I Hope You’re Not Torturing Yourself

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman should Stephanie Stucky sell peans on Amazon should Laura Xander wholesale yarn to Discounters should Jay Go's businesses be active on Pinterest assuming Jay knows what Pinterest is this week we cover those issues plus whether the owners are ready for an economic boom and how Laura made the painful decision to fire several employees she inherited when she bought her wholesale yarn business in Texas you have to do it since J and it doesn't make you a bad person it makes you a bad boss if you don't do it 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 this week's lineup features Jay goldz whose company in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason home Stephanie Stucky who is CEO of Stucky the snack and roadstop business famous for its pecan log roles 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 TSH in Fort Worth Texas the episode is titled I hope you're not torturing yourself 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 craw 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 him I sent you you can get get a free consultation with Steve himself just shoot him an email at Steve befound online.com to schedule your talk that's Steve at befound online.com now on to the [Music] show Welcome Jay Stephanie and Laura today and I hope you guys are ready for this and can handle it we actually have some good news to talk about as as we discussed last week it's been quite a year but all of a sudden cases are down vaccinations are up a huge stimulus bill just passed and economists are talking about a historic boom later this year are you guys ready for it yes no Stephanie you're ready yes so ready have you seen a anything pick up already store sales are picking up orders are starting to gradually rise so yes and we're getting some very good leads from potential large big box retail accounts all within the past couple weeks are you prepared to handle that kind of pickup in business can you uh can you gear up for it we are working on it and as listeners who heard the last podcast I participated in would will know in the last couple that we've purchased a manufacturing facility so we're in the process of getting packaging and getting our own product line made at this existing candy plant and pecan snack plant so we're working on it we really are trying to scale up but already we're concerned that we might not have the capacity so we're already looking into what additional equipment we'll have to buy how to expand our space and we might even need to staff up as well already you just brought the facility yeah six weeks ago and you're concerned about capacity yes that's a good problem I guess well I think part of what happen happened was I was putting out on social media that we bought this candy plant and it got a lot of circulation because it's an interesting story I think and others agreed and so that prompted people contacting us letting us know that they're interested in buying our product now that they know we are in the manufacturing business we can offer better margins because we make the product ourselves and we can offer private labeling and that's of interest to a lot of retail so we're getting very good leads without even having to pay a rep or a broker we're getting these on our own organically which is exciting interesting Laura you you guys actually did pretty well during the pandemic when people were uh stuck at home are you concerned that as things open up your business might actually drop off uh no not a ton actually I think that we'll probably see a boom it's funny you say that we did pretty well because like Stephanie we bought a factory or Manufacturing Company a year right before the pandemic hit um one side of our business the business that we bought in Texas saw a huge drop in revenue and I know this because I've started running the numbers again to compare against like 2019 I mean like a 50% drop and and that's because that's the wholesale part of your business right and you were selling to retailers who were shut down um part of it was wholesale a part of part of it was that part of it was covid and we've probably had 50% of our staff um contract the virus and so attendance has been a huge issue so our production capacity um has just been nailed uh and then but then the you know the Reno the e-commerce side of the business has done really well but on the flip side we lost over probably a million and a half um from our retail store and from the in-person events so it's this really interesting mix of part of the business has done really really really well as a result and then other parts of the business have done miserably do you think you lost any business because the people that were buying from this manufacturer you bought it you're a retailer you're competing with them on some level do you think that you lost some business from that that they don't want to buy from you because of that we forced a little bit of that to happen so our two largest competitors happen to also be Discounters um so we stopped selling to them on the manufacturing side and they were two of the top three or four accounts so we made a strategic decision um that we would only sell to people who sell the product at full price as a premier brand um and so yes definitely I mean we lost a big chunk of Revenue as a result of that are you still glad you did it absolutely 100% because we're actually seeing you know a huge increase in interest as a result of that and we think that personally even though it's less likely to make us rich in the short term um long term we think it's the better thing to do for our industry and for the yarn industry and for the small independent yarn shops I'm a little curious as to fair market trading you know like is