How the Sausage Is Made

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman in this week's discussion we once again unearth more questions than answers mostly because there are rarely one siiz fits-all answers to the questions we discuss here this week those questions include can you be friends with your employees can you work with your family how are you coping with price increases in your supply chain how do you handle shipping especially given the example set by Amazon our refrigerated trucks really called reefer trucks and what happens when employees question whether you should be doing business with a particular person or company plus Jay goldz turned 65 without a succession plan 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 highlights the most important news of the day for business owners and which you can subscribe to at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews joining us this week are regulars J goldz whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason home Karen Clark Cole who is CEO of blink a user experienced research and design firm in Seattle and Stephanie Stucky who is CEO of stues the snack and roadstop business best known for its pcan log roles the episode is titled how the sausage is [Music] made welcome Karen Clark call Jay gz and Stephanie Stucky really appreciate you guys being here hope you're all doing well today I'd like to start by running through uh actually some news items and and something uh that we talked about in the morning report this week uh this past Saturday I asked uh all of our subscribers whether it's Poss possible for an owner or a CEO to be friends with his or her employees and we got some really interesting responses and it just made me think I I want I want to ask you guys the same question uh Karen let me start with you do you think it's possible for you to be friends with your employees at blink you mean like going out for a beer and hanging out on the weekend um no however you define friends but that's part of it sure yeah um it's a little tricky it no the short answer is not really have you learned this the Hard Way Karen no uh depending what the hard way is I don't really know what the hard way is but but what happens is there becomes a fairness issue as we get bigger um it's important that I'm not seen as favoring anybody um and that you know at the end of the day there's a raise and a promotion somehow tracked back to me which isn't really the case but but there's perception and Optics is everything so I'm just really aware of um sort of how I am received and what the Optics are around me and my role Stephanie how do you think about this I think you could be friendly but there is definitely a line of demarcation where you are still the supervisor if you cross that line too much to where you're really engaging with them on a personal level and you get to know the family and you're you're hanging out in a very social way it makes it hard to make tough decisions that can be fair and you also want to make sure you're treating your entire team equally so at when I was with city of Atlanta our team grew from five to 20 during my period of time there well I couldn't be personal friends with 20 people so no I don't think you can be friends in what I think we most most of us think of as friends that doesn't mean you can't be friendly you can't be warm and caring and ask about their family and their relationships but there's a a line that you cross and you you it's no longer a professional relationship and I think it's important to maintain that this is a professional relationship Jay you've been doing this the longest uh over 40 years I everything that Karen and Stephanie just said makes sense to me but but I also wonder you know you spend a lot of time with people and friendships kind of just happen it's not something you can always control has this ever been an issue for you it's extremely complicated and I don't buy the the theory of you can't be friends you shouldn't be friends I think it's a mixed bag and I think when you say something like treating people equally I that gets to be difficult when you have an employee that's been by your side for 27 years and you know they're always there for you and and when you're out of control they go hey you're out of control and versus someone who's been with you for six months that you got to sit here and have me with that they're not coming in on time I mean it's I don't think it's I'll just speak for myself there's different relationships everything from you see this person more than you see your own family and was a critical part of growing your business to someone who I call a work for there's work wids and there's Workforce so someone who's a work for that shows up on time does a nice job but you know um is you know could quit at any time um it's not going to come pull you to the side and give you some inside information about hey you better keep an eye and so forth and so on so I think it's a extremely big bandwidth of people that are 100% with you that you can always count on that will always tell you what's going on that will always you know speak truth to power and there's other people who need to be written up because they come in late so I I I I would never make a blanket statement about it but I would say it's very tricky and you have to be careful but I have very deep relationships with I don't know 10 20 people out of the 125 there's no right or wrong ansers to this it's what everybody's comfortable with and um I I if somebody says no I'm not gonna be friends with my employee okay I'm I'm not GNA argue with that and then Paul he's not here I'll speak for Paul he said