I Will Be Here

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week I asked Paul DS and Jay gos to talk about their New Year's resolutions here's Paul's my New Year's resolution is that we will be open on December 31st 20121 and I don't know whether I'll have the same number of employees but we will be open I will be here and here's Jay's my New Year's resolution is I'm not going to do anything stupid this year so far so good Paul and Jay also talk about Paul's disappearing backlog each of their plans for PPP round two Jay's efforts to lure one of his sons into the business and responding to a listener question how they handle business and personal expenses I think we have to stop recording right here says Paul 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 these challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which you can subscribe to at 21h hats.com and where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and if you have a question you'd like the 21 hat regulars to respond to whether it's about your business or about theirs you can email it to me at Lauren L RN at 21h hats.com this week's lineup features Paul DS who is founder and CEO of Paul DS cabinet makers which is based outside of Philadelphia and makes custom conference tables and Jay gz whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason home the episode is titled I will be here welcome Paul and Jay uh Paul this is the first time we've spoken to you this year how you doing doing okay uh I think that longtime listeners will recognize a pattern in which I've predicted imminent Doom for my company uh every every time I've been on since May and uh I have a feeling that we're actually a little bit closer to that right now mostly because For the First Time in months our backlog has shrunk below 7 weeks and that's kind of a danger area if we have a backlog that's less than say four weeks four weeks of work lined up it actually becomes very difficult to operate and so it's Not Unusual for us to see kind of a Slowdown in incoming sales at the end of a year and at the very beginning of a new year because it seems like the world takes their attention away from the concept and this is really hard to believe but it's true they stopped thinking about custom conference tables for a number of weeks at the end of December and it really takes them a little while to get that going again and then uh usually we see at the end of January that the world is placing the proper amount of uh weight to the concept of buying a custom conference table and then we're back up and running so every year we go through this and I kind of sweat out whether the orders are going to come in and where they're coming from and last year we entered the year with about an 18we backlog so that if we knocked a few weeks off that that's fine but entering the year with a swe backlog knocking 3 weeks off that by the end of the month that would be bad so you just walk us through why it why if it gets down to four why is it a problem if it if it did get down to four but then it went back up why is it a problem unless it hit zero well there's there's a couple of ways to answer that the first thing is it's a it's a indication that sales are collapsing if you're back I got that so that's absolutely a red flag right there second of all the uh the process to design and build is somewhat lengthy and that we have to um engineer the pieces we're build and then we have to show the client hey this is what we're about to make from for you and we want to make sure that we got the right woods and the right stains and everything's been approved and there's a usually a several week period during which we're getting approvals from a client all right I can between those two things a shrinking backlog is is bad and then the the bright line is about 4 weeks are there any other metrics that you look at yes I look at hundreds of metrics I'm Mr metrics and what we saw last last year was that the overall number of calls that we got over the course of the whole year was down about 24% so in 2019 we did 1,00 calls and emails came in and last year it was 840 and the last time we had 840 was uh before 2012 so we worked and worked and worked to grow the number of leads and then it utterly collapsed I might start calling I'm going to start calling you a couple times a week just so we can help that number help well there's the the calls have to turn into sales too so oh oh yeah Jay if you want to help there is a way to help I think that custommade conference tables are important and I think that it is a key to you know civilization is skin deep and then I just think that if it uh yeah we stop we stop buying custommade made conference table it is the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it a lot of civilization does happen around a conference table absolutely Paul I was thinking that you were going to tell us that things were were looking up uh in part because I've read about it with other Industries like travel where people are seeing the vaccines uh come online and starting to plan ahead and with a purch purchase that takes time like buying a a custombuilt table I thought maybe people would be planning for the summer or or Beyond at this point but you're you're not seeing that it's really hard to tell because the normal pattern is that you see some kind of collapse of inquiries at the end of December anyway and We are