“Pardon Me. I’m So Sorry. This Is My First Pandemic”

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week I go oneon-one with William Vander bluman we start off talking about how he managed to see the great resignation coming and what he thinks are the keys to coping with it then we step back and with the help of many questions suggested by listeners we discuss his journey from Pastor to CEO including what happened to his company culture when everyone went remote and why he still reads every single email he gets even when he's off on a 7we sabatical plus William explains how he hit upon his unconventional social media strategy and you offer suggestions if you're looking for a VP of marketing suggestion number one try not to lose the one you have 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 report which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners and which you can subscribe to at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews and please stick around at the end of the podcast for Steve K's marketing minute joining me this week on the podcast is William Vander blumen who is CEO of Vander blumen Search Group a recruiting firm based in Houston that works with churches and other faith-based organizations the episode is is titled pardon me I'm so sorry this is my first [Music] pandemic welcome William this seemed like an especially good time to talk to you I think it was in our our maybe our last episode of 2020 that you predicted that 2021 would be a year of covid churn I think you called it it's it's become known as the great resignation but you obviously saw it coming what did you see well several things Lauren but it started with phone calls for those listening that don't know I uh own and run a boutique executive Search firm and um invariably every year there's some Cycles to our work and one of the Cycles is every year in January we get a larger than normal uh volume of calls from really high capacity people calling confidentially to say I might be thinking about making a change and you know I used to wonder why but then I realized you know first part of January is when the Gym's crowded everybody's going to get in shape everybody's going to lose 10 pounds everybody's going to balance their checkbook and I guess take a dream job right so every year that happens in January and we're kind of used to it well in uh last year in 2020 I started getting those calls and I recognized them the tone of them the people that were calling that aren't needing to look for a job but they were happening in October not in January and I just started to wonder what what is going on this feels like a surge is coming so we started poking around and we did some surveys and we did some um you know studies and and we just started to notice one of the unintended consequences of the pandemic was that there would be massive turnover and we called it the great Co job turn I wish had have thought of the great resignation or I wish I wish my PR people had gotten CH covid job turn out quicker I don't know we had it here we were some of the first to make that call and it's just proven to be dead on and and some of the reasons that we cited I think still stand very true uh one is you know we're creatures of habit and what I don't know if you ever driven your car and you mean to go to the office but you end up at the house or the other way around just all too often yeah you get in a rut and you just kind of do what you always do and and and in our world of many of our top Executives we place or top pastors we place have sabatical every seven years and when they take those sabatical smart employers put some form of golden handcuffs on them to stay a year after their sabatical because when people take a sabatical they get out of their rut and they start asking why questions why am I doing this job life's short why why why why and they come back and it's like it's time to rethink career well the pandemic was not a sabatical most people that I know work their tail off but it was a Breakin pattern and it got us out of our rut and I think it got a lot of people asking though why do I want to keep doing this question uh you know you had some involuntary turnover with jobs that just went away you had people that were making more money taking federal aid than in their normal jobs but I think two things were were really pushing more than those uh external circumstances that is people started asking why and then people started asking not just why do I do what I do but where do I do what I do and cities like Park City that are just now massively inflated with real estate because people are like I can work from wherever I want to and the the the acceleration of virtual work and the acceptance of virtual work just hit the gas so I I think you saw a whole lot of different competing factors maybe we could put in the show notes a link to the article where I list about seven real tactile uh Dynamics that played into this turnover but it's here and it's uh the workforce is very fragile right now we can talk about that but very current events I think are going to make it even more volatile for the next 6 8 10 maybe even 12 months and uh I think it's no longer a question of will you have turnover it's a question of how are you going to mitigate it and how are you going to prepare for it let me ask you this and maybe this is a two-part question the churn and the turnover is one thing uh there's also been a uh a shortage of workers and I I think that's hit you know certain areas like the hospitality industries uh especially hard I'm curious did you see that coming too and has it affected uh you know the areas where you work as much as it has something like Hospitality yes for the first question no for the second yes because uh one of my golf buddies is in the