Optimism in D Minor

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week William Vander bluman tells Karen Clark Cole and Dana White that he's cautiously optimistic about 2021 because his clients are cautiously optimistic and because he's expecting lots of turnover as the pandemic recedes William explains how he uses a Frankenstein customer relations system to track what its clients read on his website and to sense when those clients are getting ready to make a hire the system then prompts the Vander bloomen team to give the client a call we also talk about why Karen is tired of being a best-kept secret and how Dana handles customers who have to be fired plus there's a new tax credit you should know about that William calls pretty incredible but that seems to be getting lost in the PPP Shuffle 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 these challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which you can subscribe to at 21 hats .c where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes this week's lineup features Karen Clark Cole who is CEO of blink a user experience research and design firm in Seattle William Vander blumen who is CEO of Vander bluman Search Group a recruiting firm based in Houston that works with churches and other faith-based organizations and Dana White who is CEO of paraly Boyd a chain of hair salons based in Detroit the episode is titled optimism in D Minor thanks for joining me today Karen and William we we haven't talked to you yet this year let's start with you guys Karen how about you how how's business what's going on I love this time of year because the numbers all go to zero and we just start over so on one hand it's exciting the other hand it's like oh God we got to do it again um so uh but so far so good uh everybody's gotten used to being remote so it's less a constant conversation um but we are starting to think about what are we going to do with our spaces when people can start coming back later this year so we're not anticipating anybody's doing anything until probably after the summer um so uh and we have a lot of beautiful office spaces well not a lot we have four and um so it's just sort of rethinking workspace so we're starting to actually do some prototyping do some space planning that kind of thing so but it feels like we're just less everything seems less of a panic than it did um you know last summer and through the end of last year we were just trying to make the year come out in the black which we did so everything was just focused on that so now I feel like we have a little bit of breathing room to start thinking okay what's this year going to look like do you think most people are going to come back into the office or are you anticipating more of a a hybrid solution yeah we've done a lot of um asking our employees and uh it's going to be hybrid for sure and and that's I think that's good you know I think I like it you know we've proven that we can do work from anywhere so what we're asking is like okay so knowing that you can still do that what's missing and it's the coming together to collaborate just to see each other to um you know we are human beings after all and we do like being around other humans so it's that part is really missing so we're trying to um create a space where people that facilitates collaboration and coming together for um Gatherings or meetings are you know certainly we want to see our clients but I think what's going to happen is the heads down work will continue to happen at home how about you William how's your year starting off we've had a a great out of the gates few weeks I've said for a number of months now and people are starting to latch on to my prediction that this year will be a year of massive job turnover are you seeing that at your place uh yeah some but but not not any this year yet we had some last year what I read are the Tea Leaves of like usually in January you'll have people call me and say I know you aren a job placement service but I'm a high capacity person and I'm For the First Time and Forever I'm thinking of making a change and I'm like well it's January everybody wants to change in January last year it happened in November and December I've never seen that before so you know that's a that's a Tremor all that's to say when there's huge turnover you know usually signals a really good year for us William we should specify when you say when the William when you say when there's huge turnover that's a good year for you you you mean among your clients not necessarily among your employees well yeah yeah yeah exactly turnover as a market you know means there people moving around and that's we that's kind of why we exist so so William can you just tell us at at a high level why you think this is the year for that first and foremost there's just a latency in the market and what I mean by that is yeah people left their jobs in 2020 maybe because of downsizing but a lot of the voluntary natural turnover that would happen in a year didn't happen in 2020 because people didn't want to move during all this mess or they couldn't move so you you've got a buildup you know like there's been a dam in the river for a year and and now it's going to get let loose right so that's one got a number of people Mo moving back toward family of origin we got a number of people I mean if you're in New York City you know it's like people are leaving quickly like the Titanic um so you've got Geographic reshuffling that's happening a whole lot of people during 2020 their job became something that's entirely different than what they signed up for it's just made him say you know I understand incremental change but this is too much too fast and I've got to find a new way so those are a few reasons we outlin a ton of them but it it looks like a year year of heavy turnover so Lauren January May well beat last January which was a all-time record for us and uh we'll see where it goes and how long it takes for us to to you know get past the pandemic into whatever is new as normal but uh it feels like employers are starting to be able to see or sense a Finish Line and that has created uh uh optimism about hiring it's an interesting time because you you we do have the optimism of the the vaccines coming online at the same time cases have been up and there the the new Varian that have people nervous