booking new calls and as a matter of fact the rate at which we're booking just for these first two weeks of the year is pretty healthy but it's not enough data to really uh say everything's okay I mean the the reality is there's a lot of people who are not back at the office and offices that that may or may not be opening anytime soon I think that a year from now offices will be open and if we make it through this year we'll probably be okay um but I think it's still early I do think you'll be okay but it is a little early I mean people are not planning on getting back to the office until June July August so I do I know I know it's frustrating and scary but I do think the Cavalry is coming it's just a little early so well I I hope you're right and I'm actually very pleased that Congress passed another round of PPP because it looks like we qualify for it although there's still a lot of questions about some of the uh some of the criteria like the the 25% drop in a quarter the way the law is written it's says in a quarter with a with a small q and that doesn't clarify for me whether it means any 3month period in the year because any three months of the year is quarter of the year I've read that it doesn't Paul I've read that it's got to be first quarter second quarter okay we appear to qualify for in in any way you count it then I have to think about well what do we do to prove uh our revenues in in the in over the course of a month and I look through everything that we file with the government and there's only one filing we make that says anything about our revenues other than the yearend tax statements and those aren't broken down by quarter so we're going on sales tax filings that we uh do to the state of Pennsylvania and we're able to to make that you know cross that bar of having that 25% drop so I'm hoping we qualify for that and that the money will arrive sometime around the same time I run out of work if we R out of work and I'll be able to buy some breathing room that way do you know how the amount is calculated do you expect to get the the same amount you got last time I mean if we if they're basing the calculation on 2019 which is what we did the first time I presume you'd end up with the same number um and if we based it on 2020 I didn't really have much change in staff uh over the course of the year so I'm guessing it's going to be pretty pretty close to the same number which in my case was about $347,000 it's enough it's enough that's about as much as we spend in all ways on a normal month so that would give me a couple of months probably eight weeks of just paying people uh and while we can reload our backlog so we'll see I I really don't know what what'll happen I mean the a lot of it is everybody's like well the vaccine's here and that's great but if you look at the case counts they're still going up a lot so I don't I I'm pessimistic in certain ways and I feel very much that this could go either way for the next six months yeah I I talked to a business owner yesterday who had to make a call on um office space that hasn't been used since March and uh he decided to give up his space put everything in storage and not plan on going back into the office anytime this year I'm sure that has an impact on you I think it does we we're still seeing projects big projects for big clients like we I don't know whether I'm supposed to say this but we're we're working on getting uh the job for the new Federal Reserve Bank meeting room in Washington and we do that level of client in the past you know World Bank and what have you so that's the kind of governmental or giant corporate institution where they just don't anticipate that they're not going to be having meetings um we just got an inquiry from a very large hedge fund and uh so I think that the big big money clients are going to continue on with that idea but there's going to be a bunch of smaller companies or people who are just on the fence and they're in a different year they would have gone forward with it and in this next year I think they maybe won't so that does move the need a lot of my business so one question is have you considered slowing down you know your production so that you don't use up your backlog so that you tell your employees listen for the sake of us long term we're going to start working four days a week and at least stretch out the you know the work so that you can get a little more another month or two out of it that's a possibility the biggest difficulty is that we have the the company's 23 people half of them work on the shop floor and they're fairly easy to say show up or don't show up and you can dial up and down their numbers the rest of the staff are salaried highly skilled employees and it's harder to turn them on and off and uh I don't want to do make any permanent changes in Staffing at the moment and given that the government is supposedly going to give me money in order to pay their wages I would try to just uh just try to pay people and keep them even if we had nothing to do but in reality with a factory you always want to run it as fast as you can so that you're getting the jobs done as quickly as possible so that you're working at the best possible rate and I've found in the past that when we slow down it means everything gets so inefficient and people get discouraged and it just it's not as no I hear you I got the same thing I'm just yeah but you're thinking