something really smart in one of these podcasts that boy that's a that's how do you def Define friend I mean you have control over their income I mean that's that's taking the word friend to a different level and I'm not so sure that you know and he's right that's it's do have controls over their Destiny and stuff and that's not normally what a friend has do I I can give you a black and white answer on this do I socialize with my no I I get enough I you know I get enough trouble with my own family I'm not going to their birthday parties and you know no I I'm not hanging out with them but that doesn't mean I'm not extremely close to them I think that's what we're talking about Jay I mean for me that's the difference I have really close relationships with some of our longest term employees like I would you know do anything for them but you know I don't that's a good way to put it is I don't go to their birthday parties because Paul's right you know ultimately certainly the people I'm closest with they report to me I control their salary that's a really interesting way to put it yeah it's it's very complicated and uh everyone needs to find find what they're comfortable with but I I have people who isn't this where you say it's Lonely at the Top no and I guess that's what I'm saying to you it isn't Lonely at the Top for me because I have six people that I have I have very tight relationships with that no it's not and I don't want and I I couldn't deal with that and I didn't want to deal with that so I do have six people that I'm very tight with that I can go in their office any day and have a conversation about anything and be comfortable with it and I and I'm not lonely and I I um and I like it this way could someone argue they don't like it that way sure um I I I I I definitely would not subscribe to the black and white you can't be friends with your employees or you should be friends it's like I said it's complicated but um and when when you're growing it's very different when you get to my size I'm not Hands-On managing anymore so it's a little different than when you got 10 employee it's very different than when you got 10 employees so have I had you Lauren you asked a question have you had problem absolutely I mean I got 50 of them I can tell you about so I've absolutely had some bad situations with it I'm very comfortable with where I'm at now I it's like being a parent it's like being a parent you can be their friend but you got to be the parent first I do want to add something and like I said at the beginning you can be friendly without being friends so you can have a warm and trusting relationship but I do think that there's a point I agree it's a subtle complicated relationship sometimes but you do need to establish you're in charge and it all comes down to company structure and Company culture I've structured stues where I'm not Lonely at the Top because I have a a colleague I have aent resident and we co-own the company we run it together and so I have someone I can trust completely to share with him everything about the company because we're in it together so I don't feel that sense of being lonely but I do think you have to be really careful not to cross that line and I disagree that you can only get full and Frank advice from people that you are close to I really have tried to cultivate an atmosphere at Stucky and every place I've worked I want everyone even if they've only been with the company for three months and they see something that they don't think is working that they should feel comfortable being totally honest with me because if you can't be willing to accept criticism and act on it you're never going to move whatever organization that you're running yeah I don't know what I said did you say you disagree with because I'm not I'm certainly not saying you can only trust certain people I'm saying you'd like in the perfect world think that everybody's going to come up to you and tell you yeah but but the biggest FY in the world the biggest joke in the oh I've got an open door policy I just laugh at that now I mean that's just laughable that you think people are going to feel comfortable walking up to your office so you got to go out there on the floor you got to go and talk to people and then they'll tell you but you got to ask but I I'll tell you what you just described the relationship with your partner I'm I've proven this to myself you don't have to have a partner to have that same relationship my employees will absolutely they act like Partners they tell me everything that they think and I don't I didn't they're not Partners in the company but they act like it because I treat them like that and I've got just to give you some perspective I've got six people that have been with me more than 20 years and and I'll tell you through this whole pandemic it's been stressful but I got to tell you it's a beautiful thing we're all together when I asked this question in the in the morning report newsletter we got a bunch of responses and all but one of them came from men uh we normally have quite a few uh women owners and CEOs who participate in that kind of conversation but but not in this one and maybe that means nothing maybe it's just random but I'm curious Karen and Stephanie is there anything different about this uh from a a woman's perspective well having only been a woman um it's hard for me to tell but I think to me I'm what Jay's saying what Stephanie is saying I think we're all saying the same thing is absolutely you want to have friendships at work who are you know people you trust and that's the bottom line and that you know whether you go to their birthday party or not is sort