there what's the I assume you've looked into this what's the laws on that can you insist they sell it at full price that's legal I don't know the exact answer to that I think you can do it I don't know really how to do it I think it may be that you can't tell somebody what price to set for a product they're selling at retail but I think you can choose not to sell someone who routinely discounts your product which is I think what you did yeah and that's what we did and I agree with you the long term it better for the industry because you know the whole the whole Magic of the internet is it's driven prices down to where whoever gets the sale can't make any money on it so uh you know it margins still count it's tragic I mean it's really really hurt our industry which is you know similar to let's say The Running Store industry or you know it's a passion Le industry um the guitar industry and so you've got these couple of really huge brands that are taking up now we've learned today $83 million in sales and they're selling everything at 20 30 40% off so that's $83 million that's not going into the pockets of small independent run shops that are selling at like regular price I I think the key being they're selling and supporting the industry they're helping the customers they're the ones that are introducing customers to your to to to your industry and that's a problem that the people that are providing services are losing sale I've heard stories where people going into the shoe store they think nothing of trying on the shoes okay thanks a lot I'm going to order them on Amazon now or on Zappos I mean they think nothing of telling the shoe guy guy or the shoe woman in the store that you just wasted 20 minutes of their time and now they're going to go order them online that's a terrible thing we've had that experience with stues where not to a significant extent but where wholesalers will buy product from us and then they'll sell on their website at a lower price than what we sell on our website so the choic is just we just we can choose not to sell to them and you can make a decision when they next place an order we're not going to sell to them another thing is just to be very brand forward and aggressive about buying from us buying from the Stuy website and we actually are having some serious discussion about whether we should continue to sell our product on Amazon and just have our product is only available on the sts.com webbsite or in retail stores but if you want to buy it online you go to our website period that's what we did um when we took this business over they were on Amazon they were on you know all kinds of things and we took it off of everything and then on the on our site we the mateline Tosh site we increased the prices above MSRP um above what we wanted our shops to sell stuff at uh so that it was a detracted you know we're trying to drive people to go to the local yarn shops and they only come to this site if they have no other option I don't think consumers realize that they aren't helping small independent businesses when they go to Amazon the prices that they charge the fees it we are barely making a profit on Amazon and that's what prompted this discussion and I think if we do make the move it would be accompanied by an aggressive Outreach to our customers to say this is why we're making this decision and support small businesses go to our websites purchase from our websites we can deliver now we can't necessarily ship overnight or be as quick as Amazon but Amazon isn't as fast as they used to be so it's actually allowing some of us to be more competitive with them on their shipping well and if you think about it like stues isn't about quick shipping right Stucky the whole brand in my mind as a consumer and as somebody who used to go it's about the road trip it's about taking your time it's about you know like really appreciating things um which is kind of diametrically opposed to the whole Amazon model so from a brand standpoint it really makes it like it's worth the weight yeah and we're small and we're we're a comfort brand we're a nostalgic brand Amazon is not aligned with what our brand is some small retailers choose to be on Amazon just because so many people discover products there that's right that's where people search and I know some people who have tried to to sell a little bit on Amazon just to have that presence but try to drive most of the sales through their own site have either of you thought about that that's what we're doing we we we did have pecans and our pean log rolls on the site and we're taking the pecans down they're probably down already they were supposed to be down a couple days ago and we're just selling our pecan log rolls that's it and so if you want the full Suite of Stucky product you go to our website is that full sweet s we or sui T that's very punny Laura have you started to see any pickup any changes based on the economy picking up a little bit no it's still pretty steady so it's not I mean we'll see when the stimulus checks come out next week or so we're kind of preparing for that because we'll get a big huge bump out of that you've seen that before when the checks have come out yep totally now now we have a track record you know to go by are you at all concerned about your capacity to uh to keep up if business really picks up yeah we're actually booked through the end of the year um already in our Tech location so we're really struggling um part of that is you know we got flooded so we lost about 10 days of capacity you know we had to let a couple people go as you know we've talked about before um and then you know we moved a month ago so it's just been it's one thing after another it feels like but yes so we're booked up we're booked up for the rest of the year hey Lauren I want to add something about