I’d Love to Manufacture in the U.S.

[Music] Hello everyone. Welcome to the 21 Hats podcast. I'm your host, Lauren Feldman. This week, Liz Picarazzi tells Sarah Seagull that she's taking another pass at finding a domestic fabricator. Maybe it's wishful thinking, Liz says, but she's hoping that now that her business is more established, she just might find an American factory that wants to partner with a growing business and would be eager to help her reshore her manufacturing. She's also decided she's going to keep speaking out about the tariffs despite the hate mail she's been getting. I'm not going to be ashamed of manufacturing in Asia. She tells us, "I had my reasons, and they were very good reason. Plus, Sarah talks about how she's been using AI, including to create her own GPTs, which help her promote her clients. She's also found a software platform she loves that makes it much easier to find and file requests for proposals. 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. In fact, that's the whole idea behind the 21 Hats community, engaging with other owners to get the kinds of insights only another owner can offer. If you're interested in learning more, step one is to sign up for a free trial of the morning report, which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners, so you don't have to go looking for it. Step two is to get on our Slack channel where you can ask questions, get vendor recommendations, and tap the wisdom of a very impressive crowd. Just search the 21 Hats Morning Report to subscribe. Joining me this week on the podcast are regulars Liz Picarazzi, CEO of City Bin, which makes trash enclosures and package bins and is based in Brooklyn, New York, and Sarah Seagull, CEO of Seagull Communications, a public relations firm based in San Francisco. The episode is titled I'd Love to Manufacture in the US. Welcome, Liz and Sarah. It's great to have you here. Liz, can you give us a quick update on your tariff situation? Last time you were here, I can't even remember uh what the numbers were for Vietnam and China, and I know they've gone back and forth several times since then. What do they look like today? So, I never thought that I would say that I felt lucky to have paid a 52% tariff, but I I think it because today the China tariff is 140%. Um, so I had Did you say 104 or 140? 140%. Wow. Yes. And yesterday it was 125%. Um, so we could use the whole show to talk about the number of tariff changes, but to sort of update you on where I am, I had my last two containers from China in March and um, those were tariffed at the 52%. Um, prior to the Trump presidency, I was at 7 12%. So had these two containers arrived on January 20th, um I would have been paying a 7.5% tariff. So it subsequently went up and as it went up over and over and over up to now today's 140%. I am really glad that I moved the Vietnam plan ahead. It was a high priority in 2024 to diversify our supply chain. We moved it to Vietnam. Now, everybody who heard the reciprocal tariff announcement last week probably remembered that Vietnam reciprocal tariff is 46%. Which for a couple of hours before I got clarification from my customs broker, I thought that would be applied in addition to the 25% tariff that I already pay. Um, but then I did find out later that day that there's an exclusion on the section 232 aluminum and steel tariffs of 25% which were implemented in early February. So, long story short, I'm in Vietnam. I have three containers coming over and all of them are going to be tariffed at 25%. Unless something changes. Yeah, that could never happen. Why 25%? We're talking, I should say, on Thursday, April 10th. Uh two days ago, the reciprocal tariffs went to effect. Uh one day ago, they were lifted for most uh countries, but not for China. It was put at 10%, I believe, for most other countries. Why are you at 25% for Vietnam? So because I manufacture in aluminum, um aluminum is subject to what's called a section 232 tariffs, which I believe are a carryover from the first Trump administration. And that's a tariff on, you know, those materials coming into the US. It can actually be from any country now. So like going to Malaysia or Indonesia or many other Asian countries people are moving to, it doesn't really matter. I mean, if I manufactured in Canada, I'd be paying a minimum of a 25% tariff because that's aluminum and steel, but I right now am feeling relatively safe in Vietnam. Um, but that's because I'm comparing the 25% to the 145%. Last year when I was moving to Vietnam plan ahead, at times I thought, am I being impulsive? you know, are we spending all this money and time going to Vietnam and then, you know, it's not going to be beneficial. Uh, so several points along the way recently, you know, there was a point when Vietnam and China were really close in what the tariff amount would have been, and that would have allowed me to have manufacturing in both countries. But now, as of right now, today, we're focused on Vietnam while looking for US options. So, you've just received uh a number of shipments. Do you know when you'll have to place another order? So, we are um definitely going to need to be placing an order in the next 4 to 8 weeks. We have sold a lot of some of our items due to great market demand in