concert business and he you know nearly everyone and he's it's a fairly large organization and nearly every one of his employees were 1099s well when Arenas got shut down he he couldn't keep them so he let him go I mean there wern't they weren't having concerts well now he's started to have concerts again he's got to go rehire people but those people have all found new jobs I saw that a whole lot of people who were in very particular sectors were going to have a hard time backfilling U the the holes that were created by the pandemic in our world not so much we do a lot of work we we work with faith-based organizations we started by helping churches find their pastor and that's still the backbone of our work but what we see now is it's a different type of work and it requires a different kind of person that can work in this hybrid environment of virtual and in person and um boy it's just led a lot of people to question do I want to keep doing this and they step away and um in our world there was going to be a shortage anyway um and I I think this is true across Ross all sectors but as the the last wave or two of baby boomers retire there just aren't enough people my age I'm I'm 51 but from like late 30s through mid-50s they're just not enough people to fill the holes created by the Boomers and so you're left with hiring Millennials and maybe they're experienced enough and maybe they're not so so there's lots of reasons why it was going to be a year of turnover anyway um and a shortage of workers but but I think the pandemic just added to that and I don't know a sector other than maybe government employees that hasn't been affected you know there are a lot of business owners I talk to who are kind of asking the question where'd everybody go um you know there were enough employees before what happened to them it sounds like it hasn't really hit you uh and your industry but do you have an answer to that question I don't I mean I think it it depends entirely if it's our friend Jay who's trying to do uh storefront stuff it's thing if it's manufacturing it's another thing I think we the creatures of habit is a pretty deep Groove for humans and a lot of people got used to not working and federal benefits just ran out uh so I guess the the jury's still out I read in my morning report today uh we might be in for a rude awakening and that people might not come back to work I think people get out of the Habit uh we were already dealing with this sort of gig economy where you could side hustle this and that and I think a lot of people people have just found little side hustles they can do here there and Yan and and not have to take a job uh you know our our 17-year-old uh has a job at a great grocery store here HB it's a wonderful wonderful grocery store a well-run business and he has figured out uh he has an an 11-year-old sister and I will hire him as her Uber driver on the weekends and he makes way more money doing that than he does going into his job as a personal example of of a very large dynamic that's happening you know we we surveyed a lot of our larger clients and we found and I've seen in the morning report many times articles that similar to this we found that a lot of their their employees that were working from home during the pandemic now have two full-time jobs and just aren't telling anybody so I man there's just a lot of stuff that's gotten overturned that it's going to take a while to sort out I don't know where everybody's gone and I think it's largely dependent on the industry you know do you have any examples of employers who are coping well with all of this anybody who's come up with a a Fresh Approach a new idea that maybe we could all learn from well I think I think that the employers that I've seen who are showing honesty and cander about how bad it is are the ones that I see doing the best and you know we host a a culture conference on workplace culture it's totally free it's you can download it for free I think it's uh culturecon toorgle these experts Pat lanon I mean you'd know the names that spoke for us and I I I got to speak because we own the conference so I it's like little TED talks and I just said hey guys you know we wrote a book on culture we've won all these Awards on culture let me tell you something if you think your culture is bad it's not as bad as mine what do you mean it wasn't as bad as yours well we so we had turnover during the year we hired a lot of people we restructured at the beginning of the pandemic we said we have to shrink our overhead by 40% if we're going to make through a year and a half of this so when we came back to work half of us had literally never seen each other in person literally as we restaff as the year went on um people are in but they're not in and then maybe they're exposed to somebody so they're out for however long they have to be out until they get a rapid test so it's just quiet um we don't know each other we went through a very intentional effort at diversifying our staff you racial ethnic diversity which has really been good I mean if you look at our Christmas card this year versus five years ago you'd say wow they've overhauled the place that's great what I didn't realize um all the push for diversity that everyone is rightly pursuing right now it's great when we were 5 years ago bringing on new people it was almost always a friend of an employee that was coming to work for us well my girlfriend wants to apply for that job but hey my buddy wants to apply for that job so it was all people who knew each other and had relational Equity maybe they went to church together maybe they're on the same softball team it now we have people who are very diverse which is awesome but they have incredibly diverse backgrounds and very little relational equity and they haven't worked together