about it no I think to navigate it I mean if we if our business declined by 50% which I don't think it will but it would be a $2 million business and I had a $2 million business for many years I I know how many people that should be and I know how much money I make out of it and I sort of been through that phase uh in this same shop and I know what it would look like I just don't want to do it if we can Poss no I can understand that so you're going through triage which makes sense so yeah I mean I have a plan in place to dial back and the order in which I would lay people off and all that and that's very unpleasant to think about but yeah if if if we get there we get there um and the backlog acts as a sh a shock absorber on that so that we started off 2020 with 16 17 weeks we ended it with seven weeks so we were able to uh run the shop more or less at full speed our acrude revenues weren't much different in 2020 than they were in 2019 the cash revenues were a little lower and what was really worried was the number of new contracts cuz that did drop but you see that show up just in the loss of backlog more than anything else do you know what the timeline is for you on the PPP do you know when you can file and when you can I don't my my bank is a large bank and they sent an email last week saying they're getting the second round application process ready uh I currently am in the middle of the Forgiveness application and I haven't done what I need to have it sent to the SBA because I was really unsure about whether you want to have that cleared out before you apply for the second round or not I just don't know the answer to that my bank is big in in ponderous and it took them a while to get the initial application portal up and then it took them a long while to get the applic the Forgiveness application up on their website and then I tried to do that process starting I think I did it over Thanksgiving weekend and they asked for just this huge amount of uh documentation I think I had to upload something like 65 different PDFs and the I took reports I got out of paychecks and put those numbers into the portal and then hit submit blah blah blah blah blah and then they started coming back and kind of arguing with me about the numbers and what was what was acceptable and uh oh we're not going to count your electricity costs because your landlord sent to a bill for that because they pay the main account it's just like a lot of nonsense and we we got all tangled up in it and never got resolved because then when the second PPP round came up it's like oh this might actually happen uh I didn't know what to do so I was just like well I'm just not going to do anything I'm going to wait Paul you don't have any reason to believe that not having applied for forgiveness would get in the way of you're getting a round two loan do you no but but we're in a world where anything's possible any of these PPP things is just so off the off the likely experience of a United States business owner that that I'm worried that I'm not so worried that Congress wouldn't give out the money but I'm am worried that my bank will balk in some weird way so I suppose I could go with a different bank uh but you know they're my bank so I kind of would rather stick with them if I can Jay are you are you thinking about applying for another PPP I don't think so I luckily I'm on the other end of the spectrum here my customers are mostly consumers at home and we've been doing okay and I'm in a way better situation than I thought I'd be at this point um so I don't think I need the money and I certainly would like to see it go to people like Paul and the restaurant owners and I I probably could get some but I I don't think I'm in to mess um and the first round certainly was critical so um I believe we're getting total forgiveness but I don't think I'm going for the second round but you have had some dealings uh with banks lately haven't you I have been I just looked at my you know once in a while you go to clean up your old emails I realized I've been dealing with this since April so it's nine months later I've been trying to find a new bank to take out my old Bank who is a big bank that bought out my little bank and I'm right back to where I never wanted to be in the first place dealing with the big bank and I'm trying to take some I'm trying to find a new bank to take over the a mortgage on a building and give me some extra cash for another building that I don't have a mortgage on and I have literally and I'm literally I've kept track of this I have talked to seven Banks I've talked to three more that the deal was too big so I'm not even going to count those I've talked to sever different banks and they're all hiding under the table and as soon as they hear retail it's like you're saying I've got leprosy can I come over for lunch and you know they they and these are banks some of them I've known so one of them is my ex-banker he's at a bank um near my house and he he actually said to me yeah we're no we're not doing any loans to retailers or anyone in Hospitality which I find so incredibly offensive like oh so you're in a category so you just aren't going to give any money to them and um um that's that's where the banks are at so I do have two two and I've got a third one who said he was definitely interested I've hit two claiming they're going to give me a an offer and one came through yesterday