I’ve Had a Love-Hate Relationship With PR

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week's conversation was supposed to be about how the pandemic has changed sales strategies and for a while it was but it seemed my guests really wanted to talk public relations so that's what we did we talked about how you get PR and how you assess the results we compared the merits of public relations to those of advertising and we discussed whether you need to hire a firm or whether you can do it yourself one concern all three of my guests shared is the cost of PR here's how jay goz put it you hire an accountant you're going to get some accounting you hire a lawyer they'll do some legal work PR is one of the few things you can pay money for and get absolutely nothing even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will if nothing else let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners and which you can subscribe to at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews joining me this week are regulars Paul DS who is founder and CEO of Paul DS cabinet makers which makes custom conference tables outside of Philadelphia Jay goz whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason Hol and William Vander bluman who is CEO of Vander bluman Search Group a recruiting firm based in Houston that works with churches and other faith-based organizations the episode is titled I've had a LoveHate relationship with PR welcome Paul J and William hope you're all doing well uh I want to start today with a topic we really haven't dealt with that much which is sales and specifically I'm curious if anything has changed in your sales approach as a result of Co Jay how about you I've got different kinds of sales I've got inside sales people who take care customers to walk in and I will tell you I've just had a profound change between the minimum wage going up a dollar an hour every year for the last three or four years now all of a sudden it's $15 it was whatever 111 12 between that and the mentality of the people that I hire has changed a little bit you know it used to be in my framing showroom they would grab the next customer to get a little and I never paid a lot but I've always paid a little commission just to compensate them for people that you know were quicker and you know put more sales through they're they're not doing that anymore they're not that driven by it so I just realized I'm way better off raising the wait they're not doing what anymore you know I had people that when the customer walked in they would grab the customer they wanted to get to sale and now like walking into an auto dealer yeah they're walking into right the two's up so um be between that and the fact that the minimum wage is now $155 an hour I realized I'm better off paying more per hour and and putting back on the commission because the commission thing isn't going to make a difference to anybody whether it's less or more they don't know what that means when they get when they interview for the job but they do know the difference between you know $16 or 18 or 18 and 20 so we're I figured it out I did the math it's going to cost me the same exact thing but it'll also smooth out their sales because during slower months sometimes they didn't get commissions because I have a floor they have to hit so I've just redone my whole sales commission thing based upon are you changing this just for new people you hire or no everybody everyone's being the same thing and and how did your existing employees take it I just came up with this yesterday but um I'm also going to put a guarantee to everybody look at we'll look at it at the end of the year if anyone lost any money I'll make it up to them but I I don't think that's going to be the case but that's a profound change partially driven by the fact minimum wage is $15 it it's it's and I'm not complaining about it it's just I want to I want to be an appealing offer and like I said charge paying $20 an hour in a smaller commission sounds better than you know $17 so that's on that side on the outside sales I've got three people that go out and call on corporations to do art programs and such employees yeah they're full-time employees um I got to look at that I mean the world's changed with getting your foot in the door and going through design firms and the internet and it's just I know it's personally I'm getting so few calls now it's unbelievable I mean I used to get I don't know in the olden days I'd get two phone calls a day from people trying to sell me insurance trying to sell me stock brokerage real estate and these days I can go a week without getting one phone call so is cold calling dead I don't think so but it's certainly not what it used to be what have those three salese been doing especially during Co how have they been not easy a lot of the projects have been put on hold and uh you know the offices aren't open and you know uh it's it's causing me to have to look at that whole thing Paul how about you are you doing anything differently no we were actually our operation was well suited to a covid world because we had always done our selling mostly through screen shares and phone calls and the only thing that really changed was the number of people who were in The Market our process didn't need any modification at all um we saw we we sell through two main channels one is internet driven people just contact us directly the other channel was when we work through an intermediary like a furniture dealer or rep and those kinds of of uh of of organization really had a collapse last year because they service people who are in offices and moving offices and office life has kind of come to a halt so we've seen the sales levels