the browsing because I think that's a really really good comment you made that there are consumers who go to Amazon just to get a feel for what's out there and I've recently started to have more of a presence for stues on Pinterest and Pinterest users do the same thing they go there to browse and we've seen quite a bit of traction now it's only been a month so I'm just getting that first four weeks worth of data to analyze but our conversion rate is pretty good for having just gotten on there I noticed Pinterest started popping up where all i' done was place a few photos and so I hired a woman at a very reasonable price to help me create a more professional look and it's starting to pay off so I'm hoping to get that browsing experience still for our consumers but just not on the Amazon site Laura are you on Pinterest I bet you are um yeah it's funny that oh it's funny that you would mention that Stephanie because we were just we just had a meeting this morning about our Pinterest return on investment and we actually went Lauren when you had asked about us putting um you know our products on Amazon so that people recognize them personally I don't want people to associate our brand with Amazon so I don't want them to discover us that way um I would like them to discover us through Pinterest because our brand aligns more with Pinterest right it's a little more artistic it's you know um it's it's less about the transaction so yeah we have started to see I think the number that we got today is that last month maybe we put in 45 bucks and we got a return of $4,200 wow yeah yeah it's crazy um you know the numbers aren't huge so you doubling down on that yeah I know I was like I'll give you another 45 bucks um the numbers I mean the volume just isn't huge but the ROI is really great I don't know that we can't put in 90 bucks and get 9,000 you know there's there's a a cap there do you know that because you tested it um I haven't but yeah our team did Jay are you on Pinterest um I believe so I'd have to talk to my pin trust division Lauren Stephanie do do you think there's a place on Pinterest for somebody who sells picture frames and art no no not the framing Jason Holmes on Pinterest I'm sure it's artistic it's crafty it's DIY it's people looking for ideas it's decorating a lot of home renovations and people designing rooms that totally fits within picture framing I'm sure we're on it you just have to remember I'm stuck here in 1997 What why are you stuck in 1997 because that's when the last time I felt comfortable with the technology that was available I have never been on Pinterest it's not my thing but I I know we do all that stuff well running a small business is getting outside your comfort zone I am not at all comfortable with video content and I am forcing myself to do short form videos I posted a couple on Instagram this week I actually posted a couple on LinkedIn so you got to get out there because that's what is no no the other option is you don't get out of your comfort zone you hire people that are comfortable in that zone and have them do it and that's what I've done I've done a mix of that you do have to understand the medium in order to effectively interact with whoever you can't just hire them and say okay go no no they work for me they are full-time employees here they understand what we do I'm not I'm not Outsourcing it they know what we do and they do it extremely well yeah I'm Outsourcing Jay if we were talking about accounting and numbers you would say that an owner has to have a working understanding of the way the numbers work and be able to keep an eye on what your people are doing to make sure uh that you're comfortable with it doesn't that apply to marketing as well because the numbers are how you make a living and and I do get feedback from people that say oh I went to your site and I you know what I I I just I just can't be everything on everything and I'm okay with that I just I can't I I maybe maybe I'll change the word to can't to I just don't want to it's like you know what I've got really competent people doing it I hear nothing but positive things about all these things sales are solid so I I'm I'm the opposite of the micromanager I just I just don't have the head to go do that and it's working so I'm not arguing with you that maybe that'd be a good thing to spend some energy I I just I got 10 other things that I'm spending energy on that I think are like this podcast for instance if I did that could I be on this podcast you tell me wait we're not going down that road Jay well it's all about delegating and playing to your strengths but I do think a certain amount of any business is going to require that you get outside how many employees do you have on management team we're right around 10 I'm a little sketchy on that because we're merging four companies right now and so we're still figuring out who's doing what I mean we we went from 10 people for the entire company to we're right at 120 now since our merger and a lot of those are are seasonal line workers at the factory but about 25 30 are year around so we're we're definitely in transition as as far as Staffing but the social media is all Consulting plus me so I'm managing all of that with a very limited amount of spend on support well it's all about bandwidth and each of us have a limited bandwidth and we either choose to do what we think is most effective or we choose to do what we like and I I can't even argue in some cases yeah maybe I could add something to it though I doubt it I just I don't choose I just I have to tell you I stopped driving myself crazy years ago if I got something that's working and someone's in charge of it and it's working really well I leave it alone I try to put my energy into stuff that I think there's some opportunities in or that I think there's