“I Think I’m Screwed”

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Jay gz tells Shan busy and Karen Clark Cole about a dream he had recently it was a dream of all things about this very podcast and on it someone it was a guy was talking about how his business was fairing I think I'm screwed he says in Jay's dream but who was it and why was he screwed Jay woke up before those answers were revealed so we did some interpreting on this week's real podcast spoiler alert it wasn't that hard to interpret plus Sean explains why he thinks his website is no longer performing Karen explains why she thinks it's actually easier to onboard an employee who will work remotely and Jay and Karen discuss whether it's time to give up on things going back to the way they were even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which Inc magazine recently named the best newsletter 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 me this week on the podcast are regulars Shan busy CEO of Kinesis which is based in Portland Oregon and works with small businesses on marketing culture and strategy Karen Clark Cole who is CEO of blink a seattle-based user experience research and design firm and Jay Golds whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason home the episode is titled I think I'm [Music] screwed welcome Sean Karen and Jay it's great to have you all here Jay I want to start with you today uh cuz you called me recently to tell me about a a really interesting dream you'd had and it was actually about the podcast want to tell us about your dream yeah I have very vivid dreams every night but this one was far more just realistic like there wasn't any weird stuff I'm Dreaming they were on the podcast and we're on with some guy and we're talking about what happens to businesses eventually so I said well here's my experience and I said it seems to me three things happen three things happen with what at the end of your career when you own a business so of like three reasons why why a business might fail right well not even failed there are three things that can happen to your business eventually if you're doing a long enough so one is the market changes my father had a dime store it kind of just dried up I see dry cleaners closing now I'm not saying they're going out of business but there's less of them than there used to be that the market could change and whatever your business used to do that was relevant and purposeful the demand goes go down or maybe you just get tired and you're ready to retire and it just you just close it so that happens a lot that happens you know probably 75% of the time then there's people who do have their relatives kids nieces nephews or professional staff that they've groomed over the years can take over the business and keep it going for another generation that happens from what I've read that happens 20% of the time and then the last part is your business is profitable has a good eida and is in a market that people want to be in and you sell the business and you hand it off and you take the cash and sometimes it works out great and sometimes it doesn't but you got your money and you're done so those are the three outcomes that's not what you told me when you called me and tell me you had the dream Jay uh it was pretty close no you told me this guy was worried uh about where his business was going and you said that there three reasons why businesses go out of business so he's worried about where the business going I said well there's three outcomes sometimes they just lose their Edge sometimes the market changes sometimes they sell it so then you said to the guy you said so what do you think and he takes a pause and he goes I think I'm screwed and then I woke up and then I called you because I found that interesting and then we had a conversation about who this guy might have been you know was it somebody who who is on the podcast uh was it somebody who was not on the podcast so that took me several hours to analyze and I've concluded that that guy was me well of course it took you how long to figure that out a couple hours dreams are always about you well I didn't know this see you're more dreams you're more dream knowledgeable than I am yeah duh yeah well at least he got there yeah so I the point being I of course subconsciously uh uh I'm not going to say I'm worried you know there's a difference between conscious and when you're sleeping I mean when I'm conscious I feel okay about everything and I feel like I'm on the right path but I can control what I dream about and yeah this subconsciously I'm thinking about how's and I I figured out where it came from also I just the day before gave a tour to a guy from England that came here who's in the frame business and I'm walking through my warehouse and I showed him I go you know I don't know where the thing's going for sure but you see that cart that guy's using I bought that at a place that went B out of business I been to about six liquidations of people that were in the frame business and I go listen for all I know in 20 years my pallet racking and the forklift and all stuff's going to be sold off in an auction I go I'm sure that's what planted the seed and it came out as gee is my business going to actually Sur out survive me and I have learned that my dreams I can always find something that spurred the thought and I'm sure that's what did it when we talked about it the other day you did express some concerns about business in general things that you thought might be weighing on you things that might have prompted you to to come up with uh I think I'm screwed uh even if it's your subconscious um I think my delusion works better when I'm awake you know I can steer it better I don't maybe I don't know I don't think I'm I'm I'm not worried about it I'm really not because I emotionally would it be a sad thing if the business just fell apart one day certainly but I'm not going to go broke I've got you know I own the real estate I'll be fine financially so I