The Constant Struggle of Marketing

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Warren Feldman this week we take another crack at some questions that probably don't have definitive answers should business owners Outsource their marketing or bring it inhouse either way how do you know you're picking the right agency or the right person is it possible to get someone great for what smaller businesses can afford to pay Paul DS tells us what happened when he hired a firm to audit his website Dana White tells us why she dumped the AG geny she'd retain for $50,000 and J go sums it up when it comes to the mechanics of marketing he says we're all in the dark Plus Dana gives a franchising update and Jay starts his own business group even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners and which you can subscribe to at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews joining me this week are regulars Paul DS who is founder and CEO of Paul DS cabinet makers which makes custom conference tables outside of Philadelphia Jay goldz whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason home and Dana White who is CEO of paral Boyd a chain of hair salons based in Detroit the episode is titled the con constant struggle of marketing welcome Paul Jay and Dana glad to have you here Paul I'd like to start with you I gather you have a a new marketing initiative going can you tell us about it well I I am always wrestling with a basic dilemma in our website most of our business comes via Google organic searches and for many years I have biased the content that's on the site towards pleasing uh Google robots and particularly with building out the site with a lot of language that's designed to incorporate certain keywords and repeat them and work them into sentences in ways that no human being would ever enjoy but the result has been uh steady growth of our of our organic traffic over time with the exception of last year which was sort of different event and then just a couple months ago my marketing I have I have a person who handles sales and marketing within the company she's a part-time uh sales and marketing manager and she found a friend of her someone who owns a marketing agency who said hey we just want to do an audit we're going to we're going to line up someone who's never seen your site it'll cost 1,500 bucks and we'll tell you what we think and I thought well that's useful I've had the same guys working on the website since 2013 and the website has a lot of text on it because again this is designed to maximize our SEO capabilities but the question is is it human friendly so they did their audit and this young person who was one of their team who knows nothing about my product just looked at the site clicked through and then put together a very well organized document with a bunch of feedback and some of it I had issues with but I thought that the the basic comment which is this site is very wordy and a lot of what's written I don't even understand it I think I thought that was actually useful criticism so we're in the process of trying to figure out what to do next the marketing firm that did the audit has presented me with another plan to basically take over our social media campaigns and take over web design and and basically take over everything as marketing companies want to do and then get onto the monthly uh charge situation where they are an ongoing provider of things to us and I don't particularly want to do that because I've already got people on my team making content do you know what it would cost to do that if you did want to do it yeah about they're talking about an initial cost of $7,500 and I can't remember whether it's per month or whether that's just to begin with I doubt that's per month it sounds like a startup fee startup fee and then some ongoing fee I and just for comparison's sake I currently pay my my web design firm who handles a lot of these same functions about 2500 a month to be available at any time if I need web help and also to do ongoing SEO optimization and I'm satisfied with their efforts but curious to see what a new opinion would would reveal you know someone just fresh looking at it um so that's what I am I'm not dying to sign up a marketing firm to to produce content for us CU I think we know content better than anybody else it's really this question of who's your customer is it the human using the site or is it the Google robot who makes that connection between that human and us and it doesn't seem to be that there's any way to satisfy both to make a site that's both clean and easy to read and easy to use and one which is SEO friendly as far as I can tell did they tell you that or is that your conclusion that's my own experience I'm in a similar thing I got internal people doing stuff and I just joined a new business group and there's two people on it that are really into this and do a lot of e-commerce and they told me that I should be Outsourcing all that stuff and I'm looking into it but you know I I it's just it's just you ask three people you get six opinions it's very frustrating my basic take is that when you Outsource marketing your hand over the messaging particularly if it's content production you're giving people who basically know nothing about the ins and outs of my business uh control of what the message going out to the world is and and we've tried it in other cases and I never found anybody producing content that I thought was good so we I hired someone a couple years ago to just do it full-time in house because then she has a chance to be here in the shop and see what we actually do and then I get to review her content but the idea being that someone who's in the building is going to understand the complexities of what's going on in a way that some outsourced person never will that all makes sense well that makes sense on the content side but that's making the assumption that it's all about producing content versus knowing all the other little stuff that they do which I can't speak to yeah I think think that that's that's a valid point like I tried to set up my own Facebook ads campaign because uh someone on