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Add mentionJaci Russo has had quite a summer. First, her husband and business partner, Michael, underwent an unexpected quadruple bypass. Fortunately, Michael's recovering well, and their branding agency passed an important test: With both founders largely out of commission, the team kept the business running and the clients happy. But that wasn't the only surprise Jaci had to deal with. For the past several years, she and Michael thought they knew exactly how they would eventually leave the business. They had a succession plan. They had a timetable. And they had already begun putting the pieces in place. Now, they're back to figuring it out.
This week, Jaci tells Jay Goltz what happened and how she's thinking about her options now. It's a reminder that succession planning isn't just about choosing among selling to family, employees, investors, or some other buyer. It's also about recognizing that circumstances change, people change, and even a plan that once seemed settled can suddenly become anything but.
Plus: We check in with Jay to see whether he's received the hundreds of thousands of dollars he's expecting in tariff refunds. And with Wayfair reporting improved sales, I ask Jay whether that's a sign the furniture business is finally recovering—or whether Wayfair's gains might actually be bad news for independent home stores like his. This episode is brought to you by Grasshopper Bank.
Published August 11, 2026
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About 21 Hats Podcast
The 21 Hats Podcast presents an authentic weekly conversation with small business owners who are remarkably willing to share what’s working for them and what isn’t. Unlike many business podcasts, which tend to talk to highly successful entrepreneurs whose struggles are in the past, the 21 Hats Podcast features a rotating cast of business owners who are still very much in the trenches fighting the good fight. Every week, our regulars gather to talk about the kinds of important issues many owners won’t even discuss behind closed doors: whether their businesses are as profitable as they should be, whether they are willing to give up some control to an investor in order to grow faster, why they had to lay off employees, how they wound up with way too much inventory, why they don’t have a succession plan, and even why they are concerned about their own mental health. Visit 21hats.com to hear all of our podcast episodes, read episode transcripts, and learn more. The show is produced by Jess Thoubboron, founder of Blank Word.
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Speaker B Is AI changing the way Grasshopper does business?
Speaker C Yeah, for sure. We're very focused and disciplined with AI, and, um, What we've done is we've taken the approach that it's most important for everybody in our organization to know how to leverage AI to do their jobs better and more efficiently. And what we believe is that AI will not take your job, but somebody who knows how to use AI will take your job. So, so it's kind of like a cultural thing where we've said, Guys, you got to know how to use this. And we provide tools and training and we monitor the, the effective use of AI inside the company at the employee level first. And I just did a presentation and presented a graph, and I think we're at 90% of our employees are using AI daily. And so that makes me feel really good that we've provided our employees with the right tools For them to be successful in both the business world and frankly, using AI in your day-to-day world is probably good for you too as the world evolves. We take this from a real kind of slow perspective. I'm not trying to get to the moon. I'm not trying to do things that are crazy, but I am trying to use it day in and day out because it's kind of like the personal computer. You know, if you wanted to ignore the personal computer 30 years ago and pull out your abacus, you wouldn't have a job. So that's where we start. And then amazingly, we, we also are very sensitive to people's fear of AI and their job. And, and so when you get them engaged in using it and they become more productive and start to create more opportunities to use it, they feel more in control of their job than fearful of it. So getting them to use it overcomes the fear, and then that leads to more and more kind of bottoms-up ideas about how to create efficiencies in everything that we do. And then it's evolved inside our company from really backroom-oriented now into some of the things that we just launched— our MCP, which is allowing our small businesses to use Claude to ask questions about their checking account, which we think is an unbelievable tool for businesses to be able to, again, save time, understand their finances better by using AI that's connected right to their checking account.
Speaker A Well, what kind of questions would someone ask Claude about their checking account? What is it you have in mind?
Speaker C Well, you know, who's my largest accounts receivable? Who's my largest accounts payable? You know, have I received a payment from XYZ? So all the things that you might be scrolling through your statement to find, Claude can find that for you. And so moving our AI kind of culture into serving the small businesses with better tools is where, where we're getting to. And, and the next part of this is using AI to improve even turnaround time.
Speaker A And now on to the episode. Welcome, Jay and Jackie. It's great to have you here. Jackie, you haven't been here in a little while. Has anything been going on?
Speaker D No, not too much. It's kind of like a gap year all shoved into about 30, 45 days. It's been a month, man.
Speaker B Tell us about it.
Speaker D Well, we'll start with health. I may have, before I went on my baby sabbatical, mentioned that Michael, who is my co-founder and chief creative officer, had flunked his calcium test. And we went through the round of things that one goes through of angiogram, stent, not a good solution, and ended up being a quadruple bypass.