New York City. So, that's been something that's really helped us. The New York City trash can law changed in November and now New Yorkers need to containerize their trash um not in a city bin but in a trash can which means they have people have big trash cans in front of their homes now and um they're looking for city bins to enclose them. So we are almost sold out of one of our main components. Um, but that's also even more reason for us to look for a US option. So tell us about this. I gather you I mean you you've spent years looking for a US option. Now think you might have some options. I think I do. However, I haven't gotten pricing yet. So last Wednesday there was the reciprocal tariff announcement and for a couple of hours I thought I was going to be tariffed at 71%. I was actually on an airplane at the time. I watched the tariff announcement from the plane and I immediately drafted an email to send to fabricators in the US. And these are five that I haven't I hadn't spoken with before based on a conversation I had from a fellow in EO who manufactures actually aluminum and steel cabinets, lockers and other things. And I finally put two and two together and realized I know someone in the US who manufactures lockers for packages, which is actually also a product I do. I reached out to him and he gave me a list of five metal fabricators to contact that he has worked with in the past. So, I didn't wake up as panicked on Thursday morning as I I would have been if I hadn't done that reach out because even though this reciprocal tariff luckily is not applying to me because of the aluminum, the instability that those reciprocal tariffs caused really shook me into realizing I am going to give this US option one more try and I'm going to be even more deliberate. and highly involved. Like I'm not just having like my assistant run this process. I'm hands talking to people, meeting with people, doing the NDAs, and I'm feeling optimistic about it. When you say one more try, had you tried that initially when you first started or um why one more try? So when I first started the business, I I manufactured in New York, then I moved it to Pennsylvania for about a year and then I moved it to Connecticut for about a year and a half. And so I got the experience of working with American fabricators and dealing with, you know, the price and it was a price that I could not afford. So that was sort of my first, you know, my first attempt in the 2015 2017 range. And then after I'd been in China for a year or so during the first Trump administration and those tariffs, I again resumed the look in the US. And I did that kind of once during the Trump administration, probably twice during the Biden administration. And I want to think that I wasn't thorough enough. I just want to believe that I wasn't thorough enough and that there might be more appetite to work with a company like mine because maybe there would be a good feeling about helping an a fellow American company work together and to help me reshore. Some of the conversations I've had sort of make me think that they would be happy to help me if they could. mathematically it needs to make sense but that American companies they haven't been like told you so you should never have moved stuff over there there is a feeling of wanting to help a fellow American company for all of the places that you have worked with or approached in the US was price the thing that's either stopped the relationship or never started it so you you know when people say you can get price, time, or quality. I definitely did not get the price in the US. I got good quality and I got really inconsistent timing, which you would have thought in the US that I would get faster production for most of the time that I was in China. I actually got all three. And I know people as Americans listening to this do not like to hear it, but I got price, quality, and time. And that's being in China. So, I didn't have a great experience the first couple of times around, but maybe I didn't look enough. Maybe I should have spoken to 20 companies and not just eight, right? Like, it's almost like a saleserson, you just need to call and call and call until you get someone to like bite. I guess what I'm saying is I've had a very negative experience and perspective on made in the USA because I've never been able to affordably do it and I've been doing this for 12 years. I want to believe that there's something different right now. There's more of a will to accommodate that will maybe make someone like me a purchaser and a supplier maybe negotiate and meet in the middle a little bit. Is there a reason uh Liz that you're optimistic about uh the price this time around? I don't know. Maybe I'm just really really wishful thinking, but I feel like there's more of an interest and there could even be potential strategic partnerships that could help lower my price. Um I don't want to really get into that. How do you go about finding a fabricator? Does somebody have a register? There are a lot of directories such as Thomas. Thomas is sort of a almost like a yellow pages for American manufacturing. They have it in paper I believe still and online. I have found that one to not be as useful as actually like googling because then you're going to find