Jay Goltz’s 12-Step Business Check-Up

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Sean busy Jay goz and Sarah seagull talk about what they hope to accomplish in 2023 Sarah's moving into new offices looking for 20% growth and hoping to land a chocolate company as a client Sean's looking for new space too and attempting to reposition his business to shake the corrosive effects of the pandemic and Jay's employing a methodical 12-step process to assess how his business is performing hiring check pricing needs work inventory levels way out of line office technology major problems and then there are his ongoing efforts to Mentor his two sons in the business and prepare for the inevitable these days Jay tells us he's especially careful when getting in front of buses if you've been listening to this podcast you know our business owners discuss their Journeys with unusual cander but in some episodes we go with especially deep this is one of those episodes even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which Inc magazine recently 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 Jay gz whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason home and Sarah seagull who is founder and CEO of seagull Communications a public relations firm based in s Francisco the episode is titled Jay Go's 12-step business checkup welcome Shan Jay and Sarah it's great to have you here last week we had a really good conversation about plans and goals for next year in fact I I thought it was so interesting I decided to do it again this week with a mostly different group the best part of doing this is that it means for the rest of the coming year I'll be able to say Jay I thought you said you were going to do X Y and Z in 2023 how come you're not doing it and you never been able to say that so far so that's right I just want to make sure okay so let's start with you Jay what are you planning for 2023 I am very much into and I've happened for years I work on the business not in the business so the bigger picture stuff especially since you know the looming whatever what the econom is going to be like my new phrase is let's turn all the dials so I'm just looking at everything I'm doing and I'm going to sit down with all of my managers and say okay let's see see where we're at on these 12 items and I'll very quickly how's our hiring process very good real good I'm feeling great about that two our employee retention great how many of these are there 12 but they all take five 10 seconds each you have the time yes three this one's tricky employee performance do I only have eight n and tens working or out of 10 um pretty close yeah I have to say we're good there four are we buying the right products we go to enough trade show yeah we're doing really well with that five inventory levels way out of line at the moment because of the whole stuff didn't come in for months and then all of a sudden all came in at once my inventory is way out of control I got to work that back down six cash availability I've changed Banks um I've got a new credit line so I'm good there pricing markdown protocols I'm working on that that is an issue these days with different shipping costs have gone up markdown protocols meaning meaning when do you start having things on sale if you've had it in the Flor for three months and it hasn't sold I mean when you're in retail or any business I would say you need to make sure that you keep inventory going out if it's not selling so somebody needs to pay attention to that eight budget creation we do that every year monitoring it is it accurate this year I'm putting extra attention into real estate taxes have gotten crazy in Chicago they've gone up 20% in some cases I got to make sure that I'm charging myself enough rent for the even though I own the building that's how people get themselves in trouble over a long period they start to subsidize their business with the fact that they're not charging themselves with the building's worth so you look like you're really profitable in reality you're taking advantage of the fact you own the building but you should be able to make money on both ends marketing looking at everything Direct Mail you know radio ads the website social media PR events is there anything we could be doing with that 10 risk management in this case the big one is cyber security I need to pay more attention to safety protocols I've realized I could do everything right in this business and be a genius and none of it will matter if somebody took a space heater and plugged it in to an extension cord plugged into another extension cord and the place burns out I mean it's a problem I've got there's a bunch of space heaters on around here and I got to pay more attention to that 11 technology got major problems I'm on a legacy thing for years I'm GNA have to spend a lot more money Legacy thing meaning you're software I'm ter out of date customer relations management everything everything I have the hardware is some of it's six years old and I'm told yeah you shouldn't have six-year-old servers because they won't match the new stuff I wasn't paying any attention to it and we need to I'm bringing in a computer consulting firm to look at everything we're doing and I'm G spent a lot of money to do it and I wasn't prepared to do that before and now I realize I have to so that's my major one of all of them and finally 12 is just the facility management which I feel good about I'm Tak taking care of the building of all of them yeah I got a couple of major issues the technology issue and I got to work my inventories down and then continue to work on any marketing