what you deal your your clients are are on the front lines of this are you what's winning optimism or pessimism optimism um and and I don't just say that because I'm an optimist and it's not optimism that's polanish um it's it's uh optimism in D minor and what do I mean by that I mean it's I mean it's like look here's the thing even the most cautious doctors that I talked to and the Texas Medical Center is arguably the best medical center in the world and it's two miles from my house so even the most cautious doctors I'm talking to are like yeah the vaccine's going to get out it's taking longer than we would like but it's going to get out and oh by the way there's so many undiagnosed cases that have happened that we're going to get to a place where this will run its course one way or the other and not going to be in 22 it's going to happen this year so you know that's sad because a lot of people are going to get sick and that means a lot of people are going to be very sick and probably the death numbers are going to keep going up but I think my clients what what really dragged on them in 2020 was they all felt like uh uh you know the Greek mythology guy Copus that just rolls the rock up the hill and it rolls back down on him and he has to roll it up the hill for all of eternity and it that was 2020 was like well let's you know flatten the curve and then 30 days later well let's flatten it again well and there's never a sign of a terminal point and I think even if it were worst case scenario clients that I'm talking to are sensing there is a terminal point and a lot of our clients are churches and schools and they're looking toward fall of 21 and you know the back to school push as a time when things should be a lot less clamped down and maybe back to whatever normal looks like so so optimism is winning but not without a very sober sad reality that that we're not through this at all so if we're not even through it like what You' just said then why in January are people looking to turn over their jobs it seems a little premature isn't it is it just like New Year's resolution that's what happens I think so people are going to balance the checkbook they're going to lose 10 pounds they're going to get right with God whatever the thing is that happens in January but but but what but but but beond on that January means we're in a new budget year which means we quote have new money which as a business owner I have no idea what that means um I have the same money in my checking account today as I did December 31st but you know it it's new budget year so we get things done there's planning for hiring if you do hiring right it's not a two it's not a two- week Venture it's like okay we're going to need this person in place by the Fall so let's back that out and say we probably ought to get going in the spring which means we ought to talk talk about it now and that sounds like a terribly long time but but most of the hiring that we do is not for Rank and file workers it's for executive level or leadership positions and those you you tend to see people taking a little more time hiring Dana how are you doing I'm doing well Perell is doing well um we we've had some challenges in the past week or so um my admin team is is dealing with some personal issues um multiple deaths health issues oh gosh yeah it's pretty sad are you talking about covid deaths no not at all thank goodness um but um still death um my operations manager she had two deaths within her family one was an elder family member and the other one was in reaction to the Elder family member passing um and so that happened suddenly and then uh my manager you know she has in and out of the hospital they just checked her back in admitted her rather to the hospital this morning so what I'm proud of is the fact that they um are taking care of themselves supporting their family and you know using their work with per boy to help take care of themselves we've talked to a lot of salons lot of businesses and we are so blessed to not only be open but see our numbers increase um and I think think I am when I when I think about where I was a year ago in March when we were um worried we didn't know what was going to happen and I'm a little emotional because I've learned so much about myself believing that when I put my mind to something I can do it without asking permission um I was scared on I think it was a call with Karen and Lauren you said so Dana what are you going to do and I said I just don't know and you know I had a choice and Jay put it out there what are you going to do and I chose and to see the results what did you choose I chose to Bear down I chose peral Le to survive yeah and I'll choose her I will choose my business every day and twice on Sunday I started the product line yes it's slow going but it's going we're not closing we're hiring I chose not to climb the mountain but to get on the pelaton and ride still get my workout in but it doesn't mean I have to ascend I don't have to scale Mount kale and darl but I can still build without moving and I've learned the value of being still getting my resources together getting my PPP winning demo day which was awesome applying for grants and Loans getting the work done and on January you know 2021 I'm still here and getting ready to Market and and grow the business so yeah I'm a little emotional because a year ago I I was gonna I I thought Co was gonna take us take us out hair hair salon is standing over somebody shampooing their here I'm I'm not a restaurant where I can load up your food in the back of your trunk or your car to see my numbers yeah it's January we had a we had a slow week last week great googly muggly it was the worst but overall when I talked to other salons that are doing 5,000 this month 6,000 this month and to see us maintain steady double digits yeah I'm I'm I'm like whoa I chose I chose peral good for you you know you you mentioned demo day uh I don't think we ever really tied that up I think the last time we talked about that you were still deciding ing how you were going to take uh the money from them whether it would be a uh uh I guess a convertible loan that they could convert to equity uh or you could just take it as a straight loan I think was uh was the discussion did you make a decision on that I did I have taken um $50,000 of that demo day money as a