this podcast swore to God that that's easy and I could do it and I'm not at all sure I did it right but I don't necessarily want to pay somebody a th000 bucks a month to do that either because I'm not sure that Facebook is ever going to be good for us but there's always that question like if you hire someone do they understand what you do versus what do they know that you don't know well I want to go back to the decision you made just to have somebody come in and review your website I think you know that's something probably a lot of businesses should consider doing do do you think you got the right outfit to do it did you looking back would would it sounds like you picked somebody who was recommended by a friend should you have looked around more or I've sat through get to know you calls with a number of marketing outfits and This Crew seemed more more palatable to me than than anybody else I've seen so I went ahead with their audit they also were smart enough to offer this audit service at a pretty reasonable price okay 1,500 bucks maybe you got it in your pocket maybe you don't but to me that that's not a crazy amount to to just see what a fresh person thinks about our site since we really rely on that site for almost all of our business my experience is there really isn't the kind of Divergence between what what's good for humans and what's good for SEO that you described have you tested that theory elsewhere have you talked to other people sure you talked to a million people and um nobody nobody actually knows how Google's algorithms work and uh even Google people I don't think understand how their algorithms work anymore so I would say that my feeling has been that there is a divide if you go all the way like we have we're selling a product that doesn't have a single configuration hasn't a zillion configurations so there's a lot of different Search terms that people use for them and so we have to try to make those terms sticky and incorporate them into our site because well let's just say that of all the people who are looking for a conference table today in the United States I'm going to guess it's uh 5,000 people and I I think that's a real a reasonable number who have it somewhere in their mind and then the number of people who are looking for the exact thing that we want to sell which might be a very large v-shaped table is way lower but it's not zero and the question is what are they typing in to Google to get to that to solve that problem for themselves and so we have to kind of scatter all the these various permutations of keywords that are around the concept of table in a way that that uh because Google will not tell us exactly what search strings people use anymore wait help me with that help me with that wouldn't it simp I'm just wouldn't it simply be custom conference table give me some examples of what else somebody would punch in other than that oh modern table cool table expensive table cheap table used table oh uh conference table could be a search for soccer standings anywhere in the world but the United States and custom conference table can also be a search term related to sports league standings it's way more complicated than that and it used to be that that we could see like three four five years ago Google would show you what people typed in to get to your site you could scroll through endless search strings and just be like wow I you know I had no idea they took away that data stream some number of years ago and now you're really guessing as to what people are typing in I think there's still a way to do that I don't know how to do it but I've seen it done are you sure yeah yeah I I have like the marketing T I was working with that was part of our weekly our weekly rundown here are the Search terms that people are using to find your website I had a company doing that also because again custom picture framing could be up six different terms and they did pull it up they pulled up a lot of things I would like to say in regards to the marketing I found that Outsourcing it for me has helped and I i' I've kissed so many frogs in the marketing world that um you know when I first decided to chop off you know a significant amount of the demo day money you guys are said well hey Dana why don't you just hire somebody in in house and I didn't think that that was a good idea because I was just like gosh is there enough to do for it to fill a full-time position at that salary what I found is it works better when I Outsource when I know more and I've learned to manage my expectations of Outsourcing a marketing team and then also what are they what are they doing to onboard me how well are they getting to know me and how much time will they be spending in my business in order to create the content um needed to convey what I want to convey and so that's what I've looked for when I've been looking for a marketing team it's like okay if they're on boarding is just a quick you know 20 minute conversation and you know one hour conversation for onboarding and strategy then it's a yellow flag for me not a red flag but a a yellow flag because you do need to especially with my business which is new you do need somebody who understands we had a marketing person it was a great group of people but the pictures that they were posting were not representative of the work that we did why because they still lumped Us in the salon category so part of their content would be we make your appointment today we don't take appointment we're not we're walking only and so that's a learning curve that I think you'd have to go through with somebody who was in-house or somebody who was outsourced but I've learned from me in Outsourcing a marketing person it's about the time they've spent getting to know my brand I think you you said that you'd set aside $50,000 to hire a marketing firm uh you know maybe in the beginning of this year m can you tell us about that how did are you happy with the way that's gone no and haven't um haven't been working with that company since and and and looking for a new company I think what happened I I they were great people um I think they were excited to work with