have been reasonably good but the almost all of it is coming through the internet channel so having that diversification was good luck for us and what I'm considering that would be different is more marketing uh whether to make a push through the at the furniture dealers and and my my gut says don't bother uh or whether to put more resources into that direct to buy or sale and we're looking at ways to do that do you get emails every single day from company from people saying oh I went to your website and we can figure out how to get you sure I mean that's just Spam what you're talking about is is the when the tools facilitate communication there's more communication so the the other thing your remark about uh I don't get cold calls anymore um I don't get cold calls if I can help it part of it is that I think people put up better defenses against cold calling and so it's just not as effective as it used to be well coincidentally yesterday I got a call from an office dealer an office office furniture dealer wondering if we're expanding and I thought it was a weird out of the clear blue I don't know why where they got my name but they get your name from anywhere there's so many services that identify key players and companies and give you their contact information and all you got to do is pay money and you get those lists and you hire somebody to uh plow through the list I don't think it's particularly effective but that information is out there and marketers use it do you use it I've thought about it we we have done well by waiting for interested people to contact us and by being in a good position on Google so that when someone begins their search for a new boardroom table they just find us and we've never done any branding we've never really done any Outreach because the people I mean we can identify the demographics of people who buy our stuff but the number of them who are in the market for at any given moment is such a tiny proportion that it's not really worth trying to Blake at the whole world in the hopes that somebody wants a boardroom table we just wait for them now I'm considering the wisdom of that and thinking that this is actually not a terrible moment to try to reach out and do some branding and position ourselves as experts in sort of a responsive approach to what are you going to do when you get back in the office because all the old Rule books are clearly no good anymore and we have incredibly wide experience with every possible way of setting up a boardroom you can imagine so it might be the moment to play some offense and and try to uh get to top of mind and the biggest problem is figuring out what what kind of where to place the ads like we already know everything about Google advertising and what that does for us and what it doesn't and the question is are there any other places where people who might be interested in my product uh naturally gather is there a podcast or a magazine or a website and it's actually really hard to track down people who express any enthusiasm whatsoever for office furniture because it's just not that interesting it's not like Harley-Davidson's or jet skis or or or skydiving or you know like whatever there's things that people are enthusiastic about and it's not my product so we we sort of have our work cut out for us I would like to challenge that there's lots of people who are very excited about it that are in that business and one one thing that you didn't mention you talk about ad you didn't talk about PR I'm confident there are trade Publications out there who are in the business of educating people who are in the home who are in the The Business Furniture Market which is a huge Market that would be interested to hear your perspective on how to to create custom you know tables for different I think there I I I would consider looking into that getting into those there's there's still a few of them around the magazines that go to facility managers and and corporate office people and and I think you have an interesting story and your website looks very good it I think it fills a niche for people that have unique situations that need a special table well thank you I think that's that's a that's absolutely valid analysis and I should probably be doing PR um and I'll I'll consider it Paul you said that this might be a rare opportunity for you to reach out because people are looking to do things differently uh and that you have all all you know experience offering all kinds of Alternatives what do you mean by that well the the the things that we are seeing people respond to the ideas would be one being able to reconfigure the table to uh handle different types of meetings and in particular the there's some meetings where everybody's looking at a screen and maybe there's a camera and there's another group of people on the screen or maybe it's just data and then there's another meeting where people are looking at each other and then there's another meeting where a bunch of people are looking at one person classroom and so we we have products that respond to all those situations that's sort of what we what we're seeing people be interested in the other thing is one that never goes away which is just branding making making the table be the center of the meeting and having the logo of the company in the middle of it and that can be your clients are coming into the room and they're seeing you know like this is a kickass table and there's our brand in the middle of it or it can be you're in a meeting where uh a camera is looking at the group of people around the table and after 16 meetings in a day everybody looks the same so let's put our logo right in the middle of the table we just did one for the uh University