Here’s My New Succession Plan: I Can’t Die

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Sean busy Jay goz and Liz picarazzi discussed their succession options and if they could go back in time what advice they would give their early stage selves Liz would tell herself to get some help with administrative tasks Shawn would tell himself to find a mentor although he's not sure he would have listened to the advice and Jay would tell himself that there's an obvious solution to the chaos caused by fast growth plus how Liz changed the narrative after City bins bout with bad publicity and we have suggestions for a listener who asks how do you know when it's time to quit the day job 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 when Jak magazine recently named the best newsletter for business owners in which you And 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 goz whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason home and Liz picarazzi who is CEO of City bin which is based in Brooklyn New York and makes trash enclosures and package bins the episode is titled here's my new succession plan I can't die welcome Sean Liz and Jay thanks for being here I want to start today by asking you kind of about the best advice you never got tell me if you could go back to the early days of starting your business and deliver a message to the younger you just getting started what would that advice be Liz can I start with you absolutely so I don't know if my advice is all that exciting but it's definitely something that I could have used and that's that I underestimated the amount of administrative work that goes into having a business so when you register with the state and you get a tax ID number you get put on a lot of different directories for various types of mail some of it is seeming seem kind of like solicitations but a lot of it are various types of insurance various types of sales forms so when I started getting this mail I was really overwhelmed with understanding the difference between even something like unemployment and disability I know they're totally different things but from a standpoint of knowing you know how do I handle this you know what what do I need to know about this how much do I need to to pay how do I get this set up for me I found that so unpleasant and as I've said on the podcast before anything administrative I don't have very strong skills in that so I actually had a box that I carried around with me for a few months with a lot of mail in it that were important things like sales tax I was overwhelmed with it I didn't like it so if I could have had someone take me through what are the various you know insurances taxes that you need to get set up with then when that mail started coming in I wouldn't have felt as overwhelmed in addition to that annoyed because for me it was like wow what an annoyance that I'm finally going out on my own and I'm starting this business and I'm already buried in paperwork so that would be my type of advice I don't know if there's some sort of advisor that can provide that sort of simple advice you know I know there are things like score and other City resources on how to start a business but no one told me and I didn't seem to have a resource for all those additional admin things that you need to take charge of right away who was doing your accounting who was doing the tax return and such at that point well I'm talking about like in the first six months or so I know but it my my point being usually if you have some kind of accountant they could at least give you some guidance and some of that stuff you're talking about I just questioned it in the beginning did you not have an accountant at all you don't need one in the first six months necessarily do you no no I didn't have it I had a bookkeeper that was in my co-working space and he was you know helpful to a point but you know maybe that's it is that have an accountant that can help you help take you through those things not just from an explanatory perspective but from an actual practitioner well and I I can't help but Wonder Too like we live in a very different time than when you started your business Jay you know in terms of the administrative burden and Liz is in a state and a city that is like epic in terms of its bureaucracy and I am too I mean that's sort of one of the Perils of doing business in kind of more liberal cities is they uh they love their fees and their taxes and their um processes and permits I mean it has become permit Ville crazy um so I I think I think Liz brings up a really interesting point no you're right when I started it was very different I I don't remember getting a bunch of mail with with all this stuff and you're right it's changed over the years it was 44 years ago you know even on something like disability if you don't pay that on time you get a pretty big fine so I think my disability bill was like $250 and I didn't pay it and then I got fined 500 are you sure that was disability because disability is an insurance policy I don't know who would be finding you for that did the state F you for not I guess they could yes yeah at the time it was through the state and I tried to fight it but I think they have those punitive measures in place for people like me they probably call them Liz rules how can we get Liz it is it is really difficult I mean I think that and I don't even know if the accountant's the right answer yeah I don't either because it's so broad it's not just the financial side it's more of a compliance in rules that often fall out of the realm of accounting it's really good advice Li I actually think it's a business opportunity as well because if you can get in there with an upand cominging small business at the beginning and you know whether you're a lawyer or your accountant or some sort of advisor and help them through this then you know you can you can get longer