In Four Years, This Will Be Your Business to Run

[Music] Hello everyone. Welcome to the 21 Hats podcast. I'm your host, Lauren Feldman. This week, Jackie Russo and Sarah Seagull wrestle with a question that haunts many entrepreneurs. How do you bring your kids into the business, whether for a summer or for good, without messing up the business or the kids? For years, Jackie and her husband, Michael, quietly hoped their son Jackson might one day take over their marketing agency. their unusual strategy never mentioned it to him, at least not until he demonstrated interest and not until he'd proven himself somewhere else. The approach seems to have worked. Jackson has joined Bran Russo and Jackie has told him he'll take over in 4 years, which prompted Sarah to ask Jackie an obvious question. What happens if he takes over and he does a bad job? As it happens, Jackie and Michael have thought about that, too. Plus, Jackie and Sarah also discuss the merits of the new tech trend, especially hot in San Francisco, where more and more people are wearing AI powered devices that can stealthily transcribe every conversation they have. 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, you can sign up for a free trial of the Morning Report newsletter, which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners and shows how other owners are confronting challenges and seizing opportunities. Just search the 21 Hats Morning Report to subscribe. You might also try our monthly Zoom mastermind where owners around the country gather to compare notes. It's a lot like this podcast except you get to be part of the conversation. Shoot me an email at lauren21hass.com to get more information. Joining me this week on the podcast are regulars Jackie Russo, CEO of Brand Russo, a marketing agency based in Lafayette, Louisiana, and Sarah Seagull, CEO of Seagull Communications, a public relations firm based in San Francisco. The episode is titled In 4 years, this will be your business to run. Welcome, Jackie and Sarah. It's great to have you here. I'd like to talk about the potentially tricky situation of hiring your own offspring to work in your own business. Obviously, it can be a wonderful thing, but it can also be challenging. We all know whether the your kids are there just for a summer or whether they're there hoping to one day take over. Sarah, you've had some uh recent experience with this. Tell us about it. >> When I got my first job in the real world, um my first job, I was a bagger. I worked at a store called Bread and Circus in Boston and I bagged groceries and that job led to another job in food and then another job in food and another job in food. I had no interest in working in food. Like to eat food, like to do PR for food, but I didn't actually want to work in food. And so with my kids, I've always been very specific in saying, listen, you know, if you get a job, you need to get a job that is um furthering your progress towards your goals, like whatever you're interested in doing. And so my daughter um was interested in kind of advertising, marketing, and a little bit of interior design. Like those were kind of the things that got her excited about getting up every morning. And so I was like, listen, you don't have any plans for this summer. Um, instead of going back and working at Nordstrom, which she had done for two years in in retail, which I think is a great experience, um, for anybody because it really gets you comfortable with talking to people and sales and communicating and this and that. Um, so kind of associated to her interests, I was like, why don't you come and work um on my team for my social media team? It's creative. Um, they're a great group of people. you'll get to create content which is along that kind of advertising space and it's all about like marketing and stuff and so she came on board last summer and you know for me it was great you know um it was nice to to have my daughter there but there's definitely some uh things that she got away with that I think that I would never let another employee do. Right. such as >> well, you know, um okay, so so my social media lead um she was I was I was always telling her I was like, "Listen, yell at my kid. Make sure that they do this." She's like, "I'm not going to yell at the boss's daughter." Like, that's not going to happen. So, she didn't get the same like level of direction, I think, or um guard rails that other people did. She did her job and she did it well. But you there would be times that I would find her like in a room with her shoes off, her feet up on a couch and um I swear to God I almost caught her napping at one point and I'm like just like if I had an employee do that like I don't know. I mean first time probably I'd be like yeah maybe you need to go home and come back refreshed. Um, but you know, she took liberties with me and you know, she's my kid and like when your kids are so used to you, they like they don't listen to anything that you say. You can slap them as hard as you want on their wrist and they're just going to be like, "Whatever, mom and then move on." I think she did have a great experience. she did decide to refocus her major on interior design and so this year she's actually interning um for a home furnishings company and she's really enjoying it and uh I think that that she's getting a little bit of a reality check in terms of expectations. So that's so far that was my kind of foray into uh having a child work for me. Were you disappointed that that good experience didn't lead to increased interest in what you do? >> Oh, whether or not she'd take over my business someday >> or even, you know, pursue it as uh a career with the possibility of working for you and maybe even taking over. >> Yeah. I mean, I think I mean, honestly, that would have been fun. Like, that would have been absolutely fun. And I I probably would have encouraged her to go work for some other agencies and then come back because uh I think that it's good to kind of check out what's out there. Like I feel like I run a pretty good good office where people are rewarded for good work. They're