Is Anybody Listening to Me?

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week sha busy Paul DS and Jennifer Karen talk about the challenges of communicating with employees especially in the post-pandemic world it's hard enough to get aligned on mission and vision but how do you connect with an employee who you've never met in person is that even possible we also discussed Jennifer's realization that she has overperformed on sales but underperformed on marketing which is part of the reason she's redoing her website I need a higher level of prestige she tells us so better copy better photographs and all around more sophisticated look what we had was Mom and Pop you know Wix plus the panel tackles a question posted on the small business subreddit that question is how large can my margins become before I'm ripping off my clients even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations brought to you by our principal sponsor of the great game of business will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which Jake magazine named the best newsletter for business owners and which you can subscribe to for free at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews joining me this week on the podcast are regulars Sean busy CEO of kinesis which is based in Portland Oregon and works with small businesses on marketing culture and strategy Paul DS who is CEO of Paul DS cabinet makers which makes custom conference tables outside of Philadelphia and Jennifer Karen who is CEO of SB Expos and events an events management business based near Baltimore Maryland the episode is titled is anybody listening to me welcome Sean Paul and Jennifer it's great to have you here I want to start today with a topic that Jennifer raised in our emails before uh taping the show today which is how business owners communicate with their employees I think this topic is especially relevant to both Jennifer and Shawn because they've both gone fully remote since Co hit but Jennifer what what prompted you to raise the issue well the communication from a CEO is supposed to be both Visionary but then establishing a connection and with remote employees ones that maybe you've hired a year ago and you still haven't met in person the Visionary part has made sense to me I've I've worked through how to align our mission and our vision and our values to Showcase to employees but how to establish a connection or is that possible and do I have to just wait till we go face to face because we do events I meet the employees often in person sometime throughout the the year how best to communicate to establish connection I'm I'm just trying to figure it out you've spoken here before about the fact that you guys do get together even though you're working remotely you have these events and people gather there so you do get to spend time and you have meals together and all that but you just mentioned you have an employee you hired a year ago that you've never met in person that's kind of an amazing situation I was at a show site at a convention and there were three staff members and I went out to dinner two of them I had not met they were hired in the fall of last year so I had not met them personally uh obviously I hired them through Zoom it all worked out they're doing a great job but having dinner with someone there's a connection there that you just I mean I'm in the business of face to- face events I don't know why this surprises me but there just doesn't come across in Zoom right I can and I do often talk about the culture and the values of the of the company but that connection is just I'm I'm trying to figure it out of how to manage that through Zoom we do lunch and learns where the company buys lunch and we do training we do once a month we do uh a virtual happy hour where one of the Departments plays a game we all bring drinks and we learn either trivia or learn about our I'm just looking for more of those ideas of communication but more so connection with employees my question is why would you expect a fully remote uh relationship to work at all when I think about organizations where the actual leadership is sort of up on the mountain somewhere and giving pronouncements and often that is by video or whatever but you're not in actual touch with them most organizations that have been around for a while that do that always have somebody in person who's actually dealing with the line level people and you know think of the military or or any large corporation there's layers and you're trying to run a company where there aren't any layers but you and you're not making a physical connection but you're trying to be both the scary leader or the removed leader but also the empathetic inspiring leader and I'm not sure that that's possible without just showing up and and being in the same room with people John what do you think yeah I I don't have a silver bullet but a couple of ideas um and also some things I've seen with some clients that have worked well so one is I would encourage uh Jennifer you might consider the phone over Zoom I it's interesting when you get rid of the element of video you you just have a different relationship and that might be something worth trying with some of your employees um I found that you know there's something there's there've been some studies on this that when we see ourselves we're almost we're so fixated on how we look and how we appear that it it kind of freezes our brain and other areas so I also think that for f especially for fully remote companies that they need to take that money that they were going to spend on office space if they're committed to fully remote and they need to spend it on flying people to be together and I think they need to do that probably two to four times a year the clients that I've had that that are pretty successful in terms of culture and being remote I mean talking all over the country they'll Gather in different places around the country four times a year and these are not related to client work like you're doing these are actually just purely to to shape and cultivate the culture those have been really really successful from what I've seen and I'm trying to do that with us too Sean that's good to hear we are starting that um it's taking a big hit in my budget from professional development but we're doing Department of meetings