a problem with so fair enough that makes sense yeah it does make sense Laura I wanted to go back to you when you were talking about your operation in Texas you referred to having to let some people go is there a story behind that oh yes tell us about it oh god um so and Stephanie I'm so interested to hear your journey um through acquiring this Manufacturing Company um and I can't wait to pick your brain about it but you know we bought this about a year ago um this one in Texas and so there were a lot of I don't know longtime employees a lot of Legacy employees and we had a small group um three or four people who were just toxic um just you know calling each other and yelling at people and just I don't know wow yeah yeah yeah we had to like put a rule down you know after after the I guess the trauma or the events of letting these guys go um that you are not allowed to call anybody like you know these names and and blah blah blah BL wait wait wait can we go back before you let him go did you have a meeting with the entire staff and say listen I'm new here I don't know what's been going on before I got here but I just want to tell you how the how this company runs and we don't do this we don't do that here's what we do do did did they have did they get told that you can't do that multiple times and we actually had let some people go last March because they had been Crea and I know Jay doesn't like this word but um you know they had been creating drama they' gossiped you know had been talking to people about problems that those people couldn't solve um I only don't like the word drama just because I don't know what to mean I mean that's just that has a million different connotations I just to you it does but I Dana and I talked about it and we're like we know what it means I know what it means yes it's very clear so um yes and it has been this kind of drama creation um this disrespectful Behavior okay that I understand disres okay that's in my wheelhouse I get respectful Behavior that's clean easy to to identify so that has been something that was part of kind of the DNA of this business when we took it over so we've been slowly kind of weeding sometimes quickly sometimes slowly weeding out the people that are the ones that are causing some of the problems but it's taken us a little bit longer to figure out who some of these people are anyway um we had a group of five people who decided not to show up to work multiple days in a row and they had made a PCT that if any of them got fired they would all quit what reason did they offer for not showing up at work um just I that it was I don't want to go into it was there a flood there was a flood wasn't there there was a flood yes was there no electricity no we had electricity um the the building flooded so was there Locust no there were no locusts there that's what I'm asking I just want to know how many of these we can I just want to know how many of these we can take off yeah okay clearly there was a snitch in the ranks for you to have this information though well it just is really obvious when everybody else shows up except for one Core group of people you know I mean it's anyway um so we let these people go then we find out actually so we fired four of them and then one of them came in a fifth one came in and said I now have to quit and we're like okay and she told us we had formed a PCT and if anybody got fired out of us then we were all going to quit and so I want to hold true to my word and it was so tragic because this was such a nice woman do they know if they quit you don't qualify for unemployment just saying I know I know no I mean forget about the pack she has with actually feeding her children um forget about that pack better to have a pack with some people I mean that's just sad and childish did you try to talk this uh fifth person into staying despite the P we did not no because we felt like it just she made her decision and if we need to get rid of kind of all of the bad juju we're going to get rid of all of the bad juju um but it broke our heart because she was a really nice woman um she just was kind of following them and so anyway yeah that so that really imp Ed our production of course um but it really shook things up and I'll tell you you know the day that we did that it was a little while ago was one of the worst days that I've ever had there why it just we're just tired you know I'm tired of it's been 16 months or whatever it's been now of just one thing at like just getting punched in the fa I mean it's Rocky right but you often hear business owners say you know when I finally fired the person or people everything got better people thanked me for it it just lifted a cloud and the only question was why didn't we do it sooner you didn't have that experience um well yeah but not on that day okay you know on that day it's pretty freaking horrible now granted these people were on so we had a list in December we did bonus we were able to do bonuses um for the staff and so I asked her staff you know I asked her manager to rank People based on a you know on a one to five scale and I know Jay says go 1 to 10 but we did one to five we had a group of people that were two out of five and attendance is one of the major issues attendance and then just like I said kind of the the shittiness and like not treating people well so we had this group of people that were a two that we knew we needed to do something about but we're in the middle of a move we're there's Christmas there's um you know we had huge covid rates infection happen in December blah blah blah blah blah so they're all these things so the time wasn't right then when these people who all coincidentally happened to score two all decided not to show up to work for a couple days then that's when we let them go so we knew it was something that