of a different level I have a guess here here's a guess as to why I think guys struggle with this more and I think that the guys that went on there have struggled and think they figured out the answer and they wanted to share that and I think I'm just guessing that women are more comfortable with it and didn't didn't feel like they had to share their Revelation CU they this is how they have relationships that's interesting I like that theory my older sister once told me she said something about one of her friends and she said said I go I don't have that problem with my friends and she says women have deeper relationships with other people than guys do and that was Food For Thought I think that's a good point I think you know you don't want to generalize by any means and who knows why people didn't respond maybe we were all just too busy I think often women are really good at multitasking because we often have family obligations that take up a lot of time as well and I think we are really comfortable having close bonds with a variety of people in and out of work so that may be part of it that's a good point Jay want to say real quickly it is interesting in a family business you get a whole other dynamic because it's your family members yeah that's tricky in many cases you could say a whole different dysfunction you know I always say a family business when people hear that it's supposed to be a warm and fuzzy from my perspective I get a knot in my stomach because I watched my mother and my aunt and not talked to each other for five years and I've been in business groups listening to this stuff it ain't pretty I mean if either wonderful or it's really bad I haven't seen many that were like in between Jay do you consider your business a family business you know when I was blogging with you at the New York Times there was a few comments that really have was helpful to me he goes Jay you don't have a family business this is your business your kids didn't grow up and it it didn't work in it when they were growing up and he's right but you have two of them working there now well they're here now so it is becoming a family business but I can't say that it has been up till now because they were out in the suburbs and I was in the city and my kids have never framed a picture in their life none of my I got three sons not one of them has ever cut a frame on a saw not one of them has ever put a picture together not one of them has ever sold a piece of furniture they have not in been Hands-On ever so yeah I would say that's my new thing I've got two of them now here and my new goal is I'm working on indoctrinating them into the whole inner thing of this and it's going to be a very interesting experiment Stephanie I wanted to ask you too though do you consider Stucky a family business today obviously it once was it was and it's really interesting when my grandfather had the F when he founded stues literally the entire family was employed my grandmother worked with in the business my grandmother had 10 siblings all of them worked in the business whoa yes and then my he had two kids dad worked in the business for some time before they sold it and then my aunt's husband worked in the business his dad worked in the business so they're probably about 30 stues in the business now it is me and my nephew and it works out really well because he owns and operates two stues and he's an independent franchisee owner and operator and so he kind of does his thing and I'm at the corporate level so how long long did that last with all this family did was this a 20 year social experiment was this 30 years was it 40 years was how long from beginning to end was did this this whole family Dynamic hold together from the mid 1940s till my grandfather sold in 1964 so about a 20-y year run there and then my grandfather sold the company and it was completely out of family hands at that point and why do you think and with so many family members there why' you sell the company that's a whole episode in and of itself but he was getting to the point where the company was expanding Beyond his capacity to manage it and he would either need to get outside investors or loans and additional support and his health was failing so he just decided it was easier to sell he had frankly a really good offer and what's the status of the family now you have a cousins party they all they all happy and loving and picnics and flowers and puppy dogs yeah they're all actually delighted that I got the company and I was the only one interested in buying the business and had I not bought it it would have fallen out of family hands and they they're just frankly relieved and they've been very supportive and they buy up all our merchandise because it's got the family name on it that's the least they can do they're my biggest supporters it's worked out really great I will say my Dynamic with my father was not good when I initially took on stues I bought out 50 I bought 49% of the company from former partners and then six months later I bought out my dad and once I bought him out it was 100% better it was like I could have a father or I could have a business partner and we both chose we wanted to keep our relationship so I I just paid him completely above board fair price was there a particular issue that you guys saw differently everything I mean he just was constantly just on my case about every decision I made and anything I wanted to do to take the company in a different direction like buy a candy plant he was just freaking out about the cost of that and the financing and and I said dad why are you doing this like you retired and you live on the beach with your wife of 50 