with each Department's coming together for a day and a half in person cool the first one's coming up and and we're going to try that each department over the next four months is doing a a day and a half meeting in person uh that's a good to hear recommendation cuz we're see how this works yeah for what it's worth my son uh managed a team of software Engineers that was scattered all over the world you had like 20 people in can't remember a dozen countries and they made a point of getting together physically three or four times a year just exactly like Sean said and uh and I think that that's pretty well accepted in the software world where distributed workforces have been around for a while you just have to get together there's no substitute for it Paul obviously you're not taking your factory remote anytime soon uh do you have any employees who are working remotely not exclusively so yeah I would say that that no is the answer there are some who spend a day or two working from home when that's the right solution to the to the day uh but for the most part I see all my people at least several times a week physically like we're just in the same room and I think that that makes it much much easier to be the kind of leader I want to be I think I would have a hard time projecting empathy over video or or or the phone leaving the remote issue aside Paul I know you've given a lot of thought to how you communicate with your employees do you have an overall philosophy of what you're trying to accomplish uh in the way you communicate with them yeah my goal is for people to feel like they're part of an organ ganization that values their participation one of the things that I learned at at my Visage group I think five or six years ago we had a great speaker and the guy was an actor he was like one of these local theater types and he came in and he said hey if you want to be the leader it's a role it's it's something you put on every day you change your your demeanor the speed at which you speak the consideration you give people everything is an act because all your people are going to be looking at you they're the audience and they're looking for I believe certain things from leadership and those things are one leadership has a plan that there's some some like considered way that we're going to move into the future number two leadership is honest about the situation the company is in and I give regular briefings every Monday uh updating my employees as to the financial health of the company and the the sales we made and sort of what I see on the horizon but I think that the other thing is that it's also important that a leader these days demonstrate a personal connection to the people who work for them and show some empathy and know you know like know when the dog needs to be put down the kids are sick or whatever is happening that you you have some recognition that your people have their lives and that you're you're there you're listening you're you you can be a resource I just had an employe who got on a plane to go to Ethiopia last week because his family has been there he's from there and he was the family was caught in this Civil War situation and he had not been able to communicate with them for 3 years and during this time there was a lot of trouble in the area he was in and he didn't know whether they were alive or dead and just recently he was able to reestablish Communications and he said hey I want to go back and I was like sure do you need some money but I just loaned him some money so that he could go and do what he needed to do and it's being ready to respond to how people are I think it goes a long way to building a culture the kind of culture that I want where everybody cares for each other but it has to come from the top too that the leadership has to care about the other people so those are my goals I love all that stuff you're saying especially the acting part cuz I think there is something to projecting when you're in a when you're in a position of leadership and and and I found that in times when I'm just not motivated and I'm not fired up I the results I get are just so poor and when I am engaged and when I am participating it's like exponentially better man that's that's really really cool the acting thing is kind of interesting to me you need to perform but you need to perform an act genuine that almost seems contradictory you need to perform but there's techniques involved in performance that make make your your inner feelings communicate better to the people who you want to understand what you're thinking a lot of that is about diction honestly it's about making sure you speak slowly clearly you don't uh you don't contradict yourself two minutes later um you listen but all those things are to my mind a skill set and when I encountered this guy I'd already been a boss for more than 25 years years but thinking back to all the situations when I was much younger particularly when I was younger and I was trying to communicate to people who are older and more experienced to me it would have been damn helpful to have some of these techniques in hand just to make it give myself a little bit of a Tailwind when you're fighting to establish your own authority and expertise in certain subjects I'm right in the middle of of I've promoted somebody internally to the role of President and it's just part of my succession plan and it's so interesting watching her present to the team she's she's really beloved by the company everybody there she does the third thing you talked about which is create personal connection Paul but it's interesting because the thing she's actually not that good at and she's working on it is Clarity and succinct communication and so when she does a presentation she's got way too many slides and way too many bullets you know I'm really trying to coach her on single message very clear metaphors make it simple for people to understand because they can only handle so much information at once and in the one-on ones you can get a little deeper but as in a group that Clarity of information and succinctness is just so important and I think that's part of the skill set in acting you're talking about too and is that translating uh in a remote environment Sean it's not as easy I you know it's a lot a lot lot harder because you can't read the room