all year and they don't even know each other and culture is built on relational equity so when I say the conference our culture is terrible it's not we have we don't have a bad place to work people wouldn't say it's a toxic place to be or they're mistreated or it's not authentic it's just lacking relational equity and I I I was afraid that when I said this at the conference it was just going to demoralize my my team many of whom are brand new but in in quite the contrary they came to me and said thanks for saying that we're going to work on this so I don't want to you know lionize myself in that but I I have begun to pay attention and the the the employers who are willing to say hey I know it's a tired word now but this really is unprecedented and I'm figuring it out I have one client who's doing a great job and he I've stolen this phrase from him pardon me I'm so sorry this is my first pandemic and it's kind of inarguable right like it's it's it's my first pandemic and I think some measure of authenticity helps there there are other things I'd point to I think people who are are focusing on culture uh work can't just be a place where you come do a job because that's kind of gone out the window how do you make it a place that's appealing and not just a sentence um you know depending on the sector some flexibility although I am I continue to be an old kogin and just believe that that we were meant to be together and we have better productivity when we work together and while there may be some hybrid schedules that survive or or become true changes I I think teams will find that they're they're more productive more efficient maybe more profitable when they're in a space together are you in a space together now we are and has it helped yes yes and uh you know it's the I never was a huge fan of that old phrase management by walking around but I'm doing a lot of it right now just asking people how they're doing trying to invest in them it's been a lonely 18 months for a lot of people and uh I I think building relational equity in the workplace is helping and and it's not perfect at all I mean we have uh we're a small company we have 34 full-time people we have seven or eight that are Consultants that are always on the road so you know what does that leave you 26 in office and I doubt we've had more than 18 or 20 at any given time because somebody got exposed to somebody over the weekend that tested positive so they're out it's still weird but uh uh it's way better than when we were all virtual you said a moment ago that you anticipate some increasing fragility uh I think in the weeks ahead I'm guessing you may have been referring to President Biden's vaccine mandate yes how is that hitting your world I think it's going to help me I think it's going to help any small business owner listening you've just got a whole new market of people you can hire not going to try and politicize things I'm all I'm vaccinated I got in line I actually got mine a little early because there was a a county you know south of us that had a lot of antivaxers and their vaccines were going to expire and I'm all for it right but boy the sentiment is strong and this is not just the Texas guy like the sentiment is strong everywhere that in a year where everything has been out of control and people have not been able to have a say in their life there's a strong strong part of our population that wants to have a say in whether or not they're vaccinated and I you can argue whether they should or shouldn't but when it becomes a federal mandate I guess I guess if I owned a company with more than 100 employees I'd feel two ways one thank you President Biden for making you're the bad guy now not me I'm not going to have to mandate it okay fine we're just doing what the government said but on the other hand you probably just invited 10 of my 100 employees to go ahead and make this the reason that they're leaving their job and I I think it's just going to inflame already fragile teams and workplaces I I read of One hospital this morning that had to close the Maternity Ward because they don't have enough nurses um and they're just saying you have to have your baby somewhere else and the nurses weren't coming to work because they weren't going to do a vaccine mandate and it was up north it wasn't you know in US backward Southern States I think that mandating the vaccine while it may help the fight against the pandemic I think it will have an unintended consequence of giving people the reason they need to leave the job they're currently at you said that it could help you and other small businesses presumably that means helping you by giving you the opportunity to hire employees who leave these big companies yeah come work for us you got a choice we don't require it here we bonus you if you do get vaccinated but that does mean you're hiring people who are unvaccinated does that give you pause I don't know I don't know that I don't ask them I'll but if they'll tell me they're vaccinated I'll give them a bonus so I got a pretty good idea don't you think if they're leaving their jobs over the Mandate that probably means they're unvaccinated I don't know I just think small business owners who are looking for workers saying where did everybody go will now have some percentage of people who work at large businesses who are going to leave over the Mandate I mean I've got a friend who would leave over the Mandate and he is vaccinated he just doesn't want doesn't think that that's a place for the government to step in you know but it doesn't make sense to leave an employer over a government mandate it's it's that's like what you referred to before right I could be wrong I have a religion degree I'm not from Wharton but my gut is telling me that irrespective of what you think about the president's