needed to be done we just weren't ready for it the timing wasn't right it's now been a couple weeks and you're right Lauren I mean it was even after 5 days it's the hardest thing that we've done because you know all of us had to jump in and do their job so we could try to keep up but it was we're in better shape now and the environment there is better than it's ever been so the you keep saying we what what are we talking about you two man how many managers are with you on this this whole thing um in this case it was three okay so my question to you is did those those three had been working for the company for quite a while yes and what was their excuse to you for why these twos out of fives were still working there before you got there was it the owner that overruled did they think there was a problem with having someone doesn't show up to work I just wonder cuz that was the culture the culture the turnover there has been so put up with everybody no matter what they do basically yes and basically somebody could stay employed if they basically showed up 80% of the time okay that was like consistent so just for my business language because I try to keep it in business language forget about the word culture it their standards were such that no one set a standard to say okay you need to be here 95% of time in order to keep your job so the previous owners had set a standard or let a standard find itself which is yeah if you show up 80% of the time we're not going to fire you and the managers why would they not go along with what the owners thought so okay yes exactly and there was um in business terms there was no accountability pretty much so the accountability people would get fired for just random reasons on random days um so this has forced us I mean we're putting a point system in place ' got you know anyway it's forced us to really really do a much better job and be more clear about expectations and to put standards in place did it have an impact on the morale of people who stayed um you know for the first couple days absolutely I mean that day we had a you know an all hands meeting where I just kind of laid into them um and I had pretty much every person come up to me over the next week and tell me how embarrassed they were um and how just sorry they were that you know blah blah blah blah blah uh so in the beginning it was a very fearful you know people were scared am I going to get fired too um and then after a few days everything has kind of lightened up and it's a much more community-based thing and the other thing that we that has changed and we've been more intentional and taking a more intentional approach is with the hiring um because in the past basically that just hire anybody that walks in the door and now working through more intense interview process including more people in the interview process being more clear about the expectations wait can I help you with this stop saying expectations this isn't about expectations it's about standards lower your expectations and raise your standards the standards or expect I can expect somebody to be the perfect employee and doesn't mean they're going to be that whereas a standard is a standard it's it's you they didn't what the standards were they didn't know they had to show up at a certain time they didn't know that they had to do a certain quality of work because expectations everybody has different expectations where standards once they're put in these are the standards all right thank you you with me on that yeah well because you were born in like 1930 I mean and so I get it no I've been through it myself that's the only reason I know that's the only reason I know I it took me 20 years to figure out what I just told you in 30 seconds so okay thank you I'll pay you later you said that last time I still haven't gotten any payments I would take some suckies chocolate even or seriously roll um that's a great Point thank you Jay I appreciate that correction and I'm afraid that these days when you hear about everyone talks about corporate culture you know what there's certainly something called corporate culture but usually they're talking about management and they're not the same thing it's just not the same thing management is putting Goods ad out hiring doing a thorough interview process hiring properly setting standards explaining to people what's what what those standards are and and holding people responsible you almost just said it I almost did but I caught myself you'll notice Almost Doesn't Count I think you just made Laura's day if I can weigh in just a little bit here though one of the challenges that we face is and I'm still working through this I've only had the manufacturing facility for a little over a month but we are in a very small town in r a rural community so trying to get the motivated staff is hard sometimes and then motivating people on you know for for somewhat repetitive line worker factory jobs is hard even if you tell them what the standards are getting super excited about coming to work every day and sorting pecan shells you just answered your own question no one says they have to be super excited they just have to show up I mean that's the point they don't have to be super and everyone thrs around talks about motivating everyone I found that usually how many ways are there to motivate people maybe 10 you know money titles time off gifts okay there's a hundred ways to demotivate people and I see people doing it all the time they demotivate people by by by yelling that's a big one and then when you ask the entrepreneur well I'm just passionate no you're an I mean I I you know what I've learned years and believe me I used to do it yelling is destructive Behavior there's no yelling there's no need to be yelling I think beyond the basics of making sure people are paid and