Speaker B How long ago was that?
Speaker D That was July 7th. And this is a healthy 55-year-old, slim and trim, fit guy who plays golf a couple times a week. And he's not a sedentary obese guy by any means.
Speaker E I think you meant apparently healthy, 'cause he obviously wasn't.
Speaker D By all appearances,
Speaker E he
Speaker D looked great.
Speaker E Yeah.
Speaker D But, you know, there's some family history and some, what do they call it, underlying factors or mitigating circumstances or whatever. And so luckily, surgery was a great success. He's like Dan with the new legs. He's Michael with the new heart.
Speaker A And he's doing well? Is he—
Speaker D He is amazingly, he's ahead of schedule, both home health and PT who is coming to the house Both said, we don't need to keep coming here. You are so much better than the rest of my patients because you actually do the exercises when we're not here and you're very mobile. And he's now seen, you know, back to internist, back to cardiologist, back to surgeon, and all of those have cleared him and said he's weeks ahead of schedule. And as long as he keeps doing the things we're doing on the schedule we're doing them, he's going to have a complete and full recovery. Now, it takes almost a year to be back to 100% because, you know, they do a lot of damage in there. And, you know, if you tell the heart and the lungs to take a nap for a few hours, they're a little sluggish to wake up again. So, there's all those kinds of things to work through. But at this point, he's got a titanium cage around his sternum because when you break the middle bone, that breastplate, it takes a while for it to heal back together. But his scar was going to be really pretty. And he's already realizing that he did not feel as good before as he thought he would based on how much better he feels now.
Speaker E Yeah.
Speaker A So he had no sense that there was a problem before, but now he realizes that something—
Speaker D Correct. Well, every time— and we went to a lot of appointments— every time somebody would say, are you having any symptoms? And he would say no. And they would say, Let me explain to you what I mean by symptoms, because they were like, obviously you're having symptoms and you just don't know it. I mean, they made him carry around nitroglycerin tablets. And I was like, can I just check him into the hospital and leave him there? Because I'm worried about taking him home. And they were like, no, I mean, he's, he's going to be okay. But he had 100% blockage in 3 places in the widowmaker alone.
Speaker E Well, I'm glad to hear things are moving well. And thank God you went to the right doctor.
Speaker D Right, right. It's a really good team. You know, we There's a regional system down here in Louisiana called Ochsner, and they bought our for-profit community hospital, Lafayette General. And I have been blown away by the team care, level of care, system of care. Just all of it has been so impressive. We are, you know, big fans.
Speaker E Just for full disclosure, you told me about this, so of course I called my doctor, who's the concierge doctor. I should be getting everything Right,
Speaker D right.
Speaker E Why didn't I get the— and they don't put you through the calcium test unless you have a family history, because— and I Googled it also, Dr. Google— there's some false positives and it makes people nuts. And they don't— if you haven't had a test, it doesn't mean your doctor's not doing his job.
Speaker D And so family history. So if your family, you know, like you've had a dad and a grandfather with heart attacks in their 40s and 50s, family history. If you are diabetic, pre-diabetic, or have diabetes in your family, family history, those 2 things will contribute to calcium. 'Cause Michael did not have high blood pressure. He did not have high cholesterol. Like his labs, until we got to the cardiac calcium test, we wouldn't have known.
Speaker E Wow.
Speaker D But it saved his life.
Speaker A We are very happy about that, obviously.
Speaker D We are. We like him. We'd like him to stick around.
Speaker A Yes, we do. Jackie, what has this meant for the business operation?
Speaker D Well, it was a real good test. You know, everybody talks about the founders and entrepreneurs being the bottleneck, and your team should be able to function without you. We got to figure out real quickly whether or not they could, because we both checked out. Now, there was some forewarning, and there was some opportunities to put some systems in place and make sure things were properly transitioned. It wasn't like we had been in heart attacks or car accidents, so that was great. I did not have surgery and I felt great. So I was still able to do work remotely a little here and a little there, just some things that only I can do. And there's not a lot of that. Everything else is pretty much delegated, but there's a few things. And just as an added value challenge, 4 days post-op, one of the designers on the team had a preplanned family European vacation for 2 weeks. So they were down 2 people for 2 weeks. And I give the team a lot of credit. They just kept on trucking and they got things done and they kept clients happy and they stayed on task and on deadline. And we stayed with our 4-day week. Now I know that they filled in extra hours and I'm sure had to do some things on Friday to keep stuff afloat, but they did it. And we are very appreciative that we have a team who acts like a team and covers for each other. Because clients didn't even miss a beat.
Speaker E I'm sure your clients also cut you some slack knowing the situation because you have a relationship with them, right?