encouraged. There's a really sense of um you know team mentality here and it's a it's good vibe, right? But you don't know how good it is until you experience something else. So regardless of whether or not I'd want her to like take over the business and she may still someday. I mean she may decide that hey you know what after I mean I was an international relations major in college, right? Like I I completely changed what I wanted to do when I graduated so there's still time. >> Sure. >> Um and I don't know that she would love it though. She sees what I do as as boring because I sit at the computer and this and that and she likes going out and we have events and content creation and that stuff and she loves that stuff. But my son the same way. He like he thinks what my husband and I do is boring and we're in the creative field but they're like you guys sit at desks and look at computers too much. Maybe they don't want to do that. They want to do something that's tactile and in person and moving. My son wants to, you know, either be an NFL player or, you know, work in football and then my daughter wants to to do like home furnishings, work in terms of design and creating spaces and this and that. Like I think they've seen us look at our our screens too much where they're going to go in a different direction. But so I think it was it was nice for her to see my I think she was impressed by me like gave me a little bit of like uh validity in terms of what I do. But I I don't I'm not think I'm disappointed that she she won't follow through. I mean, it'd be easier for sure, but I don't think it's going to be my reality. >> If it were, do you think you learned something from that uh one summer's experience and would be able to handle the uh the placement of guidelines and that kind of thing a little bit better uh on a second chance? >> Um I just I think that's hard with your own kid. Like they know you too well. They know that you're you may yell at them, but you're still gonna like give them a hug at the end of the day. Like I think having your own kid work for you is difficult. Well, again, I think that yeah, they have to go work for someone else first. >> Jackie, when you started your business, I'm not sure you realized you were starting a family business, but I I think from what you've told us in the past, that's kind of where you've landed. >> Yeah. How have you dealt with this issue of having to treat offspring as an employee? >> So, I I grew up watching a family business um and answering phones at a family real estate company and napping on the job when I had weekend duty. Um so, I knew firsthand the challenges. >> You know, naps are a very good thing. Very healthy. A lot of people recommend them. >> And so, no, I I I never thought I was starting a business, Lauren. I was just going to be a freelance media buyer. So, everything that's happened for the past 26 years is just me saying yes and figuring out how to make it work. So, you know, I became unemployed uh February 1st, 2001. So, that was my first day as a freelance media buyer. I'm 8 months pregnant, due to have a baby in 3 weeks. And she ended up waiting until the middle of March. And so five months in, Michael is doing more work for me than the real agency that he and I say real agency because again, I'm a media buyer working out of my house, technically working out of the nursery while I breastfed a child. And so then Michael's like, I can't keep doing two full-time jobs. And so all of a sudden, we became a family business because he was employee number two. So that continued until the aforementioned toddler and the one I was pregnant with when we started and then the one that followed and the one that followed, you know, four kids in four years. They got into high school and wanted money and you know there's no free rides at the Russo house. So you want money, you're going to do chores to earn it, which meant they needed to get summer jobs somewhere. And because of their athletic schedules and camp schedules and all the rest of their busy lives, it really wasn't going to be as easy for them to work somewhere else as it would be to work here. Eventually, every one of them at some point had to go apply and interview with strangers and get jobs on their own because I think that's an important part of the development process. But in the meantime, I had odd jobs and they are odd people. So, it was a good match. Thank you. I paused for the required laugh, but it was things like scanning our photos, you know. So, I have these these plastic tubs of photos that we printed out before we had digital cameras or at least before we had iPhones. And I wanted to make sure I had a preserved copy of those online. And so, one summer, one Russo kid spent the entire summer with a scanner scanning photos into a Google photo folder. One summer, I had a kid with a scanner and a shredder go through and scan all of our paper records because I had decided we were going to go completely paperless and I wanted every filing cabinet gone by fall. And so they went through and scanned every document and then shredded them. So I made them do those jobs early on because they were menial tasks. I wasn't going to waste a real employees time and it was a way for them to make money and learn some office protocol being on time, dressing appropriately, acting appropriately and so I think that was our good start. Did they do that right away or did they know enough to dress appropriately, show up on time, like you know, say please and thank like did they know all that or was there a learning curve? Well, I there was an orientation at home before they went into their orientation at work. You know, Jackson, the oldest, he transferred schools in fifth grade and his new school was five blocks from the office. And so once a week, I would walk to the school, meet him, we would walk back to the office, rain or shine, stop at Subway, he'd get a 12-in meatball sub and sit and do homework. And it was a scheduling thing because I I couldn't go pick him up and the girls had activities like dance class or whatever on those days and so the babysitter