it's really easy to be passive if you're a participant those little things that when you're in a meeting that like help the meeting like somebody throws out a little joke here and there to lighten the room those are harder to do knowing knowing the vibe of the room is really difficult on Zoom so yeah it's I think it's an uphill battle all the way I would agree with that Sean so I every Monday morning send out a a weekly email from the CEO just sort of an update of of things I sort of have different categories I focus on and there's usually always a call out of an employee who did something great but then on Wednesday morning we have a half hour full staff meeting and I asked them I was like do you guys what do you think of these emails do you even read them and what do you think of the zoom meeting and and they told me some really great positive feedback and they're like don't you know this I said how do I know it it's impossible to read the room Sean right it's it's impossible you're trying to be succinct I am not very clear sometimes either so I try to do repetitive uh words repetitive categories each week just so that message stays on point and they remember it and it was great getting that feedback because I wasn't sure how it was being received yeah I mean Paul you're so fortunate in some ways that your business just like there it's not an option and I it's just clear that you lose so much over the remote and and and you're starting to see now some of the studies there was a study out in Bloomberg about productivity and remote work and sort of some of the problems with those early studies that were showing greater levels of productivity so that's just one element the productivity side but I think the morale of the team and the sense of connection those things are boy it just we're humans I mean we've been together in real space for hundreds of thousands of years so it's just but I'll never go back Sean will you um we're looking at office right now okay I'll never do it why never Jennifer what we do the ability to find labor across the country makes it so much easier to to scale up it's really hard in the geographic region I'm in to find the labor needed it's difficult and so now I don't have to just stay I'm not constrained by geography I I am constrained by other issues but but not that where are you you at in Baltimore oh is it just that it's really expensive labor or is it just very Niche very Niche labor I mean that's a huge Market that's interesting well I I think that what we're going to end up is replicating what used to be back in prehistoric days where people lived in very small family bands most of the time they were in groups of just a couple of people and then they would get together with the rest of the tribe several times a year to sort of make the culture work and get their kids married and do whatever they did but it was a splitting apart and coming together splitting apart coming together and we've just done this big experiment of what happens when everybody splits apart and we haven't figured out what the coming together needs to look like although I think that certain industries are ahead of it just like my son software experience but that wasn't cheap they would they would put everybody on a plane flying to Portugal or whatever it helps to be in the software business yeah the VCS could do that I don't know whether Jennifer could afford to do that but uh I think that there's no free lunch in terms of oh I don't need to rent an office and I can just sit at my desk all day and run a multinational corporation I don't think that that's actually going to work we're going to see that pretty clearly yeah I agree 100% Jennifer it sounds like you're doing well with a lot of these things did this issue come up in your mind because there were problems that you feel need to be addressed or is it more just a vague sense that you're not sure you have the connection you'd like to have or or that you once had when you were all working in the same place I think it's more just a vague sense of am I talking and no one's listening and should I be doing something differently right I think that's it to to Sean's point of reading the room if you talk and no one's paying attention you find out pretty easily what you're saying is worthless when you're sending an email or you're doing a zoom call it's more difficult and I I absolutely believe to Paul's Point earlier the way I Inspire is to tell my employees what they do matters what the important work that they do they may not notice it but it helps fund the mission of an association and we work with some amazing associations that are doing really important impactful workout there and what my staff does is help them fund that mission and I want to make sure that comes across I want to inspire them but I also want to know that they're listening or that it matters and that they're not just ignoring it I don't know it's I think it's a more vague sense Lauren did you used to have an office Jennifer we did we did what was the lease payment on that office and the headcount of people you had there well I owned the office I still do and so I never really paid myself I should have H okay so it's artificially artifici and then I would have been the person in 2019 my staff came to me and wanted to work one time per month at home and I was like no I don't see and then Co forces us and I was two weeks away from buying a 3,500 foot building to house our office in right before Co to fully embracing the virtual work and I love it now I absolutely do it I think my employees love it it works really well for all of us are there challenges yes yes we discussed it before training new people recent college graduates is challenging connection is challenging and I think I'm hoping Sean that these meetings these in-person meetings do solve some of that um and I think I wish I would have thought of that last year yeah I mean I think folks are kind of just now figuring this out and they and they they saw the positive aspect of remote you know which are many you know especially when you have kids or elderly parents or caring for somebody commutes or I don't miss to commute at all and now I think we're starting to see like the downside I yeah I I love your idea of getting people together the companies that I've seen that are doing that seem