Speaker D Well, we do have great relationships, some of them for years and years and years. You know, Michael was not real— well, he'd have a heart attack honestly if he heard me talking about it right now. He doesn't love that everybody knows his business.
Speaker E Oh.
Speaker D So we weren't doing a lot of advance notice to clients, but Michael and I aren't the day-to-day point people for clients. We transitioned that years ago.
Speaker E Oh, all right.
Speaker D And so they don't know who does their work. They just know it gets done.
Speaker A Is there anything Michael was handling that nobody else knew how to do?
Speaker D You know, there are some things that Michael does better than everybody else, and I think the team had to step up. And then some things probably didn't look like Michael did them, but they still looked really good.
Speaker E Okay, so as the business owner guy, I have to ask, this wasn't an immediate quick, you're going to the hospital, right? There was how much time between?
Speaker D Correct. We had about, from flunking the test, To the angiogram that was 16 minutes because there was no way they were getting a stent in there, to scheduling the surgery and he's on the table under the knife, that whole thing was 5 weeks.
Speaker E Okay, so the question is, out of that 5 weeks, did he sit down with his computer and make a list of stuff that if anything went wrong that he figured you'd need to know?
Speaker D Well, um, let me put it to you this way. When we saw where we were headed, When the angiogram was non-starter, I said, hey, listen, by law, according to this document in the safe, our 22, 23, 25, 26-year-old kids have to go live with our friends Cody and Melissa. And I don't think they're gonna wanna do that. So we need to update our will. And while we're at it, our healthcare directive and our irrevocable trust. And here's a digital document that is every login, every password, Every—
Speaker E I was waiting for that one.
Speaker D Oh yeah, and security questions and authenticator login codes. I mean, it's everything. And so, we both did that. And, he goes, well, you're not having surgery. And, I said, no, but I also could get hit by a bus. There's no guarantee just because I got a 0 on my calcium score and you didn't.
Speaker E The point is there's no reason not to do it is the point.
Speaker D Correct. But, we've been talking about it, Jay. I'm so glad you asked. So, we lost a very, very, favorite uncle of Michael's a couple of years ago, maybe, gosh, year and a half now. And I'm really close friends with his daughter, his oldest, who I actually was friends with in college before I ever met Michael. And so she walked me through all of the challenges as the executrix of the estate that she was going through. And so I promptly bought what they call the NOC box in OK, next of kin. And it's a box with all these forms and documents. I can tell you exactly where that box is. Unopened in the study at the house right now. It was just big and overwhelming and intimidating, and neither one of us ever wanted to sit down and do it. But but she really didn't want to. So then we were on a trip with our friends Melissa and Cody, and in the bookstore, I love to buy from local bookstores a little something every time because I like supporting a bookstore. And so it's a book that's maybe forty fifty pages thick, and it says, "Okay, I'm dead now." What? And I was like, I like that. That feels manageable. So I bought that book and it sits on the table right next to my seat on the couch, unopened, untouched since maybe January. This was go to the lawyer, get the documents, get them notarized, get off your ass and get shit done. And so that's what happened.
Speaker E Because the damage you can do to your descendants, the grief, just the grief that they would have to go through if they had 60 seconds with you, just go quick, what's the password? Where's that? My sister just went out of town. She took her entire family to Africa. Oh my God, she sent me a whole— her entire family, kids. There was no one— would have been no one left. She sent me an entire thing about where everything in her house is, where this is at. And like, I respect that. I— yeah, you know.
Speaker D Well, here was my theory. Um, if something tragic were to happen to either one of us, we would be so sad. Uh, we would be so devastated. We would need to be providing, you know, mourning and, and support for our kids and our family and our friends. And the last thing anybody's going to want to try to figure out is passwords and authenticator codes. And so being prepared, to me, it's like a good insurance policy. I hope I never need it, but if I do, I'm going to be glad I got it.
Speaker E No, I think you're off on one part of that. You are going to need it. This isn't it. We're all—
Speaker D I may not.
Speaker E No, I'm older than you are. Trust me.
Speaker D Somebody's going to need it.
Speaker E Somebody's going to need— we're all going to need it at some point.
Speaker D The one who goes first doesn't need anything.
Speaker E Yeah, I guess. Well—
Speaker D But I hope it's not me.
Speaker E Yeah.
Speaker A But the one who goes first would like to know at the last moment that everything's been buttoned up.
Speaker D Well, luckily, I mean, you know, hopefully I got 30, 40, 50 more years with him. Um, but according to every doctor, when and if something takes his life, it will not be the heart. Something else is going to fail first. That heart's going to last a long time. It's in really great shape.