was driving the girls. So it was a way for scheduling. It was also it's some of my favorite memories, you know, and they would come after school or in between activities or, you know, we have a half an hour between this and that, so I'm going to run by and take care of some emails real quick, you know, whatever it might be. So they the office wasn't foreign to them and the people who worked here knew my kids and they heard stories of people who showed up for interviews with their mom in the lobby um of showing up wearing booty shorts and halter tops to interview for a like a professional job and typos and resumes. So that was dinner conversation. They know more about logos than most third-year college graphic design students because they grew up around the business and they grew up talk us talking about the business. They heard the horror stories of the people who weren't professional. So that seeped in, you know, just some osmosis, but for sure they went through some training of you will be first fired. If you don't follow these protocols, you can't come back here and therefore you can't make the money you want to make for whatever the thing is that you're saving up to buy. And so I think that helped. But then they also went through our standard orientation that just employees go through. They had to read the office uh the handbook and sign off on it and you know they had to do all the things. So they were treated pretty much like a regular employee. The last name probably was a weight not a step stool. >> Did you run into situations similar to what Sarah described where you you knew they weren't being treated by other people at the company uh as a normal employee? I observed a few things here and there uh where an employee might have been maybe a little harder on them than they would have been on another like on a regular intern and I let it go cuz they need to figure that stuff out. There were definitely some times when the kids took liberties of you know they rode to work with me and I had to stop on the way so therefore they were late but they weren't in trouble because they were riding with me. So, Michael, who is the absolutely, and I say this with no ego um or inflated pride, he's one of the best Photoshop artists I think exists in the country. He's incredibly gifted at what he does. He is amazingly hardworking. I have never been frustrated by the amount of time that he works at our business. How could I be mad about that? But as a wife and mother, we have definitely missed him because of how much time and dedication that he puts to his career. So, they've heard that. They've heard the, you know, where's dad? He's at the office. It's 9:00 at night. Yeah. But he had to work on this client project thing. We all, the five of us also became aware at some point that he basically set up a bachelor pad here and really came to the office to get away from us, but that's a different podcast for a different day. But, so there's a balance there, right? There's both things. I would flee a house with me and four kids under the age of five, too. So, there's no no uh guilt there for him. >> You can't all flee. >> Well, right. Right. Otherwise, the 5-year-old's raising his three sisters. >> Right. >> But so, that also comes with the artist mentality of he's incredibly motivated by deadlines and therefore every job becomes a last minute job. And he has a loose relationship with deadlines. And so the children grew up hearing that again around the dinner table and in some probably louder than necessary volume of talks at home. And that meant that they knew that it's not tolerated by me for him. It would not be tolerated by me for them. And so I would say that because there was so much pre-training, we were able to avoid a lot of those challenges because we just we prepped them ahead of time. I think whether we meant to or not, it happened. >> So, you've gone way beyond that now. And you do have a kid who's in the business who is serious about making a career of it. Correct. >> That is correct. And that was not what any of us expected. Early on, I think Michael and I both to each other identified that our oldest, our only son, Jackson, was incredibly inclined to be successful in this business. He had the best of me and the best of Michael and um had the potential to be really great at it at that time. He is a high school football baseball star, you know, three-time state champion, fourtime state MVP, just an excellent, outstanding athlete. And although I don't ever remember him talking about going pro as a player, I do distinctly recall years of conversations around his future doing marketing for a sports team or being a sports agent or being a manager, whether that's a manager of a team or manager of a player like a business manager. And so it was all going to be geared around sports. And Michael was the one who regularly, you know, Jackson would write a really great paper that would win some big award and Michael would be like, you know, that's what I do. I I write just like that. You could write. I'm like, hey, stop. Do not for the next six years, cuz Jackson at this point was nearing the end of high school. I said, for the six years, don't talk about him working for us or with us or at the agency. If we stand a chance in hell of getting him to come work for us, which we both would love to happen, we cannot talk about it. We cannot act like it. We cannot prep him for it. We will push him away. We will not draw him near. And it was very hard for Michael to resist the urge. But he's like, "No, if I just I'm like, "No, no, don't talk about it. This is like fight club." >> No, I I think I think that you're right. >> Yeah. >> I don't I don't want to speak for everybody, but I think it's nice to say like your kid wanting to come work in your business because it's like validation in a way, right? Sure. But I think that if you're pressuring your kid to come work for you, they're going to run the opposite direction. >> Yes. Yes. I mean, did we learn nothing as parents? You know, if I want my kid to study, I can't say go study. Like, that's never going to work. And so, Michael