I can think of so you know I've just learned when you do everything right as much as you can stop talking about recession stop talk whatever do everything you can and the business will get through the next whatever it is and be okay Jay let me ask you that was really interesting but it doesn't sound like a plan to me um it's not setting goals it's more of an annual physical do you make a distinction between those things well I certainly have goals for what we want to hit for performance but there's two things in business there's turning the dial and then there's looking at the gauge you know so yeah I want the gauge to say x million but to get there I got to play around with the gas you know combination and the everything else so there's the two ends aren't you looking at those gauges throughout the year yeah absolutely and I recognize we're in some questionable times and you know given the circumstances I'm certainly not coming up with anything too aggressive with spending money that I don't need to because I don't know 2023 could turn out to be a a little soft so I'm playing it conservatively but I'm trying to fix everything I can fix the technology piece I've have not paid attention to for years so that's where you could set a goal what's your goal my goal is to have it all fixed by four months I have a completely different head than I had a year ago when the consulting firm would come in and go oh it's going to be 140 oh I'm not doing that well now I recogn this is this is going to be a six figure for sure expenditure and I know I need to do it my servers are just going to go down one day so I recognize that there's some stuff you just can't kick down the road and that's not my expertise that's not my where I pay attention but I recognize now if I have a big problem that's what it's going to be and I also know I'm wasting a ton of labor on stuff that's extremely inefficient because our technology is just doesn't it's just old and when I hire young people now they look at this and they go what is this what's Doss yeah that's what I'm talking about I've got screens that look not they don't look like it they're from 30 years ago so I need to upgrade all that and the problem is I'm the biggest one in the industry so it's like I'm too big to go take canned software but I'm too small to write it myself so it's a problem I guess the point of the story is you can't pay attention to 11 out of the 12 things that's that's my point of the day Jay can I ask a question yes ma'am do you have any personal goals that are associated with the business like things that you're like I really want to get this client my personal goal is that the business gets more profitable and I'm certainly got my two children that are here that I'm trying to mentor to take over more responsibility so my personal goal is to to Mentor My Two children better and to get the business more profitable and to continue my goal of having this business be able to run without me because one of these days I'm not going to be here how do you Mentor your kids how how what does that look like um well as the parent this is very different than mentoring an employee you need to calm down and not what would be a good word I I just have to calmly explain to them it's very difficult to take a kid who did not grow up working in this business my kid did not grow up working the counter in my business framing pictures they were out in the suburbs I was in the city so my kids did not grow up working in this business and it's very difficult to have a 33y old plop in to 130 person company and really understand the nuances of the people part the cuso I'm having to be P there's a good word I have to be patient with with explaining how the whole thing works and there's times where it's frustrating because You' hope that everybody would just get it right away but it takes some patience so I'm getting more structured I'm thinking about all right we're going to just work on pricing for this week you know and it's good I'm explaining where they come from and I just have to have some patience because it's I'm trying to cram 43 years you mentioned that a couple of times are you are you struggling with that the patience uh I don't know struggling I'm conscious of it yeah I don't think I'd say struggling I think I'd say I I've got it under control it certainly took some energy though it certainly took some Awareness on my part it certainly took one bad meeting where I went home sick to my stomach would you know because I called you because I always call you that I was really sick to my stomach like God I shouldn't have said that and I I think I had to hit rock bottom before I realized I need to take a different approach and I will never do that again are you writing this down like are you creating kind of like a you know a diary of my madness of no no no but like for your for your kids like your institutional knowledge oh absolutely absolutely no I actually typed a very thorough document of here's where we're at here's where we're going because what I realized is we're on the same page we all agree I don't need to open more stores so let's so I wrote down everything where we're at the part that has become the challenge for lack of another word is this looming and I I'm not used to this because this is not the way I think I am an optimist okay now that doesn't mean I see everything through rosecolor glasses and I'm just this Optimist fool that's going to go broke because I don't realize going on around me I've had to say to my kid to one of them you know what I somehow managed to make it 43 years and you don't have any school