Speaker E Okay.
Speaker D So that was July.
Speaker A Well, Jackie, Michael's surgery forced you to think about some things that you perhaps had been putting off, but I gather almost simultaneously, you also learned that another person you expected to be working with you for a while in the business might not want to do it. Is that right?
Speaker D That's correct. So, you know, Jackson moved back to Lafayette from Nashville.
Speaker A Jackson is your son and the— He is
Speaker D our son, our oldest. And the heir apparent to the business. has been the heir apparent for 3 years, was working for a marketing company in Nashville when we had an opening. He was— I really honestly, I don't think we talked him into it. I think he thought it was gonna be a great idea. We thought it was gonna be a great idea. This was Michael's lifelong dream come true. My boy is gonna take over. And we put that on track and we've talked about it. I've talked about it on the podcast. We've talked about it at the 21 Hats in-person conference sessions. I've talked about it in other— Entrepreneur groups I'm in.
Speaker A You told us, uh, you wanted it to happen within 5 years, and that was, I think, at least a year ago.
Speaker D It was, it was, because the plan was 2030. And so we, you know, had really started to do some transitioning and, and some, uh, training and figured out how I was going to take the 5 years and onboard him into this. So it wasn't just a switch flipped. It would, you know, he'd watch me do it for a while. We'd do it together for a while. I'd watch him do it for a while, and then I'd be out. It was kind of my approach. And it became apparent in the past, really, I'm going to say 10 months, but definitely the past 4 or 5 months, that this wasn't his passion. This isn't the thing that he got up energized to do every day. And I wondered if it was a phase or things going on, you know, in his dating life, or, you know, just an off day, maybe a not great—
Speaker E Wait, wait, wait, wait. I got to ask for Both as the parent and the boss. Was it obvious to you, or did he say something?
Speaker D It was becoming obvious to me that something was off, but I didn't know what that was. And so I knew it wasn't the— I get up energized to come here every day, and you can tell when people are just going through the motions or they are doing something they're passionate about. And look, I don't love every day, every minute, every hour at my job, nor do I expect anyone else to. But there's a big difference between I'm frustrated by this project or I've had a bad week and I really hate what I'm doing. I see a lot of times in people when they are not passionate about their, their calling, it's not a calling for them. It's like they're stuck in Jell-O and they can't make decisions and they become kind of lethargic and they seem to be sort of resentful and there's no joy in Mudville.
Speaker E And how did this end? Did he just come in one day and go, listen, I have to tell you this?
Speaker D No, no, not at all. We were talking about maybe is there another thing? Like, I get that this isn't your thing and there's other things you could do in the company to ascend towards the top. And so maybe it's time to transition to another thing. So we'd been talking about that. We'd been talking about other ways he could serve the business. And so that's in one side of my head. We're having these conversations and I'm initiating them. He's not. Meanwhile, I'm thinking, because at the end of the day, I am a human and we are somewhat self-serving creatures. I'm like, you know, I could sell this place for a lot more if I sold it to a stranger. You know, if we're going to owner finance, that means we have to be involved a lot longer. I don't want him to take on debt, but I want to get top dollar. And so I'm thinking, you know, what is the best situation for everybody, not just for him, not just for me and Michael, the team, the company, the clients, everybody. What is the best situation? Because I feel like it's team, clients, then us. That's the order I make decisions in. Because if the team is happy and not taking advantage, not slacking off, really genuinely being provided for, then they have an environment where they can work at their best, which means clients get the best work. And therefore Michael and I get the best, you know, company. And so everybody wins. And so as Jackson and I are having these conversations, it's like he's not feeling it. I'm not feeling it. And so about 2 or 3 weeks post-op, it must have been 2 and a half weeks post-op, we sat down and I said, I think we need to rip the bandaid off. I think we're dancing around this topic. And I think you agree with me, this isn't your thing. And he goes, but I'm dumb to turn it down. And I said, no, you're dumb to stay if it's not the thing that makes you happy.
Speaker E Wow. Now that's interesting because I was going to ask you, because, you know, I've been through this to some degree and I—
Speaker D Right.
Speaker E And I'm still in it. I, I say I'm in the suck part of succession planning right now. That would be S-U-C-K. Yep. But I'll figure it out. I don't want to hang it on my kids, and I'm perfectly good with they want to do their own thing. But I was going to ask, did he figure it out? And now you're telling me something I didn't think about. He was, was, um, tantalized by the idea. Maybe he didn't love it, but, oh, this is a good opportunity. I never thought about that, that this is a good opportunity even though they really don't want to do it. That's— you got to put that in the book of the family business thing. That's interesting that there's ones that want nothing to do with it, there's ones that love it and want to be there, and then there's ones that know they can make money doing it and it's a good opportunity, but they're not—
Speaker D There's a sense of obligation. And care. He thought of it as caring for Michael and I.