plus years why are you doing this just let me buy your shares out and I'll take the risk and if the manufacturing effort is a huge failure that's on me it's my it's my investment well I can tell you as a father the answer he doesn't want to watch his daughter get in trouble I mean that's an easy one so I can understand why he was you know cared I'm trying to navigate this and I see myself I hope and I think I am the kind that will work collaboratively with my kids and I I don't think we're I'm going to have those problems but I don't know I mean we'll see well it's great now and he actually didn't agree to sell to me until I was making a profit and he had the confidence to hand it over next issue another thing we've been been writing about a lot in the morning report is price increases Rippling throughout the economy Karen how about you uh have you seen this happening uh well no but but we're selling services so no do you have to pay your people more because it's a competitive market though well that's nothing new that's nothing new that has nothing's changed no so are you is it going up more than inflation that's kind of the question no nothing new in the last couple of years I mean we we have we're in a different world though because we have these Tech Giants in our backyard and the pr you know the the the competition there it's just not they're not normal salaries right it's just it's in another world it's ridiculous so it's not directly connected to the economy how about you Stephanie yeah I'm experiencing price increases but like Ken it's not directly connected with the economy it's directly connected with the fact that we just bought a manufacturing facility we are improving the quality of our product which is a very deliberate decision that we made so we are buying better ingredients and specifically the peans so we're buying a higher grade nut and that to me is the most essential way to up our candy game and our pecam snack game so we're we're going to charge a more premium price for a better quality product we've been reaching out to B2B retail customers with whom we have good relationship and asking their honest feedback although it's been hard because if you say all right are you okay with us raising your prices you know most of them are going to say no we don't want to we don't want you raise your prices but we're sending them samples and letting them taste the product and getting some really honest feedback with people that we respect and so we think we've arrived at a price point that's higher but not you know ridiculously so and it's kind of nice that the market is already showing price increases so it's not as of a shock when our competitors are raising prices to you let me give you a little uh Insight that I think could be valuable a trade show a picture framing trade show I've got this beautiful we make Prisma frames they're made out of acrylic and colors and they're just magnificent so this framer walks up to me she looks up at the wall and she goes how much is that that frame job I said I don't know it's probably around $600 wow that's a lot of money and I looked at her and I said doesn't fabulous always cost more and it was like a light bulb went on her looked at me her mouth drop she goes of course it does oh my god I've got to make sure I tell my customers this cuz I'm telling you this framing was just it's a magnificent beautiful thing it made sense to her so I I think that translates beautifully when they say oh that's all I say doesn't the finest chocolate doesn't the finest peans in the world doesn't that cost more I mean it just makes sense of course it costs more and that's why we're offering samples as well and so when we're getting potential accounts first of all I think y'all gave me this advice they send the S sheets without the price right and say let's follow up with the phone call so they can see we've had beautiful photography done so it really looks terrific Pro we did new packaging and so it it's just beautiful and we're in the process of ordering new display so everything just looks like a quality product and then you send the samples and then we can talk price and then also we are frankly looking at getting into more upscale retail operations so I would rather be in a gouret grocery store than a sea store for some of this product line so Stephanie you're describing a process by which you're choosing to pay more for better stuff you're not you're not experiencing as a lot of people elsewhere in the economy are are experiencing the kind of supply chain issues that are causing them to pay more for to to suppliers for ingredients or services or whatever we're not experiencing that because we are now making our own product right but you have to you have to buy the the nuts and you have to buy chocolate and whatever else we have to buy sugar and chocolate and that that pricing actually is going up but the peans we are shelling ourselves and then my business partner grows pecans as does duckies so we actually are tree to table and literally a lot of the supply chain we are controlling is we become more vertically integrated we have our own distribution facility and we do have retail outlets with the stues locations that we have a certain amount of control over as far as them providing our product for sale I didn't realize you grew all your own nuts we do and we don't it gets a little complicated because it's separate ownership it's owned by by the same owners but it's not a corporate umbrella so we're actually selling pecans to ourselves but we do have a good uh supply chain there how about you Jay are you seeing price issues in your chain absolutely I'm getting it on