I'm waiting for the details but he said he got it cleared by everybody and the other one I'm still waiting to hear from so I do believe I'm going to pull it off and I've always felt confident I would because I know that Jay because you've told me that every week since I think March I know it's just you know they call that old phrase Bankers hours well now I think it's like Bank is months like a month goes by and like we're oh I've been traveling Oh okay oh it's the holiday oh okay I mean weeks go by and every week I think well for sure I'll hear they're like on their own schedule but one absolutely committed yesterday that he got it approved by everybody and he's going to send me a term sheet and the other one I'm still waiting to hear from wait would you say absolutely committed you mean he he told you on the phone it's good to go phone no one's talking on phon they're too busy to talk on the phone I get emails um an email that said he got it he got it cleared by the the um top loan officer if he can get it cleared by the top credit officer and I thought I would have loved if he didn't say if I wish he would have said I need to get it so absolutely committed may not be exactly right he got the top the credit guy to sign off so he said I've gotten green lights from everyone they want to do the loan he's sending me a a a rate you know the rate sheet or whatever it's called U so so um I'm waiting for that but I don't think it's going to be a problem so so I do believe I got a loan I'll be able to buy out the other bank and go back to where I wanted to be which is be at a smaller bank so I believe I've got it covered and then the other bank still I think is probably going to give me a a proposal so I believe I've gotten through this part of it is the whole point of this Jay was you've talked about this before that you've told us that you really think you should have done this before the crisis hit there's no question I absolutely should have done it but but your goal is you would it's not that you need the money today you like to have the the security of having available cash absolutely I wasn't paying enough attention to I always said you know the phrase dried po oh I've got dried powder I don't have a mortgage in that building that was stupid a paid-off building is not dried powder it's dried powder in a keg that's got Nails shut and you don't have a hammer you can't get to the money so the key is Cash is cash so I want to take some money out and then just go stick it in an account and know it's there so I'm and to be the fact of the matter is though in the nine months since I've been trying to do this I'm in way better shape now I've proven to them business is fine I paid off a lot of loans I'm in good shape so now if I was in the same shape I was nine months ago I don't know if anybody would go near me but I I I think I'm not think I'm gonna pull this off I'm gonna take some money out and then be settled because um I'll and I'm not getting aggress I'm not taking out an 80% loan I'm only taking out a 60% mortgage which which is very conservative the banks like that and I'll have some cash sitting there on the sidelines if I need it dry powder cash is dry powder anything else is not dry powder a paid off building is not dry powder that's the lesson I've learned to myself and I should have known better so this I should be in good shape okay give us another quick update you would talk to us about your succession plans and your attempts to lure a son into the business what's the status well I have three sons and I was concerned for a while that maybe I ran out of kids to to do this um so I have been having serious talks with my eight-year-old grandson which have been going well he's interested um but that's too far off so my third son actually who's been doing real estate he he decided this is a good opportunity and he's very into it and he has now come in full-time and I'm starting to have him you know get familiar with not operationally not being a manager anywhere but start to understand the finances and the price and the costs and the electric bill and the buildings and he's taking over the buildings and he's taking over and he's I'm starting to IND doctor into the whole thing which is going to take years but I think this will be good and I talked to all the managers and explained to them that I'm gonna be 65 years old in April and um I need to do something well you know I want to be careful what they were it's not that I need to do something it's that I want to do something because as I've said before if I drop dead tomorrow God forbid um through there's plenty of insurance my family would be fine but I do want to do better than that I want to provide for the rest of my I got 120 employees I want to try to keep the company going as well as possible and it would be best if one of my kids had a handle on this whole thing so he's here uh the other one is here also but he's been dealing with the internet for for the home store and I think between the two of them um I believe I should be uh in good shape I have a question about this which is that this idea that the sun takes over the family business goes back to caveman times and it seems very counter in a lot of ways to how you would evaluate who you want to do what jobs in a business in other words if you didn't know what anybody's last name or couldn't see their faces of all the people who work for you