Speaker E Well, that's a whole nother one. I was gonna ask you about that.
Speaker D Yeah.
Speaker E How did this all start? Do you think he felt some obligation that he needed?
Speaker D Yes.
Speaker E Yeah.
Speaker D Yeah. I think Michael was— and I'm not putting this on anybody, it was collective, it was the 3 of us talking about it— but I think that Michael definitely expressed, my boy. And, and Jackson was like, I'm a good and dutiful son. And, you know, it's almost It to me felt like an arranged marriage.
Speaker E I hope I haven't done that. I don't think I've done that because I'd never— from day one, I didn't want to hang this on my kids. But this happens. Oh, I read a book from a guy that has a very successful business, and he thought his kid was going to take it over. And in the book, he said that he realized his son wasn't, and it broke his heart. Yeah. And I thought, ouch. Um,
Speaker D well, it's funny because a couple of years ago, one of Jackson's really good friends was handed the keys to his family's kingdom, which is a very successful regional business. And Jackson's friend would be the 3rd or 4th generation to take it over. And you talk about easy street. I mean, this business runs itself. Like, he gets to just go hunting and fishing and camping and get a check. And he turned it down because it's not his passion.
Speaker E Wow.
Speaker D And for 2 years, I think Jackson has, at least behind his back, if not to his face, kind of made fun of him. Not in a derogatory, putting him down way, but like, dude, how dumb are you that you're passing on this? This is so great. And I said, do you think your friend should have taken over the family business? And he goes, no, absolutely not. He's so much happier. I'm like, right.
Speaker E There's another piece of that which, which we don't have, but the reality from that I've seen is if it gets to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation, there's a lot of money there.
Speaker D Yes.
Speaker E And the kid's got some of that money already, as they should. So like, the kid's not starving. He's a wealthy, he's a, I love that new phrase, a nepo baby. He's a nepo baby. He's got, which is, I'm not criticizing it. He's got family money from the family. So that does change the dynamics of the whole thing. Now, what about your other kids?
Speaker D So that's the other thing I actually said to Jackson. I said, so we have 3 daughters, sisters who are younger than him. One is a chemical engineer who has ascended rapidly at a very big global company and she's killing it. One is a film editing graduate who is now an English teacher and has found her passion and is so happy and killing it. And the third is 7 days away from flying to London for grad school to marry her love in London, an English girl, and be a social worker.
Speaker E Okay.
Speaker D And so I said to Jackson, which one of them would you have me derail their careers to take over this business that they want nothing to do with and have no talent or aptitude for? He said, none of them. I said, then why would I do that to you?
Speaker E I have a friend who's in the frame business that I've known forever. He's got 4 kids. He sends the youngest one out here and I spent the day with him. I call him and I go, Bill, you got the kid to do this. He's totally into it and he's smart. And he goes, yeah, that was the 4th kid, meaning the first 3 didn't work. And I go, there's my problem. I had 3 kids. You gotta have 4.
Speaker D Yes.
Speaker E Because the odds are 25%. So it's like going to Vegas with, yeah, you gotta have the 4 kids.
Speaker D Every stat when the kids were little, we would see that says 1 in 4 kids blank. I'm like, which one of ours? Because we got 4. Yeah.
Speaker A Jackie, do you have any idea what is Jackson's passion or what is his plan now?
Speaker D He is taking a, what I'm calling a gap year. Um, and he is, uh, you know, paring down expenses. He bought a house, so he's renting that out. And he is driving to, uh, with his dog and camping along the way to visit friends in Colorado. And he's had, I don't even know how many job interviews at this point for places in Colorado and Montana. And I think he's gonna end up working like at a dude ranch and just kind of touch grass and figure out what's next.
Speaker A So you clearly did not try to talk him into sticking around.
Speaker D No. No, I talked him into making a decision now to go.
Speaker E The older I get, the more I recognize it makes perfect sense that only 25% of businesses get to the second— that doesn't surprise me at all. Between not wanting to do it, not having the head to do it, it just makes perfect sense. This is like there's a— Michael Jordan's kid doesn't— is not in the NBA. I mean, there are certain aspects to being an entrepreneur that you just can't hand off. You have to have the head for it. You have to have the heart for it. You got to have the stomach for it.
Speaker D Right.
Speaker A Your employees have seen a lot going on with your family at this point. Has it raised questions? Are you hearing from them wondering what this means?
