How Do We Get Out of This Cage?

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman we cover a lot of ground this week for one thing we talk about what you do when your to-do list seems endless you're already working 24/7 and you just can't get ahead for another what do you do when employees decide they want to work remotely from random parts of the country does that work is it a bureaucratic Nightmare and we discuss several big interrelated issues that Laura Xander is confronting her co-founder and husband Doug is ready to step back from the business that's a little tricky because the company operates off a 19-year-old platform that Doug built and only he knows how to make it work Laura and Doug have been trying to hire tech people for Doug to train but they've been through 15 people in 10 years and they know they're doing something wrong do they need to hire a recruiter is it time to junk the platform and go with Shopify if they do that will they forfeit 19 years of SEO value all of which has left Laura feeling trapped that's this cage that we're in she tells us what the hell do you do even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will if nothing else let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which collects the most important news of the day for business owners in one place and which you can subscribe to at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes this week's lineup features Karen Clark Cole who is CEO of blink a user experien research and Design firm in Seattle William Vander bluman who is CEO of Vander bluman Search Group a recruiting firm based in Houston that works with churches and other faith-based organizations and Laura Xander who is CEO of Jimmy Bean wool a digital yarn store that is based in Reno Nevada and also owns a wholesale supplier meline Tosh in Fort Worth Texas the episode is titled how do we get out of this cage before we get started one of the recurring themes of this podcast is that marketing is hard for smaller businesses one reason it's hard is that we are all besieged by self-appointed digital marketing gurus who overwhelm us with outlandish promises on the other hand there's Steve crawl co-founder of be found online a loyal listener to the 21 hats podcast Steve understands the business owners who listen to this podcast because he is one he knows his stuff but he's also a real person who you can have a real conversation with and if you tell them I sent you you can get a free consultation with Steve himself just shoot them an email at Steve befound online.com to schedule your talk that's Steve befound online.com now on to the show welcome Karen William and Laura Laura I'd like to start with you I understand you have an important job opening if I'm not mistaken you're looking to replace your husband yeah I am I am God if there's a rich single man out there um that would like an 11y old William in your experience how long does a husband search usually take well if you're willing to go the mail order route we can get done pretty quick perfect perfect in all seriousness your husband is your co-founder and um and I guess kind of the chief technology officer at Jimmy beans wall is that right yeah he's the everything technology officer um but yes yes so he has built we've been a business 19 years um he started full-time 17 years ago and he has built every piece of so pretty much every piece of software that we use so from scratch Laura from scratch okay huh yeah so it's all zeros and ones it's all like asp.net JavaScript um VB uh so you know we have because I just have to ask have there are there no systems out there you could have used you had to make them from not 19 years ago no oh wow no and that was actually our big huge competitive Advantage is that nobody had I mean I sure we probably could have spent $200,000 at the time I mean there was no Shopify I mean this was you know we started years before Facebook started and also you guys were both coders who uh made your living doing this yes yeah so we started it with you know an inventory management system that linked to a website which was the e-commerce plus we had a point a Sal system because we had a retail store so we had this platform that Doug built um and then just expanded it and expanded it and you couldn't buy you know we're in the yarn industry and so we have all these interesting little things it's not apparel where you sell one t-shirt in one size you sell two Hanks of yarn somebody's going to make a scarf you sell three Hanks of the same color if somebody's going to make this you sell blah blah blah and then there are diots so there are some complexities um inherent to the industry that we're in that make it so that you can't just buy off-the-shelf software um or you could and then you could customize it you know and and that's something that we need to think about but so now we have this you know 19-year-old Legacy system that Doug has built added on to he's um invented some things if you will uh before things were available or readily AA like subscriptions before um I don't I don't know what that subscription platform is but he built a subscription platform for us before you could go buy one somewhere so that we could run subscriptions um so all of that said he has built it he maintains it he you know he maintains AWS for us he maintains our phone system um he has two College AED women that help him um and that he is training and teaching we've run through over the last TW 10 years I guess um maybe 12 years we've tried hiring we've tried hiring college students we've tried hiring $150,000 a year people from Stanford we've tried everything in between we've probably hired 15 people over the last 10 years wow yes so all you all to try to replace Doug or to do different things well we would you know in an Ideal World he's a bright guy you know and he's he's a creative you know like he designs our house he's an architect he was a technical architect in the Bay Area before we started this so in an ideal world he would have a team underneath him with somebody that managed the team and he could do the New Creations you know and he could create