which one would you choose to be your successor if any of them and then you put the kid in that position and my question I guess is do the other employees just kind of shrug like that's the way it is and that's the way it always has been or do they are do they have in their mind a more uh egalitarian model of how leadership acts and how succession should be managed that's a fair question and I have two answers one is is he's not operationally taking over the company he's not going to become the president and start he's going to be an owner and and understand the finances and being able to just like just like a board of directors or an owner of a company would and to go ahead um I don't know that any of the people that work for me really would would be any more qualified in that level but even if they were the fact is the family owns this company so it's it is what it is let's say theoretically you had someone that was that was perfectly capable of running everything they they don't own the company and and they could just decide to leave one day and then where are you so it it it is the nature of a family business and um and then if anyone listening saying oh why not just bring somebody in you know I'm not planning on retiring anytime soon so the idea of bringing in a third party what do I tell them oh you'll take over when I drop dead um that could be tomorrow that could be in 20 years I mean that's not a viable option so I believe this is the most viable best option and the other thing is they've done lots of studies they say most people that sell their companies regret it I have absolutely no desire to sell this company so I'm not that's that's off the table um I think I'm G to be working for another 20 years so it think you know who knows so this is the best of all the options my kid is smart and he's got a good education he's I believe he's fully capable of understanding and in overseeing things but um so those are the three options sell it not doing it bring somebody else in that's that that would be a disaster and decide who's going to run the company here well there are people that are running the company that's not going to change it's about the oversight of the company have you done anything to kind of smooth his path I mean it's easy to imagine people who've been working with you for for years or even decades feeling you know a little awkward about having your kid come in and start looking over their shoulder and asking questions what's that process been like well I've typed a document telling everyone this is good for two reasons there's lots of things that I don't pay enough attention to that he will be able to like we haven't redone our pricing in years down to all my pricing formulas are 30 years old I mean I I I have not spent enough time on this so there's some things he can do some catchup on wait you haven't redone your pricing in years no I redo the pricing but it hasn't been done from ground level let's do time studies and it it hasn't been done thoroughly enough from the cost to the price so there's pricing issues there's inventory issues we've never spent enough time I've never spent enough time coming up with inventory levels and reorder points and all so there's some stuff that he can find- tune in the company that I think will have some tremendous benefit that's the first half and the second half is if I disappeared one day so it's for everyone's best interest that he's here because if I listen I got Co I had no symptoms whatsoever I just happened to take a test because an employee was near me they got it and I was perfectly fine but it did make me think what would happen if I Disappeared tomorrow and one of my employees actually said to me he was concerned about that I mean it's in everyone's best interest that there's a backup plan if Jay disappears one day so um and I told everyone don't take anything personally and certainly I've been coaching him don't go making any assumptions just ask some questions so yeah I am I am smoothing the way or navigating or whatever word you want to say and um I I'm I'm very conscious of the fact that nobody wants the boss this kid coming in and questioning what are you up to so I I am working to try to keep that uh drama free or Problem free okay I got a question from a reader that I want to run by both of you it actually comes from a woman who owns a business in Brooklyn called City bin her name is Liz picarazzi her question is she's curious uh how you guys handle expenses that are partially personal like car phone or travel do you what how do you decide what to put on the business personally or for employees personal I think we have to stop recording right here all right well I'll I'll say something that can be recorded I've made a decision many many years ago that I want to know that if I get audited I can think no problem squeaky clean so I don't mess around with anything I I I put like the car I have a car company car we we charge me for some personal mileage on it every year at the end of the year and I don't mess around with anything if it's a business expense I put on the bsiness I don't even go out to lunch if I go out to lunch I pay for it personally because it's it's so I don't I don't play games with that stuff I don't think it's worth the I don't think it's worth it do you know where the line is drawn I I think it is possible to put some of these personal expenses on the business