of Georgia for their football team like that big video conferencing table that has a giant bulldog in the middle of it so those things um and then the other thing is just making sure that the table's the right size and shape for the room uh because rooms come in much more variety than tables do I'm sure you've got lot of tricks up your sleeve which is why I think that would be a fascinating article to read in a magazine to talk about some of the new things you're doing to reflect Zoom meetings and you know video meetings and some people working from home and some people working in the office and I I think there's all kinds of interesting things that you can say an article that would get a big company to think yeah we need to get a customized table for our place so we may come back to PR because I think that's something a lot of people struggle with well I I'll let me just throw in one comment which is that years ago I got a fair amount of PR uh this is back in print days like in the 90s and I also ran ads when I started advertising back in the 90s the the value was to always be running the ad and the pr would kind of the article would appear and five people would read it and then it would just get thrown away and I'm thinking that I may just be wrong about that given that now anything that's on the Internet is there for a good long while and searchable you're not wrong about that now you're wrong about it back then I mean to suggest that having a good PR article five people are reading a is preposterous there's not five people there's tens of thousand people reading it and two it's credible because they're writing it about you and you're comparing apples to oranges an ad costs a lot of money to have in a magazine every single month whereas PR you know it's it they're two different animals but I I wouldn't say one's better than the other it depends on what the the situation is and I just think you have an interesting story let me throw another data point in and then let me get William into this conversation okay but I'll just I will just remark that I was able to put my name in The New York Times as an expert on boardroom tables 179 times over four and a half years and you know how many jobs I got out of that I bet you don't know the answer is one you don't know that for sure wait what did that cost then for that one pretty good return on investment seems to me well that's that's a discussion about how much time I put into it going after trade Publications you don't necessarily have to have a PR firm they're very targeted there's only a few of them out there probably at this point and I I think you could do it yourself without going and spending you know $10,000 a month for a PR firm I just see how I've completely lost control of this podcast William you still there I am excellent you may recall we were talking uh about sales previously and I'm curious if anything has changed for you in the way you approach sales well a couple thoughts top of mind and that is where we were I'll go back to PR for a minute I think what I'm learning about PR because it does Drive our sales is you have to ask yourself why do I want to be in the news right I mean some products PRS not a good thing I I remember reading an article about the guy who started 5H Hour Energy the richest uh indian born American citizen and you can't find him in the news like anywhere he doesn't want to be known he has an office with a card table and on the card table are little bottles of other energy drinks he ran out of business by suing them that's it um for us we're trying like crazy to always be seen not as a vendor 5H Hour Energy but more as a thought leader so that's why we have put so much emphasis in our uh PR work and in our content-based marketing toward positioning ourselves at not as hey I've got some new guys you need to meet transaction like Smokey alley meet the search guy that's totally not what we want to put out want to put out hey we wrote the book on succession uh hey I write for Forbes thank you Lauren uh you know that makes a huge difference for us because the goal for us is to be a thought leader and when we're seen in the media we don't have a single competitor who ever shows up in the news so there's never a question of which which group should I hire if I want the thought leader if I want the trusted adviser if we lose it's because somebody just wants a transaction wants some resumés and wants it fast to cheap so I do spend money on PR and I spend next to nothing on advertisements and I think it does get back to your root question Lauren what has changed for us in sales uh two things one what we have been doing accelerated so our our need to position ourselves in such a way that people are consuming our content and moving down our inbound funnel through all the blogs we've written I think there were three 3,000 resources on our website now totally for free that has accelerated kind of like people used to reach out and know a little bit and we'd have to walk them through a whole lot on the phone by the time they reach out now they know a whole lot they have really studied online and I think the pandemic has uh accelerated people's learning about how to use the internet when they can't go anywhere so so for us it has probably reduced the amount of time that we're on sales calls while the number of sales that we're making is actually increasing so um those are kind of tied together for me why is that well because we're putting good content out how do people find our content because we have a a top of the funnel that's not on our website it's it's Forbes it's Inc it's uh church-based Publications so so those are all sort of tied together the other piece that we just fell