Speaker D Yes. Yeah, no, we've, we've had to have some pretty open and honest conversations when all of this— because, you know, Michael was very, uh, non-sharing because he doesn't like that. That's very uncomfortable for him. And so—
Speaker E But his wife's on a podcast talking about it.
Speaker D Yeah, I mean, we're not the same, Jay. We're not the same. And so, look, I'd be showing y'all pictures of his scar if he let me, but that's maybe a step too far. And so, you know, 2 employees reached out and said, you know, obviously we are worried for Michael. Whatever you need, we're here. Not to make it about us or not to make it about me, they each said, but is there anything, should I be worried? And I said, we're not selling the company. We're not shutting it down so that we can take an easier, quieter life. We are going to get him healthy and then we're going to be right back at it. And that's what's happened.
Speaker E Do you think that Jackson's head was changed at all watching his father go through this? Do you think it changed his perspective of, you know, it's one thing you think your parents are going to live forever and the next thing you know your father's going in for a quadruple bypass. I would think that might have had an effect on his head.
Speaker D It hit all 4 of them in very interesting different ways. You know, Jordan missed, with permission, her last 2 days at her— she's in the middle of a promotion and transfer, and so the last 2 days at her original place she did not finish because she came here to be at the hospital. And that manager was really great, and then the new one was really great, so it worked out perfectly. But they all did the thing that you want your kids or your family to do when times are challenging. And the petty stuff went away. Everybody focused on the big stuff. Everybody circled around each other and ensured that we were loving each other and supporting each other and caring for each other. There was a healthy dose of sarcasm thrown in because that's our love language. And I think that everybody maybe took a little stock, you know, as I've got— Jordan moving with her husband to Pennsylvania and Molly moving with her future wife to London, they're going to be further away from us than ever before. And now Jackson probably going to be in Montana. And so I think each of them has had to take stock on how do we continue to stay connected when we don't physically live in the same town.
Speaker A You know, it's very early days. Have you started to think at all about what your alternative succession plans might be?
Speaker D Yes, I have. Um, I've had a couple of epiphanies. One Jay's gonna laugh at because it's so obvious. My whole peace out at 60 did not in any way acknowledge that I need health insurance from 60 to 65. Like, never occurred to me that I need to stay on my Blue Cross policy until Medicare kicks in. So that's made me reset the timeline.
Speaker E And you're hardly the only person— anybody, forgetting even about owning a business, a lot of the world Keeps working till 65 because they need the health insurance.
Speaker D Yeah, I get it now. I get it. And so yeah, so I will too. So I've reset my clock and I'm fine with that. It's it's you know it just kicks the can a little bit further down the road. It's not a problem. You know we've gotten a couple of interests over the years. Once it's turned into a little more than an interest, I'm not entertaining it, but it's just nice to know you're pretty. And so I am very focused on ensuring that our processes improve, adapt to the AI world, uh, really know that we are maximizing all of our opportunities and putting us in a good position for the next evolution.
Speaker A You heard that I'm offering a Succession Solutions workshop in January?
Speaker D I did, I did hear that. And it's funny because when I first saw the notice, I was like, oh, My plan is set. I'm not worried about it. Now I'm planning on signing up for it.
Speaker A Excellent.
Speaker D Yep.
Speaker A Well, your situation will be very interesting to discuss. Clearly, if nothing else, it shows that things can change.
Speaker D Yes.
Speaker A Even when you think you got it figured out.
Speaker D Yes, indeed. And that's why I think you always have to be open to what the universe provides, because you never know how things are going. You know it's going to change. You just don't know how. I mean, what's the Chinese curse? May you live in interesting times. And so this has been an interesting summer, and I feel all the more grateful for it. To me, these are things that could have made me angry, bitter, mad, frustrated, sad, whatever. But every one of them, I just approached with a grateful heart that we found it and solved it. We saw it and changed direction. We adjust it and move through it. And so that's to me the healthiest way to approach it because it means that I'm in control of my reactions and I am able to find the bright spot, not in a toxic positivity way, but in a how do I make the most of this situation way.
Speaker E There's another very important lesson here. There's an old joke about what do they call the person who's in the bottom of their class in medical school? Doctor.
Speaker D Yep.
Speaker E The fact of the matter is half the doctors in the world are below average. That's just half of everybody is below average. Had your doctor not been smart enough or responsible enough to send him for this test, right, that's all it would have taken. Just one small decision by a doctor that forgot to send him for that, and it'd be a very different story, which just means make sure you got a good doctor.