term business with helping them with that stuff and you can get a lot of referrals I think there are places around the country um municipalities that have gotten better at this and they have kind of created a you know One-Stop platform that lists all the things you need to do get a business off the ground that you can just go to one place and start checking them off and I would like to think that that will happen everywhere before too long Liz when you were throwing that mail in the Box were you throwing it into the box opened or unopened mostly unopened that's not good I'm smart in a lot of ways but that's not one of them I think Liz is really typical of a of an entrepreneur I mean I I've lost some administrative resources because of um mat attorney leave recently and then I had one of my key people who who handles operations go on an extended vacation and so you know I covered for for them which is kind of a joke um but I had a stack of of mail that you know a lot of it I didn't get to for a long time and finally got around to it but it's hard you know when you're you're focused on a vision and you're focused on where we headed and the pace of everything and you're selling this stuff is just a boat anchor around your neck I think that at some point it's about self-preservation and about keeping your head clear that you do sometimes ignorance is bliss that she didn't open them because she couldn't deal with it and I understand that I resp that at some point you just get overwhelmed so so there's something called I just made this up managing your overwhelmedness like maybe you just ignore a couple things that you just can't deal with it cuz it's it is overwhelming Sean same question to you if you could go back in time and give yourself a piece of advice what would it be so a question I have is when you say back in time are you saying to the very beginning I'm giving you some wiggle room I want you to give the most interesting advice for whatever point in that earlier period that you think could be last month yeah yeah that's true you know if I look back over my life and then especially the last you know 25 years of being in business the first 10 years were very different than the following 10 years and so if I reflect on those first 10 years the the most critical piece of advice that no one ever gave me and I don't know if I would have listened to it but um it would have been to get mentorship um I I worked so hard at creating things that in hindsight were just super basic and easy if somebody had just kind of given me a Playbook I think as a as an early stage entrepreneur you end up wasting a ton of energy and momentum trying to invent wheels that have already been invented so I think mentorship and guidance from from folks who've done it before I think that would be the number one thing for Sean in his 30s well you raise a a good point though do you think you would have been open to taking that advice you would have gotten from whatever mentors you found it's a great question you know I was brought up in a time you know not quite as far ago Jay but you know uh where the dominant mindset was business is a fiercely competitive activity you keep secrets you keep your stuff to yourself you don't ever admit your weakness you don't um share what you're doing because people could steal your stuff you know it's very much kind of a paranoia mindset around business and you never talk about your financials you never talk about what you make and what I've learned over the years is like that's just dumb um it doesn't help you at all and so I think that has changed I think people have become much more vulnerable and much more willing to share and realize the benefits of being honest and open about their shortcomings Jay how about you if you could go back in time what advice would you give yourself uh there's no question this cost me literally in the true sense of the word literally millions of dollars I was growing at 50% a year and then finally I get to a bank and I'm going to borrow some money and I show my financials I can remember this like yesterday and I go listen at my bottom Line's not as big as I was hoping it was maybe 4% which wasn't great and he flips open the thing he looks oh you still made money and that was the end of the analysis and I was going to a real accounting firm and it blows my mind in hindsight between the accounting firm and the bank nobody said to me wait a second you're growing 30 40% a year you got a 4% butt once you raise your prices 3% it'll slow your growth down a little bit and your bottom will go up dramatically you won't have to borrow from the bank I wish somebody would have told me that as as simple as it sounds now in hindsight but you know why the bank didn't tell you that right you know you could you could say they want to lend me money but I don't even give them that much credit I don't think they were I just haven't found a lot of these Bankers to be great business uh advis advisers I just what I don't understand the accounting firm nobody it seems like I said in hindsight it seems obvious but at the time it wasn't but Jay it wasn't just that that you could have had a bigger bottom line you could have had a better life absolutely no absolutely if I recall you're talking about it there was a certain amount of chaos that you might have avoided no it was absolute chaos if the bank or the accountant had given you that advice do you think you would have been ready to hear it um I believe so because when you do the math it's obvious that I do it for framers and they they're their their mouths drop when I go let's look at this math if you raise your prices 10% how much business would you have to lose to lose money on this deal and it comes out to like 18% so even the most paranoid of all of them even the ones that think they're in the most competitive market no one can argue with the fact they're not