debt and you're living real nice maybe I should get a little credit because sometimes what you hear is we're going to go broke next year like really really there's a fear element there I'm just not used to because I've never been afraid I've all if anything went wrong I dug in and I fixed it and I moved on and I'm not used to the way normal people think maybe and I've had to recognize I need to be more patient with that and explain no we're not going broke next year can you clarify are you like is this the voice in your head is saying this now that has never been there before is this your son saying this no no this is my son saying this it's your son so he's concerned will say you know what if we don't hit the number I go so here's the budget what if we don't hit the numbers you haven't hit the numbers the last few okay yeah we didn't hit the numbers it's been a difficult last few years I you know so I don't know what to say to that like trust me like that's the point I never had the voice in my head now I have it on the outside and I'm not used to that because I've always just dug in and fixed whatever I had to fix and I know this might sound odd to some people I've certainly have had major stress and concern and couldn't pay the bills and was figuring out how to pay everything I don't think I've ever thought oh my God I'm going broke I don't think that ever crossed my mind in 43 years I it just hasn't and I'm not used did your son actually say that we might go broke or is that what you're hearing because he's asking you about the numbers he'll say we need to put money into this over here yes I got it he's right we're going to put more money into blah blah blah blah blah and like we're gonna maybe we're gonna have to raise prices and eventually people aren't going to want to pay the prices and okay so so what are you saying we're going to be broken five years I mean yeah kind of so no I'm not making this up there's this anxiety of what if what if what if and I don't know what to say to that like like I see there's the perfect example here's the budget for next year well how do we know we're going to hit these numbers yeah I don't I I it's a budget I think we'll hit these numbers well we haven't hit them the last couple years okay so what what should we do should we just shut the business tell me what we should should we just shut the business down to I don't know what to do with that have you asked him like where the fear is coming from I don't know can you ask somebody where anxiety comes from some of the conflicts I have with my parents if I really dig into it the fear that I have is that their health will fail them they don't have very good financial resources and so I worry that I won't be able to care for them right like that I won't have enough resources to care for them so my so I I start to have these weird fears about their decision- making and all but at its root I'm really concerned for them and their well-being it would be interesting to maybe figure that out a little bit deeper well I can just tell you in this case which is why it's there really isn't a problem like we're good I mean really and I would tell you trust me we're good like no one's losing their house no one's going broke we're good now did we hit the numbers we wanted no absolutely we didn't but this is where I say it's unfair of me to take somebody plug him into this thing and expect they're going to get it yeah he's never seen the hard time no well he's lived through he certainly knows I've been short of cash over the years and I certainly recognized that my wife certainly she's got PTSD from being married to me it took me a long time to figure that out like there's been lots of times in the last 42 years where we were really order of cash and business was off and I owed money and I go you stop spending money I'm like I get it now did my kids pick that up too uh probably I mean some of this is certainly but at this stage he's old enough I share all the numbers he we're good I don't know what to say we're good yeah but I'm I'm betting that he's never felt the kind of anxiety you felt earlier in your career when you know like you're not sure if you're going to be able to get through this thing and etc etc and so you have you have a lifetime of overcoming adversity and now he's starting to see like the full picture of the business yes and seeing the full picture and I'm feeling this a little bit too with my team where you know we had a month where like we lost money and like we haven't lost money in forever and you know the kind of the looks on all their faces was like just like kind of like Dread and because we do open book management and yet you know I'm like I'm like we'll be fine you know we've had bad times before we've gotten through it but it's it's you can't just transfer that overnight no I get it which is why I say it takes some patience and I I get it people need to know yeah sometimes you lose money for a month or two or maybe for a year it it happens yeah the worst thing best thing that happened is my one bad meeting I got to tell you it was a wakeup call to me because I was just sick to my stomach and I fixed it I met the next day I went through everything I typed up this whole thing look we on the same page I think I got it under control now and I'm having much better meetings now and I'm going through it but I wouldn't there certainly have been some frustrating moments where where like I said I'll just go not screaming just go like so tell me what we should do should we just shut the business down should I fire all the employee tell me what we should do because that's