all ends the minimum wage is now up to $15 that's added cost and then it's it's it's it's kind of I call it compression I it's not like I had to raise everybody but there had to be a little raising in the middle people because if someone's just starting making $15 an hour how can you pay someone $16 an hour that's been there five so so for five years so I've got minimum wage issues the the real estate taxes keep going up uh we've got supply chain problems of the containers and and all of the the the government stuff is just you know we import a lot of stuff and we're paying more for Freight now and the container costs have gone up most of what we're buying is just going up I I have a question for you Jay related to that that we are grappling with in fact just before this podcast I was on a call with our sales rep on this issue which is the the freight which you referenced we are grappling with right now now we offer the shipping cost on top of the cost of the product and we've gotten some complaints from some of our our retail outlets who've said well our other some of our other candy suppliers they don't charge us for shipping and I think absolutely they do they just make it into the cost so if you want us to give you a delivered price we'll give it to you it's going to be a higher price but we'll we'll include the shipping so how do you deal and shipping costs have gone up so we're feeling the pain intensely of increased shipping right now yeah the part is over with UPS and FedEx and all they've all figured it out that they needed to raise their prices the days of the $3 it's it yeah it's gone up dramatically and FedEx doesn't even service our area reliably not every day so we don't have competition in our rural community we're not paying the same price as Amazon's paying for shipping that's that's the reality so I almost feel like we're Subs izing their their their shipping rates perhaps I don't know I don't know what they're paying but I'm sure it's not what we're paying they do a lot of their own shipping now right there's trucks all over and in Chicago it's unbelievable there's just trucks all over the place so so the shipping thing is a problem in your case I I think you'd have to find out you know is that a standard thing that people are doing free freight I it's kind of not quote unquote right because if they buy one box is going to cost you a lot more freight than if they buy six boxes in one package and the Freight's a lot l plus so it's it's as you said you'd have to build it in and on the other hand maybe that's what they need for their own accounting they can't start factoring and Freight but we found you know I'm signing checks now which I haven't done in years I'm every Friday I'm I'm writing 90 checks and I'm looking at the invoices and the Freight's all over the place but like for my furniture store it's pretty much running 10% which sounds like a lot to me that that's consistent with ours it's about 10% and it's also a volume game like you said if we can fill we pay a flat rate for a truck so we have to just fill it up and at that point we can offer some pretty good price structures to our customer base if they're along the Route so I keep telling my sales reps okay it really doesn't behoove us for you to get us a bunch of clients in Colorado because of the shipping in fact the sales rep today is like I got this client in Colorado I'm like great does he know about the shipping I get problem with you know we sell to frame shops all around the country and it's it's it's a problem shipping to California costs a lot more than shipping to you know Michigan and you know it's self- selecting some of the customers won't pay it and I don't have as many customers there but what what are you doing about the fact in August the trucks are so hot what are you doing about the the chocolate melting do you not ship certain months of the year do you have to ship refrigerated how do you deal with that they call them reer trucks which cracks me up yes we pay for reer ref trucks and actually we're in the South we started paying for reer trucks at the end of February it was getting warm enough in the warehouse where we were concerned that once we we loaded them from the warehouse to the trucks that they would start melting especially because we delivered the stores in Florida and so our Florida shipment starting at like the last week in February we had to start shipping um refart and here's the other this was a strategic decision we made this is a dirty secret in the candy business sometimes that chocolate bar is not chocolate it's what they call a compound and it's got a bunch of artificial crap in it that enables it not to melt as easily so we had to make a decision are we going to use a compound that's less likely to melt and we don't have to use reefer trucks as much or do we go with real chocolate and we went with real chocolate and it is costing more not only for the product itself but for the shipping but you can taste the difference you are really showing how the sausage is made I'm not so sure I wanted to know wow I was getting away with high fructose corn syrup too that's going to cost more there's a reason why there's high fructose corn syrup in so much of our food product it is cheap Stephanie was your uh your outsourcer who was making your candy previously were they using the compound and the uh corn syrup they were using compound and corn syrup yes isn't it very expensive expensive to ship things in refrigerated trucks it is it is very expensive to ship things in refrigerated trucks which is why we need people to place big orders so small orders really don't help us unfortunately what are you