going to lose 10% of their business and I also say you'll lose some business I'm not arguing with that I'm suggesting if you raise your prices five or 10% let's say 10% yeah you you'll probably lose 3 4% of the business and then you show them what the effect that he has on their bottom line and like I said their eyes open up it's totally Universal early in a bus business's life cycle Founders dramatically undercharge what they should they undervalue it this is crazy so to your point J about the numbers I had a client that was a accounting firm they were an accounting firm and we were doing brand work for them and we were looking at their offerings which were really remarkable and different and nobody else could do what they were doing they had this Niche specialization and we were like you guys you're in many cases losing money on these clients just raise your prices by like 10% and you will kill it especially because they had a volume they had a volume of clients and they were like oh no we can't do that we can't do that so they there was just like a fundamental insecurity because they were they were comparing themselves to the kind of boring tax industry which just prepare prepares returns which is commoditization I don't know if I use insecurity I would use the word I think there's two words because I've thought about this a lot fear and guilt they oh I can't char oh people can't afford that really they can afford 300 but they can't afford 350 or fear of oh my God I'm going to lose all my business if I raise my price and like i' I get it I get it I I've been there it's fear I think part of it too is the discomfort of communicating a price increase which in the last couple of years you know my business has done and I think a lot about either communicating it or in some cases not communicating it you know whatever the choice is but you know some people a discomfort with communicating a price increase I say most people I mean I think Liz is kind of the perfect example I was on your website list I was looking at your trash bins because I got this project I was like yeah maybe I can use a trash bin thing and I was like wow these things are expensive and that was my first thought and then my second thought was like well wait okay what do I do pay to have a custom thing built what else is there like there's no comparable right so you've created something that is escaping the Trap of being a commodity which is great and it also means you're gonna have some people who won't buy from you and that's fine y like that's fine right you have to get used to the idea people don't have to be happy with the price they just have to pay it that's not the same thing you go to get your car fixed you know they're getting hourly like $280 per hour who gets their car fixed at the dealer and says oh that was reasonable $493 I mean but you pay it because you want your car fixed or the plumber or whatever so or you want it to last you know a lot of the commodity trash enclosures you would get at Home Depot or on Amazon they're going to degrade very quickly garbage or to Sean's point you can hire a local Carpenter to build something in ePay that's really nice well with that person you might need to wait a really long time and it actually in many cases will cost more than a city bin because people also underappreciate the cost of good you know carpentry yeah um and if you want it really nice it is going to cost a lot next topic I want to talk about succession a little bit uh both Jay and Shan this is a thread we've been following a little bit you guys have talked about this in in previous episodes and I'd just like to to check in with you Jay you've told me recently a few times in in private conversations that you've kind of settled on a succession plan which is your plan is you can't die that's a key part of it yeah the key element can you you explain that for us um my plan requires me being around long enough to mentor and to groom and to get people ready to run it without me here I do have the place somewhat running itself I've got key people running each division that are extremely competent in some cases more competent than I am but there's still an element I still do serve some function here so I am working on getting I've got my two kids here you've talked about that as being kind of an experiment you wanted to give them a chance to see if they were interested and if if they have the capability that's why I can't die I need to find that out because things change in 10 oh things could change in 10 years but I'm working on it and I'm continuing to work on it and um I I need some more time to get this working um and then the other difference is um I mean I'm in good health I believe I hopefully I'll be around for another 25 years but you know if I drop dead tomorrow um would the place go to no it would be okay for a while it might be okay at long term but I there's definitely some holes here that I'm grooming my children to understand the finances and you know some frankly some of the stuff Liz brought up Jay what would happen if if you got hit by that proverbial bus tomorrow how would big decisions get made first it would be an unbelievable big funeral with people just throwing themselves to the ground be there throw the 21 hats on your casket yeah so uh for those of you old enough to remember this would there be an Alexander heg moment remember that Char I'm in charge when he really wasn't um would there be some power void um I've got some strong managers here I don't think there'd be any ugly someone's trying to take charge thing would there be over the next year or two I mean we do have a plan here which is we're not opening any new stores we're just running what we have running it better trying to get more efficient trying to get more profitable and just running what we have would anything change with that no and I am trying to not trying I'm