there's bonuses and Performance Based incentives Etc there's also we've talked about culture it's a sense of belonging like you're part of a higher purpose we're doing something really interesting and different here uh at Stucky we're trying to make the pecan America's favorite snack nut we're trying to revive the road trip be part of that culture be part of our community don't just have a job and so we're working through that because we just bought this company that has been essentially it's been called at well pecan since 1930 it's actually seven years before stues was founded and only been in two families that entire time and the previous owner had the company for 50 years so it's a transition so you can't snap your fingers overnight and expect them to get that look at how people get into their sports team my God you see my you think they just want a million this is the happiest day in my life you know I think wow somebody won a baseball game and it's the happiest day of your life my point is people get into tribal Association people get into they totally will I totally agree with you they wantong story absolutely they want to believe in something you think how much time people spend at their jobs if they're working even a nine-to-five job just five days a week that's a tremendous amount of your time and so how can we make that time worth it where they have a sense of belonging and it's more than just I'm sorting pecan shells out we're part of creating something really special we're making the the best quality pecans you can find anywhere which makes people happy and what a nice Mission sense of pride in yourself and your work my employees know that we always get the job done for the customers and they take great pride in that and we have regular meetings and we talk about you know we if whether we had a note from a customer whether we have a comment from a salesperson we they all get it they get the mission and I don't think I think a lot of companies don't spend any time on indoctrinating them and including them in the mission and I only know when I hired people from a big Factory this is God 30 years ago they had no idea what was going on and then one day it just closed up and left town you know they had no idea they never had meetings they had no idea what the company not I mean I think that not uncommon yeah um so just having the once a week 20 minute meeting talking about what's going right what's going wrong about a great story about it's it makes people feel good they belong to something so I I'm sure you will be able to pull that up yeah it's going to take you I don't know six months or a year but communication is key and also just really Basics knowing people's names I've started walking down the line asking people what's your name and remembering that and so next time I'm walking the line say hi Chris it's good to see you again how are you Tony it's nice to see you especially if their name happens to be Chris and Tony well th those actually are two names of people who work for sucky so I am always petrified I I have to tell you I'm always petrified of using the wrong name and I it's frustrating well in those cases I just say I'm sorry I can't recall your name is it Tony I think it's Tony and you know so but really I I work hard at remembering people's names I want to go back and and just tie up uh Laura's situation if we can do you still have any of the of the two left or are they all gone now I think we might have oh yes we have one we have two we have two twos left and we just had um serious conversations with them last week so we're going to give them a chance and what are you trying to get the two to turn into a three see this is why I like my 10 better because I believe you you should shoot to get eight nines and 10 sometimes for whatever reason maybe the labor is hard to get maybe a Seven's okay but you're going all the away from a two to a I've never succeeded ever I've succeeded in taking a seven turning him into an eight and 8 n I've never succeeded in taking a three and turning him into a seven I without a labotomy I don't think I haven't been able to did you try the labotomy yeah no I I think you can I think you can absolutely take a nine employee and turn him into a three with bad management I think you can ruin a good employee by saying the wrong thing by doing the wrong thing I've seen it but I've never I've also never personally and and God knows I've tried I've spent years trying I've never been able to turn a five into an eight um there's and maybe it's just the wrong place for them maybe somewhere else they would be an eight Jay makes a great point it's so the most critical part of Staff training is hiring the right people absolutely in the first place and it's better to take the time to hire the right person and have some delay there because the worst thing you can do for a company is hire the wrong person and I did it for I'm telling you I didn't know what I was doing with hiring 10 years I just went through person after person after person and you know I've said this on the podcast before and then I hired a hiring Guru and my business changed dramatically yes yep it's worth it and even though I hav't only been in Stucky for a year I've had many roles where I've had to hire people and I like you Jay I have the scars to prove it of hiring the wrong people it's awful and I would also I just had this conversation yesterday with my HR person she called references for this particular person which is kind of an important role here she got glowing references and I said Angie have we ever hired somebody that got glowing references didn't work out she couldn't think of one so I think not think I am confident that calling references is is a critical part of this story and if you get great references for a person you're you're probably