got on board and and I told him, I said, "Listen, it really works out well for us either way. We don't talk about it. he comes by it naturally and then he it's his idea and he wants to do it and we win or it never manifests and we're able to sell it to a stranger for retirement money. We win either way. So just pump the brakes. Talk to me about it when he's not around. Don't talk to him about it. He goes away to school. He plays baseball for his undergrad. Sticks around to get his NBA and plays a fifth year because of the whole COVID year. College athletes got an extra year of eligibility. and we I don't think missed a game. Uh we went to every home game. It was about three and a half hours away from us and uh even some away games that were within a driving range. We may have even flown once or twice. But so, you know, we got to watch our kid play college ball for 5 years and that is a gift. Oh my gosh. And he eventually um kind of started moving away from I'm going to do marketing for a sports franchise and eventually moved away from I'm going to be a sports agent. And then it was the great unknown for maybe a semester or two. And then the pursuit of his MBA became, I'm going to be in business and I'm going to maybe work in marketing. Michael, don't say a word. And so we just we let that unfurl as it was going to. And so after school at Milsaps, uh which is in Jackson, Mississippi, he moved with his um college um teammate and at that point roommate to Nashville and got a job at an ad agency. Wow. >> And again, if we can all manage to keep our mouths shut and let this work itself out, and it did, as if we had written the plan. So, he worked there for two years for another agency and learned from other people. >> Yeah. >> Things that he liked and didn't like about the business. Having worked at our agency in the summers, it was amazing for him to be able to come back and say, "They don't do this the way y'all do. The way y'all do it is so much better. They don't do that." Did he bring back anything that they did that you didn't do that you're like, "Oh, let's let's use that as inspo and change the way that we do things." That that's what I hope for. >> That's what I wanted. I And I actually would have even encouraged him to go to one more agency before like if I was writing the book, that would have been my dream. No, you know, at this point in the timeline, we're a 20-year-old company and he's working for a 5-year-old company and it is primarily being based in Nashville. They work with all musicians and the estates of musicians and it's run by two artists and so it it did not have the um >> sophistication. >> Yeah. Yeah. They had not scaled. They were much smaller. Um most of their employees were freelance and um they just I mean they weren't doing branding like we were and it wasn't um businessminded like we are. Well, we just hired a VP and I keep asking her, I'm like, are there things that you used to do that we should do here? Like, like, give us better systems. Give And so far I've got nothing, which is like disappointing because I'm always looking for better ways to do things, but like >> Right. Me, too. >> But at least he came back and was like, "Yeah, you you got your together." Which is kind of flattering. >> Well, and that was the thing. So, he's going to leave this agency after two years. He's gotten some offers. uh stay in Nashville, go to Atlanta, and I said, "Now, Michael, now's the time." Like, I you've had this pent up topic for five years. I set you free, I release you. Now, you can go have the conversation because we've got a position. And so, this is like the perfect stars aligning. And so, we interviewed him just like we would interview anybody else. And he went through our peer interviews just like anybody else would. And he applied and we put him on the front desk, which is the lowest level position. here. It is uh you know jack of all trades, master of none. It is bottom tier. It's running errands. It's weekly restocking of the kitchen. It's managing the building. It's um everybody's office supply lackey. And you're in charge of the agency's marketing because the agency has to be your first client. And if you run the agency's um marketing right, then you get trained to do client work. Ah >> that's awesome that you did that. >> Well it's a way to learn the systems and the processes and the expectations. We get a sense of seeing how you handle those responsibilities. You get a sense of seeing where the opportunities and the frustrations are. And I don't believe that the agency should be treated like a cobbler's kid. And so I don't want us to be last. There's one person dedicated to it. >> But yeah, but here's the thing is they're highlighting my mistake cuz I I didn't treat my kid like another employee. I didn't make her apply for the internship. I didn't make her, you know, go through the handbook and all that kind of stuff. Like, you did that. And if I'm expecting my team to treat her just like another intern or employee, like I need to do that, too. So, it's just food for thought, you know, if I align with you in terms of not ever bringing it up. Like, if she knocks on the door, yeah, absolutely have that conversation again. Um, but if if she come back, like I totally would follow in your footsteps and and be like, "Yep, well, you got to apply for the job and go through the interview process." >> Yeah. And and and know that whatever happens, you may not get the job. Like I said, go on the interviews in Nashville and Atlanta because if this doesn't work out, I don't want you to be jobless. And then I let Michael start talking to him about legacy. And you know, if you want to move home and build a life here, this is the best job you're going to get in Lafayette in terms of being perfect for you. And you don't have to start at zero like we did. You'll get to take over at year 30 where it's already a built business and you can now bring what you know about business and scale it. And so you know then it was a lot of aspirational thinking in future and I think that got him really excited but no he took a pay cut and uh definitely