mandate and I'm not taking a side on that I just think an un unintended consequence is going to be there's some people at larger companies who don't want to be told what to do and will leave and they will go to companies that don't have a mandate and that by default will be small business owners all right uh we're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor work better now and then we'll take uh a step back and talk a little bit about how you started and built Vander bluman Search Group okay I'm here with Rob Levan who is co-founder of work better now which provides business owners with virtual assistance how's it work rob you know as well as anybody Lauren that the pace of change in business has never been faster today's business owner has more to do than ever and if you don't focus on important stuff like Business Development and your next product and service and your customer experience and your team it's impossible to keep up much less to grow your business an assistant could do the one thing that everybody thought was impossible to do which is to give you more time in your day by taking all of the administrative tasks off of your plate how much does it cost it's $1,750 for a full-time dedicated assistant and fellow listeners of the 21 hats podcast can save $150 for the first three months by mentioning the word Warren all right to learn more work better now.com that's it work better now.com and we're back a lot of these questions by the way most of them came from listeners who are eager to hear more about how you built your business business and and I love this question what did you find is the biggest difference between being pastor of a church and CEO of a company what surprised you most well I I think my own ignorance surprised me on a number of fronts um you know as a a pastor of a very good church in a a large Mainline denomination I didn't realize I was living in a mindset of kind of a union worker I had amazing job security very hard to fire Pastor um I had uh a pension plan I didn't ever really think about our p&l I had to go raise money but you know we did a good job of that I didn't I didn't ever in my time in Ministry and I was in one of the best Presbyterian churches in the country I didn't ever sit in a meeting and think how much is this meeting costing to run right now based on salaries around the table right I had never thought through the when you start something and this isn't the answer to CEO this is answer to founder uh but when you start something as you're doing now you realize like every minute I'm spending is a minute that could be spent earning and every cost I have could be is is it worth it or not I'd never thought through that lens and frankly um I think I'm healthier now than I was before because I just kind of took a lot of things for granted and was ignorant because I came went straight from undergrad to Princeton for Seminary and straight into Ministry and just always had a job and always had good benefits and always had a pension and what do you mean by healthier I have a healthier self-awareness of of how hard it is to make a living of how hard it is to make something profitable I think I would look at my old self and say he's pretty entitled that's so interesting because the I think for a lot of people the gut instinct would be to assume the opposite yeah no not at all and and it's weird Lauren and you wouldn't know this unless you live it but when you're a pastor it's not uncommon at all to be at a lunch and then the waiter come over and say hey one of your people took care of the bill uh or to come home and your lawn is mowed because somebody just did it for you they want to do something nice that doesn't happen to you as a CEO not really uhuh so but you it's it lulls you into this like if that's all you've ever known it's like wow and even down to the tax breaks that are that if you go into Ministry to have a a a financially flush life then you're either stupid or criminal so you're not going to like make a ton of money but but boy you can you can get lulled into a false sense of entitlement pretty fast would you say that being a pastor was a was good preparation for being a CEO for being CEO of this company absolutely I I have sold things my whole life Lauren from from paper routes to I mean I've just sold everything and this is the most nuanced sale I've ever been a part of uh every single congregation is different they might have a different denominational affiliation I have such an appreciation for what it takes to run for president of this country as I travel around and realize Seattle is so different than AKA Washington is so different than Detroit is so different and when we try and sell to different parts of the country and denominations and Theological backgrounds and you're you're dealing with institutions that are not functioning rationally they're they're making their decisions based on belief and faith and not just bottom line it's incredibly nuanced and had I not done this job and sat in the chair of Pastor I don't think I'd have the foggiest idea how to empathize uh or build something that addresses pain points or or even sell it you mentioned sales could you compare the the sales aspects of being a pastor with the sales aspects of being a CEO oh totally absolutely I you know in in pastoring and we're going way far down a rabbit hole we probably you didn't intend but in pastoring you're either in uh sales or quality control so what I mean so there's some people who uh as a pastor are drawn toward trying to grow their church or get more people um interested in the faith or as I used to say I would love to be the guy who overp populates Heaven oh that would be great so I I was in sales it was just I don't know what do you want to call it Eternal fire Insurance oh so versus the