doing about that are you putting a minimum or are you just putting a chart I mean I think you have to do something about that or otherwise it's uh not going to work or we charge them like the Colorado order that's just a real life example I said we're happy to ship to Colorado they but they need to pay the shipping and he said they want to pay the shipping they want to be able to offer stockies in Colorado and right now we don't have a single location Colorado to selling more products so here's one thought it might be worth it to you to subsidize the shipping to charge for shipping but build into your pricing structure some amount because the shipping might just be a real turn off if they see it turns into 20% it might be worth building into your cost structure to eat some of it because uh I I I it might you know shipping two boxes or whatever and a refrigerated truck it's probably not pretty well we actually did that approach with with success online because you referenced Amazon Amazon is just killing it for everyone else as far as the expectations of this overnight delivery of our product absolutely click a button and it's going to be at our doorstep the next day that's made it very hard for the rest of us and we decided to bake in some of the cost of the shipping on our our website so orders below $10 we'll pitch in a couple of dollars for the shipping up to 25 we pitch in a a certain amount and then over $50 we cover shipping entirely Jay what are you doing about the price issues that you described how are you handling it have you raised your prices I have no choice I've got a you know I got no choice I you you've got to do what I I have to build it into the price I mean I can't eat it there's it's not like I have a 20% bottom line and oh I'll just settle for 15 I mean the prices went up I have to raise prices along with everyone else in the industry so as much as everybody complains about you know picture framing so expensive well it just got a little more expensive but it's still a bargain because picture framing is one of the few things you do that you're going to have the rest of your life it's going to hang on your wall not going to be at the Salvation Army in three years it's not going to wear out I'm guessing you've used that line before Jay well here's my new line which is true the question isn't why is picture framing expensive the question is why do so many people do it because it's marvelous because you're hanging on your wall and it changes your life that's why there you go well said uh we're running short of time I want to uh hit a couple of things one Karen I understand uh you've had an interesting issue recently with employees who objected to some of the clients you were doing business with how did you deal with that well it's a long process but it's long story short as we've created um an Ethics review board um which we kind of we informally had before of you know the people on that making the decisions of whether we will or won't do a project and it's Project based we're singling it to a project rather than the whole company because some of our clients are very big and they have all kinds of different business lines some we you know would be a good fit for us some wouldn't and so if we look at um just in the context of the work that we are being asked to do then we can make um a better decision and so we're we're calling it adjacency in that we're not we're not throwing you know the whole baby away with the bath water because um you know and it's not a slippery slope it's just a specific decision and we'll do that every time if necessary tell us about the review board how how many who's on it how many people uh there's uh seven of us so it's essentially the executive team plus our two delivery heads and do you take a vote I mean if if if there is an issue about doing business with somebody and some people objected would would you put up to a vote and would the review board's decision stand yes but it but we don't you know hopefully we don't need to vote the goal is that we can get to an unanimous decision and there's a lot of you know any cases that we're reviewing there's a lot of pros and cons I mean you can see it both ways which is you know hopefully most things don't even have to get to us but occasionally there's a project that you can really see both sides and and that's when we get in and we just you know just like the Supreme Court we we weigh the pros and cons I'm surprised that you haven't found that to be a slippery slope because that's exactly the phrase I would have thought of because Ian I don't envy you I mean that that to me that's a very difficult and and even though that hasn't been a problem for 20 years I think we're living in a new world now that I could see where people who are more socially aware would say wait a second I don't want to do anything for that company they're doing some really stuff with blank blank you're right and that that's what's happening yeah so we created a policy and and made it very clear what's in or out of the policy and then um and then anything where you could see both sides where there is a gray area that's when the board meets so it's really only in the extreme cases that we're actually meeting and coming up with a decision can we get another witness on the stand I'd like to ask Stephanie in in Georgia with all the turmoil there with the voting rights have you seen some problems coming with some companies are taking a stand that people are really upset about are you in the middle of that at all no I really am not it's interesting because I'm a former Democratic state legislator I spent 14 years as a State Rep so I know most of