explaining to everyone involved whatever happens I've got it all typed up for my kids that like don't do the oh Dad's turning his grave thing I don't want any response I do what you need to do if you decide to sell it if you do whatever you need to do I do not want to hang my kids or my wife with any kind of Legacy thing where they torture thems the rest of their life because oh my god dad would be upset if he knew we would I don't want any part of that um so I'm telling him I'm giving him some instructions some guidelines some thoughts and telling him at the end of the day do what you need to do if you wake up one day and you don't want to deal with it anymore you know sell it do whatever you need to do so um it's a work in process there is no easy solution to this Sean when we last spoke you had told us that there was a came a pointed in time where you tried to step back a little bit and turn over the kind of day-to-day operation to uh to your team and that eventually you concluded that wasn't really working and you had to get back involved uh which you clearly still are what's your current thinking yeah I mean some of that's a function of you know losing a key person on my team that was responsible for business development so my strategy had been you know get out of client work get out of doing the advising and Consulting business and I was successful in doing that I built a really great uh strategy and Consulting team they're fantastic um good leadership good execution and so then really kind of the next natural step was to get out of uh sales and Business Development which is really hard for a Founder owner because oftentimes they've been doing that for so many years that it's hard to kind of pass those Reigns I had been in probably year two or three of that you know uh specifically you know kind of cultivating somebody inside and you know I think the pandemic really threw everything off uh made life really hard for all of us including her and she ultimately left which is which is a bummer but but I understand it and it's just meant you know I just don't have any redundancy in that department wait walk us through that why' she leave tell us what's the rest of the St I mean where'd she Go why'd she leave yeah I mean it's it's a complex it's a complex issue do but you know I think fundamentally she's an extrovert she's a she's a community person she really loves and thrives on being around and with people and I think the pandemic and its isolating nature was was really hard um for her and you know we closed down the office we went remote you know and I think as that dragged on it just was really really difficult for her to be inspired and excited uh to do her job and so what's she doing no so what's she doing today yeah so so she took a role at a much much larger company more in the 300 person size um doing a lot of stuff around you know kind of internal uh employee alignment and engagement um it's really kind of an internal brand role which is something that you know we delivered to our clients and are known for and they really need okay so that does make sense no makes sense for her what I've learned is when you get to the stage where you really have a self- sustaining business of of size that I have nothing to do with the customers you have to have people in place that are going to be making some serious money and you have to have a big enough business to afford that because um that's not a $60,000 a year employee anymore well yeah and so that's another tension so we were growing really really fast you know up through you know from about 2011 through 2017 and that's exciting because it creates new opportunities for people in the organization and then I really wanted to focus on um more stability you know we were having I think higher employee turnover than I liked higher client turnover than I'd like as a result of that fast growth and so I I slowed it down intentionally I got it to about a 10% a year growth curve which was great um really sort of like that perfect balance of stability but with growth did you slow it down by raising prices or just by bidd for Less work uh both ra you know raising prices that's some of it but more it's it's being disciplined in the sales process to bring on clients that you felt could go two three four five 10 years with us instead of clients that were marginal like when when I was in that fast growth mode I would take a lot of clients that in my heart of hearts I was like this is not going to be good and then what would happen is it would bring a lot of stress to the team which would cause turnover within the organization which then caused more client problems which then caused more employee problems and it was this vicious cycle developing the discipline to say okay we're not going to say yes to those clients that you know your gut tells you you should say no to that was the primary thing how long youve been in business about 23 years all right here's some good news for you that's not that long a time it really isn't know I mean I was figuring it out at that point but it's like I can't emphasize enough I've been doing this for 44 years it makes a difference um you you could be in a very different not could be my guess is in 10 years you're going to be in a very different place and you will have fine tune the niche and it'll be a well-oiled machine so that when you're in your 60s you have some choices Sean where's your head at now are are you still thinking you'd like to pull back a little bit uh or are you you know happy re-engaging I mean I think what the business needs for me right now is what I'm best at which is you know major transformation significant shift and how we go to market and how we talk about ourselves and the services we offer so I've been thinking a lot about that lately and and and that's energizing for me I really enjoy it and I I really like the team we have you're