companies that may be more active, that are updating their pages, that have a portfolio that's more up to-date. That's one way. But this recent reaching out to someone who also fabricates out of aluminum and steel, I have to say it was sort of an aha moment I had a couple of weeks ago that I can't believe that I didn't think of before because this is actually someone who has been a bit of a mentor to me in the past few years and I mistakenly thought that he manufactures in Asia And once I found out he manufactures in the US, then he was able to give me a list of five companies to talk to. So I guess I should say I'm feeling optimistic because I've had some really strong referrals from a very successful business and so far so good. I've had three of the five contact me were in NDAs with three of them and have had meetings with two of them already. Does it matter where these companies are in the US? Uh terms of getting the the product to you? Not really. You know, anything can be trucked to us. Before I was sort of looking primarily in the Northeast. I'm going outside of the Northeast, even as far as the West Coast, Florida ones in Ann Arbor. Actually, total extreme points um in the US with the Ann Arbor possibility. Lauren, you will not be surprised that I'm going to try to schedule a visit to that factory when I'm there. Liz, invite him to come to our 21 Hats event and you can negotiate with him uh in front of us. We're laughing and it's sort of funny, but I should say that this fellow um reached out to me after he saw the Bloomberg article. And this has happened three times now since I started being more vocal in the press. You know, I've been in Bloomberg, Reuters a bunch. I was actually on NPR today. If these companies contact me, I see that as a really good sign because that shows a bit of compassion that they see that I'm going to try this. Um, even on our website today after the NPR story, we got a couple of pings from people, fabricators that heard the story. So, I've taken a bit of a risk by being so vocal about this, but if it actually helps me find an American fabricator, it definitely will be worth it. Why do you say you've taken a bit of a risk? Well, to be very vocal about the reasons why I manufacture in Asia. Um, a lot of people don't like to hear that and a lot of people who manufacture in Asia are ashamed to say it. Um, I've decided probably four or five years ago, I'm not going to be ashamed of manufacturing in Asia. I had my reasons and they were very good reasons to do it. So now, if I'm being vocal about it, it can attract attention from people that are pro- USA in a very um negative way. So, we've gotten some hate mail. One of the messages was actually very threatening and and did make me and Frank who's my COO. We work together serious conversation and my husband um most importantly we had a pretty very serious talk after that piece of hate mail. should I do any more interviews? And realized that I should because this part of the story of American businesses needs to be told and I feel almost like an activist about it. Um, so if I have to get some hate mail, uh, I'll do it. You've gone from being the rat lady to the tariff lady. No, seriously, I'm always really impressed by the amount of press that you get yourself. We We should explain that, Sarah. It's people may be wondering why she was the rat lady. Well, cuz obviously trash tracks rats and Right. Exactly. She solves a problem and and is just very very well verssed in it. But like also, you know, I think it's fantastic that you you're you're running a business, but you're a thought leader. you're you're you're sharing the truth in a very candid way. Um that is going to benefit other people and also give you know people that may not be personally impacted by you know the tariffs um a better appreciation understanding that the challenges that um you face as a a business owner. It is such an important story that impacts so many people and you know small business needs to have a voice in this. Something like you know the chamber of commerce they advocate for small businesses. I want to do it too. Maybe our my article as a manufacturer can sometimes pop out more but you know the advocacy for small businesses is not as fast as media for small businesses. So if I'm going to be really involved with something, I'm going to be involved with something that I think can move faster than going as a delegation to DC and meeting with coun, you know, meeting with congressional leaders, which I would do, but the feeling of is there anything being done about this? I feel less certain of it than if there is media. Liz, I wonder if the publicity might have helped you in another way as well. You you mentioned that in the past when you've dealt with American companies, they were willing to work with you in certain ways, but timing was an issue. And I wonder if back then you were a little bit more of a startup. They weren't taking you as seriously. They had larger clients that they whose needs they would put first. And now you're more established and especially getting the attention. I wonder if they see you as more of a sure thing and more of something that they can grow along with you on. Do you think that's possible? I think it could be possible. I would