Speaker D She suggested it often and he ignored it, so I'm going to pat myself on the back a little bit. I have a really good girlfriend group from college. We get together once a month and eat dinner. And at this point, it's sharing our ailments. It used to be we talked about raising kids. Before that, it was finding the right guy to marry. So, our lives have evolved. Now, it's a lot about menopause symptoms and weighted vests. And one of them who's— her husband's a couple years older than us, had the test, found a problem, probably saved his life. And she was like, y'all all need to go get this test. And so I harped and nagged my husband.
Speaker E Now I'm confused. If— why would he not— if he's got the family history and it's, it's not like it's an invasive thing, why would he not have gone for this?
Speaker D Jay, because then you have to admit there might be a problem and it's easier just to ignore it.
Speaker E Wow.
Speaker D Ostrich meet Michael. Michael meet ostrich.
Speaker E Wow.
Speaker D Head in the sand, buddy.
Speaker E And he went to the doctor once a year?
Speaker D When I figured out he hadn't gone the last 3 years.
Speaker E Wow.
Speaker D Well, you don't go to the doctor if the doctor keeps telling you stuff you don't want to hear.
Speaker E Oh, all right.
Speaker D We have had a life-changing experience though. I see a whole different approach to healthcare at my house now. It's really good.
Speaker A Jay, in fairness, I feel like I have to remind you that not too long ago, a month or two, I guess, we had a conversation here talking about your succession plans, and you acknowledged that you were not fully prepared for, you know, the getting hit by a bus problem.
Speaker E No, no, absolutely not. I didn't say I was. I'm working on it.
Speaker A No, no, no. But you were asking about why one would put off something like this. Uh, does this raise your sense of urgency at all?
Speaker E Oh no, I just— to be clear, I do have, I do have something printed out about here's all the stuff, and I've certainly— my will is up to date.
Speaker A But in terms of who would own the company and who would be in charge and
Speaker E Well, at the moment it's my— yeah, it's my wife but I—
Speaker A Not ideal according to you.
Speaker E No, clearly not and I also would emphasize, unlike everything else I've done in business where I'm into fixing it and getting it done, I can only try in this regard. I'm going to try to have a glorious finish for this business when I'm out of the picture.
Speaker A You're talking about a, you know, the whole succession plan.
Speaker E Yeah. You were talking about the drop-dead part?
Speaker A There's an intermediate step where you could just solve the problem of dumping ownership into your wife's lap and leaving the company without anybody in charge.
Speaker E And what would that be, old wise one? What would that be?
Speaker A You know, it could be as simple as, first step, a board of directors who would be able to make decisions.
Speaker E Yes. No, I'm working on all that. Yeah. It's all about triage. I've, you know, got some other pressing things at the moment, but I'm definitely working on all that. And, uh, yeah, for sure. And I also recognize that even though I trained—
Speaker A That's part of how one goes 3 years without going to the doctor, right? Isn't that—
Speaker E Well, no, that's not a fair comparison. Going to the doctor is take an hour out of your life, go to the damn doctor, for God's sakes. This is hardly as simple as that. For instance, the first step is getting over the gag reflex I have when I hear the phrase board of directors. Okay, so I'm past that, uh, and I know that that's a good first step. So, and I, I'm working— yeah, I'm working on it.
Speaker A Becky, do you think, um, all of this going on has changed the way Michael looks at, uh, his job, his business, what he wants to do at work? Do you think he's going to come back and be the same person or Will this have an impact?
Speaker D And you know, he's, um, he came back into a really frustrating project, his first project back at the office, and I think it is putting him in the right frame of mind for the vision of the agency we want to continue to grow into and the kind of work we want to do, because there's some work that we just don't enjoy as much. It's not as profitable, and I think he's more on board with that than ever before. And I also think he is realizing that life is too precious to waste doing something you don't enjoy. And so it's not always going to be easy. It's not always going to be fun, but you need to get some joy from it. And so I do think he's on board with that.
Speaker E Joy is good.
Speaker D Yes, very much so. Joy is good.
Speaker A So before we go, Jay, I have a couple of quick questions for you. The government just reported that it has refunded approximately $100 billion of the roughly, I don't know, $160 billion owed after the Supreme Court invalidated the tariffs. I'm curious, have you been able to get your tariff refund?
Speaker E No, we're in line. We're signed up to get— I check on it regularly, but there's steps that have— I don't have the exact language, but we're in queue to get it, but no, we haven't. And I've gotten these emails out of the clear blue from law firms, you know, which every time something like this happens, it creates a cottage industry and they take a percentage. But I don't think I need a law firm to do this.
Speaker A You don't know that there's a problem, that you're just—
Speaker E No, right? I think we're okay, but I just— it's hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's not $20 grand. It's between my wholesale framing business, frame business, which I import stuff, and home store. It's, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Speaker A So concerned about, obviously.