not doing it reluctantly you're throwing yourself into it eagerly you know it's a classic you know gosh I felt like we took you know two steps forward and now it feels like one step back and and that's okay that happens but I think I I'm more the piece about it is I wanted to I Really Love creating prosperity for my employees I really love watching them buy houses get married have kids have long-term relationships have great vacations I love seeing that like to me that's happiness and so this feels like a little bit of a setback from from those kind of outputs um just because the pandemic was so hard on our marketing um it's it's meant that you know I I was okay with the slow and steady but it's like you know the kind of flatness that we have right now is frustrating because I like to see Prosperity amongst the team you know it's not about me getting more money or you know it's it's more about um being able to have impact and to do more good okay wait I need to stop you there well but there is a part of that making more money let's not you're not a non for-profit are you a mar something I'm not I'm not one of those owners who gets up and says you know money doesn't matter to me it's you know I getting close to that when you said it's not about I just wanted to clarify that cuz I know I've learned from the last one the West Coast thinks differently than Chicago I just wanted to clarify that well no but what I've heard you say many times Jay is like you've reached a point of prosperity in your life where you know you've got all this real estate you've got a business that's humming you know you don't need to like make a ton more money no it's you're right no no my goal is no longer yes there's no question it's different than saying what what I really find disingenuous is when people say money doesn't matter to me even though they're saying it from a position massive wealth um I'm not saying that I'm saying that I have reached a point of of prosperity where I'm not like looking around going gosh how am I gonna achieve this or pay for that or save for this okay and that's good to know because that took all part of the you know I love when people say we don't put profits over people and I think really I would say that people and profits got to go together because at some point without the profits the people uh aren't paying their mortgage so it's uh all right just want to keep it real yeah no I'm with you on that I whenever somebody uses that expression people over profits I'm like that's the wrong that's a false Choice yes right that's a false dichotomy because you know that's the nonprofit mindset which is like oh well we're doing a really important Mission so we're not going to pay you anything and it's like well how how wrong is that right like well there are I would say this though there are moments where that's there are there have been cases where I did have to choose the people over the prop which there are times where you can do that but you can't do it generally overall because at some point you do need the profits to stay in business I think that what I'm saying about nonprofits is they will sometimes build that into their model like where they underpay their people with the reasoning that well we need to fulfill our mission and and it's a really dysfunctional industry because they'll they'll use things like well this percent of our revenues goes to the mission right 90% of our donations go to the mission which means that you basically are Staffing the organization with either really young and inexperienced people or folks who are incompetent and I I think that's a real Miss on the nonprofit sector and I think it's some of it's starting to weave its way into the for-profit sector where you get this like people over profits uh messaging which people aren't actually giving a very deep thought to which is like well the the least impactful organization is the bankrupt organization so let's let's be honest here and like make money so you can do good right the point being there's nothing wrong with making money that's the point it's not evil Jay you're the uh it's the outcome not the income guy yes no and it took me a long time to figure that out that that I see lots of very successful people that I want no part of what they what they call success um I don't think uh so so yes an income is clearly part of the outcome but it's more Nuance than that it's about your income it's about your employees well-being it's about your customers well-being it's about society's well-being it's about do you feel good about what you do for a living and I see unfortunately the people that get a lot of publicity they in business are doing some horrible stuff that I want no part of I'm going to resist the temptation to ask you what you're referring to you shouldn't have to ask he's talking about me he's just he doesn't want to say it but he's talking about me Liz I'm curious is succession and the related issues on your radar at all or are are you putting that in the box with the unopened mail it's mostly in the box with the unopened mail which perhaps it should be at this point yeah I mean I have a 16-year-old daughter and I want her to you know go to college and have some work and explore the world travel before you know posing this idea to her I think that's you're thinking about it I do think about it because I want her to have it as an option if it's you know a lucrative business that she would want to take over definitely she would have that as an option but you know it's more important for her to you know experience life as she wants to than to be tied down the only other way I would say I sometimes think about it is you know Frank and I Own 100% of the company we love it that way but we do have an excellent team of employees so I do sometimes think about some sort of a succession that would involve them whether it be taking over ownership or