guess that probably less than half of the places I'm talking to would see it in a strategic way. We have a quote that we got from a New Jersey company that we've gotten quotes from like three or four times over the last few years. They always come out really high. We were feeling optimistic. Maybe they'll be able to come down. Maybe they'll want to maybe they'll want to partner with us and come down. And a piece that we had priced out uh for them from last week was over double and it actually was considerably more than we even sell it at retail. So what I would say about them is, you know, we may end up getting priced out everywhere. I guess the point is is that there's some factories that I feel like I'm like going to a bank for a loan where, you know, we talk for a really long time. I feel like it's going to go somewhere and then ultimately they punch some numbers into the computer and then you get, you know, declined. There's not customized responses. It's it's definitely not. But I could see this time, you know what, I am much more established company. And if they look at it, they may see, wow, we could have massive business from this company. Let's strategically try to figure out how we can make this work. And like one of my ideas is what if I were to actually co-brand something with them? They could get revenue from that. Um I mean it would depend of course on who I picked. It would need to be a place that actually does have an established brand, but one of the companies I'm talking to does have an established brand. And they actually don't know this idea. So hopefully they won't hear it. They probably will. But I'm starting to think really creatively because I have to. How can I get them paid that isn't just the straight way? Could I get them paid through a cost revenue share on some sort of a co-brand? You know, I'm sort of just thinking aloud here, but I have to, you know, I have to think really far outside of the box. If none of these places do work out, hopefully that's not the case, but were it to happen, could you live with Vietnam with the tariffs where they are now? I absolutely could. Well, that's good. I could with a with a price increase with where it is now, the 25% tariff, I can deal with it. Last time we spoke, you had announced uh on your to your email list that you were going to raise prices, but you gave people a window of opportunity to buy at the existing price. Where do you stand with your price? So, we did the price increase um but we're actually phrasing it a little bit differently. So, we were about to go into Shopify and to basically go in and raise all the prices by 12 to 15%. And then I spoke with a fellow friend who has an online store, a Shopify store. She said, "Why don't you just do a line item sort of in checkout um or in the basket, which is what they do, because then if it's variable, it goes up and down, then you can, you know, lower it and raise it." A line item that you identify as representing the tariff. So ours says, because we have implemented it, section 232, aluminum tariff, 25%. Well, actually, no, we're not going to give them the 25%. it's going to be 12 to 15% depending on the product. But um that was a sort of an aha that only came up in the last week when we're thinking really closely about the perception of price. If someone has been looking at something for a long time and they actually know what the unit price is, they are going to see that it will go up a bunch. And we felt that that felt more permanent than putting it as a line item in the bottom with an explanation of this is a search charge essentially. It can be taken out. And then in terms of sales that came in before the tariff being implemented, we did have a good number of clients that were sort of on the fence that knew that if they bought a little bit faster than they had planned for, then they would get the lower price. Um, we did get some people that called and asked, can we get the same price in six months? And of course, the answer is no. But we had already factored in that there were certain strategically important clients that we would honor the old pre-tariff pricing for just because that's how much we wanted the business. But that's only because we're in Vietnam. We would not have that flexibility if we were still in China. So the advantage of doing it as a line item is one it lets people know what the explanation for the price increase is and two it gives you flexibility should they continue to change. Yes. And then one other thing it does is that it very specifically shows that we're not applying the search charge to any of our services such as installation um such as removal of an existing bin. We want them to know that we're not gouging we're not applying it to whole invoices. We're just sort of surgically putting them against product. Liz, you use Shopify and I know that um Lauren mentioned the the the new shift in Shopify's hiring uh a couple days ago about no longer hiring employees without proof that the job can't be done by AI. Um and I'm just curious as somebody uses Shopify, did you have any reaction to that? I had not heard that news. And also, I am not an a big embracer of AI. So, if Shopify changes the way that they do things to make it more AI friendly, I'll just sort of scan