me I think my story was interesting to them and I think but I think at the end of the day they didn't know black hair and so they tried right and I don't have the money or the budget for you to try I need you to be able to execute and tell me what you need for me if you need help being able to execute then I can decide whether I can I should look for somebody else to pay or if I have the band withd to help you do that you know what this gets back to what I've said before this is the problem with entrepreneurship since day one whether it's a law firm an accounting firm it's very difficult to get the best and the brightest when you're a little company because you're not paying the fees that the bigger companies are paying and it's I'm not saying it's impossible but it's difficult it's very difficult but I've I've moved on and I've looked at the work that this other company has done you hadn't spent the $50,000 all had you I have not not at all and so so that's not all gone not at all and so I've moved on and the and you know what's funny is that as we get later and later into my franchise process you know I needed to find a marketing team now I need to see what you can do for my one location to see if you're coming with me into the marketing world and so what my very first question because I I kissed the initial frog and I learned okay they have to know black hair and they have to have shown me that they know black hair and that I need to see their content I need to look at the work I've did this before but I need to look at the work that they're doing with similar social media accounts similar to mine you know taking food pictures is very different than taking hair pictures and having a cure rated Instagram J your Instagram is gorgeous for Jason home and I've said here's a Furniture one that I like here's a this one that I like can you all do this and one of the things I like about this new company is yes we can do it but just to prove we can do it we're going to give you 30 days of work and you will pay us when you're happy so that paying them to try is out of the window if I'm paying them it's because I've said Yep this is what I want over the next 30 days I would CAU you that your conclusion they need to no black hair I don't think it's the right conclusion I think the right conclusion you need a firm that is dedicated to doing a good job and they will learn about black hair from you from you how how many people know I mean you're you're you're cutting out 98% of the potential vendors no I'm not actually I'm I'm not cutting out I'm counting up 98% of the big people but I'm not looking for big people I've interviewed five companies that have done marketing on black hair care that are smaller so there was a category all right fair enough one company I was with she posted a picture and the lady's hair wasn't done and she said oh well that looks beachy well if you knew black hair black women don't do beachy right like you don't know black hair your point is there are people out there that do have domain expertise in that why not okay can't argue with that that makes sense okay hey I want to I want to just jump in with something that's probably unprecedented in this podcast which is to just say that what I said a couple minutes ago is entirely wrong and I just proved it to myself uh the last time I looked which may have been years AG wait it's not unprecedented for one of us to be wrong you're not saying that are you oh it's unprecedented to acknowledge it is that what you're saying it's the admission the guilt yeah so I see that on analytics I can now see the search queries and I do know that there was a period of time when you couldn't but looks like they've got them back up there so anybody who's wants to look at their search queries yes you can see them and I was mistaken I would say this as far as picking vendors I think one of the keys is to figure out separate the ones that are really good salese from the ones that do really good work because that's not necessarily the same thing there are some people that are really good salespeople and the second you sign up with them they hand you off to someone that's that's fairly incompetent versus somebody who actually walks to talk so um I've just summarized my experience with 20 different service vendors over the years and you can't be too careful Dana where are you in that process did you sign them up to do that 30-day thing and are they proceeding put it you this way we did an onboarding that had and I'm not a crier but yeah we teared up not because they they sold me so well they are really interested in getting to the nuts and bolts of not the Press answer for why Dana started this company the doct Phil Oprah Winfrey lay on the couch and talk about would wow the reason why and not putting that on social media but going that granular to get an understanding when I've looked at some of their Instagram pages that they of of other clients they're all beautiful you just keep scrolling they're like Jays at Jason home you just keep scrolling right you find you see yourself immersed in this picture like I see myself on the couches or in the the living room settings at Jason hes so and and we're starting now granted this might be another frog I kiss but these are people who work with national campaigns these are people who've worked with hair black hair white hair they know how to photograph these are people who also have their own photography vide so they're not upcharging me double what I need you know to find uh somebody to come in and take photos it's all included in the price so again who knows so wait how much are they going to charge then once you say I like it what what is it going to cost 1,200 a month okay that's sounds very reasonable yeah 1,200 a month and then they do other stuff too so we're going to start here and then we're going to see Paul what's the next step for you I don't know I'm still stunned by by my aor well I'm probably going to do nothing I'm going to I'm going to ask them to do what I what I would like to do which would be to just take screenshots of our site and then redesign it take out anything they think