kind what's the point you're defensive and protective of the business that you built and that's totally reasonable I'm sure that your kids have a a different perspective on some stuff and want to make some changes and it's finding that place where it's like you can make changes you're a little bit more open to like letting that kind of fresh eyes come in and I think that that can be challenging for anybody who you know you blood spread in tears like building a business um what is your time do you have a timeline like a plan for the timeline no I don't I absolutely don't have one he's working on it yeah no I might assuming I'm alive I plan on going to work every day I have absolutely no aspirations I see these people no aspirations to sell the business or not just a none zero two go to Florida go to Arizona sit around golf sit around at lunch play Coker or something shoot me I I just have no I respect people to want to do that that's just not who I am I don't want to do that I have a had a client that the son took over the business from the father and it's just really interesting to see the difference of of mindset and I think you put your finger on it Jay which is the son is worried about losing and the father was obsessed with what could be achieved anytime the business hit a bumpy spot the sun would do kind of the worst behavior from a leader which is to like totally change course kind of freak out the team cancel key initiatives you know and these were just like blips you know and and I think that that is a big difference between founding a business and taking over a business business and I think that's a really not discussed thing very often frequently it's the opposite I was in young president's organization where I see people I see this all the time they've never seen a problem so the kid takes over and is going to go oh we're gonna open up 10 more and like I said you know what now in this case the part that's frustrating me is we're on the same page I'm not trying to grow like crazy I'm just trying we're on the same that's that's we're totally on the same page so could we just be happy for a day or two could we just say okay that's great that looks good I mean could we just do that would that be a terrible thing to just actually think maybe doomsday is not coming yeah but like put yourself in issues Jay right like you've accomplished a pretty remarkable thing and I'm sure part of him is cons you know like feels the serious obligation and fear around harming the thing his dad has created you know I'm going to assume you love each other right yeah no we have very good relationship so I mean I think it would be worth your while to just really try to explore where he's coming from with his fear it can't be easy to step into a situation like that not having worked in the business absolutely no abs and I get all of that absolutely you have big shoes to fill Jay so I certainly could say could you just explain to me why you think I certainly can do that and I will also say my kids give me some great ideas they're I'm not always right for sure I I I there are times where I am too optimistic and I go okay I see there so both of my kids have absolutely caught things that I wasn't paying attention to and so it's that's if you ask me how it's great I love having my kids here they've absolutely given me some perspective of stuff I wasn't paying attention to because I don't pay attention to everything I said a bunch of things in this one thorough document I gave them I go one is be respectful to the employees that paid for your college that paid for your lifestyle like like and two don't in uate that I'm like some optimistic buffoon that doesn't realize what's going on I mean it really and and like I said I've taken all of my trigger out of this I'm telling you I don't get upset anymore I'm very patient I know but dude just that last sentence what you said about the employees like the amount of of fear that that could put into somebody right I mean you basically told your children you have a massive debt to these employees don't [ __ ] it up I mean like and okay and just I mean I think it's wonderful honestly I think I would suspect you've raised great children and your child is really worried about letting you down I would bet you a hundred bucks that's where he's coming no I'm sure no no that's a there's for sure and then because you have such compassion and empathy for your team it's not like he's worried about just letting dad down he's worried about letting down all these families that he's grown up with that are kind of part of the family too that's a big obligation like that's that's a lot to carry if you got hit by a bus tomorrow do you think your your your son would do a good job let me just change the qu do I think either of them could just take over the comp no clearly not are they doing some important good things absolutely but could they just step in and no it's 32 and 37 um no it's a lot to ask I don't think age has anything to do with it I mean like well it has something to do with it if the older you get the more experience you get but do I think they have the temperament what I believe as an entrepreneur you have to have the three things you have to have the head for it you have to have the heart for it and you have to have the stomach for it and the fact is most people don't have all three which is why everyone doesn't own their own business I mean that's just reality you can't have two out of the three do my kids have all three of those things to run this business on their own I don't know we'll see it's certainly early in the game and I'm being