it, but I'm not going to see that as news that I'm going to use or take advantage of. I know this is probably dumb to be saying on a business podcast while we're all supposed to be embracing AI. You're not alone, Liz. I can assure you of that. But like I would not let AI anywhere near the main things on my site. So that news, you know, I hadn't heard it and don't have a a big thought on it other than AI and Shopify. Not for me quite yet. I'm intrigued by that, Liz. I didn't know exactly what your thinking was on it, but I do know that Sarah is taking a different approach and has been trying to uh implement it. Tell tell us what you've been doing, Sarah. So, you know, we're um a smaller agency and we are um very techheavy. I embrace tech um probably more quickly than any other agency in the the San Francisco Bay area, if not the the the state or even the West Coast or I I don't know. I we adopt technology really quickly, but it has to be technology that we think will help us do our jobs smarter, more efficiently, and um just get things done faster. Because I have fewer people than um a competitor's larger agency, I need to make sure that I'm giving my team the tools um where they can do twice as much work um in the same number of hours. We have a kind of a rule of thumb around here where if you do something once and you know that you're probably going to have to do that same thing again sometime, you got to templatize it or systemize it, one of the two. Um and that that's kind of built into our um our foundations. So AI um I went to um two conferences last week. One of them had a a panel discussion and there was a representative there from OpenAI and I ended up grabbing her after her panel discussion and peppered her with a bunch of questions. She was fantastic. But one thing that she mentioned which really attractive to me uh was kind of a big picture and then there was a second thing that was more of a a something that I could easily start implementing which I have been working on. The first one she said is that she does the majority of her work her like everything that she does during the day happens within um chat GBT. I don't know how Liz how many programs you use on a daily basis or Lauren how many you'd use but I use a CRM, a media database, an influencer tracking system, a um project management system. I mean, I I have a laundry list of programs I use. So, like at any given time there there are way too many tabs open on my screen. And what she was saying is that some of it's in beta testing and they haven't released it yet. But the end goal was to be would be to put all the functionality of those tools into your chat GBT so that they're communicating. So, like say I get off a call with a prospective client. I've taken the notes on the the prospective client in in my chat GBT and then in there I can say add this to my CRM. Put in a reminder for me um to follow up with them in 2 weeks. Um ask Emily to start drafting a proposal for them and d and it will do it for me. I'm not there yet. I haven't been able to set that up yet, but I am starting kind of with the the basic things. So, the first thing that I've started on is um creating my own GPTs. Have either of you heard of those? I've heard of them, but why don't you explain what they are? Okay. So, um basically what you're doing is you're creating a I'm sure that there's appropriate language for it, but like you're creating a custom educated folder about a specific thing. So, a lot of people will do it with thought leadership for example. So, I've created a custom GPT that's called Sarah's brand builder. Sarah, this is within chat GPT. Yes, sir. So, if you go into chat GPT, you have to have the paid version, which is like 20 bucks a month. You click on the button that says explore GPTs in the upper right hand corner, there'll be a button that says create. And when you go into that and create it, you're basically um on the on the it's a split panel. and you put in, you say, I want to call my this G new GPT um Lauren's thought leadership um GPT. And what you'll do is you'll educate it. You'll say, "This is my tone. Um I'm self-deprecating. I'm very thoughtful with how I speak. Uh I I love to use alliterations. I don't have to be honest." No, I mean you can say whatever you want, but like uh I love, you know, three syllable words. Like you can be as weird as you want. You can say um I I talk like a surfer. Whatever it is, you can put in details about how you communicate. Um in addition to you put in your bio, you put in I run this company and you put information about the company. You put in your goals. What are your goals of why you're doing this brand builder? I want to get more clients. I want more people to listen to my podcast. I want whatever that is. And so it it creates this place. So now when I go into it, I can click on my GPTs, go into my brand builder, and I can type in um uh create a LinkedIn post about um my 21 hats um podcast that's out today um with uh myself talking about J Chat GPT and how I've implemented it as well as the discussion of tariffs with Liz um and the the challenges she's facing. I'll put a link to Liz's business profile. If I can find some bio information about Liz, I'll probably drop that in. Um, and then I'll tell it to tag