just taking over completely running it I don't think a lot about that but in in occasionally when I think oh maybe we should break our 100% and share with employees I want to do that but I do think it would legally and everything just be too complicated for where we are right now and I think that there may be other options that come into play I mean if we potentially you know are to be acquired you know I don't I don't take that off the table I see that as a possibility that is a form of succession or at least of exit everything you said makes perfect sense to me I think that's a very well adjusted maybe your daughter who knows maybe she'll find that exciting maybe she wants nothing to do with it the whole Equity thing I 100% agree with I would warn anybody who and I've been in this position where I thought oh maybe I'll give some Equity to the second you give 1% of equity you no longer have control you might think you have control but you you're open to lawsuits and I've hit situations where thank God my lawyer who was my brother-in-law I was going to give Equity to some guy this is 35 years ago it would have been a nightmare because it blew up with him and I had no idea and my brother-in-law says you just don't do that and he was right so I I I think what you just said makes perfect sense and I think you don't have to make that decision today you can wait and see how it all falls out with our daughter you know we find ways to engage her with the business so she's done some marketing work some social media and she also actually has done some videos to our Factory in China that illustrate changes that we want to make to the product so we shoot the video give it to her she'll edit it into a video transcribe it and then actually have it translated into Chinese and that was something that I think we paid her like $400 for a month ago and that moved that project forward so fast wow I think you're getting a pretty good deal there Liz she sounds like a future vice president I think there's a vice presidency in this oh meanwhile social media uh what an ADV manage to have a 16-year-old around for that maybe they teach kids a lot of new new skills and I mean lot of it is learned on their their own but I think some of this editing did come from school Sean what was your maybe maybe yeah I mean yes from a technological understanding yes from a Content creation uh perspective but it it all depends on who your audience is you know so what goes into that content and I'm not dissing on what you're doing Liz at all in any way I'm just I'm just I know other people are listening to this and I'm like I have seen that happen before I have seen folks do that like well this person's young and knows stuff so they'll be our new marketing person and it really depends I mean it depends on who your buyer is it depends on what your buyer cares about and there's no like one size fits all and I think we're going to see more of that like I don't know what Tik Tok is so I've got us you know kid doing this stuff for me I you are 100% right and the problem with some of these younger people some of them they think that everybody thinks like they do and that's just not the way it is they everybody doesn't think like they do and they completely ignore the existing market and just do what well I would never do oh I buy everything online like Liz is a good marketer so that's fine like I don't have any problem with her model at all I think the challenge is that sometimes you get owners who actually are not that good of marketers and they think the answer is to hire a 16-year-old yeah and you really need somebody to oversee that and just to be clear I do have a full-time person doing marketing but in a pinch she's got good ideas and she's got good skills and if we have to turn around a video in two days she can do it whereas an employee I am not going to have an employee like work late at night or work on a weekend to do something that needs to be done quickly you can't underpay and overwork employees but you can do that to children it's great if they're your children next topic Liz uh last time you were on we we were talking about your first ever brush with some bad publicity after a local blog in New York City reported that your trash bins were not fairing as well as expected in Time Square in a pilot program at the time you told us uh you feared you had couple more stories coming one in the New York Post one probably in the New York Times tell us how'd that turn out so there were subsequent articles in the New York Post and in the New York Times um the new New York Post um was definitely a hit sort of piece uh I would say pretty mean-spirited as they tend to be it definitely made me feel awful uh it actually was worse than I thought it was going to be I was really nervous that it would be bad but it felt a lot worse than it was worse than I thought it was going to be so that's like the negative side then a week later the New York Times article came out and that was amazing it talked all about the object of containerizing trash and clean curbs which is the whole point here it wasn't critical of the product it was really praising what the objective is here they had a lot of really good photos that showed the product not in Time Square in another neighborhood which is more residential where the bins look very pristine and they've been installed there for about five weeks and I think probably the best part of the times piece was this the last sentence which was the rat did not get inside the city bin but had died trying and that really made me feel good you couldn't have written that better yourself have you considered the rats family really I I really loved that and you know I mean the times piece was just so much more informative I mean it talked about you know garbage remediation efforts in New York City over the last couple of hundred years it had all these