without breaking the law isn't that right not much it's it's pretty cut and like these days if you go to lunch locally like if you go out of town it's 100% deductible if you take someone to lunch locally it's only 50% deductible or something I don't even do that I just I don't go to lunch that often it's just not worth it I there I I don't have any I can't think of any expense that I think oh is this personal or is this business it's pretty black and white in my mind I you know I don't if I go to a trade show I write it off if I go on vacation it's a vacation I don't think there are many gray areas Paul he wants to call his lawyer before he answers no I I I think that I think that I don't do exactly what Jay does and I don't do anything egregious and there is a gray area on certain expenses you're driving to Washington to meet a client and you want to stop and get a burger on the way which is it you know well that's clearly a business expense how's that gray you're going to you're going to a clients how is that gray okay give me a better one let me just say that that my my Approach has been not to get caught up in every penny in every possible situation and just take the time to put them in one bucket or another and document it and so that there's a a set of things that happen at the boundary that could go either way and uh I've got a bunch of credit cards in my pocket and and in general I try to uh only use the right one for the right purchase but there's times when you do a differently and it goes both ways I think is is really a critical part of it which is that uh I may have an employee walk into my office and oh I need something that could be a business expense or not and I just pull a 20 out of my wallet and give it to them you know and so the I think that what I want to say about it is that there's actually very wide discretion given to business owners to take action or not take action in a really wide range of activities and this is a good one uh a good example you get to run your business the way you want and the reality is is that there aren't that many people who are going to come snooping around that as long as the uh as long as it's not egregious just the the sheer math behind the likelihood of getting audited and this becoming an issue is in the favor of of taking whatever actions you want and I think that I've heard of of cases that are that are really egregious that are way stuff that I would never do that people do for years uh people who have boats and uh what was it some guy who's like uh wrote off a new motor for his boat as an R&D expense and and told us the the vistage group about it and we all chuckled about it uh golf golf course you know golf that one I do know about because I once said to a business broker guy I said you know he said oh when we do our statements we take out stuff like golf club membership I go wait a second that's not the duct he goes oh people find ways of burying it okay I I just think that I think that that's crazy and I think if you have a bunch of people in your accounting office they all know your I just think it's bad business so the number but Jay the number of people who are currently serving Federal time for for writing off you know or trying to write off their golf club membership compared to the number of people who actually do it is probably less than a tenth of 1% no argument there but my argument is simply when the notice comes from the IRS you're getting audited the question is add to your anxiety level and my answer is yeah listen I have an accounting degree I remember the professor saying if you're going to mess around in your taxes mess with the expenses not with the gross you go to jail when you mess with your receipt not with expenses they'll just disallow it okay I still don't can't think of one expense and I'm just like pushing through that I I just don't do it who bought your phone your business or you oh my business but I used the phone for business all day long I mean if do take a personal call on it that's a pretty good example except that doesn't add to the expense so it's there's no incremental expense to taking a a a personal call on it you're you you mean if you wanted to get down to it the percentage of minutes you use doing personal conversations should be prated against the monthly cost of the phone and the deduction uh altered right I wonder how many people are doing that yeah like zero like who would do that it's stupid it's a waste of time particularly given the the expected value of the time to to manage that compared to the expected uh cost the likelihood that you will get audited and that that will come up I mean there's a lot of stuff like that that it just ain't going to happen and uh and if it does if you were in that IRS office you'd be like yeah you got me here's a check and then then that was that let's get back to your friend with the car Mo with the boat motor I think that's stupid his employee if he's in Vis I have to believe it's a big pretty big company which means he's got six people in the accounting office why in the world would he want to announce let his employees see oh look at I bought a boat for my a motor for my I don't think I don't I mean first of all I don't remember whether he was talking about himself or somebody who knew but I think that that you could you could draw examples from current political uh situation that there's a lot of people