Liz, tag Lauren, tag 21 Hatsodcast. It'll do it for me and we'll do it in my voice. It will sound like me. Um, and then you you go in and tweak it. And with my team, I'm really specific. I'm like, I have no problem with you using Chat GPT as long as it doesn't take away from the creative process because there's certain things that Chat GPT can't know like how um how to do a effective um grand opening for a new facial company where we're having influencers come in and know the kind of the soft stuff like it can't do the soft stuff. And so, yeah, sure. Use it to give you like a starter and then tweak it and make it sound like you or whatever your brand is and then go from there. We just started with a a new restaurant chain. And so, I went in, I created a a GPT for that. Um, I dumped in everything that I know about that um one so far. I can keep adding to it and configuring it and making it smarter about this brand. I can add in its menu. I can do all these things. So, if I need to draft a a press release about their new line of spring cocktails, I can share this, right? I can share it with my social media team and then, you know, when they're having to create some social content, they could tap into it and see whether or not it comes up with anything better than they did. Liz, are you zoning out or are you getting interested? I'm very interested, Sarah. Oh, and oh, Liz, and I'm and I know that you have a lot of great blog content. Like, drop in your keywords, like, you know, what are the keywords that you want? You still need to go in and make it sound like you and your brand and values. And it's only smart as it's as smart as you make it. But what is the output? So, I see what you're putting into it. What are the outputs that you're asking to come from the information you put in? Oh, okay. So, so far I've used it for a handful of LinkedIn posts where it's like I went to these two conferences and they had huge like it's super long agendas, you know, and I'm like, I want to do a post, but I've been out of the office for 2 days. My inbox is is absurd. Um, I want to get this out in a timely way, but I'm not going to sit there and like go through all of the things that um were discussed in these conferences. So, I upload the conference agenda. I upload a list of all of the people that spoke and I give it a little bit of like flourishing prompts like draft me a LinkedIn post that talks about how my experience at companies. If you go to my LinkedIn, the last two LinkedIn posts um about each conference are in there. And one of them because it was led by this fantastic Harvard professor that I've um I've been to his workshops before, it's done better than any LinkedIn post I've ever created. Sarah, would you also use it for a proposal for a prospective client? What's interesting is so I've been doing this a long time so I know kind of what how to put a proposal together but say um sometimes what I'll do is I'll I'll do my proposal and then I'll be like ah let's see what chat GBT has to say about it and it'll be like it'll make a suggestion I'll be like oh I should add something about that that's a good idea but sometimes if you go straight to it it'll add things that you're like yeah no I'm not going to touch that I was talking to a prospective client yesterday and Um I had done just that um when I after I had put the proposal together and it was making recommendations about uh something that I it's not a service that we really provide. We've done it but we don't it's not our core capability. So I I I didn't put that in. But you know there were some definite things that I was like oh that's not such a bad idea. But I have other tools I use for proposals. I use Panda do for my proposals. So I've really worked at making um you know the the the fundamental stuff that we do our kind of who we are you know how we approach projects all of that kind of stuff is in there. So when I put a proposal together about 25% of it's customized 75% is is more like this is our approach. This is this is what you get if you work with us. You're not going to get a cookie cutter company. you're going to get a company that is like showing up to your events and jumping on calls to, you know, get more information and working with you as part of your team. So, a lot of that that's consistent across every client that we work with, but you know, one of the clients that we're working with is somebody who actually um I met through 21 Hats and they have a very specific product with a very specific audience and so I had to do some major um personal research um to kind of put that together. You said you think you may be as technologically forward as any uh agency in San Francisco, which is a technologically forward place. Yeah. How do you keep up? How do you find the time? Because there's just so much technology coming out these days. I just love to do it. I mean, I think every business owner, I'm like, Liz, when was the last time you had a real Saturday and Sunday off? Like like I'm I'm in my office at home on Sundays checking out, see if it works. I'll sign up for a month and give it a go. I'll try anything once. I'm usually looking for something specific. I'm looking for something that's going to solve a problem. Like one of the big problems that I've been