historical photos so it put it in the context of this city bin is not the Silver Bullet for the city nothing is it's never been and so we were really able to see you know we're P part of a pilot program that was another thing that was a big takeaway is that if I fixate on the things that are wrong too much and there are a few things that need to be improved then I really forget that this is actually an opportunity like who gets to test their product for a year with a city that realized it's it's a pilot and is going to be tolerant of making changes and improvements using real users so if someone tried to come out of nowhere and do what I'm doing they wouldn't have the user base to give the feedback that will then help improve the product so I really felt like I was able to kind of take control of the narrative to say this is a pilot you know if the bins are being over stuffed you know this is what's going to happen but we are going to be working on improving that because because we basically we need to plan for user air we can't just say oh it's because they're over stuffing the bins that all the juice is there we need to say well we realize this is an issue and we're working on drainage and different latches so I mean I'm really happy with where things are right now um I would say though that emotionally it really was difficult for those two two and a half weeks I was really like a roller coaster how did you take control of the narrative Liz what did you do to emphasize the points that you wanted to make so I really focused on U what the problem is so the problem is trash you're talking about with the reporter from the times or from the times yeah so the problem is trash on the sidewalk that's why the city has this whole program called clean curbs this is something that instead of having the trash on the sidewalk they're in the bins it's a huge Improvement does it solve all the problems no it doesn't like I personally think the trash needs to be Subterranean like they do in Europe but that's like a whole another thing it's not something that I think I would ever Endeavor to do but you know really taking control of the narrative by saying this is a pilot and um we're looking for feedback from everyone Time Square is definitely a scenario that's probably if we could say the worst case scenario but these are going into many other neighborhoods where you're not going to have the volume of trash like you do in times Square Liz this is all very recent but you you've been through this Spade of publicity some of it bad some of it very good have you seen any impact on the business yet yes so we have um a number of other business Improvement districts that have moved ahead you know this was just on Saturday we got a lot of calls on uh Monday and Tuesday some prospects that we had talked to before that were on the fence that actually did move ahead um I think the other thing that's come out of it is that we've also got gotten offers of support from other like potential vendors or you know Sean introduced me to an industrial designer that I had a great conversation with um so people will come out of the woodwork to see we can help that company you know even advertising on City bins was not something I had thought much about but anybody that's in media and and media sales sees a city bin like a canvas for an ad and I think there's something in there that could also be a revenue stream for City bin eventually Maybe not immediately in New York because it is a pilot and we don't want to taint it by coming in with ads but those are the types of potential partners that come out of the woodwork um when they see when they see those and I like that that's so cool I mean to think like I could see business Improvement districts where this could be a self-funding mechanism right yes definitely oh my gosh this is great Liz such good news all right real quickly one last thing we have a question that came in from a listener uh somebody who's interested in starting a handyman business something you know about Liz you had a a handyman business a platform for Handy handyman before your current business he's struggling to finance it and he writes so I have the knowledge and willpower to build this business but I hit a wall and can't find the financial means to get me going should I just get my last paycheck and go For Broke yes th those are his actual words I guess the question really is when do you know it's time to to quit the day job and just go all in Liz do you want to take cracket at first yes so um I left American Express to start the handyman company and I it really worked out well because I got laid off um kind of in the tail end of the recession in 2011 and I had already had my business plan written for about 2 years and I already had started interviewing handymen so I was like I had this locked and loaded situation which was really good when I got laid off I also got a severance and I got unemployment so financially I felt like I had a Runway and that was really really helpful did it sounds like the layoff was a dream come true did you do anything to encourage that or did that just happen I would say it just happened except the last couple of bosses I had I I wasn't fond of so I'm sure that they could have put in a negative word about me which they probably did and that hastened it it wasn't an intentional thing but I just didn't really fit in culturally yeah it did work out now the other aspect of this with the handyman business I would say is that I don't know if he plans on doing the work himself but you really have to love that work you have to be good at it and you need to like it and if you're going to hire other people you need to know what to look for in an employee but perhaps the most important thing is that I think handyman businesses have an opportunity to distinguish themselves on service in terms of customer service so everything from