careful to getting in front of buses that's for sure if you don't have confidence in them they probably sense that as well I don't think they could possibly think I think they could step into this role they don't have the experience I have confidence in some of the things they're doing that are all valuable but I don't think they would think they're ready to take over the business so I don't think they would expect me to go oh yeah my kid's all said he's been here for keep in mind my youngest one's been here for a year and a half that's your plan then that's you're figuring out okay what are the what are the 10 things that need to be checked off so you could literally get hit by a bus um at the end of the year absolutely and and be fun no forget about could I am going to die at some point there's no question about that so it's not a could it's when I leave the business I need to try to do everything I can to make sure that the business will continue well I don't have to I want to I don't want to sell the business I'm doing everything I can to prepare my children for taking over at least the oversight of the business because I do have key people here and that's planned out like you have a on a piece of paper absolutely okay is it a fully formed is it no but I put down at the moment back to the getting hit by the bus thing I definitely have a thing going okay didn't expect to die early but it is what it is here's my thoughts and I have in there at the end of the day do what you need to do I put in there my biggest nightmare would be that my kids end up getting hung with this business they don't want to be here do whatever you need to do don't ever use the phrase dad turning in his grave once I'm gone I'm gone I do not want my kids I've seen this I do not want this business to be hung around my kids neck as a weight that if they say I don't want to deal with this I want to shut it down do whatever you need to do I'm I'm not putting that on my kids I don't want my kids being miserable so if I'm gone and business gets harder and something goes wrong if they end up saying you know what we just got okay do what you got to do so Sarah what are your plans and goals for next year so honestly my planning is one of those things that I'm not very good at because I don't usually have a lot of time to sit down and focus on it um because you know I'm trying to get myself out of the weeds but you know I do have like you know checkbox plans that I'd like to to accomplish over the year I basically put them together as like goals what's important to me in terms of my business is first of all looking at the year and kind of doing an audit and talking to the team and being like well what did we do well right what did we not do well and kind of assessing that and then I tend to my questions generally when I do annual reviews is you know what are you liking doing what are you finding exciting about your job what would you like to do more of because my philosophy is that you know most people that work for me aren't going to be with me forever I have no expectation of that but I want them to look back at their experience with me as a learning and growing experience and then I always have some personal professional goals like some of them are just silly like this year I had a a personal or professional goal of Landing a chocolate company I really want to do PR for a chocolate company did you no I have a great Chocolate Company in Colorado I buy from chocol love I'm gonna hook you up you know I T I'm good at chocolate like I understand that I can taste good my family and I like we've I we've done this on vacation before where I bought like 25 different kinds of bar chocolate and we did blind taste testings and it was like it was just fun to see really what you like outside of the packaging and the marketing and I was like gosh I would love to do a Chaco company I failed at that I did get um uh a couple people saying hey you should do this chocolate company this one you should do this one but yeah I failed on my that one but yeah I just I try to put together attainable goals and then my my goal for the company is to continue to grow but at a a pace that makes people continue on on to work for me you know like I don't want to get a client that's going to make us you know push us into working crazy hours like I like to have the the good work life balance for my team and I respect their personal time so no big epiphanies on my side just yet so what's the growth So when you say you want to grow what's the number you want to grow at 20% you want to grow at 10% you 50 what's what's the number well this year I put a 100% growth that as my goal um I didn't grow that much I grow I grew probably about by 20% this year I think you know 20% growth is as healthy there nothing to sneeze it but also PR is a a weird thing because you're not necessarily growing all parts of the business right because you have consumer technology and B2 and we have B2B technology we have consumer goods we have social media management that we provide and then we have thought leadership and so that's part of the question is what are we doing well you know and maybe we double down on some of those things maybe we're like all right we are nailing this content creation which we are we're doing a lot of video now and because half of my team is from broadcast background it makes sense and I know that they're all enjoying it you know it's fun to create that video content and we know that all of the social media algorithms like prioritize video so we're probably going to double down on doing more content for our clients so how many