into I wish I could say it was bold thoughtful on my part but it was just a a selfish curiosity frankly was when back when we've talked about this PPP uh loans that went out and how we kind of got on the front end of that mainly because I wanted to know whether we qualified or not well that turned into webinars about PPP that turned into Facebook lives all these different ways of serving people that had absolutely nothing to do with what we do on a day-to-day basis um that has created for us a new term and we'll have to figure out a different way to leverage this thing every year but it's we're calling it the very top of the funnel where we're just serving people and winning people over as fans long before they ever even ask Staffing questions how does a sale happen with those people William do they just come to you or do you reach out to them no we don't reach out to anybody ever ever yeah I mean it would be very rare if I if I have a friend who I've known for years who goes to a new church or school I might call them and say hey give me a call if we can help you but most of the time people reach out to us like the overwhelming majority of the time people reach out to us so you've changed the way that you you know spread the word and you you've done great things in terms of getting your name out there have you changed anything in the way you handle the calls that result from that well I don't handle the calls that result from that but I mean the way your your business does um I think we have tried to qualify our buyers more so um so we're not getting into a contract where the person's going to be unhappy and so we figured out like the times things have not gone well with a client we've drawn a line back to the sales process and said what did we tell them we could do that wasn't realistic and how do we uh how do we protect against that in the future I think for us um customer satisfaction is issues are almost always a sales issue uh it's it's creating an expectation that can't be met so people are coming to us more informed now because they've done their homework and we're probably spending more time qualifying them but we're also this this sort of very top of the funnel we are also pouring time into content that really has nothing to do with what we do but WIS favor and and I have lost count of the number of searches that we've had in since Co where the client has said I never knew about you till PPP but you helped us get a loan and we wouldn't be here without that and we want to do a search do the people who feeli those calls that come in as a result of that uh get compensated based on commission salary both mostly based salary um much like Jay we we probably pay more in base salary than we do in commission uh there is commission um most of it is weighted toward a team-based commission I I I don't want people fighting over who gets this lead or who gets that lead we sell big widgets and we don't sell tens of thousands of them a year so it's not a a high volume enough to face some of the problems that larger sales forces do well how about you what do you do in terms of compensation there's salary and commission I'm just looking up the relative percentages but it's it ends up being about 60% salary and 40% commission is that pretty much what it's always been or has that evolved that evolved I when I first elevated two shop floor guys into a sales position the commission percentage was much lower and the salary was higher because they were very dubious about sales in general like they didn't see themselves as salespeople and they were afraid that their uh income would go down they went through a bad patch where the guys just weren't selling anything and there may have been a million reasons for that not because they're they're bad salespeople but I just lost my temper and basically said you're on commission now that's always a great motivation to make decisions how'd that work out I would say it worked out well because the but it wasn't done right and and it and I should have handled it completely differently but it the upshot was that now much more of their compensation is commission as opposed to salary than it had been we went back to some salary and and they sort of got used to it and they make a lot more money now here's the problem because I've lived through this this is the problem it might be fine now when you go to hire new salespeople that's where the problem comes in because on the interview they know they need x amount of dollars to pay their rent or whatever and that's where you're going to have to re-evaluate that because they don't all the percentage thing they don't know about the numbers they have no idea what it's all they know is what's the base because they got to pay their rent and I I'm not so sure that when you start to hire new people you're not going to go back to more of a I don't know 70 30 80 20 split because uh people gota people people it's a competitive market out there for finding good salespeople and they're looking for some security well I don't think there's any reason why you can't start someone off at at some higher salary lower commission to yeah sure allow them to grow into the job and then change it so that there's a path for them to make more overall money as they get more competent yes and as they become confident that the company is a good one to work for and the product can can be sold and I could certainly show any new salesperson what the record has been for the existing guys to say you could make this much you know like I can prove it you can make that much um but I hear you people want people want security more than anything but the day the the deal you offer on day one is not necessarily the deal you're