to be doing well I get back to why I asked Jennifer what you were paying for your lease you know I was doing the math on pre-pandemic Kinesis and we were spending I don't know n Grand a month somewhere in that range you know for a team of H 14ish people it was probably more space than we needed but it was wonderful space you know if I take that number multiply times 12 throw in some extra money for all the lunches and other stuff we would do it's probably $120,000 a year you know that's what like $8 $9,000 per person you know I could budget that to fly them places put them up have them have great experiences so I don't know that it's necessarily more expensive to do that it's just a different use of the money and I think a lot of folks went remote and they were like this is sweet we're saving all this money but they're they're Miss missing out on the costs that they're paying that they're going to pay in higher turnover rates of Junior employees um folks feeling disconnected alienated so they got to counteract that and that's going to take money that's just going to take money I that's all it's as simple as that all right next topic Jennifer at the end of the last session that you were on you mentioned that you've recently invested heavily in a new website uh could you tell us a little bit about that what what are you trying to do and how's it going sure it's not launched yet it will be launched in a few weeks so we're we're on the the final lap um I think we rebranded January of 2022 and we did it very quickly after covid because our company changed dramatically we added a lot of new Services we're doing a lot of tech support in the virtual event world so we rebranded but there just wasn't enough time in the day to Rebrand and then make a great website so we just sort of slapped it together and now year into this a year and a half it's not good enough right a year into it we realize we're just not making an impression when when new associations come to us it looks bad and so our new website we're we're not going in a New Direction like Paul is with his website it's the same people that we want to see it and it's not for lead generation it's more to Showcase who we are to to associations that already may be interested in us and I need a higher level of prestige so better copy better photographs all around more sophisticated look what we had was Mom and Pop you know Wicks and uh and now moving to the next level we're having a professional designer professional copywriter a brand agency helping us to get to that next level of sophistication so I would say overall pretty great I look forward to the end result you're like near the Finish Line on this I am I would say two more weeks and what's the budget been it's been low we've spent about $155,000 on everything on everything that's yeah that's low low by my lights so hopefully sophistication level is so hi we have um a great great agency that we've worked with in the past and partnered with on some other things that I know gave me a family and friends discount and um I'm I'm looking forward to seeing that result do you get a lot of organic traffic to your site no how do people get there then why would they find you yeah they contact us through other means I speak at a lot of conferences or I um they moved from Association to Association heard of us and so they they say oh I recommend this this um this company and then that person goes on the website to hear more about us the function it's performing is affirmation yes you know so your customers are your potential customers are evaluating you they're finding out about you via word of mouth and then the website's job is to affirm that purchase and to not scare them away I'm going to use that sophisticated marketing language SE I'd like that affirming our our abilities and our reputation I like it that's going in my next weekly CEO email that's cool it should be like like I really really encourage folks to think about good marketing as a series of yeses like okay they heard about us via Word of Mouth they heard good things that's a yes they went to the website they saw on the website what they heard via word of mouth that's another yes they wrote a case study that's another yes they picked up the phone they had a great experience on the phone that's a yes and so like just evaluating that entire journey of purchasing to the point they become a customer and then after and make that all yeses and look for the Nos and sounds like your website was kind of a well maybe it's not it wasn't a yes so that's cool I agree yeah I'm looking at your website right now the thing that's missing that that you need is uh testimonials from clients front and center because anybody can put up a site that says hey we do stuff but it's the power of other people affirming that you did a great job is is what you really want to put right there totally agree that's phase two so the website goes up and in the meantime we have people working on writing case studies with our clients so that will be probably in the fall totally agree with you I would extract the pus sentence or two from those case studies and just make a scroll on the bottom of the screen that's just like these people are awesome andan we've looked into why people buy from us and a big part of it is they suspicious you know like who are these guys they just came from a Google search so we were always making sure that we're showing them two kinds of testimonials one from people who are just plain impressive but the other one is from people who might be down the street from our clients so that we're saying yeah we could service anybody even the most demanding but we also work with people like you and it's doing those two things at the same time is the best thing you can do with testimonials sometimes the testimonials can chase people away if they look at the testimonial and they say oh well of course you know like the president hired you well of course you did a great job but that's not me so you have to have to figure out who your next client is and make sure that you're demonstrating that you could do for them the same work you could do for anybody else I agree with most of everything Paul just said I'm curious about what your strategy is for your about page like right now like my my instinct when I look at a company is to go to the