employees do you have now I have five full-time and for contractors okay so that means if you grow 20% and you do lose someone along the way you probably you're going to have that's not a lot of hiring you probably have to bring on another two three people so that doesn't seem too burdensome no yeah I plan on hiring somebody in the new year um because we just landed u a winery and a brewery U which we're so excited about working on we have a couple other clients that are strong possibilities so I might have to hire somebody um another person by the end of q1 you're also moving into a new location right yes um we have a new office space in San Francisco we uh literally just got the keys like 10 days ago you know it's a mess it it'ss paint I have an electrician coming on Saturday I have a painter coming on Saturday but yeah we'll be in a new space it's a a great location I had the team go there we had an end of year kind of dinner and we went there and we had a glass of champagne nice just to you know for all of our hard work my question to them is like you know I know we're still GNA have this kind of hybrid work you know where people come in two three days a week like what would make this a place for that you would want to spend more time at and the consensus was that they want to make it feel like home right I want to wear anything I'm like you can wear anything you want I don't you can wear you wear slippers for all I care I don't care what you wear someone else was like I really want really great carpenting so when I'm just tired of sitting at my desk I can lay flat on the ground I said okay we can do that they want it to be cozy and welcoming and so I'm doing that I'm making it kind of a home away from home Sarah was this the space that you low balled the offer on and yeah what what did you end up paying per square foot but I assume it's tripl net but maybe it's full service oh my God it's not it's a quirky place okay that's fine oh I I'll tell you exactly how much we're paying so it's 800 square feet so it's not very big and we're paying $2500 a month okay so that's 30,000 divided by8 you're by you said it was 800 feet yeah so you're paying about 30 whatever $38 $37 a foot yeah and it's it's not a full surface building it's a two slight walk up it's it's literally like two three blocks from Union Square so it's near Boudin is it near bin there's bin everywhere in San Francisco okay you know where it's near is um the entrance to Chinatown if you've ever seen like the it's called like the Dragon's Gate or Lion's gate I can't remember which animal it is it's about a block from there so it's like on the edge of the financial district and the the people that own the building is a nice couple oh nice they own the jewelry business downstairs like it's a very family like and the people that are upstairs from us seem like they're in alternative energy and oh that's cool it's a low um stress um piece of real estate I love that you know one of the one of the lessons that I took away from the pandemic that I really failed to appreciate is it matters who you rent from and I just you know I looked at it in price and amenities before the pandemic and now as we're looking at new office I'm like who owns the building because it it really it really matters and I would say to you go buy a building go buy a building with anba loan for 10% down no I mean it having no landlord is a beautiful thing 10% down SBA loan yeah I'd like to do that maybe someday but you know buying a building in San Francisco is yeah it's a different Jam you're talking Millions like right even just for like a floor this would be a good time to buy though I suspect it's not if you could do it barrier does not do what the rest of the country does if I were to um say oh I have $2,500 a month to pay and I would go to Chicago like I probably have a much sweeter space than I do well no I can tell you exactly what you'd have $37 a foot is what you pay for first floor retail space here so what you've described here which is my building I can tell you exactly I say you could rent a third floor walk up probably for half what you're paying that's about right 18 bucks a foot for not anym about here in Portland I bet that'd probably be 20 bucks a foot maybe something in that range are they customers ever going to come by this office um that's a good question I don't know people aren't going anywhere right now still all right well they because I'm just suggesting that I've got this picture of the woman walking around in a bathrobe and house slippers and another one laying on the floor I'm not sure is the place I want to take customers to walk through oh well you know what's interesting is I was reading an article about I posted it on my Linked In it was about whether or not you should let people wear tank tops to work and you know I have never had that stress of like people dressing inappropriately even when I worked for another agency and I managed people people knew what to do like it be appropriate like they're grownups I've had I've had that problem I've had very difficult conversations to that I decided I'm not having that one I had someone else do it because it was a woman Toom thing that that you shouldn't have to tell somebody but you have to sometimes yeah you know and but here's the thing if someone doesn't hire us because somebody's wearing flipflops in the meeting I don't really want that client are you sure I'm sure because like you're not hiring us because of the way that we express ourselves in terms of what we wear you're hiring us because we're good at our jobs and we'll deliver for you like if you're