working on trying to solve is there are government RFPs that are put out for work all the time, right? Um and that's a request for people who aren't familiar with that as a request for for proposal. And it's a really messy process. Like they're listed on low like government site, they're listed on paid sites that you have to have a thing of um to to search through. Like they're just it's messy. But I found a third party software. They're relatively new. They've only been around I want to say for like a year, but I I was like, "Oh, this kind of sounds cool." Uh, so I had a call with them um a couple weeks ago and they walked me through the platform and it's genius. It pulls in RFPs um and you can be specific. You're like, I only want to find RFPs in these five states or I want RFPs across the country, whatever it is that uses AI to tell the system your core competencies. So you're only being delivered the ones to you that kind of match your skill set. And in addition, what they'll do also is is it will help you issue FOYA requests. So um Lauren, I'm sure you're familiar with FOYA. Um but the Freedom of Information Act. So, as somebody who's um submitting for a um you know, say say the city of San Francisco tourism, they want a PR agency to work on um their blah blah blah celebration. I can submit a request, a foyer request through the system and they'll do it for me where I can say, "Hey, can you look and see if there was any similar RFPs that went out for this same kind of project in the last 3 4 years cuz I want to see the winning bid like who won it last time because government agencies are required to provide you with that. And if I don't win it after the fact, I can say, "Hey, can you pull me the the proposal for the winning um agency cuz I want to see what they did that I didn't do so I can make my proposal better for next time." I thought only journalists used uh Freedom of Information Act filings. I didn't know that it would be considered a FOYA, but it is. I mean, like, I know that if I pitch a a government RFP and I don't win it, I can call I can email that person after the fact, like we we bid for um Carmel by the Sea, which is a it's a just south of San Francisco to do travel and tourism. Um I know another agency that did as well. We both didn't get it. So, I I emailed the the lead there, the the person that was running the RFP, and I said, "Can I get a copy of the winning proposal, and they have to wait until it's in contract, but then they can send it to me." So, I can do it. You can just do it directly. You don't have to submit anything for it, but some businesses don't really want to do that because they don't want to annoy the prospective liaison. Um, they'd rather just do it anonymously. And that this service lets you do it anonymously. So yeah, AI is a good thing and it like if I had to do that all myself and like search you how many platforms I look at for RFPs like it's kind of ridiculous like I don't have to do that anymore. I look at one place and so AI is a good thing at least in my world. Liz, you respond to RFPs, don't you? I do. Um we don't do it often but we I guess sort of do it more old-fashioned way. get the email about it. We're in a bunch of directories, but then at least for the city of New York, they have a system that is called Passport. It's incredibly clunky. Like, you can only do it on certain browsers. Some of the drop downs don't work. And there was one contract that ended up we got and it was very, very important to us that I almost didn't apply to because I was so frustrated with the application system, passport. Glad I got over that. Does uh what Sarah's doing sound interesting to you? It definitely does. I from listening to you, I have a lot of ideas about how it can be applied um particularly with consolidation of information that's continually being updated. So I was thinking for press mentions of citybin, we've had so many in the last month to just pull those into a list and have our whole press list be pulled together that way instead of sort of we don't even often update our website often with the new press mentions. So that could have otherwise been sort of a manual process of going through Google and pulling them down. Do you use it for pulling press lists for your clients? Yeah, so we use a program that's very common in in PR. Um, it's not cheap. It's it's an investment and every agency uses it. Um, we use a company called Mukra. Um, and there's another one is called Sision. Mukra is is my preferred one. I've been using them for years, but you know, it's it's it's not a cheap investment. Um, and that's why it's mostly um used by agencies and not, you know, um, small to mid-size businesses. So, you can be you can be my AI, Sarah. I can just call you on the old-fashioned telephone. And for me to pull um all the coverage that you've had for CityB over the last year literally will take me 30 seconds. I'd love that. The platform has added things as well where you can pitch reporters directly through the platform and use AI to generate your pitch and blah blah blah and all that kind of stuff. We don't use that as a team um because we have another um program that we use to make sure our pitches are are consistent um and timely. Um but you know, a lot of people like it. You