loan and uh interest free loan for uh marketing and in the event that I do decide to partner with a VC or an investor um I can take that loan and convert it with the rest of my money and turn it into a convertible note um but they you gave them no equity I gave them no equity just good but if i y but if I want to later I can but for right now I think I learned that the VC world is touch and go I am I know that I have a great product I have I have a really great business Co has taught me that um and it's only as great as the people that I work with and the decisions that I make the work I put into it and so I again I choose peral Le and so I've you know I'm going to start selling products on Amazon I'm selling products online through our website we're updating that to just handle the volume um and I've taken I didn't hang on to it I've been advised to hang on to the $200,000 winnings then a VC would come along and then give me money and then I put my $200,000 with it I think that's a tall ask in the time of covid um so I decided to shave off $50,000 of it um as we spoke about in our in our last episode well that $50,000 is coming from a noin interest loan from demo day and I'm putting it into a year of marketing are you planning on focusing that marketing on the salon or on the products or on both both both we're going to start with product and then we're going to move into uh butts and seats because we're still getting a lot of people in the salon who've never heard of us before a lot of new customers who just never heard of us before how are they finding you Word of Mouth word of mouth has is what kept us above water for eight years um and I can do better and so it's time to have an ongoing marketing budget starting with this 50,000 and I will grow it I'm nervous of course because wow that's a lot of money but um I hear that you know if marketing didn't work nobody would do it it's a lot of money but it's also it's not really a lot of money for marketing right right well you want to look at that as a percentage of your Revenue right mostly right for a small business yeah it is it is 4,000 plus dollars a month yeah that's a lot for a small business like mine um but I'm fortunate enough to have the ability to do it thanks to Detroit demo day I can do it and I believe it's going to put us on the path to increase our Revenue to invest more in marketing and and and grow the company even more Karen you've talked in the past about uh your marketing and I think you've expressed a sense that um You're Something of an Undiscovered gem that not enough people know about you uh although you do have a a ton of big well-known clients we do but we're still I I describe it as the best kept secret which is bad so what are you doing about it well I I'm sort of laughing to myself listening to Dana because um if no one if marketing didn't work no one would do it and it's so funny how it's so hard to spend that money I mean you're talking about it being a lot of money it's always a lot of money no matter what you know it's like getting a new roof it's painful to spend to me to me um but you have to and so as a result you know I'll tell you if you don't do it now 20 years later you'll be the best kept kept secret and luckily referrals and repeat work and word of mouth is an amazing engine I think all of us see that you know you do great work and you get referrals and you can keep going and you can grow your business and 20 years later you'll be 30 million in Revenue I mean that's what happened to us with with hardly any marketing and so now though um you know we we really want to break out of the you know like literally 90% of our business is repeat referral work imagine so you can do that all the way up to you know millions and millions of dollars and so now we want to keep that keep those customers coming and coming back and coming back because that means we're doing great work but we want to change that percentage at least I do I want to see that percentage more like 70% repeat even imagine if the other part were new business and new clients because of the efforts of our marketing work so we're really focused on that now my strategy is always to fire bullets all over the place and see what works and then we put our money in one spot but so in the last year year and a half um we've been trying lots of little things and all Outsourcing we really had this realization probably three years ago that building maybe two building a marketing team for us just didn't make sense because we we don't really know how to do that properly and it would be so expensive to you know hire someone who does know how to do it properly that we thought we're just going to put our money give it to the Consultants who who have who they come knowing what to do and so so we put money in lots of different little types of um marketing like for example analyst relations so we're trying to have better connections with analysts and Gardner and Forester and in the and in newspapers uh with reporters and so we we hired small groups who are really good at that and so they're helping us get traction there and then a small group which is great at SEO and a small group which is great at actually um writing for those audiences um so so we've gotten smarter about what's working for us and so for example we had we had hired a Content company that was just sort of generating you know blog posts and and it just it just wasn't working for us however the analyst one was really working well so we put more money there and took away money there and so we're constantly just moving the pieces so um so I'm I'm excited to see it's working and so um uh so that's good but it you know it took us 20 years to figure that out when you say it's working you're you're referring to your Outreach to analysts and journalists and yeah we're getting great great track traction we we're in a gardner report now and so we're getting great traction which is exactly what we wanted are you talking about Traction in terms of uh people writing about you or actual clients coming in the door both our our percentage is going down a little bit so when the volume increases but the mix of that is more new new clients then I'll know that it's that we did it it's it's really working William you've uh spoken in the past about your content marketing efforts uh about how will you make