is extraneous just show me what a simpler site would look like and uh that was not exactly what they offered to do in their followup although I asked my marketing manager to convey that request to them so I'm not really sure what I'm going to do are you rethinking your site uh just because it feels like it's time or was there a problem that you identified that you wanted to address I mean I guess the question I'm asking is are are sales uh okay now sales are now we're we're on track to our best year ever and up about 207% from last year but up 15% from 2019 too so I don't think there's necessarily a problem but that doesn't mean it couldn't be better I think the issue that we all have is none of us think that oh we've got this thing down path we're doing the best we there are so many moving parts to this that we all can conclude someone out there knows something better than we know and we continue to look for that so I absolutely applaud spending 1,500 bucks makes perfect sense to me maybe it could have turned out to be a complete waste of money but it's worth it because if it turns out to be worth the money it's worth a whole lot more than that this this is the world we're living in like you're just we're all like in the dark trying to figure out our way with this stuff and you there's always someone that knows better somewhere the question is who is that Dana I want to switch topics a little bit even in that conversation when you were concerned that maybe you weren't quite quite ready to franchise you told us that uh as you were going through the preparations with your consultant the numbers were looking really good can can we talk a little bit about the nuts and bolts where do you stand in the process of franchising how do you mean where do I stand like where am I in the process or well uh how far along are you and how much have you figured out in you know in terms of what this package is going to look like you know what are you going to sell to franchisees and when and how many yeah great question so I'm halfway through the process we're still on track to be able to start awarding franchises in October um I've learned a lot and one of the biggest concerns I've had I had it right when I started and I had conversations with the franchise consultant um saying listen culture and training are important and what I'm saying is there is an element of cultural training in paral boy that is different in Wing Stop that is different in Burger King or McDonald's right this is an africanamerican hair salon this is a cultural thing and so we can't there are some broad Strokes that we can apply from the franchise consultant space but it's going to take having someone who has experience in this world with this Workforce to be able to execute this success so I have had these conversations at length and unfortunately there's not much that my consultany can do for me because this is foreign to them and I understand that and don't fault them for that but I have had a conversation with them saying we need to add a position to my initial franchise team director of training and cultural immersion because the culture for my industry is such that that it's kind of do what you want when you want and it's not very structured I'm changing that and that is huge and if we do not address it initially again this will be a disaster of a franchise in five years so it's not as easy as chickfila not saying Chick-fil-A is easy but just saying well you know well everybody has a diverse staff yes but your time with your customer is a lot less than at Peril Boyd at per Boyd you're with this person for an hour plus it's very personal you're dealing with their hair you're not handing him a you're not handing him a sandwich perfect exactly so and then you have to look at who's doing the hair and you have to acknowledge where they're coming from and what the industry dictates and so I am upheaving all of that and so they thought was well why don't you bring this person on in year two no this training and cultural immersing person needs to be there day one we can't be a part of the hiring but we can train the lead staff and we can train the franch and the people are going to be operating that franchise on the cultural emersion training that is going to be needed in order for this to be a successful franchise there are things that can't go on and there are things that have to happen it's going to fit some people and it's not going to fit other people and what you just said is why you're going to be successful in what your unique selling proposition to this world is you're very smart and you figured this out and everything you said couldn't be more true and the fact that you figured figured it out before you had a disaster is why this thing is going to work because it wouldn't have taken 5 years it would have taken five months before you started to pull your hair out Dana you you say that this realization um has caused you to adjust some things but you're still on track to uh start selling in October it hasn't set you back no it's a matter of I have a call tomorrow to look for this person I know exactly who this person is I don't know them like their name or anything but I know exactly the qualifications I know what some of their personal history has to be I know what their professional history has to be and I'm reaching out to my network to just start having conversations with people who can point me in the direction to bring on this person part-time to start and then who can gradually go into the fulltime as we start awarding franchises and the beauty is when you find this person they're going to be thrilled to get this opportunity because they're trapped somewhere right now that they learned all this stuff but they can't be part of an exciting new thing that's going to change the world so someone's going to be very very excited to get job yep and I mean it's going to it's the person I need is going to create a Chick-fil-A maryk drink the Kool-Aid like culture at perly boy we're going to Rally these ladies and these men and we're going to bring them into an organization and make it an organization for them a place to be