Speaker E Yeah, well, well, that's one of the— I try to teach my kids this. If I wanted to get concerned about things, I'd be nuts. I'm already nuts enough. I just— Jackie, I assume you can appreciate that there's 20 things that could happen that could be really bad to each of our businesses. And if we wanted to focus— well, what happens if— yeah, okay, stop. So no, I'm, I'm following up on it regularly. Am I concerned a little? Yeah, sure.
Speaker A You thought about how you're going to have to pay taxes on that money?
Speaker E No. See, I'll add that to the list of things that I'll— maybe I'll send you the list of things that I should be concerned about that I'm not concerned with and then we can just—
Speaker A Yeah, please do, that's our next podcast.
Speaker E Listen, paying taxes, I wish that that was a pro— paying taxes is a great thing. If you're paying taxes, God bless you. If you're paying taxes, I mean, you made money and that's a beautiful thing. It's when you're not paying taxes that you got a problem.
Speaker D Yes.
Speaker E God bless America.
Speaker D That's the right way to look at it though, Jay. That's really good.
Speaker E It's the only way.
Speaker A Well, not everybody is there, Jay. Not everybody is there.
Speaker D I did not look at it that way for a long time.
Speaker E Yeah, I gotta tell you, I'm old enough the tax rates used to be way higher than they are now. I mean, it's, uh, yeah, it's okay. Like I said, I, I did the years that I haven't paid taxes are the difficult years.
Speaker A Next thing I want to ask you about Perhaps it's on that list as well. Wayfair just announced its second quarter returns. They say the overall furniture category is only beginning to recover, but their sales rose almost 9%. And I'm curious what you think that means. Does that mean that the overall market is improving or is Wayfair taking even more share from companies like yours?
Speaker E Probably not a company like mine because they sell crap. If I had to guess, I don't think the industry is having a big comeback. I'm guessing that some of these smaller places have gone out of business. Oh, I can tell you, this isn't even— this isn't an opinion, this is a fact. Some major big furniture chains have gone out of business that did billions of dollars a year. I'm sure they're getting some of that. So, the mass market furniture thing, they're getting some of that market. That's not the market I'm in, but at the end of the day, I'm sorry to say, in just general business, competing with these big public corporations is not easy and they get public money and they just— they lose money for years but you're competing with them and it hasn't made the landscape. I don't care whether you're in the sporting goods store business, I could name 10 industries probably that have to deal with this, and many of them have gone away. Whether it's the local flower shop, whether it's competing with the big chain store, grocery store that's got a flower department now, the local bakery that's competing with the big bakery at Costco, for instance. I mean, it's difficult.
Speaker A Are you seeing any signs of recovery at all in your business?
Speaker E Framing's doing fine. Um, the furniture store, um, I, I can't, I can't say that No, I, I don't think it's, uh, been rebounding. Um, but I got one store, you know. I sell interesting, cool stuff that, you know, I've got a very loyal following. I'm not selling, you know, bedroom sets. There's a little but very little overlap between what I do and what Wayfair does.
Speaker A I know you do stuff online already. Does Wayfair's continued growth in sales suggest that maybe you could do more online?
Speaker E The problem with having one store is I I don't have an IT department with 30 people in it. So, we do a beautiful catalog twice a year. We got an extremely rabid, loyal, excited customer base because we sell cool, interesting stuff. It's a niche. I can't play the mass market thing. That's just not what we do and it's not where my— I don't have the leverage to do that and it's not where my head's at. So, I'm a specialties niche player.
Speaker A You actually opened a pop-up store in New York for a while because you were selling so much online. Uh, to that area. So it— you have had some success selling online?
Speaker E No, for sure. We do a decent amount of business online, but it's a speck compared to what these big companies are doing.
Speaker A All right, Jackie, will you please tell Michael that we asked for him and are thrilled that he's doing well?
Speaker D Of course, will do.
Speaker A My thanks to Jay Galtz and Jackie Russo, and a special thanks to our sponsor. This episode was brought to you by Grasshopper Bank. And thanks for listening, everybody. Before you go, if you get something out of these podcast episodes, it would be a huge favor to me and to the entire 21 Hats community if you could tell just one other owner about them. Your word of mouth, owner to owner, will always be the most effective way to build this community for all of us. And don't forget about our other offerings. The monthly mastermind on Zoom where you get to join the conversation, the upcoming Succession Solutions workshop, and our annual 21 Hats Live in-person events. And of course, if you have a question or suggestion, you can always email me at lauren@21hats.com. This episode was produced by Jess Thuberon, founder of Blank Word Productions. Thanks again for listening.