going to offer on year six I agree with you totally I I've just learned that getting these people that will work on almost all commission they're not people I want to work with and they're not people that everyone else wants to work with generally speaking it goes to the whole question of Hing these days like how do you attract a good candidate from some other job to join your company and the offer that that's floated to the new employee always has to be attractive and it usually involves overpaying them and then you got to hope that you can build their productivity to the point where your compensation scheme is reasonable okay so you guys obviously are interested in talking about public relations and I do happen to think that's a a really interesting topic if for no other reason than because I've always been on the other side of the equation as as a journalist um so let's dig into that a little bit William you talked about having some success with that uh most of what you've described to us has been in the you know along the lines of content marketing where you're just creating stuff and Publishing it uh on your own platform or elsewhere uh but have you actually hired public ation people and ask them to you know spread the word and build your brand yes we have single biggest year of growth we hired a firm and and ironically they they'd worked with a lot of people who um have have made it to the top that's kind of an odd way to talk about the church sector but people in the legal industry who represented religious clients and such they sort of helped them up the pr ladder so so they had they had a good understanding of the uh the market so to speak but none of them go to church at all it's kind of ironic or expected they were wonderful guys but and they did a really effective job is our biggest year of growth ever it just I kind of wondered whether the expense was worth it so we backed off uh continued to grow and then what what what did they do for you they got me on BDC they got me um in front of uh they got me to speak at uh the Oxford Institute which led to me meeting you which got me into Forbes they got a regular gig on Fortune they got me placed they got a big article placed in the Chicago Tribune about the rise of the Christian search firm uh they did a lot of work I mean they got a lot of things done they were super frustrating and I always felt like I was overpaying them but but in hindsight you do a Google search for us and a lot of the placements you can draw a line back to them how did you pay them monthly retainer $112,000 a month wasn't that high all right wasn't that high but you know the growth we saw was pretty big we just ended up needing to pour money into more staff and more systems and frankly we grew a little too fast that year so it was uh it was good to uh to pair that back for a while but about a year and a half ago uh met a guy who was really tied into our world and the media and uh we hired him um didn't pay him as much and I've been pretty pleased with his results we've gotten a fair amount of traction and placements enough that people who call in say well I read about you in or I saw you were in so I I've had a LoveHate relationship with PR but I think overall it's been a good thing I've heard the love I didn't I didn't hear the hate uh writing the checks writing the checks and probably writing the check yeah I've been through I don't know I probably used four or five people over the years PR is one of the few things in life in business that you can spend money for you hire an accountant you're going to get some accounting you hire a lawyer they'll do some legal work PR is one of the few things you could pay money and get absolutely nothing that's right and I've had that and um the problem I've seen is they do great sales pitches and then as soon as you give them the money they stick some 23y old on your account that makes $16 an hour and that's who doing it and it's I've had good experiences I've had worthless experiences there's I would never make a blanket statement it's great it's horrible it's it depends on your business it depends who you find the problem is if you're a smaller company the sharpest Minds in PR are not working for the small companies they're you know so it's It's Tricky very difficult Paul you said you're thinking about taking the leap into this area what what are you thinking about doing well honestly I I think I could be incredibly presented as a thought leader on certain aspects of office design of course um I I suffer from this problem which is that when there's content to be developed I always want to write it myself because I think I'm a better writer than anybody else on Earth with evidence and uh um and so that so that I tend to shy away from something like PR where I feel that it's the the ACT content is way out of my hands and that risk of spending and not getting anything uh is also scary for me so but a lot of times when I'm when I have a gut reaction against something I'm just being stupid so I'm going to I'm going to look more carefully at it and think about how could that actually happen and reach out to people I know who do PR and have done PR and see if they can recommend somebody Paul I'll I'll be uh I I should throw a caveat into the success that I feel we've had people in our work people don't really do as much reference checking before they hire us as they do Google checking and my last name is so messed up that it Googles really really well yours does not soccer players come up lots of different things so if you get quoted it's it's going to be I I think harder for someone with a more common name to gain PR Traction in the world where everybody just wants to Google to see if you've