guy who's like I want to take the people who are here and make them into the highest quality believer or disciple or adherent or whatever word you want to use I was much more in sales always that part was not a hard transfer a lot of CEOs including some on this podcast struggle with making the tough unpopular decisions you know having to fire someone uh having to lay people off was that hard for you coming from the faith-based world yeah I hate it I hate it I I I can't stand firing somebody or making the hard call it's probably a dysfunction of mine I really like pleasing people and which is not a great quality for well nobody likes doing it I've met some people who do and they they need therapy you know I mean my goodness but um it was certainly a lesson and you know I was in a larger church we had a uh I think our total payroll was about 300 employees so it's a pretty good good sized group so you it does get way more business uh than the normaliz church or synagogue of a 100 people or something like that so it it I had a little bit more exposure to the business side of things than a typical Pastor would but you know we deal with this all the time with our clients where it's like man I don't want to fire him can we find something else from new Jesus wouldn't fire anybody would he and I'm like well he did uh so he he fired a fig tree and cursed it for not producing um but uh it was a a tougher transition but maybe not as tough as some people who leave Ministry and then go straight into corporate world is this something that you've been able to help churches with obviously the churches and the pastors you work with sometimes have to make these kinds of tough decisions yeah and and and the flip side Lauren that's actually more common is uh every Pastor I know has one uh business person whether it's woman or man in their Church who's really done well and pastors are impressed by that they've made enough money and now they want to quit it's it's the old line I want to move from success access to significance so they start volunteering at their church and the pastor says they would be great we should hire them they've been CEO of this company or a general in the army or whatever the thing is and I would say when you bring someone from the marketplace into the church World there is at best a 50% success rate sometimes it just they can't make the transfer they're too hard NOS they run off the volunteers they they just act like normal business people and the church is a quirky weird thing so uh we help them on both sides of the need to help somebody to the door but also prevent you from hiring somebody who's going to mow everybody down in your transition to founder and then CEO was there a moment when you said I got this I hope not um I mean there's certainly some Milestones I think what what's the old line uh in the 20 years I've been married I've been married to 10 different people I actually haven't heard that but I like it well it's I feel that way as the founder and owner of this company I think I've launched six or seven different versions of this company um as we've gone through we'll get to a place where it's like oh now we've gotten here but then we have to Pivot and make an adjustment and we've got it again I boy if 2020 didn't cause people who thought they had it to second guess that that's a uh you are a rare individual I mean I'm all for confidence if you can back it up but I I uh I I hope I don't ever say I've got it Lauren and I have a lifelong battle with pride and and whether it's the the Hebrew scriptures or the Bible that you're reading you you'll find pretty quickly that the god described in those two Traditions is staunchly opposed to the proud and so I find myself at odds all the time with with my faith what's I think I've told you my favorite Ted Turner quote um if I had a little more humility I'd be perfect I hope I don't ever say I got it we do get to place where we go oh isn't it nice that the place can run itself now but there is a meaning to that that I think does contain some humility I mean it's a level of comfort it's a sense that you now kind of know what you're doing not not that you're perfect does that make it change the equation for you that does change the equation and there are some things now where you know I'm like yeah no we've got this um I I don't think I'll ever say we've got this on the sales side but on the delivery side like I my biggest threat to our business is me and and a friend of mine said to me from the very beginning of the business William the one thing you've got to be aware of is you will always run the risk of outselling what you can deliver because I love to sell so now when we sell like crazy I know that we built a system that can deliver and deliver really well and on time and at the right cost so that does feel like okay and and I can't take credit for that I hired some people who are really smart that got it done but uh there there are some parts of the puzzle where I go we we've now got this on the podcast we we've talked uh a good bit about your remarkably successful content marketing strategy and how everyone you hire has to be willing and able to create content that you use as your primary marketing was that your plan from day one no we sort of fell into it Lauren how did you figure it out well I don't know if you listen to how how I built this sure yeah so we actually stole straight from it uh and we've done how God built this and interviewed entrepreneurs in the faith-based world it's really cool but one of my favorite questions that uh gets asked on that podcast is so when you look at your success do you chalk it up to Talent OR luck and they ask it in different ways but they always seem to ask that question and I just if if if there's ever if we make it for the long haul as a