in really good shape if you can't get references or the references act like you're pulling teeth when you call them that's a concern oh yeah well I call people that aren't necessarily on the references too places where they've worked I and that's where LinkedIn comes in it can tell you who your contacts in common are because of course they're going to list references that are going to say good things about them so it's important to dig deeper if it's an if it's a key position and pretty much any position is key the fact is you can do this 10 times and nine out of 10 times it didn't you didn't learn anything that one time that you didn't hire that one person oh my God I mean what's that worth I mean what's that worth not to hire the wrong person one out of 10 times it's worth a lot is the point one last thing with you Laura you've explained what happened there do you feel you learned something about this is there something that you would do differently if you had it to do over um I definitely feel like I've learned something um I think we all have we being the management team Jay um and the staff would I do something differently um that's a tough question look I've given and we the team we have given 150% of ourselves so sure but I don't know where I would have found the energy I don't know where we would have found the time I mean I think we have just done the best that we could so kind of but kind of not does that make any sense it does yeah so sure I wish things had been different you might have very well done everything you can you walked into a crummy situation that needed to be cleaned up over time well remember we hired a general manager that had worked there for years and years and years in January and then she didn't work out so in May um you know we had to switch and we uh promoted the HR manager into the general manager who had never done that role and then you know and then we brought in another new person into upper management in September um and so we're all kind of discovering what our strengths and our weaknesses are you know who's the structured one who's the really manager who's the blah blah blah um and I think we're in a really good spot now and it's becoming very clear but it's been a painful process for 16 months you've done extremely well I hope you're not torturing yourself because that's that's a tough thing to walk into I mean for you know one of the first times in my life I'm not torturing myself it's been very painful but it just is what it is you know and so I just keep the only way to get through it is to get through it Jay maybe you can help by putting it in perspective it does sound painful but I'm guessing you've been through through a more in 40 years a more painful firing situation I've learned that if you want to run a warm wonderful company you have to do some cold unpleasant things and anybody who thinks you can't or don't is naive that there are some people on this Earth that just don't fit in your company you can you've given it a good shot you've trained them you've hired them you You' and it doesn't work and you and one of the big learning curves of being the boss is sometimes you have to fire people and it's un forunate but it is what it is and you have to do it it doesn't make you a bad person it makes you a bad boss if you don't why because if they if they shouldn't be working for you either the customers aren't getting what they're paying for or the other employees are are not enjoying coming to work because of this person like there's no the fact of the matter is there's no ability in it I want a story what's your worst firing story you start out by yourself you hire five people 10 people you get to a day where you think God I need some kind of manager here so I HED the manager person and and uh he had an art background and it was going well so we had maybe 20 employees and things were going okay for a couple of years and then slowly but surely I was growing the company now I'm up to 40 people now I'm up to 50 people now I'm hiring a different level of of of employee for different jobs and this person was clearly over their head and um it got more and more stressful and I eventually had to fire him and I will tell you what I've learned from this is if you think that you're going to grow a company from four of you to a 100 and you're going to have all those same people with you from the beginning that's just that's almost impossible if not impossible because the same kind of person that joins a company when there's five employees is not necessarily the same person you need when you have a hundred and you could say oh can't you put them back in one another position yeah sometimes that works but frequently it doesn't frequently it turns into them getting mad at you because you're not paying attention to them anymore and blah blah blah and it was really brutal and and then it gets personal because in the beginning you're going out to dinner with your wife and and them and you're friends with everybody and then you come home and you tell your spouse I get rid of so and so and the first thing out of their mouth is well you can't do that they're our friend and um I would say that's one of the growing up stages of a business that um it it was brutal it was it is it it and then I've had a couple more since then and they've gotten easier cuz I I see it sooner than I used to but if you're growing the fact is you outgrow people sometimes if you're not growing Maybe not maybe you can have the same people working with you for 40 years but I think when you grow and I think I've observed when a company grows your needs change am I wrong there have been a lot of books written about that yeah I mean we've had the exact same experience the staff at Jimmy beans right now is probably 90% different than it was five years ago