don't I don't think it's it's that I'm worried about it I also had a company reach out to me a couple weeks ago that wanted to buy me it would have never gone anywhere it was absolutely ludicrous it's somebody that's in the industry that has absolutely nothing to do with what I do and and I would not do that I'm not going to go sell it to someone knowing they're going to mess the business up so I have certainly thought about all these different options and I'm very comfortable with where I'm at at the moment well I think we can agree you're definitely not screwed but there there probably are some things that that you're thinking about how has your business been of late listen I live next door to Highland Park and that whole shooting up there was just I can't even put in the words how distressing and and and what's happened to all over the country it's always distressing but like I think it messed people heads up and business for that first week of the month was horrible and I you know I I think the people were just depressed so is it just a temporary blip and then you know between the inflation and the Ukrainian War I mean there's so many things going on people are just you know I I keep telling people you can't ask anybody how are you now you need to say how are you holding up it's more appropriate because it's rough right now just emotionally and business isn't horrible but it's definitely softened so um is it going to continue and then if you're dumb enough which I am to watch the news and you get all these experts on there it's like we heading for a recession I don't know I mean meanwhile you can't it's get it's difficult to hire people I've never I've lived through six recessions I've never been through a recession where you're having a hard time hiring people so I wonder whether we're going to hit the recession because maybe we're okay because we still seem to be at full employment so I've learned not think about it much because there's nothing I can do about it you have had some uh turnover of key people there of late yes I have which is interesting to me at least and that you know I've been in business 43 years I got lots of people that have been here 20 years 20 29 15 and I've had four people leave in the last 6 months and I've had a major Revelation from this and that I always say I run a a collaborative company where everybody says within their mind and we all work together at the opposite end of that scale is dysfunctional and I've come to to realize that I thought I was a collaborative and I was really a Cooperative which means you're working together but people are putting up with each other a little bit and companies outgrow employees employees outgrow companies and the four people that left it was it was a good thing they left for their sake for my sake it didn't fit the company grew bigger what they used to do and they love doing they're not doing anymore because they've got other responsibilities and there was a mismatch and I'm in much better shape now I don't think you were sure that was going to happen before they left no absolutely not and I look back if you would have asked me a year ago I certainly didn't predict that um I recognized that I wasn't um as aware as I could have been should have been about you know the little bit of the mismatch and like I said it wasn't dysfunctional it just wasn't working as smooth as it should have worked there were people that were frustrated and it all worked out because I do have some solid people here did you have people ready to step up absolutely they were the reason why part of it got caus so the people that were yeah I they're all different situations but it all it all worked because eventually either I figured out or somebody came to me and saidou know this isn't working or in one case somebody came to me and told me it wasn't working I mean there's it was all variations of a theme but the pandemic certainly made made it um more obvious and then the pandemic probably not probably made it worse that if somebody was already frustrated with something it got worse so this two the go living through the whole pandemic situation has just put more stress on things and it kind of forced the solution so I'm actually um it worked out okay and uh it worked out well but I I absolutely would have never predicted that Sean Karen um do you guys dream about your businesses you know like many years ago when we were thinking about selling like gosh it was probably 12 years ago I had a dream that I was being walked to my new office which was at the very end of a Bay of beige cubes and my office was actually just a big Cube at the end of all the Bays of cubes and everyone sort of had this look of they might have been zombies but they looked sort of deadish and everything was very beige and I woke up I was literally sweating when I woke up and uh and I was like this is not going to work and we never did it never went any further so I do think you can I think your dreams do bring up stuff that maybe you're not conscious of during the day and of course they do sure okay you seem to know more about dreams than I do I did you read a book what's going on here Jay just come to the West Coast come to the West Coast we know Dre for you're on the west coast that explains it all right that's an excellent right Jay it's They're Your Dreams they're in your mind something is driving them told you I'm absolutely confident that me looking at this I mean if you go to my factory I see a green two wheel cart that I got from my father's Dime Store that my father closed the store in 94 I've got a a table with wheels that I got from my first boss when he went out of business literally 50 years ago so it's like it's like an archaeological thing going there so I can't tell but look around when I'm talking to somebody and go you know when you stand at an auction for a place that's similar to yours it's it's kind of jarring it's kind of like wow one day you're in business and the next day people are paying 10 cents on