a ego cut and he started at the bottom and and has worked his way up now. He's had some promotions along the way and um he's got his own client roster now and he's got an office but he's earned that and the team has seen him earn that and I thought that was really important that they didn't feel like it got handed to him on a platter. >> Has that always gone well with the other employees? There was never an issue of resentment or anything. >> I don't think so. He no one else wanted the first job he had. And um no one wants that job. That job turns every eight months to a year um by design. I mean, no one's going to stay there forever. You're going to come in and do well and get promoted up or you're going to come in and not do well and and be escorted out. And um so they all saw him, you know, out sweeping the front of the building and changing toilet paper and emptying the humid dehumidifier and doing all those menial tasks. And I think that was good. People give him a harder time than they would probably give another co-orker every once in a while. All in the goodnatured fun, joshing around, you know, te I'm just teasing, but I see them giving it to him harder maybe than they would give somebody else. but he also dishes it. So, I can't tell if that's just he's asked for it and um he's getting it back or what because he can kind of be a dick. Uh so, you know, sorry, Lauren, did I just lose you your G rating? >> No, no, you're okay. I was about to ask you if you thought he wasn't performing well, you would be able to admit that to yourself and deal with it. But, but but based on that comment, I suspect you could. >> Oh, yeah. No, we have a weekly. So, I have um I have a weekly with every department and I have a one-on-one weekly with him so that he is getting not just the opportunity to get realworld information he needs for the work he's doing right now, but the training to take over when. So, I started the agency when I was 30 and I expect him to take over when he's 30. So, I got four years um still. I mean, we're we're a couple in already, but I've got four years left. >> Is that all on the table? Have you talked that uh >> absolutely everybody knows it. He and I have talked about it. What that means, we haven't figured out yet. So, I listen to every one of your podcasts and every, you know, founders group when we talk about ESOPS and we talk about sales and we talk about, you know, because every time I think I know what that structure is going to be, a week later I think I'm wrong. And so what I know is I don't need to know yet. So I'm I'm continuing to do my job of building out a completely scalable business that I am not an integral part of in any way so that when the time is right, I physically am not going to be blocking us from opportunity and then we can figure out whatever the structure of the transition will be when that time is right. Do you imagine him taking over and you departing or continuing to work at the business? >> I um I today's answer and again ask me in an hour and it might be different. Today's answer is that I would be the chairman. He would take over as the CEO or president title doesn't really matter but he would take over day-to-day operations and I would serve as almost like a board advisory role. Um, so I'm around but I I'm not expected to be here every day. >> I like that job. >> Me too. That to me might be the best of all the worlds because, you know, for the first year I was just dead set on we're going to sell to him and he's going to, you know, he's going to go get financed or an investor or whatever and he's going to buy it. And then I thought, why am I going to saddle him with debt? Like we we managed to run this whole thing for 30 years without getting a bank loan. So why am I going to push that on him? that seems awful. So then I was like, okay, well, owner finance, but so then I was like, maybe I'll just keep my same salary. Well, if I'm keeping my salary, I'm going to need to keep a position. So that's how I circle this drain all the time. >> Question, what happens if he takes over and he does a bad job? >> We've talked about that. Um, and so I told Michael, we um we need to be saving as if this doesn't work. Which we have been. I mean, we've we've we've been very good about that over the years. And a couple times I've had to dip into that when we had low years and that's how we were able to avoid having to go get investors or whatever. Um, but so what would that look like? I think that's why Michael feels comfortable with this version of where I'm still involved. >> Has Jackson got interested in the possible structures uh for this succession whether it's ESOP or or something else or having an owner financed deal or an investor deal or some other uh form. >> He hasn't um I think that he feels like it's still so far away. Um, you know, four years at 55 is five minutes away. Four years at 25 is decades. >> Yeah. Oh, he'll learn. >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I have some more goals uh to check off before we get there. And so I feel this sense of um weight because I want us to be at certain places in terms of our size and our growth and our pipeline and our stability. And I have some some metrics I need to check. And then I'm going to feel better about whatever path we choose because I know that what I'm handing over is um exactly where it needs to be. And we're not there yet. I mean, we're on the way, but we're not to where I want us to be. Are you and Michael still on the same page as far as most or all of this? >> You know, we um we went to the Edward Low Foundation last year for a program that they call the entrepreneur and residence. This program was very different from all the other times I'd been up there because it is 3 days of no programming. Uh they house you in these different um there's 34 structures on this 2,000 plus acre property. It's gorgeous in lower Michigan. And they feed you. There's an entire kitchen crew that um creates these amazing, very healthy, but so tasty breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But otherwise, your job is to think think about