everyone at the company and I think you mean everyone uh blog and then that's your marketing uh any changes with you you know I if you do any kind of marketing or sales at all people talk about the funnel right you know there's the top of the funnel where you attract people to pay attention to you and then you move down the funnel where they're engaging with you and toward the bottom of the funnel they're saying what would it look like to hire you and and so you got top middle bottom of the funnel and and we think through that with our inbound marketing blogging is top of the funnel but I think we've discovered something new I'm calling the very top of the funnel uh the V tofu we talk about top of the funnel being the tofu and so I don't know if that's like vegan tofu extra special or what but uh it's uh and what do I mean by that well you're opening a restaurant yeah right when uh when churches and schools shut down in March and it got clear that no one was going to gather for Easter which is unbelievable um you know it got real clear no one's going to be hiring for a while and I started looking at the PPP program for our own use but then when churches and schools and faith-based organizations got included as um qualified entities to receive pppp we just said well we could keep our money and just cut our costs or we could keep everybody working hard and and spend all our salaries resourcing other entities about how to get their PPP and Lauren we've we've directly counseled over a quarter million people now and our email list is you know three times the size it was a year ago are you doing that again for the second round yeah yeah there there not as much because it's the people that are are paying attention to the second round generally speaking are people who paid attention to the first round and have their ducks in a row so what does that mean that means they're people that may never ever ever come back to us for Content but now they're on our list and they're not even really at the top of the funnel where they're reading a Blog we wrote about Staffing or they're doing PPP which really has nothing to do with a talent solution that lasts it's a very temporary thing but this very top of the funnel now has us asking the questions well what are the next very top of the funnels what are the things that you know we need to be the expert on if no one else is going to be and just as Goodwill serve people and offer uh free content that really is not directly connected with what we do and uh time will tell whether that pays off how do you connect your PPP advising to Talent searching it wasn't some master plan what we found out on the back end was we're advising people about how to keep their staff intact and how to keep their their personnel budget above water and we have a incredibly OCD database so if you come on our website and eventually we have your email address I can look backward at every time you've been on our website we score you every time you're on it we can tell what you're reading there's a little bell that dings when you hit a certain score that says it looks like they're about ready to hire somebody you should call them and and while the PPP advice won't score people very highly to begin with it will be the beginning of a long longer term relationship when you help people receive free money from the government to keep their business afloat they trust you you know and then they want to hear more from you and sooner or later they will have a staffing need I have to ask what CRM system are you using that's so good that you love uh well it's a Franken it's a Frankenstein so um if you think if you think of it like Lego blocks right the the base platform is Salesforce okay okay and then I think the current owner of what we use is called bullhorn which is one of the bigger ones and then we custom built a snap on on top of that for faith-based because there's some categorization and tagging that needs to happen there that's very particular and then running right alongside it I wish they could run together but I haven't figured this out yet HubSpot is really the the key to the marketing piece and they talk to each other fairly well but but it's a Frankenstein I wish there were one solution you know the CEO hubs spots like don't use us as your CRM yet it's too complex just use us for marketing and so it's we're a weird little company and and for for the for the moment we're in we have a NIC looking Frankenstein as long as we're talking about PPP have uh all three of you uh applied for round two uh Dana I think you mentioned it yes I I applied um what was it Tuesday I went through my bank and put my application in and it's under review much smoother process this time um small the process but more detailed my um accountant bookkeeper Financial Manager lady she went through the application with me um I did the first one by myself but this one when it came to the records that they wanted us to have um and just making sure I did it right uh we I just did it with her on the phone it took me 20 minutes maybe no and I got it done got it in so your bank has filed the application and you're waiting to hear no it's under review as of yesterday I haven't checked it today and they review it to see if they need any more information from you and then if they don't then they just send it on to the SBA um the people in my region have been getting approvals within days I mean literally putting it in on a Thursday getting money in their account on Tuesday how about you Karen no we're not applying this round is that because you don't feel you need it right yeah would you have qualified could you have applied um that's a good question um probably well it's a good question I'm not sure actually but we are still waiting to find out if what the status is on our last one so we kind of we don't need it and we we don't want to go through that again necessarily so cuz we we still don't know if our last one is going to be forgiven or not so we've been going through a lot of Hoops to figure that out how about you William so we got our first round it was very very smooth uh we've used the same bank forever and we use it for all of our Banking and I think that helped um I understand that has been forgiven I I think I've gotten that through word of mouth but not gotten the final form in the mail so this go around