about page and too and the team page and Jennifer you don't have one right at the moment so what happened is it's terrible I have underperformed in the marketing area but overperformed in the sales and so now I'm going back to be like okay our marketing presence needs to reflect who we are as a company now and so that's why a couple months ago I embarked on this process yeah don't look at our website it's terrible um the new website feel free to to give me feedback in a few weeks I'll come back on and you guys can give me better feedback on that but overall across the board we tell a much better story in the sales process than we've ever done in mark marketing and I don't know where that disconnect happened it happened years ago it's I think because I enjoy sales more than I enjoy the marketing part of it I don't know well who's helping you with the marketing well up until a year ago I I was totally responsible for business development so Business Development marketing was on my shoulders and I lean towards the sales and you like sales right I mean that's like the age-old pitfall that every owner does is they hire a VP of Business Development and hope that they'll do marketing and sales equally well and they never do they're either really good at sales or they're really good at marketing and the two like so it's great you recognizing that you're really good at sales and that's usually the fastest path to growth which you've demonstrated so who's going to help you with the marketing now well you know Sean it's funny you say that because the Director of Business Development I had she's amazing but she's more A salesperson too so a you got two of you I don't havek I have a bunch of volunteers from the staff but they are not marketing people oh you've just identified a a gap that I have now yeah and then you're only spending 15 grand so I'm like uh who's going to really nail it for you I'm I'm hoping your agency's good what's your suggestion well wait till your website comes out then Paul will really really hurt your feelings well you're going to do four million bucks this year right no 36 let's say 5% for marketing that's about what I've spent on it for years whatever that is you know that's closer that's closer to 100 Grand and that's how you grow your company you have to make people aware the fact that you guys are good at sales is awesome because a lot of people are the flip side and and that's a that's a much tougher problem that's a worse problem actually yeah but I think part of it is thinking of just like hey there's we're making this much money this much money is coming in the door how much should I be spending on whatever and uh you're not spending on rent okay you're going to maybe spend it on staff development but you should have a budget for marketing you should just expect to pay something for it I do but I've put the marketing money in thought leadership so when I speak at conferences the cost that it takes for me to go there we're exhibiting for the first time this year right that's totally reasonable yeah I mean it doesn't I'm agnostic on what you should do with it but I don't think you should be surprised to be paying something for it no I'm not surprised with that what I'm I'm disappointed I guess in myself is that I the website just became overlooked as we grew and we focus on sales somehow this website fell to the side and I'm looking at it now and it's pitiful right so Jennifer why didn't you uh address it when you did the overall rebranding why did you leave that behind at that point I rebranded but I wasn't sure at that point we hadn't had the sales come in in retrospect yes Lauren I should have at that point said let's spend $30,000 make some great brochures or or website do testimonials put it there but I wasn't quite sure and then in a few months later we got all the sales so there was like a small window of opportunity that I just skipped over and then the sales came in and I was busy trying to figure out how to scale up operationally well this is so good because really what this illustrates is that Jennifer kicks ass at sales she's allocating money to a type of marketing which is thought leadership which leads to faster lead generation because it's like people are seeing her they're seeing she's an expert they're going we want to talk to you and they're kind of half of them are going to the website and maybe not taking action because the website's hurting you but the rest are going like I trust this person I'll overlook this crappy website so it's like it's actually for dollar for dollar a great use of your money but then then the thing you're not doing is a different type of marketing you're really not doing brand strategy messaging and communication yes and that's a whole different discipline and requires different level of expertise and and you know it's cool you've identified the challenge but that's you've also been doing really great things so I think I think Paul's right though I think you've underresourced You' probably underresourced marketing and you've put a lot of it into sales I agree I agree to scale to the next level I can't can't ignore it anymore right I could get to this level with a hard emphasis on sales and expertise through thought leadership but to grow to the next level I can't what percentage of your business now is repeat clients 70% well that's how you've been surviving oh good point because once you get them once then whether you have a shitty website or not doesn't matter and uh but that's that will limit your growth because you're not what's just what Sean said just picture it someone says oh I saw this saw Jennifer at the uh at the at the conference she gave a great speech and someone says oh yeah send me the email or whatever and then they click on the website and they're like you want to hire this person and you lose them there that's where you lose them and so that you're you you've been able to keep your hooks in people by doing a great job and that's fantastic but it's going to limit your growth it's so easy to just see some little thing these days and be like ew that bothered me I'm gone and so our whole Marketing sales process is about making sure that once you're in our in our like our gravity uh pole that you never get out that we never give you that excuse to leave everything gets better and better