that superficial you're not going to be a client that I want to work with I'm sorry okay can I speak as the client that go for us you have no idea how competent the person you're talking to is you're taking their word for everybody to say we do a great job and when you look at them and they look like they're on their way to the beach it makes you think God how professional are they are they really going to take care of business and I do I'm just saying then you wouldn't be a good client you wouldn't be a good client people would people would be like way back when like if you had tattoos people like oh they're awful right I respect people's creative expression through whatever they want to wear and I'm not going to be the person that says you like yeah don't lay on the ground in the middle of a a client meeting but like if we're all working in the office and you just need to stretch out and like get a different perspective and look up at the ceiling go for it I agree with that I'm just talking about when a client walks through I'd like to give it image that we're professionals and we're taking care of business and well they should know that because our metrics and what we're delivering for them anyhow that's superficial stuff shouldn't matter I mean it it shouldn't I mean you know for some clients it does but again those are not the clients for me Sean you were part of our conversation last week and we ran out of time we talked about the event you had but we didn't get to your plans and goals for next year what are you thinking yeah so um thing I've used in the past for planning is to create a theme for the year that helps kind of guide our decision- making and really I'm I'm still kind of working on this but right now I see 23 as kind of a corner turn year in that a lot of the things that have been hard for us in the last couple years because of the pandemic are now available to us again so like I met with clients in the real world yesterday and it was a sales meeting and it was awesome I was like this is what I've been missing and this is why our business has been so hard for the last couple years you can just do so much more in person than you can over a zoom call when it comes to and and I think Sarah you've talked about this a little bit so for us it's it's that corner turn it's getting getting back to the things that were good before the pandemic and then also changing things that maybe need to be changed so you know to use Jay's format of a list the big one this year is a transition in the leadership team and really evolving that to a much higher level of sophistication so that they're looking at financials in the way I've looked at financials over the years also our marketing and sales is we're putting full force to that in every single way that we can big repositioning going to launch a new website we've already launched some producti services that are pretty exciting Sean are you doing the website yourself yeah yeah yeah um which is always a risk but we're GNA we're going to give it a shot wait let's get granular for a second what what uh what are you using to do your website WordPress is pretty much our go-to we've we've used WordPress for many many years and it's it's solid really great it uh to your your pay J uh our it provider was awesome went into the pandemic sold to private equity and is now total garbage um so uh we are absolutely switching on that but that's a hard move it's really a tough move um to do because you they're just woven into your business and you know picking a new one takes a lot of due diligence I I will say this we hired a company earlier this year and their value prop is to really take all the operational stuff and evaluate it and then help you select new vendors that has been so awesome you know they've helped us with insurance they've helped us with it they're helping us with Tax and Finance because a lot of our vendors have become terrible what are they called yeah the company's called Zuna zun and um you know they have pretty extensive skills in these Arenas like our 401k plan we had a good provider but as they've evaluated it they're like you know you're ready kind of for the next level and the the provider you're with is just you know kind of set it and forget it at this point and they're right and and I'm like it's so helpful to have a third party just evaluating it with kind of a neutral disposition wow and then also when vendors come to you and they try to sell you [ __ ] be like you know what we use this part this group you're welcome to go talk to them you know good luck and it just takes a lot of pressure off you as an owner so that change that it change but also we're changing our tax provider our tax provider I this is embarrassing I am still not had my personal returns filed for last year wow I I extension and I missed the extension deadline and my provider was like may I call will pay any fees and and stuff you're you know you have to oh they and they this again went for years they were great they sold to a large you know National Tax company and total garbage so you know got to switch that out and I can tell you the reason is they just don't care about the little clients care no they don't care about the little I'm sure I can assure you the big clients got taken care of yeah totally um and then last I know we're running out of time here um we're going to have a new office we just toured them uh the other day it was invigorating to to just think about getting them back into an office space and I know some people will think I'm a dinosaur but I'm telling you it's going to make a difference have you picked