been written about well that's that's a that's a good point I think that there's a couple of Paul Downes that are fairly uh Google Rich there's an actor there's a playwright and then I think I'm about number three in the Google Universe There's an opportunity now because these trade Publications are holding on for dear life many of them they've cut back on staff and you are an excellent writer evidenced by your New York Time Blog you could write a really interesting article about how Zoom meetings have changed the conference table and all these things and I believe you could send it to these trade Publications and they would be thrilled to run it because it's interesting it's relevant and you're a good writer they I I don't think you need to hire a PR firm yeah see I'm not familiar with sort of the mechanism by which like what do you do just send it to info at architectur magazine.com let's talk to Lauren Feldon because he actually has some experience in that Lauren how would one do that uh you know the I get asked that kind of question a lot and the basic advice I usually give is a couple of things one it it's it's really a a relationship business you want to find people who in the media who are interested in what you do and it's it's not that hard I mean you look for people who write about topics that are close to uh what you're doing and then you try to help them you try to reach out to them and you don't necessarily make it a transactional uh call at the beginning you don't say hey please come write about me you say hey I'm in the space I saw what you wrote you did a really good job it was terrific uh I just want you to know I'm here if I can ever be of help with anything uh let me know and you you try to uh build a relationship that way and to my mind that generally works a lot better than going out and hiring a public relations firm cuz I can tell you from my experience there are very very good PR people and if you find one they're probably worth whatever you're paying them but there aren't that many of them um my inbox you know for the last 30 years has been filled with ridiculous pitches from PR people who never took 10 seconds to figure out what I do or what I'm interested in and every journalist I talk to will tell you the same thing um PR people just don't take the time to figure out where a pitch is likely to succeed they spray their pitches everywhere now that's that's the vast majority there are there are some who are much smarter than that do it much better than that and those are the ones that you want to find if you're going to do that but it's better if you build the relationship yourself so Lauren think back to whatever December December 2009 and I sent you an email out of the blue um why did it catch your eye um you know that that's easy because there was uh something what was the headline do you remember no I don't remember the headline but I remember the substance and the substance was uh you're editing a Blog for small business owners and it's pretty good but you're missing one thing and that's what it's like to be running a business that's in the process of failing and I'm willing to write about that for you and you know I can assure you that's the only email like that that I've ever gotten um and that doesn't mean that you that you have to be at a failing business uh and happily by the way for our listeners you did turn the business around which made it all the better um but you don't have to be at a failing business to get attention but you do have to offer something that isn't everywhere and you you were offering something different and that's what caught my eye I think in this case it's shooting fish in the barrel because there's not that many trade Publications for office furniture and I think given the fact that people are working from home and all the changes I could almost write the article myself and I don't know anything about it just about people coming to a conference room with electronics and where they plugging them in I and I haven't read anything on that I think it's just the perfect time to go out there with that so go for it Paul well that that's a great suggestion I I think that's a a much better outcome to this podcast than I expected going in that I think that is a valuable suggestion all right that's two to one against you Lauren you got you gotta catch up no it's a good suggestion and I'm going to give it a go I mean I I totally dropped the ball on trying to find my Google person a couple months ago but you can hold me you can ask me about this one in a couple weeks people may not remember what you're talking about but but I do you Pro you were told who was it by maybe Laura and Karen Laura I think it was yeah that if you were spending serious money on pay-per-click uh marketing with Google you could get the attention of a an account person who would make sure you were doing it right and uh and help you in ways that you couldn't even imagine at least that's what Laura says her experience was and you promised to uh to test that theory and see if you could connect with somebody Google but you didn't do that did you no I didn't because I talked myself into what I thought before hearing this remarks which is that it would be a waste of time and uh so I haven't given it the real test but I'm still I am convinced it would be a waste of time for US based on my many many experience of years of interacting with Google you did tell us that you you had been paying for payperclick for quite some time and that at a certain point you decided to see what would happen if you just cut it off and that your phone kept ringing at the same rate and you just wrote it on organic uh search results is that still the case yeah