who admire someone who gets away with stuff wow and so that the fact that that yeah there's a group of employees who would be appalled if you do things like that and there's another group of employees who are like yeah you know that's living the life man and I don't think it's it's given that that everybody on Earth thinks that hoodwinking the government out of a few pennies of of taxes is actually a bad thing I wouldn't feel good about I wouldn't necessarily do it myself but I'm just great about having people working in your accounting office to think it's a great thing that the boss is cheating on his taxes I don't find that that's a great thing that I wouldn't think I I think that they're thinking oh look at what he's getting away with I'm paying my taxes I don't think there's a whole lot of people that would applaud the boss for doing that basically you're making a lot of assumptions about the people uh I mean how many people take as one just at home I mean that's all true but but I think that that just that there's a range of reactions to government looking into people's like everybody all those employees do they ever pay the Lawnboy cash or the babysitter cash as opposed to you know withholding Social Security taxes for them this is prevalent throughout all human uh organizations every government every person in the world for all time there's going to be a certain amount of fiddling at the margins that's the way it is I think that when you see how it can take over a society like Nigeria or something yeah it's really bad but the idea that you can eliminate it is is false too well you can eliminate it in your own business you can eliminate it in your own business and uh and Jay I congratulate you for eliminating it in your own business it's not it's not worthy of being congratul I'm answering her question personally I don't think it's worth screwing around a just in case you get audited and B I don't want to set that tone for my employees so per I'm giving her an answer from my perspective I don't do it you're right the okay the phone thing other than that maybe there's another one or two but I I I you know I go to Costco when I buy paper towels for my house I put it on my charge card when I buy for the company I stick it on the company's Char chart so I you know that's that's my answer so it's not you know I yeah I will getting back to I had a conversation when I was very young uh with a client of mine who worked for a major financial institution and he he recognized I knew nothing about business and he said well are you do you have a company credit card and I like no I didn't even have a company bank account at that point so he helped me get it all set up and then he said listen kid there's certain things that you can charge on the company card like gas uh for your car and no one will ever no one will ever uh ask a question about it it it just won't happen and he told me four or five things and I was like wow that's really helpful could you could you send over you know could you give me a list of all the stuff I could do like that because I was 24 years old and he he's like what are you crazy of course I can't but he he made there's the answer like there's things that that some people will do and there's things that some people won't do and it's probably not wise to talk about it but a really large number of business owners are doing something somewhere the idea that you could be 100% in compliance would require a ton of of uh of just effort in in in recording and and managing it that people won't do I don't disagree with that I'm talking 99% but I don't disagree with that think that if you manage to get to 98% in your own business you're doing fine and and I wouldn't sweat the other 2% I got to get you guys out of here I have one last question for you we are taping this on January 13th I'm curious whether either of you made a any New Year's resolutions and whether you've managed to keep them thus far Paul yeah survive my my New Year's resolution is that we will be open on December 31st 2021 and I don't know whether I'll have the same number of employees but we will be open I will be here and we will be ready to get into the following year good answer Jay my New Year's resolution is the the same one every year I'm not gonna do anything stupid this year so far so good it's only the 13th how'd that work out last year um not bad this is what I told you know Laura last week I you know what the older I get I get a little smarter and I learn from my mistakes it gets a little easier so I I feel like I'm doing okay I'm just thrilled that I'm in decent shape because it was a scary year and I don't feel like I've had any serious Collateral Damage I did I I haven't lost any employees so I'm just happy to be in business Paul downs and Jay goz thank you both I appreciate it thanks for listening everybody this episode was produced by Jess thubron founder of blank word Productions remember we started the 21 hats podcasts to help business owners feel a little less isolated to let them know they aren't the only ones fighting these battles if you got something out of this conversation please help us reach more people tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcasts follow us on Twitter at 2or hats and let me know if you have a question or a comment or a topic you'd like us to cover my email address is L Feldman at21 hats.com see you next time [Music]