much much much much much much much more than that and I never thought I would value it as much the reason I felt this way about marketing firms is because they couldn't give me enough tangibility right and when you show up with more data your Solutions were probably great for all that but they felt greater to me because you had more data backing them up with this the tools you're talking about that you guys are working on right now yes absolutely so to Circle all the way back to Lauren's question that's one of the things that we are test driving on ourselves right now because I would never waste client time on this but it's going to really benefit the clients in the long run Jackie I know this wasn't your intent but when you went to your employees and said please let's figure out what you're doing that AI can do better or improve some of them I suspect might have felt you were asking them to write their own obituaries did you have to deal with that at all I um don't always know what they think and don't tell me U versus what they think and do tell me so I didn't receive any push back or concern or furrowed browse but I did preface it beginning middle and end with I still need people people are still important humanity is necessary I just want better Intel and so I want to go find the tools to get us better Intel and you know they've been here a long time and so I feel like they know me and know my word and so I don't think I have a problem but I figure as we continue to work on this I will continue to make some emotional check-ins to make sure everybody knows I don't want to be a company of one person and so um and I think there has been a running joke in this company for its entire 23 and a half year history and so everyone knows that Michael and I have a better marriage because we don't talk to each other all day I know we work together but we don't have to talk to each other we don't have to talk to each other because of all the people between us and so there is job security for them in the fact that I want to keep a happy marriage and so it all works out I've literally never heard that one before but I like it I mean I don't know how family businesses work when the family has to actually work together um I have a family business where I don't actually talk to anybody in my family all day and it's awesome is is it just you and your husband or are there other family members there too we had four kids Mel so they just keep showing up at the doorstep looking for jobs wow no so one of ours is about to graduate in uh film editing and I mean we do a lot of videos here so she has been our number one video editor for most of her college and um she's made it very clear that she is not a commercial editor that she's not a video editor she's a film editor I'm like well you know they shoot films on video now right but no she's already figured out her path to LA and and she really does want to work in that environment and that's where her skill set is I've seen some of her Capstone film work she is a really good film editor she's an okay video editor so I support and encourage that quite a bit um and then you know we've got a chemical engineer so we don't even understand what she says we just try to get her to not talk at dinner because it makes no sense to us whatsoever and then a therapist uh who will be graduating in two years and going to grad school who we need her to talk more at dinner because we all need a little bit of her input but um the oldest is our one Saving Grace that I think we will eventually convince to come back uh he's in Nashville right now he got his NBA and he's working for another branding agency because he went off to go do big things for big people and he's working for a married couple is that right jce so it's um but it it's true I I I have some family business clients you know they've grown and grown and they're on the second and third generation and they work directly together all day and I think man that's tough so Jackie did did that your original premise of starting this conversation around uh how do you know if you went too far did you get any input from us that that felt like value something to help you think it think about it oh absolutely um and so you know I love that Mel is playing the role of Lauren today I was going to say that I part interviewer part that was too good a question Mel you you could not call me out on that good that was really good one of my commitments is how do I become a more active listener and ask better questions and I'm just going to study at the feet of Mel that was great I'm so sorry I'm never going to be invited back compliment legitimately there was good I'm going to leave now it was nice talking to you guys but so no I I do think it did it actually helped him quite a bit I I feel a little more crystallized on feeling good about what we've done and not feeling like I've gone too far and really kind of thinking okay how do I do more because the more I can retain these great people the better my company is and I thought that the the point being made about not pricing us out of the market and not becoming too far in the sense of we can no longer be afforded then okay well now I have a line we are just about out of time I think we have time for one quick more question Jackie in the past you've raised the issue of how difficult it can be to control manage costs especially when it comes to subscription expenses can you tell us quickly why that came up why that's an issue for you so I'm sure like every business we have subscriptions and it used to be magazines we subscribed to magazines they would arrive in the mail I knew what we spent we got it done well now it's all these online subscriptions our software is online our project management our accounting and so when I am the owner of the subscription easy but I'm not always the owner of the subscription for a lot of reasons because somebody else needs to be the one logging into it and that double Factor authentication thing is crazy you know and so what do we doing these days are they paying for it and getting reimbursed am I paying for it and then when they leave I got to figure out how to get the login back how do we track it like you know am I going to use one of those online will manage your subscriptions and tell you what you need to cancel things because I like Netflix I'm not ready to get rid of that but workwise I don't feel like I have a handle on it that's an interesting question maybe there's a business opportunity there yeah well you just you just struck the fear of God in Me because what I don't know is what I don't know right right I mean right I got I bet we got subscriptions everywhere thanks a lot I'm starting to sweat well and here's where it came up just so you know um so my entire creative team has very expensive subscriptions to the whole Adobe suite which they need to do their jobs I'm not questioning that and all of those are in one place and so that monthly amount is divisible by the number of graphic designers and so I can I know that that makes sense but on a different credit card and we run everything pretty much through the one because I like the miles on a different credit card I have this one Adobe subscription so I called Adobe I'm like what up and adobe's like nope we don't have that credit card listed I said okay they said we don't have a login so Adobe and the credit card company and I are all looking at this and none of us can validate it none of us know where it's coming from and so but you're paying it every month well I can't but I can't figure out how to stop it so the credit card company says this is crazy we're just going to cancel the card and we'll send you a new card and it'll end it and it didn't work and it's back wow wow and now none of us know why it is and none of us know how to stop it and I'm thinking well if this is just this one $32.95 a month example how many others of those are slipping in on the main card that's supposed to be used for this because I wouldn't have noticed it necessarily and so here we are you know it it's not just software I mean right Jay goz told us uh a couple years ago I think about at his Warehouse he had gas canisters or something I'm going to get this wrong but there was it was a physical product that he had and he was paying a monthly fee for it and whatever the the gas or whatever it was was used for hadn't been used in 10 years or something so he'd been paying thousands of dollars a year right for years right so it's not just new with software right great sorry Mel I'm not hearing any solutions for you uh Jackie I don't know I'm not either the only thing I can think of is it we use concur as our um tracking tool for expenses and if everyone has to use that tool at least at some point everything ends up in the same place and is reviewable so I get I used to get until I stepped down but I I'd get every month I'd get a sheet to approve people's expenses and so I would see what they use their credit card for and it's the only way to get reimbursed for your expenses so if you had a tool like that you could catch some of that but I I still I can think of multiple examples of right right well if anybody listening has any good suggestions please uh shoot me an email and we will discuss it in a future podcast uh you can reply to your Morning Report or email me directly at Lauren 21h hats.com unfortunately we got to go now but my thanks to Mel Gravely Jackie Russo and William Vander blumin if you didn't notice William had a cut out a little bit early and to our sponsor the great game of business which helps businesses use an open book management system to build healthier companies you can learn more at Great game.com thanks everybody 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 at21 hats.com that's l r n21 hats.com do a 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 21 hats.com this episode was produced by Jess Theron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]