business and there's ever a rewrite of outliers and they need another example or an appendix we could be it we were so right place right time if I have started three years earlier or later it would have failed because social media wasn't in the right place for you we started the year that Twitter started and who knew that Twitter would be way more effective in churches than anywhere else but popular pastors have a higher retweet per follower than entertainers it's weird wow I happened to notice that email was starting to become more than just a correspondence it was becoming a what did they call it email 2.0 and I was just starting to fish around about that and start a blog a little bit when I I hired someone that said we really ought to look at this company called HubSpot and then that all fell into place and we were very early adopter with them and and then we I happened to be in the right room at the right time and met one of the founders and he became a friend it was just so happen St I do think we had a disciplined commitment to what we caught um so there's there's Providence or luck in catching the lightning in a bottle but but then we said now we're going to write it and uh we could have done a better job with it but but it's been great we're now looking at things going okay it's still about content and thought leadership but how is it different now than it was 10 11 12 years ago you for instance or 10 11 12 months ago well true but like uh you know everything's about video cont content now so or or the Resurgence of LinkedIn that's a whole new like we got to go figure so we're still learning but uh uh we didn't have it planned from day one we're just trying to read tea leaves and uh figured out as we go I I I think my vision as a leader is not the ability to see you know 500 miles down the road it's more like what's the next thing and then have good people who can map it out you mentioned the uh Resurgence of LinkedIn do you have a uh a new strategy for how you're using LinkedIn yes hire a new VP of marketing that knows how to develop a strategy for LinkedIn can you give us a hint what that strategy is I don't have a clue we just did an audit of our all of our marketing efforts Social Media blog posts web traffic email growth and uh trying to get a handle on things after the pandemic we had a real surge during the PP we sort of caught lightning in a bottle there and and ran with it so now what do we do with it and how do we strategize and I'm actually interviewing right now for a VP of marketing and the interview is sign an NBA I'm going to send you our marketing audit you tell me what to do um and what I'd love to find is um and and this won't be that hard find someone way smarter than me uh I should not be the one coming up with the best marketing idea I have a religion degree but you have been doing this for quite some time now and you you've learned a lot yeah have you ever heard of The Seven Last Words of the church no the seven last words of the church I'll get the word count wrong with contractions whatever but it's like this is the way we've always done it you know that's like and I'm I'm 51 I'm not 37 anymore and I I know I know that I have every day the likelihood of calcifying are you on Tik Tok I am not on Tik Tok I watch I I am I don't post on Tik Tok but I pay attention well you're ahead of the game just doing that I would suggest I'm trying but you know I I may have told this story on the podcast before but years ago when um our youngest was about two years old I I decided to start being a little more intentional with jogging and that meant I had to start stretching because I was old enough to start getting injured you know and I uh I remember the stretching being harder than the J and I came home one day to do my stretching and the 2-year-old walked in the room and there I am just dying trying to touch my toes and she looked at me and she came and sat down beside me and she tied herself into a human pretzel which only olds can do and then she stood back up and laughed out loud at me and left the room I just thought William every day you're alive you get less flexible man as they say in the South that dog will hunt like that that line is worth remembering if you're a business owner every day your business is alive it is a fact of life that you will get more uh rigid less flexible more calcified so at 51 years old when I'm looking at a marketing strategy for LinkedIn or or whatever it is I am trying to find younger smarter faster people that will intentionally stress me to a place I don't know rather than the natural propensity that I will have to just say well we've always done it this way or blogging always worked in the past I I I want to I don't want to be that guy that that that falls into a rut and stays there and wakes up and and he's been lapped by something new I've spoken with a lot of business owners including some on this podcast who've really struggled to hire the right marketing person uh I don't know how far into your search you are have you learned anything uh thus far about how you identify the right person it's a very difficult search we do a lot of them you know as we're talking right now it's a it's a public fact so it's not I'm not breaching confidence but we're doing one for Joel ostein right now you would think he'd be able to find a marketing person he's kind of got a pretty good gig going on uh most watched preacher in the world but it it's just hard there is a real Supply demand uh Crunch and and it's and it's you can actually understand it forensically marketing changed with the internet at a rate that was much faster than uh the development of new marketers so you got people still trying to sell print ads and TV spots and like there's just a whole different mindset that's been required since