new technology that's what he's you know um uniquely talented at but um or he could just walk away I mean he if we found somebody to replace him today he would walk he'd get on his mountain bike and ride into the sunset um very happily I think you told us previously that his his dream is to be a house husband you know he wanted to be his dream as whole life was to be a stay-at-home dad with no kids um and then I got pregnant so we had the kids um but so somebody one of our employees at one point put it very um described it very well and that Doug has built a cage around himself you know and we need to figure out how to get him out of that cage because the system can't survive without him what's gone wrong with those 15 hires is there a Common Thread that's a great question um and I wish that I understood it's a really great question I don't know if it's our expectations um I don't know if it's you know obviously it's that we didn't hire well you know that's a big part of it um I do get feedback Doug is really really are all of them no longer with you Lis interrupt um we have two right now so he did for a a brief for a couple years he had a team of two women that worked for him that he trained from the ground up and they were a magical Duo um they worked really really well together and the one woman she was a college student um could have replaced him at some point but she wanted to go to a bigger company so she left after a couple years and she went to you know Hamilton robotics or some place like that she wanted to work on spaceships so there's that um I think part of it is us just not hiring very well probably not training or not communicating I don't know I mean the feedback I'm getting is that he's extremely extremely patient and extremely good at teaching people um but what happens is when he hires somebody that's 100 Grand or 150 Grand he has really high expectations and gets frustrated really easily when those expectations are not met so you know we hired a guy that had been a CTO at or a director of engineering at a local um Reno company and he came in and the guy made mistakes all over the place and Doug just has no tolerance for that I mean he's very he's a very good programmer so the guy made mistakes you know wouldn't own up to him didn't have the skill set that we thought he had and that's why you know again I think it's part of it is the hiring um and the expectations so what approach are you taking now what exactly are you looking for and how are you trying to find it um I am a little paralyzed right this second um you know I have so much on my plate with the Texas business and everything else and trying to get that going that I've actually just been kind of letting I've been ruminating it ruminating on it for the last couple weeks but even then I mean William tell me if this I'm totally wrong here but even then you find somebody and that's not guaranteed they're going to work out exactly exactly well if you hire if you hire the right SE they guarantee their work for at least a year if not two yeah yeah have you tried the try try before you buy so we've done this in the past with uh three of our current sea level positions uh one of them was uh had a consulting firm that we worked with for several several years and then actually bought them so that she could come in housee um another one was uh that was our chief culture officer and our Chief Financial Officer he was uh he just finished a big gig and was out just Consulting as a Consulting CFO and so we worked with him for probably a year and then and just to sort of we didn't really need a full-time one at the time and so we were you know it was good for all of us and then we just realized hey this is working out great and then he came in as an employee and then another one um our coo actually came through an acquisition but he was only on for the transition at the beginning cuz his role wasn't in the new company but then he and then so he went away for 6 months and then he actually came back and we had meanwhile had to fire somebody in that position and then he failed it and it's been great so that try before you buy like for a decent amount of time you know one or two or three years has worked the best for us out of all those different types of things I think you're hiring somebody who has a lot of experience for a lot of money you should expect everything from them Karen can you do that uh with a position like this I mean the people who have these skills are in such high demand right now for a CTO position yeah yeah I think so there's loads of people who are out there doing contract work because it is in such high demand and so you know finding that fit is not super easy either but at least there's less heartache less expenses when you can just say this is a six-month contract um and then you try it and then you're done and then there's no commitment you don't have to fire anybody there's no big um you know cultural downfall after they leave if you're really trying to find the best fit that that's kind of in my opinion the only way to do it when somebody's at that high level on the company they really have a big impact so I completely disagree with you Karen good 100% oh I'm just telling you what's worked well for us so I'm not and and I can't okay well then let me let me let me edit the comment I don't disagree that that's your experience I don't think it's repeatable for everybody in fact I'd say more often than not it's not reputable um particularly in this sector it's the hottest sector there is right now I mean it the the supply demand of people who are out there that can do the work versus people who are realizing they need this kind of work done is is there's just a huge gap and and the people who are good at it know it and so the ones who do contract labor don't want to chain themselves to one company because they can move and Float around and in my experience the people who have decided that the gig economy and the the contract labor way is their way they do great work but they make horrible permanent employees I I think that you know in in my experience um this is why I started our business