our application was more complicated not because the government made it more complicated but just because our bank had serious technical issues um that were a pretty major glitch it was yes and I was frankly a little concerned that the money would run out because it's less money that's go around but we've done all we can do on our end have you learned anything this goor round that you've been sharing with uh uh with all your followers yeah the employee retention tax credit which is this tiny little niche thing I don't know if that's language that any of you are familiar with but it's a tiny little piece of this giant bill that was passed in early January um it's a pretty incredible tax break if you happen to qualify for it and there's a lot of uh math involved I mean I had our bookkeeper well our finance director I should say spend two full days working at for us and to make sure we were compliant right but basically it's if if you I think the spirit behind it is if you were able to keep your people last year even if you took PPP and you're retaining your employees we want offer you an income tax credit to uh that's equivalent to some portion of their salary and Lauren I know you put this in the morning report before but uh I would just encourage people if they haven't looked into that it's worth a look it's not easy but man if you know if you work it it there is uh help to be had is there one particular aspect to it that decides whether you qualify or not can can you point us in the right direction of who this works for yeah yeah you have a good Finance director who can figure that out for you okay so I I mean honestly I mean I'll plug the morning report but you you put it out there last week I think maybe I forget I think it was the beginning of last week yeah yeah maybe on Tuesday we had a holiday Monday but uh is that where you learned about it William that's where I learned about it and I'm like really so I forwarded that over to my accountant and she said oh yeah no we ought to look at that and she's wonderful I would recommend her everybody but but had I not read the morning report I was like how would we have found this out otherwise and oh well you know but the reality is reading the Morning Report pointed me in the direction and I went down the rabbit hole and looked thank you William yeah yeah know tot that's not I didn't get paid for that or and I don't even get a uh you know like holiday basket from Lauren so he didn't either so it was a rough year I read about it I went down the rabbit hole and it looked like oh my gosh we have to be able to qualify for this I know enough about our numbers at a high level and then it did really I mean it really did require somebody that knows accounting to get in there and roll up their sleeves and spend some hours but it was enough of a tax break all I needed to know from my accountant was I said Kristen if this is a $2,000 savings I don't need to pay Renee two days of salary to figure that out we'll just let it go and she said no no no no this is a if if this is right it's a much bigger savings and that's when I said then fine and we I called Renee and said hey look whatever you're doing push it to the side get after this and let's get it done and uh you know we've got all our paperwork in and we'll see see where it goes all right so in the time we have left I'd love to run a question by all three of you that I got from a reader we've been trying to do this uh every episode uh for those of you listening if you you have a question for uh the uh 21 hats team it can be about your business or about their businesses just send it to me Lauren L ren21 hats.com uh the question this week comes from uh a listener who preferred to remain anonymous who asked uh how do you decide when it's time to fire a customer have any of the three of you been in that situation yes oh man yes do tell oh yeah wow you took me back we've I've decided not many but on top of mine there are a few customers that I have needed to fire what does that mean when you have a customer that comes in and disrupts the Synergy um of your business when you have a customer who feels that their dollar is important so important that they can change your business model I know you don't do it like this but because I'm paying for it you're going to do it like this when you have a customer that feels like their service of is the same as in servitude to then you know you have to fire a customer um and ask them not to come back um and then then sometimes when during that conversation you see the change um and then you give them one more chance and you realize that yeah is just who they are and we are not the business for you that's the entitlement I've had several customers that I've had to we've had to pull aside um when when everybody's tense and they're not doing their best work because they know there's a customer in their chair that's going to give us or read us the riot act on every little thing then we probably suggest that this is not the salon for you have you had to do it with someone who was a loyal customer yeah we weekly it was painful yeah weekly customer it wasn't painful um because once you left I noticed that my staff needed to recover um we had a mother who had a mixed daughter and her daughter had you know thick and curly hair and she would scream at her child this is why your effing hair it's this it's the death of me and her daughter would just scream and cry in the chair I'm sorry Mommy I'm sorry yeah no you're not no we tried to work with her we tried to give her tips um and then she got mad at us and and once they would leave my staff needed to recover which affected the customers who were there after who didn't know what just took place in the salon so no we had no problem saying goodbye to her it's probably a little bit different with a a B2B customer uh such as you Karen uh would have have have you been in that situation yeah yeah um luckily not not as often as you might think over the years but um we so how we work with our clients is very collaborative so they become part of our team or we become part of their team um so the the way we work together is really important and in a couple of cases in a handful of cases there have been clients who because of their behavior their attitude or their unwillingness to collaborate um has has not allowed us to do