your next evolution. Think about your next chapter. And so, it's just entrepreneurs of eight of us. And so, it's a small group. We only see each other at meal time. And then after dinner, there's usually a fire pit and beverages, and people sit around and share war stories and and commiserate. It's really fantastic. And so Michael and I went up, we got to go together since we co-run and and co-own the agency. We went up together last year and we sat down to start our first session of just the two of us with a workbook they gave you to kind of guide you through the process. And I said, "My goal for the next three days is to figure out what my exit looks like and to help you be okay with it." And he said, "Exit from what?" Like our marriage, no, from work. And he was like, "What do you mean work?" I said, "Would it have been easier for you if I'd said marriage?" She goes, "I think so." And I was like, "Okay, well, I'm not exiting either of us in our lives, but I am not going to run the agency forever. I mean, I won't live forever." So, we need a plan. And not like a real plan, not like a here's where the bank records are, like a real plan for continuation and elevation. And so, we spent three days hashing it out. And what we finally came down to was I'm allowed at uh in the year 2030 when the agency is 30 years old to transition to whatever my next step is going to be. And he gets to stay if that's his choice. I've never had an issue with that. But he can't be mad or frustrated or try to prevent me from what my path is. I was like, you don't have to go, but you can't make me stay. And so I think finally we kind of hammered out something that works for both of us in terms of how that will work. But that's his big concern is, you know, he has probably overinflated faith in me because I don't think our success of the past 26 years is solely on me. I think I helped drive it. I helped facilitate it. I've helped to nurture it. But I am one of many. And it has truly been a team. And I think other people can lead that team. And I know that because there's 84,000 agencies and I only run one of them. >> We'll uh we'll probably keep talking about this as time goes on. I suspect I'll be eager to hear uh how you sort out the re the remaining details and and what Jackson thinks of all this, which obviously will become increasingly important. I want to talk about something else, especially with the two of you. Uh I recently highlighted story in the morning report that suggested that if you are in San Francisco or Silicon Valley, you should just assume that everything you say is being recorded. And that's because so many people are wearing AI devices and you pendants or bracelets, whatever. And pretty much no one asks for consent even though technically that's the law in many states including California. So I'd love to hear your take on this. Sarah, you are based in San Francisco and I believe you have one of those bracelets. Am I right? >> I do. So, just so you know, there's a reason why I have one of these bracelets. So, I'm an auditory learner. So, like I like my main news source is podcasts, radio, like um listening to people. Like that's how I learn. And so if I'm taking notes, then I'm not really listening to the person that's talking to me. So, I like in everybody else was served up um an Instagram uh post um about this bracelet that that doesn't record you. It transcribes your interactions and then it takes those transcriptions and then it, you know, uses AI to kind of consolidate the the findings from it and then you can connect it to your notes app um and select to add things to your to-do list, which is been fantastic for me because I'm not always in a position where I can sit there and take notes. um uh or want to take notes. I want to sit there and have a conversation and really engage with the person. Now, as far as telling people that um yes, there are laws about um two-party consent states in terms of recordings. Um but technically, this is not recording, this is transcribing. So, I to me it's a little bit of a gray area. I'm I would love for somebody to chime in and tell me that like that I need to go and tell people that I'm wearing a bracelet. I mention it, you know, if somebody asks or I'll offer it up and be like, "Yeah, I use this. I have this bracelet that just helps me remember everything." And most people are curious about it. But there's a lot of concern like, you know, is is Google listening to you? Is your phone listening to you? Is are all these devices in your house listening to you? I don't personally care. And I think maybe it's because I'm in the San Francisco Bay area because my life is not that interesting where I have any concern about trade secrets or something like that. So, I'm personally fine with it. I have not encountered anybody that would not be okay with it, but uh I'm sure they're out there. So, I'm just kind of riding the wave of it being a gray area right now. Um and and we'll we'll see how it goes. How widespread is the use in San Francisco? >> This particular item, it's a startup, so I don't know that they have a huge distribution yet, >> but there are lots of other devices, including glasses and other things. >> I think that you see more of it on social media than it's actually in real life. Um, you know, people are not walking around with the Ray-B bands on and stuff too often. And if they are, they'll probably be severely mocked by everybody else. But, you know, it it takes a while. But we we're are a community of early adopters, that's for sure. People come to visit San Francisco and they're like so freaked out about Whimos. Like, they're just kind of part of the the landscape here now. So, new technology is so um easily adopted, I think, um around here that nobody bats an eye. >> Jackie, do you have one of these bracelets? >> I do not. Uh Sarah showed it to me when we were all up at Ann Arbor at the 21 Hats conference and I immediately hit FOMO and ordered one, but it's been on back order uh because they're uh building a new like sold out so fast. I will get one. I will wear it. And I uh I don't understand the problem