uh to try and reduce the heartache if you do you think that's just this field in particular William like it's the no I I I think it's all things you know hiring is a venture into the unknown people don't don't really think that way unless you point it out but I've never had anybody disagree with me when you add a new person to your team you're you're taking a great gamble even if you know them personally and adding a person changes the equation right it's an arranged marriage right I mean right so so when you when you think about a venture into the unknown like what is the most Primal human fear it's the unknown you know you get a three-year-old what do they want at night can you think a light on in the hall I don't want to I don't like the unknown you as a pastor in my previous career I buried a lot of people and even the ones that were solid in their faith were scared of death because it's the unknown and you know when you're going into hiring whether you realize it or not you're venturing into the unknown so the human propensity is always to look for some known entity during this Venture and and that turns into my friend told me about a guy that be great or I used a contract person for a little while and they'd be awesome and and there's whether people realize it or not having something that you quote no mitigates this innate fear that's in hiring and this Venture into the unknown and and I think a whole lot of times you just need a a third set of eyes you need some professional opinion you need someone that can turn on a light for you and uh I think that goes across all sectors now within the job market I don't know a sector that's hurting more except maybe like Chief nursing officers there's staggering need for that and and not a great supply chain coming and uh but but but this sort of role that your husband's played is the supply demand's just way off you've got to have somebody help you the the real question Laura the hard question love you but if you asked me to do the search I'd say you know I'm going to have to sit down with you and your husband for a long time time and visit before I decide whether or not I'll do the search I I am no I am so aware of that why is that William what what do you want to know well so just imagine a Superstar singer um a woman who's seems to keep dating and breaking up and writing songs about how awful the boyfriend was and they can't seem to they keep getting with the wrong guy and eventually you got to go um maybe it's not the guy to 100% um absolutely 100% and that's where that's where I really that's why I'm like a little paraly I don't know if paralyzed is the right word well and Laura and Laura just to put a finer point on it so people think I'm not just the Krabby guy on the call today it has nothing to do with you as a person it has to do with Founders syndrome and can Founders really let go and that's a very real question to ask everyone says they can and a staggering percentage cannot and we we've just learned to ask some real careful questions and we've told some folks I just don't think we're the best fit for you that's a really really great point and it's been very interesting and Illuminating um for or educational I guess for me because Doug and I you know if you look at this when we started let's say we had three people you know after when he started full-time you know we probably had two employees or something like that and I have grown my team to 80 people he has grown his team to two people um and so I have watched myself go through this founder syndrome think I'm Letting Go But realize now I realize that 5 years ago I wasn't letting go because now I have let go in some areas and I'm like oh that's what it feels like okay maybe they're not doing it the way that I wanted I would have done it if I did it and I'm constantly checking myself on that and so now I'm able to kind of watch him and see where he is and is not letting things go um and so 100% absolutely like totally AG age and that's that's this cage that we're in you know what the hell do you do like the only thing you know if he dies we get a couple million bucks and I'm like maybe then I can pay somebody a million bucks a year and even if they don't want to do it forever this podcast just became evidence yeah well but you know what what's the out like what what are our options do I believe that there is one person in the US and maybe two or three that would like to live in Tahoe um and would like to build a team and would like to work you know that all of these things kind of come together sure there's one or there might be two people in the whole country why do you say that I I have a hard time believing that this it seems to me like under the right circumstances going to work for a growing company in um in an attractive area uh having the opportunity to you know build your own thing and and take charge that seems like an interesting challenge that you ought to be able to find more than one or two people interested in taking on am I am I wrong about that maybe Karen William no I I agree with you I think it sounds good I'll do it great maybe maybe I mean I just think about you know Google's down the street and Facebook's down the street and you know we're kind of sandwiched between San Francisco and Portland and Seattle and like I get the life lifestyle of maybe living you know in Tahoe and being able and having some freedom but and and I had always thought you know maybe if you've got a couple small kids and you want to slow down and you want to like have more of a lifestyle job um as opposed to going and working for one of these big things but it's not young whipper snapper out of college who's super smart but doesn't have the high salary and the high experience is that a bad idea William Laura um we would love that but how do you find somebody that that doesn't go to San Francisco you know and then that's just a couple miles away also isn't that person going to be a little ways away from really being able to take over from from Doug I mean h what's his timeline maybe I mean if he found somebody smart enough again we did have somebody you know he did