the players involved with this debate I served in the legislature with now Governor Brian camp and I'm friends with Stacy Abrams in fact my legislative district when I uh when when we when I was redistricted she actually got most of my old district and I knocked on doors the first time she ever ran and endorsed her and so I'm I've had friends on all sides of this debate and I thought for sure I would be you know brought into the midst of it and I really haven't it seems like most of the focus has been on the larger corporations now personally I've come out against it I have posted on my personal Twitter page uh feed that I I'm opposed to cilt uh 202 but um no the company itself we're not really political and haven't gotten into that so what if some grocery store chain the CEO comes out and is fully supportive of the restrict restricting voting rights or whatever and your employees go wait a second I don't want to I don't want our product to be there these this gu you know do you see that as a possibility as a problem it hasn't really filtered down to our level no I it I most of the controversy has been on the Deltas and the coca-colas and those larger corporations so it's not to say I don't care about this clearly I devoted 14 years of my life to being involved in politics and before that I was a legue of Women Voters president so I think anything that restricts voting and I think this bill does right through it hurts our democracy so I'm opposed to it so so it could it could become a problem uh potentially yeah and at that point I think I'd have to you know I I I would need to make a decision with my business partner and do what we think is going to be best for our company and our employees and reflect our values very tricky It's Tricky it's it's hard for corporations because as we all know at any level whether you're small business or a big business you're about getting customers and and being profitable but at the same same time I think more and more not only are consumers expecting this but employees and just the general public wants to see corporations that are good citizens and are engaged in the community and are standing up for what they think are the values that they care about so corporations whether they want to or not are being put in the position where they need to make a decision right now the focus is on the large multi-billion dollar corporations but wouldn't be surprised if it starts filtering down at a smaller level and then we need to we need to decide how we're going to react to that Jay have you had any situation along these lines here I just had one small somebody brings in some photographs from a well-known photographer who had a show in France and it it was kids except they they were they were they were small kids and they were naked they they weren't wearing clothes and it there was no pornography but this was upsetting to some of my employees that said wait a second that's kind of getting close to pornography and you know that's a tricky and there was a big controversy even in France over it there were somebody was suing somebody I mean they were in a gallery not like these guys this guy you know got the local kid in the neighborhood to pose naked but on the other hand what's the difference it we we conclude it if my employees are uncomfortable um framing something I'm certainly not going to uh force that on them but it it it it we had to go around and around on it and um so did you decline the work did you say you won't do it then I believe the solution was we had one employee who couldn't care less and he put them together and you know that's similar to ours and that we give employees the option to not work on any project that they're uncomfortable with and then with our and then it gets elevated if they think no the whole company shouldn't be connected with this thing okay we're just out about out of time I can't let this episode end without acknowledging that uh Jay goz you had a big birthday yesterday did I yes you did I forget happy well that's what happens when when we get old Happy Birthday J 65 you add the years that you celebrate less sometimes yeah quite shocking quite thought-provoking Jay you can retire now you're 65 that's awesome well that's the point and then if you thought I was cuz I don't think a day goes by that I don't get some Medicare mailing from some insurance company that's what you have to look forward to it has made me double down on I really need to work with my kids and help them understand this place and work with all the other employees and while I while I plan on being around a long time who knows so I'm working on it are you still thinking about uh an ESOP um it certainly is an OP but it's not it's not a succession plan there's a fallacy in that having a ESOP does not mean oh I took care of my succession plan I means somebody still needs to run the company so they're really two different things so it's certainly something that I'm thinking about that I'm going to pursue some more but it doesn't really it solves the problem of getting cash out of the business perhaps but it certainly doesn't solve the succession plan of you hand the keys over to the employees here it is all yours go for it it it's it's not even close to that simp my thanks to Karen Clark Cole Jay goz and Stephanie Stucky as always guys thanks so much for sharing 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 Ren at 21h hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think you can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcast follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by just through Baron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]