because we went through that same trajectory you know everybody that we had five years ago had kind of started at the beginning when we had 5 10 people you know we all kind of grew with it and then just really hit a wall I mean I have lots of people with me for 30 years now but that was after I had critical mass at that point you know when you've got 20 30 employees that might be the same kind of employee when you have 100 but when you got five it's frequently a different person no it's you know it's so interesting that you would say that about the going to dinners and you know it's this kind of natural I guess jealousy you know that I'm not getting the same attention I'm not your right-hand man anymore you know now you've got other people that you're paying attention you hit the phrase that's the problem it's the right-hand person thing that's exactly the problem and that's exactly it went bad as soon as I hired a professional person to work in the accounting office of all things and she and she he started going off on her like crazy man stuff and I had to sit down with him and say you think it's appropriate to be talking to her like that and he got I hope he's not listening I'm assuming he's not this is a long time ago he gets a little teary eyed and say I have to think about it well young naive J thought that he was embarrassed that he was getting out of control and in highsight I realized no he felt like I just sold down the river he thought that you know he thought I I should allow him to be yelling at people at the top of his long and she didn't do anything I mean he was really just picking on her because he saw me spending some time with her with other issues and yeah it's a problem that the the the right-and person syndrome when you've got five employees it's a problem or 10 employees and the first time you bring somebody in from the outside that has to that skips ranks yes I think you me and just about everyone else I think I think this is a common problem in business but then it's like once you break the seal um you know once we brought that first person in and they were successful and you know we let and some of the people who were the most angry or frustrated about it left then you know now we've started bringing in more people who skip ranks if you will or jump ranks and now it's just part of the you know part of the culture well hopefully it's also going to motivate people to see if if you have the capacity and you really are qualified you can rise in the ranks but you're it's not a you're not entitled and we can bring in people from the outside who do have the skill sets we need so hopefully it motivates people up and down the chain I have no greater greater glory in my mind than looking at people that have been with me that started on the line that were just they were working in the factory and here it is 30 years later they're managers and um and they and I there's no there's no greater you know there's lots of things that give you a lot of grief when you own a business well this is one of the great things that you've taken people that had no expectations of their own abilities that really had no expect thought they'd be working at a factory line the whole life and slowly but surely you groomed them and gave them confidence and then one day they've got 15 people reporting to them it's a beautiful thing I was telling somebody the other day she's got a smaller business and she's like you know I my customers that I you know I really pay attention to my customers I have these great relationships with my customers um and I don't know if I want to grow and I said well what I've experienced is that now that I've grown my personal customers the people I have the relationships with are my employees so those are the people that I get to know those are the people that I'm interested in watching them grow their skills um and it really kind of reframed things for me to realize that now these are my customers you know the people that work for us with that being said if she's happy with that and she makes enough money hey I respect that 100% yeah no I'm in the frame business most frame shops have two or three employees and some of them are very happy and make make enough living and they're happy with it I don't try to tell everyone you need to have 20 employees or 30 not at all and that's kind of the the conversation was pick one it's the grass is not greener it's just different one last question has it been harder to fire people this year because of the pandemic are you reluctant to take that big last step knowing that people face a pandemic and possibly losing health insurance for me personally um in a couple of situations yes but for the most part actually no it's like if you can't show up at work for no reason um during this time then you don't want a job you know like we have been over backwards we've done so much like so much to support everybody at work um especially in Texas and you know to behave this way you know what I have a phrase for that it's not it's about the unwilling the unable or in some cases the unexplainable like can you explain how somebody would leave a job they like because they made some high school packed with the co-workers I mean it doesn't make any sense but like that's what's out there it's unexplainable makes no sense but it is what it is and at the end of the day it we can't make that all our problem all right guys my thanks to Stephanie Stucky Laura ER and Jay goz once again appreciate your sharing taking the time 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 ren21 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 convers ation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcasts follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by Jess Theron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]