find somebody who was just in college just started computer science and she was a genius you know and they they communicated really well it worked really well um she just didn't want to work for a yarn company you know for the rest of her life can you use that Mo like just go hire that like I always like it when I get a Persona around the kind of person we're trying to find yes and that's what we did and what if your expectation is not you know it's a lifelong commitment but it's more of a two and threee commitment totally um and like we hired two of them in December and one of them is still with us one of them didn't work out you know it didn't know as much wasn't quite as uh didn't have the level that we had expected um he's very much into I will teach you um and you know just finding somebody who H is intelligent and is curious um so we've tried that a few times William getting back to your thoughts about whether this is a search you would be willing to to take on I'm curious if you have any suggestions for how Laura and Doug would would think about what's gone wrong in the past why they've been through so many people and what they need to do differently to to put themselves in a position to hire the right person this is so armchair quarterback which is dangerous stuff I don't know the situation and there no cookie cutter answers for high level hiring there just aren't you you're talking about extremely talented people that have founded a company and done amazing work you're talking about a growing organization that's changing every day and you're talking about trying to find a unicorn and Laura is right I mean the geographic piece is not a small part piece in the puzzle so I I don't want to come off as here are the six easy steps to solving Laura's problem because they're not um I think you're asking the right questions Laura and the questions that I'm impressed with is what does he want to do is he ready to let go if you if you haven't read the founders syndrome you should get a copy of it and read it so and then just take a long long look in the mirror and then Lauren I you know I'm going to sound like all I have is a hammer so everything looks like a nail but I think they need to hire an executive Search firm not a Placement Firm not a head hunter a high level go ahead and invest the money if you told Doug Doug for this dollar figure we can solve this problem for good I don't think You' blink so I now finding the right firm is what I I think you need to be really careful about because there's no barrier for entry into search you just hang a shingle and say I do search and it could be snake oil salesman it could be the best in the world so I tried to equip Laura with some questions to ask as she's looking at firms that specialize in Tech what are those questions what kinds of questions what's your fee structure if it sounds too good to be true it is um if it sounds expensive that's not necessarily A Bad Thing uh is it you only have to pay me when I find your person well that sounds good most of the econ works on a pay Aon delivery you know transaction but but what you want in this search is a partner who is interested in making sure this gets solved not a competitor so if it's you only have to pay me when I find your guy or your gal or whatever you know um what happens when you laara run across a great 21 hats listener who says I'd like to be considered and you put the name that you found in front of your search consultant I don't care how good they are the human heart is dece is is a deceiver above all things I will fool my if if it's me and I only get paid if I find your person and you bring me somebody that I did not find I'm gonna have a bias against them I I can't I can't not no one's that objective so I I I'd say it needs to be a retained fee and I think they need to guarantee their work our guarantee would be this person's going to be here 12 months and if they're not we'll come back and do the whole thing again for free and and there's no expiration date on that like it the second time do it again third time do it again and that needs to be no questions asked we do it if the person dies you do it if they decide they don't want to be there anymore or if you fire them or whatever and uh if they have that kind of of guarantee then they're serious about their work doesn't mean they're perfect but they're serious about work how does that strike you Laura it sounds amazing I mean it does and that's a um William I like the way that you put it that okay if we could solve this problem by investing you know whatever that dollar value is um would we solve it so yeah I mean you know that reframes it how important is it that they're actually in Taho Reno versus just coming you know occasionally and working remotely CU that may help also right yeah that's a great point and I don't think that it's critical I think that you know maybe 5 years ago we thought it was or five months ago yeah yeah um I don't think it's critical and you know the other thing that I haven't we haven't even talked about is maybe this isn't the right solution maybe the solution is that we need to out and we did try this a couple years ago but maybe we just need to go to a new platform you know maybe we need to move everything to Shopify and then hire a firm that can manage our site that's an interesting question yeah that's looking going up a level and right yeah I know a lot of people are very happy with Shopify yeah I mean we use it on the mine TSH side and then we have a staff that can kind of manage the site themselves but you run into you know Doug's issue with that or his concern I guess is you know we've got 19 years of rankings and pages and you know the system that he built is pretty phenomenal um it's very intricate uh and very very good and very specific to what we're doing is that a competitive advantage of ours and it is in some ways you know if we have the people to manage it it's a competitive Advantage it's not a competitive advantage and that you know we're beholden to basically one person to to manage to manage it all a key question there is whether you can preserve the SEO uh value