the dollar for your molding and buying your cart for 12 bucks it's it is an interesting experience I mean you know and then all the news is Doom and Gloom so I think it kind of shifts you into a mindset of you know the crap that's going to happen to you instead of what's possible and I'm good at navigating that though when I'm conscious it's like I do I am dealing with stuff I'm not walking around depressed I'm not I I feel really good and I but like I said that doesn't mean it doesn't wear on your psyche sure Sean how are you doing yeah we're you know I'm usually pretty optimistic my dad to for that he's the eternal optimist and uh I you know it's been a struggle for us last uh few months I'd say that the you know flywheel effect of of marketing and Business Development really carried us for quite a while and we've just been struggling in that arena in the last I don't know six to nine months there was a period of time where there was a lot of interest and people seem you know re-engaged and motivated and then um you know war in Ukraine blah blah blah blah blah etc etc and I just uh get kind of a sense of malaise and that's that's just not good for our business because you know our business is about potential and optimism um so you know all the metrics on marketing and sales are in the toilet right now so yeah there's a little bit of the Lucy in the football thing going on we keep thinking the pandemics oh finally no ma okay we're all done and it's back I mean it's this is now the third round where we all thought like okay we're through the worst of it now and like it's back it's that's part of the problem too Jay is it how is it affecting you right now I know several people that that uh that are sick from it not terribly sick but like everybody's wearing masks again and and when you go into stores and stuff people are wearing masks um it's in Chicago it's supposedly you know going going wild so the good news with that is that the latest round is much more contagious there are a lot more infections you can get reinfected very fairly rapidly but the the bad outcomes are are much lower U Less hospitalization less death that's what they say yeah my team's got I mean like my team's very cautious and multiple members have gotten it some have gotten it now twice and it's it's actually pretty tough to to run a business when you have people get wiped out for a week you know unexpectedly and I'm seeing more mass now and even the other day there was an article on the news about the hospital system here starting to get overwhelmed and them asking people to wear masks again so that's just frustrating it's that and then the Ukraine thing is just like who would have ever thought that some other country would just go and obliterate another country and bomb apartment buildings and like we watching on the news now we never saw stuff like that and then you add on this the sco the shootings and it's like it's yeah it's a lot it's a lot yeah and I you know it's just a slow drip drip drip and um and then on top of that now you hear the whole Earth's melting apparently so I mean yeah how's business for you Karen because you're more in the corporate space I assume not really corporate but we're product and so um and and we're heavy in tech oh oh okay so what that means is they our clients were seeing that still still what we' call sort of green yellow so normally it would be green and so right now we're we're gauging everybody's spending appetite and it's moving a little bit into yellow but they're still you know proceeding with caution because they have to get their products out and so luckily their products have to be good and so they need us to do that and then the other side of that is if there there are layoffs if that starts happening then that's actually even better for us because they still again have to get their work done and so they can use a vendor or a contractor and have us uh come in and get the work done and then they don't have to pay for that headcount so in past years when we've had you know bad years in the past in the economy that that's actually been pretty good for us I mean we started the company in 2000 so it was you amidst chaos we we started in 2002 when you went through 2008 and nine did that happen in terms of people laid off the internal teams and then they needed to still get work done so they went to you 2009 is the only year that we actually did layoffs ourselves CU we were overstaffed for you know what we thought was appropriate at the time but but even then we we we did okay after we uh right sized because the same thing a lot of headcounts were being reduced but they needed to get their work done the bizarre part of this whole thing is amidst all of this and inflation and and and everything else I'm still having a hard time hiring people to work in the warehouse like just as hard as it was a year ago so with all of these problems out there it seems like most people are working so I don't know that this is going to be the traditional quote unquote recession that's coming I I've never seen a recession that hit high employment rates I think we're done with tradition everything's different yeah exactly Karen how are you doing with the the whole remote work thing it's almost seems normal now for us honestly I was in the office yesterday and it the most people I've seen in in what 3 years now wow and everybody seemed it it just seemed like a regular day there no one was wearing mass and um you know there were people meeting in rooms and people having lunch together and and it was lovely and you know again we're all proceeding with caution and I don't think anyone that I know anyway would get on a flight without a mask or go to crowded airport without a mask but I think in our office we have uh no one's allowed in unless they're vaccinated so I think that helps and we know that that doesn't mean you can't get it but it helps so it's a controlled environment but it's good you know we never had a problem with the remote working because