know, I I just when we write a pitch and reach out to a reporter, we're very cautious about not doing the blasts. We look at the reporter. We look at what they've written. Um we look what they're like they're most interested in. We look at their location. Like we stalk them before we reach out. Um and that definitely takes time. Granted, there are times when we're just like announcing uh you know a new location of a store and you can send out kind of general stuff, but there's still some manual stuff that you do like we still do call downs to newsrooms for broadcast like you know we we send the email and we we we send them information about it but uh the Tuesday before the Thursday opening we're calling the the newsroom at the assignment desk and we're saying hey did you get our information? Are we on the calendar? You know, there's still a lot of stuff that you kind of have to do um as a human that AI is not going to fix yet. Are your employees nervous, Sarah? No, because it's just it's making it so we can do things faster and it's not like relying on it. It's probably, you know, 5% of the stuff that we leverage. There's still a lot of stuff that that we can't use it for. No, where it's not like um Shopify where like from what I've heard it's going to kill programmers. Um anybody who went to college for like programming or or that kind of uh that kind of route in terms of their career. I mean it I think it's next to impossible to find a job these days. We are just about out of time. I have one more quick question to ask both of you. uh we've been through this incredibly volatile period where one of the things that's really been moving around is the stock market. You guys are entrepreneurs, business owners. You take enough risk in your day job. I wonder if do you have money that you've taken off the table and put in the stock market and is that an additional stress factor during times like these or do you have some way of compartmentalizing that? You can't look at it every day. I mean honestly there's highs and lows. I mean 2008 things weren't worth anything you know they came back. Like honestly, I have purposefully not looked at my portfolio over the last, you know, several weeks because I don't I know it's not going to be where I want it to be, but I don't believe that it's going to be forever, but I'm also, you know, young enough where I'm not worried about it. My in-laws, they're in their 80s, so it's probably a little bit more um stressful for them. Do you think about investing in a conservative fashion to balance the risks you take as a business owner? Oh, no. You invest like an entrepreneur? No. A dear friend of mine used to be the CFO of um uh Wells Fargo and he used to his famous quote. He was like, "There's blood in the water." So, if the market goes down, it's it's when you buy. Liz, how about you? How do you think about it? Well, I have not been contributing to my 401k for years now. So, we are in the process of getting that set up for the company. Um, and for us personally, um, I tend to take the long route. I don't look at my accounts, any of my accounts for that matter. I I rarely ever go into the bank is what I'm saying. I'm just sort of I know that everything will work out and that if there's something that I need to know that someone will tell me but until then I will have my head in the sand. And you know with our investing for retirement we usually make the decision at the end of the year depending on how much taxable income we have on how much we want to put in. So, you know, this year we probably will put in less know for last year was the first one we did. So, we really excited about starting to contribute to it, but now we probably will have less cash at the end of the year. We'll see. I'm not the right person to ask the question of because I definitely don't I don't look at that stuff. I don't want to be upset and I think long term in most of my life I'm very impulsive and unpredictable but on this sort of stuff I just take the long road and I don't look at it dayto-day. That might be the reason why you are the right person to ask Liz. All right. My thanks to Liz Picarazzi and Sarah Seagull. Thanks for sharing. Thank you both. One thing before you go. Everything we do at 21 Hats is created by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs to help us all learn together. If you get something out of listening to these podcast episodes, consider joining the conversation. You can do that by joining the 21 Hats sounding board, a Slack channel where you can tap the wisdom of a very smart crowd, or by becoming a founding member and joining our monthly Zoom forum where you can be part of conversations much like the ones we have on the podcast. You can sign up for both by subscribing to the Morning Report. If you have any questions, you can email me at lauren21hats.com. And if you get something out of this podcast or out of the Morning Report, please tell a friend, tell an enemy, tell every business owner you know. Your word of mouth owner to owner will always be the most effective way to build this community for all of us. Thank you. It means a lot. This episode was produced by another entrepreneur, Jess Stubberon, founder of Blank Word Productions. Thanks for listening, everyone. [Music]