you've developed over 19 years when you move to a new platform and it must be I would think it would be fairly easy to get an answer to that question and I think the answer my understanding and it may be different but the last time we talked about it the answer is no wow you know so that's very risky that's a big cost yeah I mean we're again we're in a cage you know what do you do we've lost money the last few years so we didn't even have the money to be able to afford somebody for $200,000 a year you know or a recruiter or whatever um so we've made some adjustments and now we should be able to do that which changes things but it's a little scary what if you hire somebody like super huge and all of a sudden everything tanks so I'm getting the sense we're not going to solve this problem today damn it I think it may be something we come back to we tried Laura no it's really helpful I'd like to pick up on something uh that that Karen uh raised which is the issue of working remotely Karen uh how are you thinking about that these days how's it working with blank yeah I mean I know what I think which is different than a lot of our employees apparently how so you know I think we're all going to come back to the offices in some capacity so the heads down work will happen at home a a lot more than before which I I think is great you for me included um but then we'll come to the offices for collaboration for client meetings um and then in our our business is a little bit unique in that we have physical research labs in our actual offices so these are places where um end users come in and they test hardware and software and we observe them and then we um do analysis and come up with recommendations for how our clients can improve the product or the service um so that requires actual physical space I hear about the part where you and your employees look at this differently yeah I'm getting to that so the uh so we've been spending a lot of time and energy and now in actual real money hiring Consultants to come up with ideas to make the space map to what I just described but what's come up at the same time recently is employees wanting oh I don't need to be in this really expensive city anymore to do my job um I can go be in Hawaii for you know once on end or I can go you know to the to Reno or to the middle of you know some remote place and still do my work as long as I have an internet connection and so I think what that's done is it it's allowed people to see the world differently which I I think is really cool but what they're doing now is asking us like hey I'm thinking about going home to Minnesota and uh I know we don't have an office there but we've proven that we can all work remotely can I move and you know my answer immediately is no we don't have an office there so we can't support you you can go to any of the states where we have offices and there's four of them um which I think is fabulous to offer that to an employee at least when we first started doing that it was a real benefit they just have to move to the same state it doesn't matter if they're in the same city well they need to be connected to an office this is my view of it so in San Francisco for example a lot of people in the last recent months have moved out of the city they can still come in but it'll be a much longer commute and so as long as they're willing to come in a couple of days a week um or as needed then it then it's fine they can do they can spend less time in the office that's okay but now we're getting people requesting to move to not only different cities where we have offices but different states and in one case a different country and I have like a list of about 30 problems with that um you know and the and the the the reason why it should be considered is there's two on my list which is you know know star employees who have busted it and done excellent work for years who are really dedicated those people are hard to find as we've just talked about and so we don't want to lose them um and but the cons are so extreme and and goes all the way through to things like okay so if we let somebody live in a state where we don't have an office then we have to set up a whole new filing system so we've got to do you know business license we've got to have state taxes city taxes unemployment we have to learn new HR regulations we have to learn new business regulations in those States in those cities um un unemployment insurance to to pay a we have to set up a policy in that state you know there's filings for you know quarterly annual taxes state taxes City you know it goes on and on and the problem with it is it's just a constant flurry of paperwork that needs to be you know read figured out when it's happening and then dealt with and kind of think okay well this is a this is a product of success in that if our employees think that we're so big that we can handle this no problem that's kind of good but at the same time we're really not big enough to manage that level of complexity in our finance side larger companies have a whole team dedicated to handling this multi-state employment um thing and so we just don't have that so we we have like one person who deals with the five the four states that we're in currently and that's a lot of work and you know it's ort of comes down to that well that's a nice idea we're just not that big of a company at this stage so maybe in the future just out of curiosity have you ever asked anybody okay how much of a pay cut are you willing to take if you wanted to move to Minnesota yeah you know I mean the cost of living is 37% less so are you willing to take a 37% pay cut no I hadn't even thought of that good one I'll add that to my list number 31 yeah Karen where's your head are you thinking of drawing a line in the the sand on this one well I already have and then that I'm continually getting push back like I you know made a I had a meeting with my Executives we made a decision that which was loosening it a little bit which is to say okay so as long it's not ideal but if it's a star employee x amount of tenure and we don't want to lose them as long as they're in a state