we know we all work on our computers largely so we can do that anywhere I think what we'll end up doing we haven't started doing it yet but we'll end up reconfiguring our offices to be more just collaboration spaces and you know get rid of the desk for the most part because people can do their heads down work at home and then come in to for a meeting to collaborate when the clients are in town we sort of have all day long workshops we do a lot of that kind of work so that still the offices will kind of be repurposed for that sort of thing and honestly we don't have a choice because if we didn't have a flexible work environment and if people weren't allowed to work from home when they want we would be able to hire no one and our hiring rates have been really high we're meeting all of our hiring targets we've got great retention and so um that's largely it's not because of that but if we didn't do that we wouldn't be able to hire anybody and have you struggled at all with the collaboration and creativity aspect of having people working in different places not really because we we're distributed anyway and so we're used to that so we often have somebody in Boston or Seattle or S Diego all working on one project team and then the client could be in Chicago that's not unusual for us so so we're pretty good at it and there's lots of great tools I mean we're not used to being so extreme that how we had to be in Co if it had been 3 years earlier when we didn't have multiple offices it would have been a lot harder for us to adjust but since we had to do that anyway we were ready to go and now we just got it all refined mind and so in my opinion it's the it's the best of all worlds I mean we sort of we get to collaborate when we want to now like thankfully we can come back together which is important I mean everyone agrees that it's yeah we definitely have to get together but it can be you know once a month or once during a project when we have a big long workshop and we really need to you know have time for just sitting around and looking at the sticky notes on the wall or you know pausing and taking a break and that that's much harder to do online but it's not impossible Sean you talked uh some time back about how much you hate remote work both for you personally and also for what it means for the business have you had any further thoughts on that still hate it to clarify the piece about it that I hate is that I I feel like it's it's really hard for new employees to get that osmosis of what the culture is like and what it's like to be supported by their teammates in in a real space I don't know how many thousands of ways of communication happen that are non-verbal and that gets pretty wiped out you have to work a lot harder to offset that and so I think that the collaboration side of it the kind of making friends and getting to know each other I think all that's really hard to do in a in a remote space don't miss the commute I I don't really want to make people commute I think that's crazy um but just the ability to work together on a hard problem in the same room I think it diminishes when you're doing it remotely at least at least for our business you also left out to me the biggest thing which is you hire a new employee you have no it's much harder to just monitor what they're doing and see what they're all about I mean it's not just about them getting used to your culture it's about you figuring out who did I hire because it doesn't always work out yeah I mean the employees that we hired post pandemic or even you know right before the pandemic our our success rate with them is just nowhere near it has had been before the pandemic um so that's pretty much all the data I need to know there's something about the way we work when we're in person and the way we create community and I have an employee that just celebrated 17 years with us I have you know just really great attention and good morale but you know the message I'm hearing from the team for example we hired a consultant to just assess how they're feeling what's going on and the message I heard over and over and over again was a lack of clarity a lack of insight lack of understanding of like where we're going what we're doing so that's just you know that's on me you know as the leader I got to I got to create that but I've never had that kind of feedback in you know 20 plus years I just think there's a lot of detrimental effects that we'll realize later on you know the difference between what Karen does for a living and what I do is so 180 degrees I'm sure it's working great for her they do most computer work there are very few jobs in my company that one can do from home that there'd be no difference between being in the office and being at home payables ordering there 's always some other issues that they can talk to the person next to them or the buyer or somebody so there's very few jobs that I have that it's seamless and perfect and yeah it's been working out great working from home very few yeah I I just think it's so much hubris to think that we're going to offset you know tens of thousands of years of evolution of working together in community if you want a really interesting thing watch the show alone which is like a reality show being out in the forest and you watch these contestants you know they have no no Community right and they're trying to survive and most of them melt down not because they don't have the skills they they like they give up because they're alone I think that the video concept is just a poor substitute for you know what is wired into our DNA what has made us remarkable and unique some of these ideas I know you're really into art Jay if you look at the the artists that have created great meaning work over throughout history you know there's this myth of like the lone artist working in his or her shop and and actually that's not true most artists work really well they've worked collaborative whether it's with a partner or with a with fellow artists or meeting