our best work or in some cases even be successful in the work that we're doing and um and then you know in the worst case scenario it's similar to Dana and that the recovery of our employees is um it's not worth it because they are you know there may be a toxic environment in either the client's company that the way they are as an organization or that team not functioning well together and um we don't tolerate that all within our company have you had a tough one where you had to walk away from a a big client oh it's all money yeah I mean it all it's all real revenue and every dollar counts so yeah it's never it's never what we want to do but it's it's never hard once you realize what's happening that the decision is usually quite easy I guess that's true if it's you know if it's really toxic behavior that you're talking about how do you look at it if it's kind of in that gray area it just takes longer but it usually becomes clear yeah you know if it's repeatedly happening you know we'll we'll try to get through the project and do our work but and usually that's what happens is we finish it and then we don't we won't work with them again so we you know we finish it off we survive you know we heal our wounds and then just we vow to not work with them again how about you William we had to add a paragraph into our or Clause into our contract you hire us to find your person we're going to stay with you till it's done well almost all the time that works out really well but every now and then you get in a situation where it's like oh my gosh and I didn't have a cancellation clause in my contract so I every clause in our contract has a story with a name behind it and I won't name names but we I can see the person in my mind's eye that is the reason we wrote the cancellation contract clausing the contract and we're just we try and make sure people have plenty of time to read and understand you know what the contract says we don't try and force the thing it's a what what we sell is a fairly large widget in terms of purchase price it's not a you know a four figure thing or three figure thing so um that's one thing that we've done to try and improve that situation but I think the far more important lesson I had to learn was not to sell to everyone like I love sales I just love it i' sell you this phone I'm talking to you on and tell you it won't get muddy and the connection will stay clear and I mean like I just love it and I see is a challenge and I would you know I can make this work so I found that that that propensity inside me has led me to sell to people when there were warning signs going off they may be nice people but it may not be a fit so we've developed some pretty careful criteria so you when you ask the question when have you had to fire a client I would say the most common time that we do that now is before they ever become a client and we still met mess up some what are you looking for what what tells you you don't want to work with this person what do they say you can do it fast cheap or good right um we're not cheap we're not super expensive I don't mind what we charge in fact my friends in corporate search firms are like how do you get a how do you make a living but but if if the lead question if you call us to talk about a position you need filled or or whatever the issue is and your leading questions are how much is this going to cost or how cheap can we get this done I can tell you right away it's probably not going to work out if your leading pain point is the price there's a very high probability we're not going to get along and I don't want that so you flat out tell them you tell them you asked about price so I don't want to work it with you absolutely you you led with price you should always ask about price but if you if your first question is how much does this cost or even better how cheap can we do this then you know no this is going to work and and oddly many times I've had to slow a sales cycle down to see if it's the right client because what I've learned it's a really counterintuitive thing but if it's a first time connection and they are let's go and don't bother to look at the details of things they it I don't know why but it it tends to lead to a bad result so so we've we've gotten where we're a little picky about that too say I want you to slow down I want you to take a little time make sure you know what you're getting into and sometimes settle slow them down enough to actually ask questions uh sometimes people hear well Vander is the best at what they do so let's hire them just get them just I'll sign it and then they don't understand that we're retained we're not a contingency based firm you don't pay us when we find your guy you pay us on a schedule and that's very different you know that's the way most exec search firms work but there are a lot of recruiting firms that don't so um I would say if people are are too fast that sends off an alarm Bell last question really quickly we're having this conversation at the very end of January did each of you set New Year's resolutions and are you still sticking with them Dana absolutely not um I bought I I I survived 2020 and I bought a planner for 2020 um which is pretty much empty up until May so no I didn't send I didn't s any New Year's resolution I felt like for 2021 I needed to see a trailer first before you know I need let me see what's coming before I set any goals I think I learned um it's it's day by day hour by hour for me and just to keep going in the moment so no New Year's resolution Karen no not that I didn't want to I just sort of um I didn't get there William you know I I didn't set any New Year's resolutions um back in March or April when the world shut down it got real clear to me that from a fitness and health standpoint this was going to go one way or the other for William either I was going to shut down and gain the covid-19 or I was finally going to get serious about you know getting getting some habits in place and that went really well and now that now that we're headed towards shutdown being over I'd just like to keep doing what I've been doing my thanks to Karen Clark call William Vander bluman and Dana White 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 lauren2 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 thubron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]