bunch of yeses it's all yeses yeah what do you what's the average age of your buyer and has that changed Jennifer uh I would say 35 to 55 no it has not changed it's not gone down no like really so this is so this is another factor to consider is that older buyers Place less emphasis on things like visual design and Clarity of messaging and professionalism of the website and to Paul's Point like younger buyers that could be an immediate no and so that's a thing I always wonder about with new clients is what's your buyer like and I'm seeing a pretty massive shift because the Boomers are retiring or leaving their businesses so now you're getting either gen xers who are at the VP level or the decision-making level and there's not enough of us and so that means Millennials are into those positions and they really grew up on brand they grew up on professionalism and Clarity of brand so I think it's even more important as the age of those and maybe the age isn't changing maybe it's just that that that demographic is now in charge so I think that's real so after website and then case studies Sean or Paul what do you think's next for me on the marketing side it depends on how you present the case studies like I would I would be careful about just having a page full of case studies on your website you need something that speaks to people being happy right on the homepage and we have a rotating I don't know what do you call it it's not a banner but it's just like Carousel a carousel there you go that's just testimonial after testimonial so that as soon as you're on the site you're seeing oh there were happy clients now that's on the new site on the old site we have the Google review tab right on the page with 100 some Google reviews and you click into that it's all about establishing that other like real people have patronized your company and and had a good experience that's the key thing these days well I I think one thing though Paul that's really important I'm guessing folks when they come to your site they are in a buying state of mode right like they know I need a conference table and so they're EV they're in the evaluation phase and so it makes a ton of sense for you to throw testimonials because you're saying we already know you need a table we make tables look at what everybody says about how great our tables are it could be that Jennifer's buyers maybe need to be educated they they may not actually know they need to hire her to do the thing that's the challenge I have is that like folks are not they don't know what they need to buy when they're coming to our site as an example so I guess that's a question for you Jennifer is like are they buying you know do they know what they're buying um or do you have to educate them still you bring up a really good question I think before they were coming to our site because they knew what they were buying but now that we've added these Services you're making me think here Sean I think I'm realizing that especially on one side of it we need to do a significantly better job of educating them on these some of these new especially to the new Services I'm thinking of uhhuh I mean that could be because because my understanding if if I remember back to some of the shows I've listened to you on the landscape has changed so dramatically because events and Association events they've gone from Allin person to remote and now hybrid right and so then that's opened up a whole Pandora's box of ways to approach an event correct correct you're exactly correct okay so you're going to have buyers who don't know what those Solutions are so you got to educate them before you can sell them sometimes that's exactly the service that I'm thinking of that's the service that's brand new that and the the event tech support those two services are new they're kind of new to The Association Convention world because they didn't exist before or they did but in such a small very small way before covid no you are absolutely right we have not changed our mindset in that the website then is or any of our Communications we have zero other promotional Communications zero so that there's no education on those two services I'm taking copious notes now Paul how do you hand because I I I I simplified your business a lot there but you you're absolutely On Target yeah we got a different different buyer than she does although maybe not that different yeah I would say that what's similar between your buyer and my buyer is that they're shopping for something that is not generally understood by buyers like my people come to us with no preconceived notion of what a table should cost for instance and is that an advantage or a disadvantage for you oh it's a huge Advantage I mean I don't want to be in a price competition with anybody and as I said there's a lot of buyers who proceed all the way down the road with us who you never think would be buying an expensive custom table the thing is we just gave them what they wanted and then at the end of the day they didn't even bothered a price shop I I imagine uh because we we answered every question so I think that if you're going to educate a client the one thing I would I would watch out for and we've we've sort of found this out the hard way is that if you put the answer to every question on your site in a way that people can easily read and understand they'll often just read and understand and go away and think like oh I got it okay got it now yeah and what you really want is to talk to them so you have to kind of leave a certain amount of a certain amount of confusion there so that they they want to call and figure out what you're actually doing and how did we find that out well through a lot of experimentation with how comprehensively we would describe the solution to certain problems and when we made it Crystal Clear like how to size a table for your room then people would just like like oh thank you very much that was nice information then they would disappear whereas if you kind of got them started but then maybe didn't tell them everything then people would call you to figure out what the rest of the answer was so you got to understand what your goal is too like my goal is to get people to call me so we're very carefully tracking the number of people who arrive at the site and the number who call us and from year to