in salons and talking about ideas like the greatest Innovations uh you know of humanity have been done really face to face so I I don't know I think it's a little bit like cherry flavor versus actually eating a cherry it similar maybe it's red but it's just not the same thing Sean you were talking a couple minutes ago about not liking the the signs you're seeing for your business are you considering making any changes yeah I mean you know we're we're not going to sit still here you know I think I've basically had a website that's been ineffectual for the last three years you know I'm getting actually almost no new business through it you know we made a really big change in 2020 to the messaging and positioning and it it's just not working so we've just got to scrap it we got to start fresh do you have any idea why yeah I think that the foundational idea behind it was probably pretty good um and it was it was crafted in early early and mid 2019 which was about aspiration and hopes and dreams and the ability for small businesses to be awesome and so we really spoke to owners realizing their full potential and aligning their business to that potential and and I think that's a good thing but then you had a freaking pandemic you know racial Injustice and all and and it's just on and on and on and all this trauma that's just not the message that's going to resonate uh for people let alone if they're even coming to the site to begin with you know I think you're on to something that's very interesting because you're right it's just one thing after the other and I think you're right that people's mentalities have changed a little bit I think perhaps the message now is more concrete here's what you can do to run your business better because they're they're getting more into survival mode right so like the the pivot we're making Lauren that I at least we're kind of in the sort of shaping phase right now is just getting very specific on the things that we can do to help people like for example we've built a recruiting and employee onboarding and retention program it's actually a set of programs that work really really well and I know everybody's like suffering from this problem and we don't say anything about that anywhere on our website right and so I'm just going to be like okay here's something we can do for you it's it works here's evidence of it working here's a way you can you know buy our services that's a pretty low risk and get to get to experience it it's a little more transactional you know it's a little less transformational and relationship but you know I think I've just got to move into kind of a war footing uh so to speak tell me about the the pivot you're imagining especially with the website do you know what you want to do are you going to go through a process to figure out how to address this we have a process that's been super successful for years now cultur North and it's essentially you know learning the insights of what's possible understanding the competition interviewing employees and customers so that we learn what's what's going on inside the business and because a lot of times owners will spin a story that actually isn't the truth so so it's a great process but it's it's pretty robust and a lot of times I think clients don't know exactly what it is they're getting even though when they come out the other side they're like that was amazing so what we've done is we've kind of broken it down into core components and said okay would you like to understand what's going on within your culture uh yes no we can help you do that so we'll take that little slice of true north and engage in that process of not surveying employees surveys are a terrible way to understand really what's what's working but actually having conversations with them and see looking for themes you know looking for themes of success looking for themes of struggle um understanding well gosh why did we lose all the employees we hired in the last three years but yet we can keep the long timers that's a good example of a common problem so we're going to just break it down into kind of the individual component parts and then like try to understand what a business owner is struggling with right now that they can like put their finger on and say yeah I'm I can't get enough people in the door as an example to uh fill these positions or I'm losing people why why is that in my mind your whole message is simply how to it help you build a more effective organization you know are you running at 80% are you running at 90% are you running at 95% I don't think most business owners would say oh yeah I'm running a 98% I think they would recognize yeah you're right I'm sure we're not and to say okay we're going to help you get from 82 to 92 and to me that's very tangible and that would resonate with me I find it interesting Sean that you've developed this process for your clients and now you're going to use it on yourself yeah you know and I we tried to use it on ourselves during the pandemic but I think that was pretty much a failure and the reason it was a failure I I think is that so two reasons one is most of our employees were experiencing some form of the trauma of the last two years you know whether they were people of color and like like literally looking around and you know feeling that or they were empathetic to that or they had family members who were getting sick you know like pick your pick your trauma right and so are all all our excess energy was going into keeping clients happy right keeping clients you know in it to win it with us and we we really had very limited client turnover which is wonderful from a financial standpoint but the person who got the short end of that stick was basically Kinesis so we're doubling down we're taking it a lot more seriously and we're going to going to take a second shot at it and we also have hired some outside help you know because it's the same thing clients say to us like we can't read the the label from inside the bottle what