like it's almost going to be like this black sorority type organization and making them feel like they are a part of something because they are and it's going to be something that is bigger than themselves because we are doing something that not only is not being done but we're solving for a problem for a market that is being overlooked and it's groundbreaking and they're going to be a part of it so the person that I'm looking for is going to be the person who puts together the program for our pinning ceremonies that when somebody gets promoted this is what we do when we have someone on our team who loses a love one this is how we show up for our staff at peral boy I will have it I will have it and I'm working towards have because if I don't have it I I I I could just go ahead and go through my franchise process and just start awarding these then grow it sell it and let it be somebody else's disaster no I believe in what we can do we will do it and I will have the team to execute it and make it happen that's it so when you said that the numbers were looking really good on your pro foro what numbers were you referring to we were looking at the projections we were looking at the fact that I didn't realize projections for what projections for okay here for when you start awarding these even and I chose to be conservative even conservative the numbers look really good so if we all have five locations by the end of 2022 I said wow that's amazing um if we have you know um five locations by the end of 2022 and going forward to five years um I was really really happy with how those projections looked I was like oh this is really really exciting do you know what you're going to sell the franchises for yet so the initial the initial franchise fee is going to be $45,000 and so then but so we're working on the final draft of the Prof fora um and those numbers look really really good what's it going to cost them to build out the space though beyond the 45 Grand I cannot answer that until our FDD is final until we are legal but thank you for asking Jay okay are you going to require that your franchises have a certain amount of capital yes or have access to a certain amount of capital yes can you tell us how much that will be I cannot okay I can't say anything until once we get the uh but we'll be the first to know right one of the first to know yes it'll probably be up on our well it might be on our website it'll it'll be on our website but once we have the FDD complete um I can I can have those conversations right now I can share is yep we're franchising in a minute you'll be able to go to our website and put your name in um to say you're interested but that's all I can share Lauren what would be a not uncommon range of capital requirements for franchises do you know I don't I know it varies greatly um you know if you're talking about a a burger joint versus uh a massage joint or or whatever it might be or a burger massage joint a burger massage joint that's hilarious yeah see new Concepts just coming up all the time you're hilarious you can go on uh franchise uh their websites like hammer and nails all that's public uh dry bar you can go on their franchise website and see what their range of and they vary they vary okay Miss Miss franchising Big Shot can you help us little people out there to explain what sbds because that's SBD to me stands for something different than what it probably stands for can you tell us what that means so sdd FDD is finan uh franchise Disclosure document ah FDD so it's FDD so once and that's a legal document I have a u my attorney is working on that right now to have me licensed my initial licensing will be in 30 38 States we're shooting to be licensed by the T at all 50 states by the time um my my process is done but we may not be we might because of you know covid and processing time whatever so I know we'll be licensed um in 38 States when I announce um and those states are part of those states are the ones that I'm targeting to opening franchises in first all right I want to Circle back to something Jay said that took me by surprise Jay you did you say you joined a new business group I started a new business group with a couple of people from my last group I was in years ago it's it's nine people and we're going to meet once a month and there's going to be be a moderator but it's not an organization we're paying um we're just going to pay the moderator and uh you rotate you know we're using the model of many of these places except it's going to cost about 10% of what it costs to join one of those organizations because a lot of the money goes to basically this trying to find the members and then the organization it's just it's just a coste effective and plus we handpicked everybody who's on the in the group from just knowing people so you know it's always worth something to see other people's businesses and see how they operate and then getting input on your own and like I said two of the people in there are really doing a lot of online business so I'm I'm confident and excited that I'll be able to get some insights from them have you picked your moderator we actually did we there are people out there that do this we interviewed a few and we have a woman we hiring who works for who has worked for other organizations who well I'll just tell you we're paying her 12250 a month to do the one meeting and uh she's happy uh and it's local she doesn't have to travel and uh we'll see how it goes but you know so far so good how many business groups have you been in um I've been in five or six over the last 43 years usually it lasts a few years and then either I get bored or the membership comes down and I it's it's you know it's it's been a problem over the years because the problem is these moderators make so much money by every member they have in there that they never kick anyone out and they're all nice people but some of them are just frankly of no use to be in a business group they took over most of the time it's a case of they took over a family business and you get to watch how to destroy a family business over a few years and you have a meeting and you discuss