year and so that we can see whether we're on track with at least that part of the generating the funnel and is that Paul with your new site that's that's geared towards the Architects that's a very different audience and so it doesn't need quite the same treatment okay with them we're really emphasizing that uh sense of hey we've worked with the most demanding people and we've worked with people like you that's really what this the that site is supposed to say and uh that's why we put the testimonials up in a way you really can't avoid them and they're very carefully chosen like we've got we got a couple of thousand different nice things people have said about us over the years so the ones I chose to feature were very carefully considered like who is it what are they saying uh what is the message they would give to someone who's not sure whether we're a good idea or not because with those with the clients we're aiming for in that site the worst thing they could do would be to go all the way to the end of a project with us and we screw it up that would be a disaster for that person and so we have to be engendering trust right from the get-go which is probably exactly the same thing with you like you're dealing with the operating director of some Association and that person's either going to come away after the convention be feeling like that was a win or that was a loss and if it's a loss then their personal credibility within the organization is now threatened so part of the part of our messaging is is based on understanding who we're talking to and what different people how how they win or lose within their organization and their day-to-day life and uh so making sure that we're responding to people who need to be able to show that their choice was the best choice to the other people that they have to deal with all the time Paul after your website do you have a Communications plan that's not just sort of sales calls um not a really good one and we're trying to rectify that uh most of our traffic is just inbound and and that's enough to get me sort of where I've gotten and we're trying to figure out an outbound sales strategy I think it's a really difficult problem these days because the channels that everybody has access to are mostly digital and it's mostly advertising sort of Google style advertising remarketing ads that chase you around all your devices and you're like what the hell is this why are these people nagging me and everybody in the industry swears to God that works and everybody out of the industry hates it so there's something basically wrong here and so it's not clear to me what the what a strategy would be other than to put out decent content keep the website fresh do the Instagram feed and hope for the best you mean you're not going to do table talk a new Tik Tock Channel devoted to conference tables um I even mention it um no I I don't think I will but I am going to try to talk more I don't know I don't know what we're going to do I it's as a 61-year-old this whole world is kind of discouraging because if we Master Tik Tock then five years from now it'll be blip blop or some other thing that's all new and we got to start all over and and I just that's not that's not very exciting for me so Jennifer are you using LinkedIn as a as a way to create new connection and then influence yes so I love LinkedIn it's the only social media that I I love and we post uh when we're on showsite to photographs of what we're doing uh we connect a lot with our potential clients as well as our current clients that is a medium or social media outlet that our potential clients use yeah I think one one opportunity that's pretty big there is is not just to like hey look we're doing this we're doing this we're doing this but actually to use something it's called the Strategic narrative framework essentially what is the old way that was being done what is the new way why do you need to care and and I think for you to just Hammer that out there continually to let people know there's a new way that's I think that's your opportunity because there is this is a clear case of like the world has changed people need to know about that change you are at the Forefront of that change what do you think I like it so is it me writing it is it chat GPT is it a Content writer I I mean it's got I think you're probably the voice as opposed to the company it's going to be more compelling and believable yeah I mean that this might be a you might need some help here but I I would just encourage you to think about what really connected when you were up on stage in the real world that got people leaning forward you know and then try those messages out in the space and try storytelling in the space and if that starts to work then you can try things like paid media but I don't know I I like the authentic connection that's what fires me up about LinkedIn as well going back to the website for a second I'm feeling a little bit guilty that we're having this conversation right before she puts up her new website and we may have discuss some things here that she's now I think it's great because now I can have their feedback once it's done and they can tell me okay wait a minute we we should we should actually for the benefit of the audience just say what the URL is so they can look at this site right now and go yeah o and then when the new one comes out uh we they can be like holy smoke so it's discover sb.com and the name of your company is sponsorship boost and your website that used to be the name that used to be the name well that's what you have stamped on the envelope you sent me so yeah that's cuz it's now SB Expos and events so all right SB Expos and events but it's dis it's still going to be discover sb.com you might need that marketing person Jen I think I do I think I do I think I have to figure out uh next stage I'll add one other thing which is that when I hire a website company I don't assume that we're just going to do the site and then shake hands and then we're going to be done I actually have my first website company on retainer and we're still in the bug fix phase of the second website company but I'll put them on retainer too I always want to make sure that we have a pretty comprehensive backend to the website so that I can do a lot of editing myself we can load new content in we can