kind of outside help have you hired so we hired you know a consultant to interview our employees in a confidential way you know and and that's what I was talking about earlier about how there's a lack of clarity in the organization I didn't know that you know I was like oh I I thought I was being really clear our mission here is to help you know owner operated businesses to be successful and to help them grow in their community and to do good work and I just don't think the full team sees especially those who are newer to the company you know like those who were hired during the pandemic they I I just don't know that they understand the mission as well as those who've been here a long time let me ask you a question when you say something like they can have confidential conversations I cringe at that a little bit so they're going to go and say something and they're going to be promised don't worry I'll never tell anyone you said that instead of allowing you to have a conversation with that person and making them and giving them the ability and the confidence to be able to say well now Sean since you asked yeah let me tell you I was uncomfortable and have an honest conversation to help you understand it versus don't worry we won't tell anybody where this comes from I I don't know that's certainly not collaborative to me if that's what you're looking for I get what you're saying Jay but I I think it really can really depend on the the power dynamics and the employee at their and their place in their career so yeah I could go to Michelle who's been with us for a really long time man she is the truth speaker she'll she we call her the Oracle right like she'll tell me like when I'm getting out of line or we're just not on target um and she'll be really honest and candid but you know an employee who's only been here a year and and like has rarely even seen me or the rest of the team face to face new employees they have a lot of concerns about am I doing a good job and am I am I safe in this position and so this has been our experience Jay is that when we talk to employees within another company they say things they won't say to the boss and I I think we have a pretty candid and open company but I want I don't want to be blind I fully accept that I I'm 100% my only question is do you need to tell them it's confidential that's my only question it does make a difference at least that's what we've seen when we talk to our clients employ emplo when we say look we will share what you said but we won't share who said it and that that's what I mean by confidential um we so everything that an employee says is open season for us to hear but who's who's saying it is anonymized Karen Sean was talking about the remote work situation and the difference between a new employee versus someone who really knows the culture and has been there a while and has an easier time adapting to uh remote work have you seen a difference between new employees versus employees that have been with you for a while I think it's easier for the new employees actually because they are coming into the job expecting that we are in a remote kind of situation a lot of them are younger and they're really comfortable with video and you know with the idea that a lot of it is happening face to face but there's you know a computer in between us and you know I hear what everyone's saying are human and of course that's not going to change we do love coming together but you know for us it's really not been a problem because you know we can focus get our work done and then come together now thankfully uh when it makes sense and Shan and I have talked about this a tiny bit but you know we are we have we developed probably 10 years ago a cultural framework that has proven it works whether you're remote whether you're in one country another country one side of the country whatever your job is it's based around things like what Sean had mentioned before around Clarity people don't have Clarity on where the organizations going or why we're here what we're doing that's one of the main pillars of our cultural framework is Clarity and we work really hard we have all kinds of systems in place to make sure that everyone's getting the right information at the right time about where the company's going in terms of what I talk about you know what we talk about at onboarding you know how often we meet with people we run our cult like a business and and the the results are we have been able to onboard about 50 people over the course of covid and and it's seamless I I met people yesterday in person who I actually didn't even realize that I hadn't met in person like I feel so connected to them and it was just sort of like oh yeah that's weird we actually haven't even met in person before yet we were able to build this relationship they hear from me on a regular basis about these different aspects of our cultural framework that we measure and you know and we're getting constant feedback and we're it's like everything if it's nothing that 24 hours of constant attention can't fix so you know yes it's a lot of work I worry when people are you know give up hope and despair about the new world because the reality is we have to adapt we don't have a choice has there been any one particular strategy uh that you've employed to bring on new employees that you think accounts for how well this has gone because I got I got to tell you this is the biggest complaint I've heard you know across the board um even people who are very open to remote work uh say that they have struggled with this particular aspect of it there's not one strategy but there's many uh it's a it's a big strategy and it involves all kinds of aspects we're taking greater care in our onboarding so more time than we might have because we don't have that hallway chat we don't have that learning by knocking on you know tapping on someone's shoulder next door and so we're more intentional about all the different things that we know happen organically in the