the point where a direct mail to how we answered the phone to what our website looked like to how we followed up with clients how we even the guys when they went into homes we had a procedure on they laid out their work cloth put their tools on top of it because I observed that was something that previous clients had complained about was that some of my handyman would come in and just throw their stuff all over the place so we learned that if we just had these small touches that distinguished them from all the other Chuck in a truck that um it made the business much better it was something that when you read the Google and Yelp reviews that people really took note of and that's one of the things I loved about the business because it was actually relatively easy to distinguish us from our competitors what are the things that this listener should be like cognizant of or aware of that or the hazards wrecking something they don't know what they're doing and they go to hang a door and they wreck the whole door frame and you know there are definitely a lot of things that could go wrong um I think with hiring people that was probably the most difficult thing for me uh probably the number one reason is that I'm a woman and some of these guys were like who the hell is this woman with a few tools thinking she can run a handyman business like I encountered that over and over I wasn't entirely surprised but it definitely inhibited things I think it sometimes inhibited me from getting and keeping good employees because they wait how did you know that I mean I don't people tell you to your face or you just surmising that how did you know that that was the problem like ey rolling you know body language definitely I was interviewing a guy and he kind of made a half smile mockingly I knew what that meant and there were quite a few of them I'm not doubting that that I'm not doubting that was the case I'm just wondering how that became evident CU well and then the other thing is if I hired guys that had previously been Union they were never happy with the pay or how long their lunch hour was or any of these little things that I was a startup I was not like an established company that had a big Union you know sending in guys um I always had some difficulty with them and then I'd be like well you know how much the pay was go somewhere else if this doesn't work for you going back to the decision of whether to give up the day job you kind of had your hand forced the decision was made for you yeah what were you think do you remember what you were thinking at the time what what would have triggered your going out and starting a business on your own if that hadn't happened I probably would have done some a active Moonlighting on the side so let's say maybe taking one job a week maybe on a weekend where I could really see how it went and if I actually liked it or not that was going to be my advice there's no reason to not just work Saturdays Sundays yeah so I I think that if I had to have gone that way I would have tried it and I really liked the business honestly um I really only got out of it because City bin I was doing both businesses and City bin was growing a lot faster as well as you know I like product more than service I realize that pretty quickly with something like a handyman bu business and this is something for the listener the number of variables on every job is mind-boggling because you have a different client with a different house with different requests what they want to have done with different materials that need to be bought at Home Depot with a different handyman that could be going in so you've got those five variables that you don't have on a job that's longer term but this was usually handyman for a day was my main product so in every job there would be those five different variables and things could go wrong very easily well I think the person has a great opportunity to start out small do some things on the weekend if I was the customer I'd feel oh great I'm paying less because it's a side gig no problem I I don't think that would turn off a lot of customers and uh get going a little bit because maybe they're going to find out they don't want to do it because that's a tough job I think there's huge opportunity in the handyman business if it's done right and I really think we were doing it right we were the only woman-owned licensed insured you know W2 employing company in all of New York City we had a very strong brand we had very strong reviews but it does take that sort of you need to have the marketing hat as well and I don't think most trades people are good at marketing but I am and that really helped as well I've never heard any anybody say oh they're just too many of these great handyman services I can't decide which one to use I agree I think it's a gigantic huge very enticing market after talking to many people that go into business my conclusion is it requires three things to go in a business marketing management finance and the people that I know that are successful are really really good at one like gifted perhaps the second one they're really strong on and the third one they're adequate the people that go broke are the ones that the third one they can't deal with it and they just you I don't know how you can run a business and just completely have no skill set whatsoever or no attention to one of those three things and everybody needs to do some self analysis before they go into business and say to themselves should I be going in business for myself because as we know the failure rate's very high anyone disagree with that no and I've let this already go way too long so I'm going to stop there my thanks to sha busy and Jay gz and Liz pick Rozi 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 r n21 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 thubron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]