where we're already doing business so we don't have to do any of that long list then we can consider it and so so that was a change already because for us we can't go virtual we have to have these physical spaces because of our research Labs clients love coming to our offices they are beautiful we have spent boatloads of money making them a cultural attraction and so I don't want to run a virtual company I'm just not interested in doing that at this stage in my career and the problem is our neighbors you know the Facebooks and the twitters and the microsofts you know Twitter's just said never have to come back Microsoft not for a year Facebook you know you don't ever have to come so it we're up against that William have you seen this kind of issue either at your place or uh with clients everywhere everywhere and and I have run a virtual company I've run a completely onsite must live here work here show up here company and now I run something in between and part of that is co but uh we will probably be some form of hybrid going forward I think that Karen's hitting on such a good point the kind of work that the that a company is doing sort of sets the standard for how much of it has to be done under the same roof you know I I'd love to see Ford Motor Company put a car together with virtual offices it isn't not going to happen right but you know we use basically a bank of virtual receptionists and then you're assigned a team of five or six that learn enough about your business to be able to navigate incoming calls and make us sound like we have this full-time receptionist sitting at the desk all the time without having to pay for it that can totally be done virtually and no re it's completely virtual work and by the way if you're interviewing people that are going to be completely virtual you can do the interviewing virtually but if you're going to have them on under your roof you better get face to face with them before you hire them have you dealt with people who want to live in different states or different countries yes and how have you responded I haven't dealt with the country piece yet for my business right but uh people that want to live in different places you know I I have a a relative who's a partner at a very wellth thought of managing management consulting firm and years ago she told me we advise our clients to leave 10% of your Workforce available for living wherever because you will will find every now and then the person who is just amazing but cannot move and and for us one of those was a guy who had started a church grown it to a really nice size in El Dorado Hills not too far from you Laura uh and uh you know he was he was ready to step away from that but had a lot of gas left in the tank and all of his grandchildren lived on the Block he lived on he was not leaving there like that was not an option but he was good enough and exactly what we needed at the time enough that we said okay that works so I I'm learning to steer away from all the categorical imperatives of always and must and never and and and go a little more Case by case um it it does come with a cost though and it's exactly what Karen said I mean he was an employee in the state of California and that's a whole different host of issues and taxes than working in Texas so I I don't I don't love it but I'm learning that you know if you're going to die on that Hill you you might you might win the battle and lose the war have you found any useful hacks for dealing with that bureaucratic piece of having people in different states no okay I mean at the time we were using um Insperity which used to be administaff you know the kind of the large peo company that there is and that's supposed to be why you're paying them an upcharge is to make that stuff go away and it it just no it was always a nightmare Karen have you actually lost people yet over this issue no not yet but it's you know we will lose them I think that that's the reality interesting but if you were a if you were a retailer let's say you know and it's just so obvious that you have to be in person you would lose if they left anyway right I mean if somebody's gonna move they're gonna move good point and Karen I don't know your business Karen but our central nervous system is still a show up at the office and be here and you must live in Houston and what I've discovered for where I am right now is that central nervous system is way more productive if they're in the same building and maybe I'll lose a person here or there but the productivity I gain by keeping people together outweighs the loss of the one person yeah I mean and for us it's the collaborative nature of it you know coming together and brainstorming and the clients the clients want to come and be with us I'm like yeah we can make an exception but then all of a sudden the exception becomes the rule and then you know everybody wants to do it and why did that person get to and not me and that's sort of that's what I'm afraid of that's exhausting because I don't want to have ghost town I mean we have a problem already and that our offices are too big for the reality of the future which is people in the office less often so we have to grow quickly to fill those offices because there's a cultural shift when you have an empty office it's bad for the culture if it's full and buzzing that's good you get energy from that so I'm already worried about that part of it and so and then they're also wildly expensive to have these offices and so we need them full of billing people and so um you know and then all of a sudden nobody wants to work in the office so like why don't we close the office but then we have then our whole business blows up so it's it's complicated so uh that's two problems that we haven't solved today um I'd like to try for one more in the little bit of time we have left um I got a question for you guys and that is this what do you do personally when your to-do list just seems endless you have that feeling that you could work 24 hours a day 7 days a week and you still wouldn't finish the list the days fly by and especially during the pandemic you if you're working from home