about 2008 and they not enough people that have come up that are trained and every company has had to turn on a dime and learn and some of them are doing a great if you don't follow Wendy's on Twitter or Instagram you really need it will make you smile at least once a day they have the most brilliant marketing and it's so rare like so if you find a good VP of marketing do whatever you have to do to keep them or pay them a retention bonus so you know you have them through the end of the year or so so I play golf from time to time and uh I I was teaching my daughter to play and she wanted to learn how to play out of sand traps right and she said I said you want to know the number one rule of playing out of the sand traps she said 'yes I said don't hit it in the sand trap that's the most important rule if you don't hit it in there you don't have to worry about if you don't lose a good marketing person you don't have to go find one so yeah but how do you keep them I mean how how can if somebody's really good a Wendy's or somebody is going to be available to them how do you keep them so some things I'm learning right and I'm just learning them um I've I've got a friend who says if you give away tasks you will surround yourself with doers if you give away Authority you will surround yourself with leaders one one Dynamic I found in Millennials and gen Z is they really expect to be given Authority and not just tasks and that's dicey right there a few things I've gotten I think right this is one of them with marketing and sales said look I would far rather you come back to me begging forgiveness than asking permission do it ship it get it out there and let's deal with the consequence later so that in terms of retention I don't know if you're giving away Authority or not a lot of CEOs don't marketers spend all the time in the world getting a plan together and then the CEO said ah we hadn't done it that way I'm a little nervous about that I I I think the the it's back to that calcification and getting less flexible are you giving away Authority uh second are you are you paying them in an incentivized way uh some marketers would rather not get paid per lead they'd rather have Security in knowing they're going to get paid whether their ideas fail or succeed and they might need that in order to be creative so I think understanding your employee and the right way to compensate them so that they uh will stick around you know try and stay with the market uh try and build a pipeline because you won't stay with the market I mean I can't tell you the number times in whether it's faith-based initiatives or schools or churches they get some of the best marketers there are and then Google comes along and says we'll pay you $300,000 to do a job for us well there you go you know that's the main thing I I think that when I'm looking for candidates though if you're currently searching in marketing it's how intuitive are they how willing are they to to speak up to me which works for me as a CEO it might not work for all listeners and and that's why whatever we paid for the marketing audit was worth every penny because I now have a here is what our situation is what would you do with it right now and then I can see are they agile are they aware are they going to tell me things I don't know are they going to lean on old ways that I could figure out on my own I would avoid the search if you can though it's really really it's one of the hardest searches we do you mentioned uh that you spotted the coming uh covid turnover because people were reaching out to you saying they were ready to to look for another job you probably get some people who come to you that you don't think that highly of what do you do with them that's such a good question this is old school advice people probably heard but I'm I'm thinking through uh several words that start with C when I think of candidates uh there's character there's competency there's chemistry with the job they're looking at or cultural fit so three or four C's in our world if character is missing if that's where they're deficient I I I can't place them it doesn't work what do you tell them hey man I wish the best for you I believe the best for you I'll get a little more candid people will call me and tell me I'm just feeling like it's time for a change I'm feeling like my season is coming to a close now what do I want to ask them I want to say is it a misdemeanor or a felony so that's what I want to say but the reality is I'm learning that a very very few people will admit that they're about to get fired and and even interviewing people and ask them about their career transitions over time it's got to be a single- digigit percentage of the 20,000 interviews we've done where somebody would say I got fired people just don't have that level of self-awareness so unfortunately if it's a character flaw if I'm going to know whether it's going to work or not I need to know the truth and if I can sense that they're not ready to tell me the truth well that's their decision but I I can't help them and I've gotten more and more blunt about that over the years you know if it's a competency issue uh some people just have zero issues with self-esteem oh they it's amazing they they think they they're running a organization with a hundred members and they think they're ready to jump to 20,000 and they're just sure and God told them that it was time and you know that's a little easier to deal with because I can just give them statistics and say Here's how many churches are this size here's how many openings there are but uh I don't know that I've had too many candidates come to me that I think they won't fit anywhere you've told us that you guarantee your searches if the person uh you place doesn't work out um you'll go back and and and do it again