with recording um people. You know, we are in out and about and every business has cameras. I mean, my gosh, how many times a day do you see the shop shoplifting videos from the local store pop up? >> Traffic cameras, >> traffic cameras, sidewalk cameras, apparently at Coldplay concerts. I mean, everything is being recorded and and broadcast. I have a smart home. um that against Michael's um wishes when we did our big remodel after COVID, we went all in and so every appliance and light and everything is voice activated and operated. We have switches, too, but I honestly don't can't tell you the last time I touched a light switch at my home or my office. I drive a Tesla, so I'm all in on the tech. I I am an early adopter and I love it. And so I love that we record every meeting and I'm able to use those notes. Uh much like Sarah, I'm an auditory learner. I do find that I learn better when I am taking notes though. So I've kind of got both sides of that. And now having a completely uh recorded transcription of every meeting that I'm in every day. It is the greatest gift to me to go back and see what I said or didn't say, to take those transcripts. I've built out a uh GPT tool that analyzes my performance in a meeting based on this set of criteria. And so every meeting I plug it in and find out what questions did I not ask, what things did they say that I missed. And I it's training me to be a better salesperson. And that's based on the advice that we got from you, Lauren, in 21 Hats um morning report from Allen. It's brilliant. >> I can see that with the meetings, although I have some questions about that, too. The the bracelet feels like a different animal to me. Sarah, how do you It must be an incredible amount of data. Is Is that thing on all the time? Anytime you start talking, it the light blinks and it's recording. No, I mean, it's not recording. I I take your point. I understand. >> So, it needs to be it needs to be within spinning distance of your phone. Um, and there's one button on it, and one push of the button, it's on, and one push of the button, it's off. So you can pause pause its transcription. I I'm going to keep correcting you on that. It's not recording. It's transcribing. You can pause the transcription. So for example, I'm I'm I'm going out to >> I go to an event that's very loud. Um and there's no way I'm going to be able to get anything. I I turn it off. I pause it. I don't want that garbly Or I'm listening to a podcast in the car on my way to to work. I don't have it on. What I do have it on is like say um uh I went and met with a potential client the other day. Uh we sat down and it was just a very casual conversation and my colleague was like trying, you know, to take notes and stuff like that, but I knew that I had this on there so I could always go back. I have a question for you. So Jackie, you record your client calls and your other calls, which is great. And it sounds like you do go back and and look at them. I used to. So, I used to have that set up on my computer where it was like you have it pops up in the the Google Meet or the the Zoom call that you're recording. And I had that for a while. I found that people were a little bit more hesitant about that just because it was recording the conversation. I also found that I didn't necessarily go back and review those or leverage those like I thought I would. I think that they just go into cyerspace and then I personally didn't have a lot of value with those. To me, it was just too much acquisition of of detail. Right? Say I'm doing a quick touch base with a team member on a client. I'll turn it on. They know that I have my whole team knows I have it. I'll turn it on as I'm like writing my to-do list and like confirming with them I have a secondary list or whatever. I'm not going to sit there and record our conversations. So, I prefer it over the recordings um generated from video calls. That said, um I have worked with people that will do like, you know, that initial uh input call from a potential client on uh on recording and then they'll take their recording to to um better detail their proposal to them. I t I tend to rely heavily on my notes for those calls. And also when we have client calls, one team member is always manually taking notes during the call, just doing bullet points. It's usually like most junior level person on the team, but we all have the agenda open and we're watching them take notes so that we know that what's being recorded is the most important because there's a lot of garbly goop that just doesn't need to be recorded. I'm trying to understand why you would wear the bracelet for certain conversations but not use the notetaker for client meetings. >> Well, I have somebody taking notes during the client meetings in an agenda that I can easily go back to. There's it's too much information. Like if you're recording an entire I mean, yes, there's a lot the AI does consolidate it down for you, but it's going to miss stuff. You know, all this technology, it's it's great, but it's not perfect. Well, your person's not going to be perfect either, presumably. >> No, but like we're all looking at the agenda, watching them take notes. What usually happens is we're watching the the junior level person take notes and then the client says something and you'll see all of people's cursors jump over and they'll like correct the spelling on somebody's name. Like, we're all kind of using this. Okay, they're taking notes, but we're adding to it as we go. So, it's more like team note takingaking almost. And to me, we're all it makes we're all hearing the same thing. We're all seeing, okay, this is something that we need to do as opposed to like getting overloaded with too much transcription. >> Jackie, do you feel overloaded? >> Well, we use read AI or we have been using ReadAI. I don't imagine that if we will continue. Um, I think our next renewal we're going to make a switch probably to Granola for a series of reasons. If you want to get into like tools, we can do a whole episode just on that. So, they all live in ReadAI and in Google because they um are automatically