hallway or in the kitchen and so we're creating sort of micro environments to to try to create that kind of cross collaboration with colleagues in one way or another I mean and I have a coffee chat I have one this afternoon with all new employees uh every couple of weeks so anybody who's new virtual or in person it's virtual because we've been doing this since Co and so it used to be in person and so now just switched immediately to on zoom and we have six six people including me Max so that we can see everyone's face nice and clearly everyone gets you know enough time to talk and I just do that as often as we need to so that everyone has at least some sort of connection with me and the history of the company everyone knows I'll do that all day long if I need to you know if anyone wants to have a coffee with me they can I I think the lesson I take it right right La you just said is there any one thing and it's like no way right like there's no Silver Bullet but if you want one guiding principle I think it's that most owners are radically under resourcing this area and and if you listen to what Karen is saying here right I mean she's spending significant amount of her time she's got a whole team and I think that's the tension Lauren is that businesses they just haven't they haven't leaned hard enough into this I I still hold to my belief that you need face Toof face time you probably don't need as much as we had in the old Paradigm but man if you're going to try to do either hybrid or full remote you got to spend the money there's just no way money time whatever you want to call it you know there's another issue just with having wearing masks all the time I I have people that work for me that I've never seen their face that that since they started they're wearing masks and that's a little weird you're not objecting to their wearing a mask I assume no no not at all I'm just saying it's an odd thing I've got a woman who started just selling framing she's done a lovely job she's been here for a year and a half she's leaving which is unusual for us to lose someone after a year and a half and I realized I've never seen her with her mask off it's just a weird thing and it it just adds a different layer of n kind of to Karen's point it can be easier over Zoom because you can see somebody right what she said I clearly see their face I think to myself well that's an advantage of of of doing a zoom because sitting there with people wearing masks you miss some of of the human and I'll tell you with customers it's awkward because you can't tell when someone's smiling or not yeah but come on J you've got to evolve you got to look at their eyes you got to listen to their voice we can't just sit here and complain about it it's the reality you got to be res not complaining I'm not complaining a and I'm talking about customers that'll come in and then they'll go on yel and go no one greeted me or no one smiled at me we're wearing masks for God's sakes what do you mean no one smiled at you I mean yeah the customers right give a warm hello instead there's yes they do that it's just it's not the same as seeing a smile it's just not the same so it just it is what it is I'm not complaining it just is what it is I'm assuming that one day we won't be wearing masks I'm going with that have you really had people go on Yelp and say nobody greeted me you know what I don't know if it was my site or someone else's I read but it was just to a company that's all no no it wasn't a dream this is real not that my dreams aren't real I think it was one of my sites but it is it is a weird thing that just a a smile and a nod used to do it I don't know I I think there is something you know we have had some meetings in person with Masson and I probably would take a zoom meeting over a meeting with Masson it just because you get you get more information um so for whatever that's worth I feel you Jay yeah it just the point is things are different and it will get back to normal at some point on some degrees but it's just it is different I mean and it's there's very few people that aren't have some level of stress whether they know it or not from pick one of the six reasons but you have to also realize that there is a new normal we're not going back to how it was the world has changed and you know people are you must see it Jay they're not living in big cities P piled in anymore if they have a choice where they can work from the beach in Tahiti and I don't blame them I think it's awesome so I think it's all it's not going back I think that's more your world but Jay's world yes I was going to say his customers have got to be moving you know they can't all be crowned in the city anymore not a lot it's not like the city's emptied out it's a minimal amount of people have left it's there certainly your right there certainly have been some but it's certainly not like 20% of the people moved out of the city it's is it 2% yeah sure but it's certainly not 20% I think there's some evidence that in uh in a lot of bigger older cities the migration away has lessened but people still aren't going into the offices the way used to so it's been tough on the businesses that lived off that Office business right I can tell you I went to a famous place in SCH Manny's Deli you know every president that comes to town they usually end up at Manny's Deli I've known the guy for years he told me his Friday business is half what it used to be because people just aren't at work on Fridays in the city and you know he's the perfect um pulse of what's going on I've been going in there since I was a kid it's the first time I ever walk into this cafeteria that I didn't have to see on line that was like it was mostly empty it was it was shocking all right we are out of time my thanks to Karen Clark Cole Shan busy and Jay goz 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 o r n at21 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 Jess thubron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone hey [Music]