uh it's just it's hard to know when to turn it off it's hard to stop it just keeps going I'm asking for a friend can anybody relate to this yeah I can I mean I'll tell you what my experience has been this last year and it's that I work 247 and I know that the list although it feels like it's endless it's not so I'm actually in a period right now for the first time in about probably 16 months where I can breathe you know and I'm taking walks with the dogs how'd you get there what what changed I worked 24/7 until the work was done that's not what I wanted to hear I built the house and now the house you know now we can stand under it and the rain is off of us and I can take a little bit of a break there's still lots of stuff to do but none of it is as urgent as it was and I just I just had to get through it Karen and William I suspect that you're at different places um in the evolution of your businesses but have there been times in the past when you felt that way how about all of the last 12 months you know I you know Lauren back when we partnered together at Forbes I think one of the most popular columns I ever wrote was there is no work life balance for me it's been a a myth you know I'm just going to turn it off at 5: and I got a pastor friend who's like I just don't take any calls after 4M that is sacred time and if the number one donor in our church called me at 401 I wouldn't return the call well the Dirty Little Secret nobody knows is he is the number one donor in the church so he he's not going to call himself so so but but I think most of us is just praying for wisdom to know when you have to get things done and when you don't uh because there are seasons where you you're in the middle of building the house and a rain storm's coming and you better get the roof on I mean you got to get it done it's it's just got to happen and then you got to have the discernment to know when to shut it off yep and and and for me a lot of what I'm trying to learn lately is the proactive rather than the reactive and and you you start business it's all proactive and then it gets busy and it's all reactive and business is coming in we got to deal with it I I'm moving to a little different stage as you mentioned in the question Lauren I can't remember one of you probably knows management consulting was basically born by a guy giving business advice to a great bank and told the owner of the bank you and your management team write down six things you want to accomplish this day that will help the business move forward just six no more no less and just Mark those off the list and do it every workday and watch what happens and it is amazing what that small discipline will do if I before anything else either at the end of the day today for tomorrow or at the very beginning of tomorrow before I see my phone if I'll do that exercise I I find that I have a better handle on my proactive throttle of when to turn it off and on well first off the um when you said there's you're a different phase in your business than Laura like as if it's all gone away it's no it's always the same there's always more to do than you have time to do particularly um you know we all have kids so if you're a parent and then you've got the you know in my case 130 extra kids in the company it feels like um so it never ends but so for me there's kind of there's three main buckets which is constantly prioritizing and and re prioritizing like every day you know my job is to be constantly evaluating those priorities and what's at the top and it's always changing and that's the fluidity of the business and so so at work I do that but in my life as well it's just constantly like okay what is at the top where will there be repercussions if it doesn't get done which leads to Outsourcing so I try to offload and Outsource anything possible and so that that is a real shift to get to that stage and I know that for small business owners they have a really hard time with this in the business and so you need to start doing it in the business and then apply it to your whole life so I'm always asking myself and the people who are reporting to me is what can somebody else do and what's the best use of your time so make sure that I make sure whatever I'm doing that only I can do and if I think somebody else can do it maybe not the way I would but that's okay it can still get done and you don't think about it as dumping your crap on somebody else you have to think about it as empowering others to take on new responsibilities and it may be something that they are really good at like wired for it they're super efficient and they love it versus me I'm not wired for it I I hate the level of detail like email for example kills me and so if somebody else can do that for me and and actually enjoy it and get satisfaction and feel responsibility for doing that and I can pay them for it then and then I can go free up my time to do the heavy lifting that only I can do in terms of running the company that's a good solution for everybody but it takes a really long time to get to the point where you're willing to hand stuff off and then I have um I added this new thing just recently that's been working great with working at home because it's hard to know when the day ends because you know there's not people leaving to clue me in like oh it's the end of the day people are leaving and that kind of is a trigger for me and I don't get that and so I put a calendar um a hold on my calendar for Monday to Friday that says stop working start dinner like get out of the office and it's actually helped because I have an hour reminder so I'm like okay I've got one hour left I'm going to go go go well I'd really like to keep talking with you guys but I got this to-do list that I got to get to right now as always my thanks to Caren Clark call William Vander bluman and Laura Xander thanks for sharing 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 21h hats.com that's l r n at 21h hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think he 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 J tharon founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]