ported over. I use them for to-dos. It'll tell me, "Hey, you need to do this, you do that." I use it for coaching when I talk too fast. It thinks I'm not engaged enough. So, there's plenty of opportunities like that where I feel like I've improved based on that. I use it for um understanding what so to take those notes and turn it into a proposal because it's a lot of new business stuff in my consulting work because I'm the team isn't backing me in the consulting work. That's just me. And so it's great to have those recordings and to use that when I'm building out the best practice guidelines when I'm doing the um social media reviews. I might miss that they said that you know CEOs LinkedIn is great but the company is um only okay I may flip that when I'm writing notes or not fully uh understood the importance of that well readi heard it and so they'll do a deep dive um that plus chat gpt or perplexity or claw depending on what I'm using at the time we'll do a deep dive into what's wrong with their LinkedIn how should it be better >> Jackie you mentioned granola granola was referred to in out story uh because it can kind of operate in stealth mode. Unlike most notetakers which show up on the screen and everybody knows they're there. Granola works uh locally on your own computer. Uh so people don't necessarily know unless you tell them. Do you think you'll tell them if you're using Granola? >> I don't mind that. I'm I'm all about disclosure. I want people to be happy. Um I actually like Granola as opposed to read AAI because of cost. It's about half the price and I don't think that Reed is giving me twice the tool since it's twice the price. So that's where I'm thinking about making the switch. I am fine that it shows up in the Zoom meeting and and people know it's there. I think we need to have an established protocol and so let me get to that overall point. I think that we should just as a people accept that everything is recording all the time and not be so worried about it because everything is recording all the time. I'm looking at Granola and it's saying it's transcribes your computer's audio, right? It doesn't record it, >> right? So, again, it's not doing the recording thing. But here's here's a a thing. I was reading about this the other day. Have you added any disclaimers or any or how you use AI as a marketing agency to your website? Because I I've read a lot about um companies doing that where they explain how they use AI. So I mean is this something that you know you ever put on your website like say we we use these tools to improve our productivity blah blah blah that's that kind of thing. >> I mean I didn't feel the need to do it when we started using Adobe and Photoshop or uh different video editing tools. I mean we're not still splicing film by hand like they did in the 80s you know. Um, so I I I can if everybody thinks it's necessary, it it won't bother me to do that, but I feel like we should not upload and we have an office policy to not upload confidential documents into it. Um, our own or our clients. Um, we aren't using it in place of people. We're using it to help the people be more efficient and smarter. And that's my job is to go use every tool. I mean, I can't imagine that anybody would need me to detail that we don't keep our prospects in a rolodex with file cards that spins around at a flip. They would be hopeful that we would use Salesforce and Mailchimp and all the things. Um, so to me, this is just another evolution of technology. >> Yeah. But here here's one thing I want to add that I I can tell you that I've been on many many many calls recently where people haven't shown up to the call but their notetaker does and the the call organizer will kick out the notetaker. >> Absolutely. As they should. >> Why? >> If you don't show up like you don't get to hear the stuff. >> Correct. >> And you don't get your notetaker to to do your job for you. And so I think what Jackie was saying is that like AI should not be a replacement or a substitution for human interaction, something that enhances what we do. >> Why do you draw the line there? I mean, >> it's cheating. >> It's cheating. Like I'm sorry. Like um >> maybe a higher level person isn't really required to be in this meeting. the lower level people can handle it, but the higher level person would like to be aware of what's going on and would be happy to >> and they should show up. >> Well, then they should require their low-level people to like keep them in the loop. >> So, Sarah, when we were in Ann Arbor and having our peer group conversations, was your bracelet taking notes? >> It was to a limit though because our peer groups were pretty large. So, like it's only so good. It's it's better for like more intimate. You're saying we had 25 people roughly in a fairly large room so it couldn't hear across the room maybe. Is that what you're saying? >> Yeah, it it it gave me, you know, reports that were like the gist of it. I can send them to you so you can take a look at it, but it gave me the the gist of what was discussed. And sometimes what I'll do for me is like I'll talk to it like I'll be driving in my car and I'll be like, "Uh, remind me to call my son's teacher or something like that." and I'll I'll just talk to it and it will add that to it and give them a report at the end of the day and then I'll put it into my to-do. So, it's also just a way for me to remember the things that pop in my head because I I have a lot of things that pop in my head throughout the day. So, some of those circumstances is not going to give me takeaways that are useful, but it was fun to to give it a go. I think it's something I need to think about because I do sometimes promise people that what is said here will stay here whether it's a virtual room or a physical room and this adds a complication to that that I don't know if it'll matter to people or not but I if somebody's talking about the performance of their business it might matter to them right >> it might >> something to think about my thanks to Jackie Russo and Sarah Seagull 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]