for free how often does that happen not not very often maybe two or three% of the time and sometimes it's they got fired other times it's they made the geographic move and they didn't realize it was going to be so weird in Mak Georgia or Seattle Washington or pick a place um sometimes you know we're doing one right now where it's a bad example but we guaranteed The Surge for two years and 23 months into the job he got covid and died so even in that situation you do the search again 100% 100% it is an absolute guarantee the majority of the redus are you know something went haywire that we know didn't know about we had a guy one time poor guy he uh we moved him across the country and he wasn't sure about the move but his wife really was she said this will be perfect let's do it he said yes he got there and within a month she filed for divorce and she knew that that state had much more favorable situation for her than the previous state so I mean like how do you predict that it's a broken world that's why we actually have you know faith if it weren't broken we wouldn't need it you told us recently about taking seven weeks away from your business this summer uh as kind of an experiment was there anything you did to prepare for that uh period away was there a process yeah I took I took four weeks away the summer before and I took two weeks away the summer before and I took one week away the summer before and I learned some things I learned that if I want um our firm to maintain and continue on the path like if I got hit by the proverbial bus and Adrien sat and owned it she could take passive income as an owner that's your wife and co-founder that's right she'd be just fine she wouldn't have to touch it it can run itself uh if we really want to make a big difference in the world which is I want to run a successful business I don't mind it being profitable but if I really wanted to make money I'd go do oil gas search that's not it I want to make a big difference and I think if you're helping organizations who are trying to let's just say leave the world better than they found it right if you can find them the right key staff they can go a lot faster so what I learned this summer was we want to maintain hey great if I want to do uh steer the company with one hand on the wheel will grow a little bit and that's great if I really want to make a run at 51 I've got 10 12 maybe 15 years of relevance left before I got to figure out something else and if I if I really want make a difference then I now know the places I need to put my energy who handled your emails who uh who responded or let's qualify things a little bit taking that time away did not mean total unplug okay um for whatever reason I'm not a very effective CEO you would think my assistant reads my emails and only sends me the important ones I still read every single email and I know that's dysfunctional and I need to get over it but I'm not there do you practice inbox zero yeah I do I'm horrible at sleeping Lauren just really bad at it that's not good I was up you know at 4:30 or 5 and I could check in on things or maybe even have a quick meeting you know at 6:00 a.m. mountain time is awesome because it's already 8 in New York and it's only 7 in Houston and I could I could knock out a few things if I needed to and I did frame up my next book so that that's kind of um so I wasn't totally away but I did take my hand completely off sales and management of the company what did you tell people about reaching you if they felt they needed to under what circumstances in our office we say if you email me I'll get back to you in 24 hours okay if you if you slack me that means I need to get back to you quicker if you text me that means you really need something and if you call me I'm going to pick up now that's our after hour communication protocol if it's after work hours and you do those things there's the the protocol right I kind of Applied that to I'm gone for the summer how many weeks are you planning on taking off next summer uh well we'll do one more my thanks to William Vander blon and my thanks again to everyone who suggested these great questions for him if any of you have questions for any of our other regulars please send them to me you can email me at Lauren l ren21 hats.com or you can just hit reply to your 21 hats morning report and here it is your marketing minute with Steve CW of be found online here's today's question Steve how do you feel about buying leads I used to do it for a living uh it's a long time ago um is part of part of my my last in-house job Lauren so I know what it means to buy leads and to try and try and move those and try and make money from them the key though is not to buy leads it's really to by help so if you need to generate pipeline or opportunity see if you can find somebody who's going to complement your sales Pipeline and complement your sales team versus buying leads yes there are tools you can you can publish content and they can help you generate leads you're buying those in bulk those leads can be really really hard to convert now some of the other folks out there who do this for living will tell you their leads are really easy to convert because they're looking at your audience and they're using your content my experience tells me that you're better off complimenting your sales team with somebody who's a little closer to your sales team and maybe it's a sales acceleration tool or s a compliment to your sales team and driving those leads so I'm no longer a fan of buying I'm a fan of generating if you want more details look for Steve's marketing minute blog post at 21h hats.com [Music] 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 he 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 dubron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]