update things but to me it's just like of course you're you're going to need to be talking to these people all the time a website is your store you don't just put put stuff in it one day and then just forget about it for the next 5 years you you have to have to think about it and have the ability to change it whenever you feel like it and that should be the expectation of both you whoever on your team is doing content and the people who are running the website I'd like to try to squeeze one more Topic in here real quick I actually saw this question on the uh small business subreddit the owner of a landscaping company asked how large can my margins become before I'm ripping off my clients and I thought the conversation was pretty interesting I'm curious how you guys react to that is is the size of your margins an ethical issue I guess is kind of the question uh well I would say that that based on the businesses in my Visage group that different Industries just have different expectations of margin and that service Industries and Professional Service Industries have much much higher man margins and manufacturers the guys I know in the group who have the highest margins are in the 30 to 40% range and that's just normal for those kinds of businesses do they worry about ripping off their clients because their margins are L that's just how it goes and uh they they uh you know like a manufacturing if you could get a 40% net margin oh my God uh it wouldn't last long because someone will steal your product and I think that the the question really is Ed not by by the the owner but by the marketplace and the customers so if the customers are paying so much and then they suddenly realize that down the street there's another landscaper is half the cost they'll go there and you know that'll fix itself you got to have some faith in the market but different businesses settle into different patterns and so that there may not be a huge price difference from going one business to the other if the whole industry works that way I agree a margin is a temporary snapshot right of what's happening with your business and your service or product and it could change drastically in six months competition could come in um the market could change economic standings could change so then your your margin over the course of the year is much less than what it might be for that one product that one job that one client so I would not worry it sounds like the question's based on fear anxiety I wouldn't worry about about it I would worry that if it's so high you price yourself up if a competition comes and sort of steals your lunch SE we're all familiar with businesses that don't charge enough that they're they're afraid to raise their prices because they're not sure people will pay it do you ever run into businesses that are reluctant to charge more because they think there'd be something wrong if they actually charged more oh yeah I've over the years many many businesses and I I think the the Achilles heel here is that our ability to gauge value as the provider of the thing is is very limited because what we do it it comes maybe it comes naturally to us or we've built experience over the years and so we have a tendency to devalue the thing that we do in relationship to what the market sees its value as and and I think for the landscaper this is a great example right I couldn't find somebody to come take care of my yard like I would call and nobody return my calls so for me the value isn't in the price it's actually in reliability and consistency and so this this landscaper may very well be underestimating the value he provides to his customers because he doesn't actually understand their point of view you know it could be that these customers like they greatest value is time and so to have somebody who's consistent and good and does great work like they don't think about the margin and being ripped off they see a great value to what he's doing and I think that's usually where owners get caught is they they don't recognize that what they're doing is so incredibly valuable um and if it's not the market will crush you so yeah well there's there's one other possibility too and I've run into more people who are in this situation probably than those who are able to get away with overcharging which is they don't actually understand their numbers and so they think that they're like oh if I charged $100 an hour when I used to make 25 bucks an hour working for Joe that's terrible I wouldn't do that and and uh they just don't have any sense of what are the actual costs they need to cover in order to perform their business successfully and so I think that that's when people ask that question I'm always like do you actually know what you're talking about I mean let's face it nobody would ever drive for Uber or any of these delivery companies if they actually understood car depreciation and there's so many people who just have no idea what they're trying to accomplish by charging money to some other person and what they need to get in order to actually have a healthy business and I've talked to multiple small small struggling business owners who were in that situation just never had any notion of what they needed to do with their money so they were undercharging and and they were constantly in trouble and and tearing their hair out and uh so fix that problem first before you worry about overcharging people yeah Amen to that it's so easy to under appreciate the risk you are taking as an owner and to some degree you have to price that into how you charge for things you know you get sick and can't deliver Services um an employee sues you a client sues you it's just a very volatile uncertain environment and to some degree margin is your is your friend in that all right my thanks to Shan busy Paul DS and Jennifer Karen and to our sponsor the great game of business which helps businesses use an openbook management system to build healthier companies you can learn more at Great game.com thanks everybody wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's l r n at21 hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think you can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcast follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by Jess thubron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]