one no but um I'm excited about the market because it's pretty rough um and I think the the vacancy level will play to our advantage what size space are you looking for I think it's somewhere between 2 and 3,000 square feet and I'm also flirting this is an interesting idea that that was floated at dinner the other night which is I've I've leased space before with a with a roommate which is an awesome strategy to get more space than you need and then one of you outgrows it and then the other one takes it over uh the new idea which was discussed was well what if one company had it Monday Wednesday and the other was Tuesday Thursday and Friday was a free-for-all and I'm like oh that's really interesting sounds like a divorce settlement we looked at shared space before we ended up uh getting a smaller space that just suited us and you're always going to feel like it's not yours and your your team is going to you know they're going to put their their nice desk items out and then not feel comfortable with somebody else yeah I mean I've done it I've done it before Sarah you know twice and and I've I've managed to make it work you know and this is before the pandemic and we were in there 9 to 5 5 days is weak so it was workable under that model and so I'm like I think I can make it work requires I think some delineation of space so like this is the Kinesis area this is the other companies area you know otherwise I'm not talking hot desking between two companies it's not that idea and and that we tried the the weor thing and weor didn't work no it it's for the reason Sarah said it's like you can't personalize it you don't feel any kind of level of like ownership and so folks just weren't excited to go in so I I think that's a that's a that's a non-starter for us Sean most of your uh your plans and goals that you've discussed here involve kind of operations what are you thinking in terms of performance of the business oh man um this is the first year 22 the first year I was saying this the first year our revenues declined in like 10 years uh even though our profits were better than last year our revenues were not as good and I want to reverse that Trend in the coming year wait a second wait a second are you sure you you made more profit with less revenue is that broken I'm not sure but it's not enough sure more profit than 20 uh one I lose track of time because of covid um but not compared to pre-pandemic okay uh some of that is artificial because we don't have an office so we have a lot of expenses that that went away a and oh okay fair enough so it's like short term sure we were more profitable Etc but it's harmed the business long term um like the pandemic I'm starting to see now the the corrosiveness of the P like for a lot of folks it was a shock yeah and for us it's been a slow corrosive effect yeah that makes sense here's the thing dude we we were on a like tear before the pandemic of how to prepare for a recession we were doing all this like workshops and we were talking to folks about how to do it well surviving a recession is usually a 6 to 12 month thing and so we were really well prepared for a six to 12 month shock but the pandemic just kept going we were fine in year one and even in year two but it's like this La this most recent year it's been really hard I mean we've really struggled on lots of fronts and and I really believe that it's just been like we were prepared for a recession we just weren't prepared for this long steady slog that's good lesson hey you survived it you know like there's a lot of no but there are a lot of businesses that didn't I remember the beginning of the recession there's this great PR agency in San Francisco um their their whole business is built on um a focus of hospitality and food um businesses so like restaurants oh man they had to like lay off everybody they're coming back I mean because the leadership there is fantastic but they were just decimated and that's when that's when I went okay everybody told me like oh when you when you start your agency you really need to have a focus that you're only going to do Tech or you're only going to do consumer and I I I'm interested in too many things but the pandemic made me go oh thank God I didn't do that Sean do you see a way out of the slog yeah I mean and and I'm really encouraged because the best sign you can get as an employer is when your employees look at the problem and have energy to work on it you know folks are like hey I want to get out there I want to I want to meet with people I want to connect I want to be part of our marketing engine and that's awesome because you know the opposite of that is like well that's not part of my job description you know I think that's been a Hallmark of of starting to hire an older population you know like we went from like we're a company of 20 and 30 year olds to now we're a company of like 30 and 4y olds and some even older like myself older than that but but like you know they've had kids they've had tough marriages they've gone through divorce like they've had these like life experiences that have challenged them and so when we Face a challenge in the business they're like you know what I've gotten through hard things before I'll help you get through this hard thing so you're just reinforcing whatever doesn't kill you will make you stronger [ __ ] yeah okay all right on that note my thanks to sha busy Jay goz and Sarah seagull we will meet again next year thanks guys 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 ren 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 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]