yeah pretty much I mean I I send them a little money 2500 bucks a month as my budget and uh which I think of is just giving them money for no particular reason because they need money from you Google uh just because this the some algorithm somewhere may have a comma that is okay if you're below 2800 then we truly don't care about you but if like who knows let me cut to the chase they don't care about you no they don't care about me William I want to go back to you on the pr thing uh for one moment when you were paying uh the expensive firm that was getting you a lot of placements and you believed leading to a lot of growth um did you think that they were doing things for you that you couldn't have done yourself well just my very limited experience is that um getting in front of people like you does require relationship and I don't have those relationships so if I can find people who do then that's helpful in this case the the P firm I don't know if they'd done some work for Cliff or what Cliff Oxford of the Oxford Center Cliff Oxford of the Oxford Center and uh that turned into we got you a speaking gig and I went and spoke and I think you may have been there and that led to um Cliff introducing me to you we had lunch I believe over at the old office you used to have if I remember correctly I I was kind of stunned to learn this but I think you flew to from Houston to Jersey City just to have lunch with me that's right I did no one's ever done that before none of that would have started had I not had some onent traded relationship and the pr firm did that they did that as well with um business Publications now it did require some things that not everybody wanted to do I had to at a moment's notice be ready to crank out an article like if something realtime news happened um I need to be able you know fast company wants an article on the pope using Twitter can you get us something in the next two hours sure so not everybody's got the freedom to do that or enjoys writing so it's it's just not for everybody but for me it's worked because they've opened doors to relationships now once I became a regular contributor for Forbes once we started to get on people's radar it I think the return diminished quite a bit we only have a few minutes left I I want to try to catch up on a couple of things Paul any news on your cyber crime yeah she sent me some of the money wow still not speaking to each other but uh she has now sent me about 990,000 of the 140,000 for those who don't know this is your client uh who uh apparently tried to pay you the payments were diverted um to to someone in Texas Nigeria no Texas as I recall that was a brief stopping point on the way to Nigeria I see but this seems to indicate that she's accepting responsibility uh which she initially did not do that's right which seems to indicate that you probably will get the full payment I hope so we we have a couple of other projects that are in the pipeline that would go through her company uh of significant size and I think the real asset test would be whether those appear or not now that's not entirely like she wouldn't say don't do business because we're already working with their client um but it would be a big step towards return to normal if we could just con continue to book jobs through her as we had been before that's great and and Jay uh any any news in your efforts to to to start another business Which business would we be referring to well we were talking for a while about the uh online Art Gallery all right I put that on the back burner because I'm back to the here's my new phrase you know people want to they always to have balance my word is is alignment and I need to stay aligned and I have to work on this and that I don't need more employees I have lovely employees I I just I just don't yeah but when you told us you were going to do it you said it was the reason you're going to do it is because it was so perfectly aligned with what you do it it is a line but it would still require a lot of energy and I I just I'm putting it on the back burner for the moment because I have other projects that I got to work on one of which is I which is right in front of me I've got a beautiful Courtyard between my home store and the framing business and it's got plants in it and we need to do some kind of Cafe thing in there to keep customers happy and so I'm working on that at the moment is that going to happen I think so there's some permitting I got to work on permitting issues which are difficult but I I just I just I do have to I I keep telling you I'm a recovering entrepreneur holic and I I need to control myself because it just isn't it just I just I just need to control it because I just I want to keep my life simple and it's been really under control and I'm thrilled that I got through this whole pandemic thing and like I got no complaints and life is good I just don't I need to control my desire to start new businesses so I'm not saying I'll never do an internet thing but it's definitely in the back burner because as you also mentioned in the last time it's never as simple as I think it's going to be and the 100 Grand I think it's going to cost is probably going to turn into 200 or 300 and I I just I don't need to do that at the moment now that's what I'm telling you today I'm pretty solid for the rest of the day but I I am going to try to stay to that philosophy my thanks to Paul DS Jay gos and William Vander bluman as always guys thanks for sharing 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 n21 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 podcasts follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by Jess Theron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]