you know what what's going on there and you give some input and then the next year it's the exact same problem and they don't do anything about it and when you're paying over $1,000 a month to join them organization and devoting a whole day to it it gets real old real fast like why am I wasting my time with this so um and in a couple of the cases the group got down to six people and that's just not enough people so I'm hoping that uh this one will did you make a rule there can be no second generation no not at all there's a couple of very sharp people in there that are the second generation that are building the business and um they're actually both of the people that I'm talking about that are on the that are doing a lot of web business our second generation so that's not a problem it's just when you charge a lot of money for a business group and um I won't mention names but when you charge a lot of money for business groups uh a lot of the people that are in there are second generation because they're the only ones that would spend $118,000 a year the the that's a lot of money for a 2 million one million growing business and it it it turns into a social club and they spend a lot of time talking about golfing and that's just not something I have any interest in spending money and time on so Paul I believe you're spending that money my experience has been different I would say that and and I would I would attribute that to my group leader because I don't think there's anything structurally about vistage that uh would prevent that kind of thing from happening if the leader doesn't have the right kind of attitude but it just hasn't been my experience that no it depends who your leader is you're exactly right yeah we've had reasonable will turn over and and people who stayed in the group I've been in the group for 9 years now and I think it's worth easily worth 18,000 bucks a month compared to where I was when I joined where I am $1,000 a year not per month sorry 18,000 a year and uh yeah some years it would have been worth that per month but uh it's just been a real resource for me and but the the group was put together by Ed Curry and uh and maybe he's unique I don't really know well and also they provide vistage as an organization they provide speakers that many of them are really I had one speaker that was and I don't say this ever it was life-changing I learned some stuff from this one speaker that has been extremely valuable over the years so it's a different it's a different model so Lauren you're the reason why I'm not in a group in a business group because this is your business group Dana you are in a business group this is a business group yeah it's very close and that's a very good point Paul that this is a business group but I was kind of dabbling with the business group thing and I was like gosh maybe it's me maybe I'm not a smart businesswoman maybe you know every time I would leave the meeting I was like gosh you know I something I'm not getting and I said wait a minute if they don't get it like Lauren got it when I talked to Lauren maybe it's the group and so I was like that's kind of been the standard after like two or three or four meetings when it's kind of like they're still puzzled they don't know what to give you and everything that they're recommending and no fault of their own it's based on their experience it takes them a really long time they're like they don't really quite get it and so they deal with me as a typical hair salon and you're saying nope that won't work and then they're dealing with me as if my staff is like their staff you know well Dana why don't you have doing piano night and I found that there's been a disconnect for me in going to so I I probably won't go I I that's not true I plan on joining the franchise ones once I get established um and working with other franchise ores um but I don't yeah as far as like prepar le boyed as an owner I i' I've decided after so many attempts to leave it alone so we only have a a couple minutes left um would somebody like to ask me if there's anything new at 21 hats yes Lauren it's Dana is there anything new at 21 hats actually Dana there is I've engaged someone to uh try to sell sponsorships uh against 21 hats content and maybe actually produce some Revenue what do you think of that you capitalistic Pig you're gonna try to produce Revenue now not profits just Revenue I'm I'm only going for Revenue okay good how dare you congratulations do you think it's a good idea well if if whatever you're doing prior to that engagement was not producing Revenue than trying something else is usually a good idea I actually I have had a sponsor as you all know on this podcast and I'm uh um his name is Steve crawl uh from be found online and he's going to be sponsoring some more so it's not like I haven't taken in uh a dime he's actually been very generous um but um I've hired a guy named Randy Davidson and if anybody wants to reach him and talk about sponsorships he's at Randy 21h hats.com um and he's had a lot he's built and sold a number of digital media companies that were aimed uh at entrepreneurs just as 21 hats is and he's going to try to do the same for me and we've arranged a deal where uh you know he keeps a percentage of what he sells so uh we're gonna try to build something here I found that some of my podcast friends you know just kind of leave it and then they like well why didn't this happen well there are things you have to do too so if you are doing those things keep going and if you're not consider starting that's all what things are you talking about maybe I'm doing them I don't know what you're talking about but it sounded good so for like promoting and getting the word out let me address that I happen to be at a business conference right now um I've written about it in the morning report it's uh the the tugboat Institute uh annual Summit it's a group of companies that believe that you can build a business to last a 100 years and that's what they're trying to do and a big part of it is not taking private Equity not taking venture capital I found you know podcasts are a little bit of a tough thing to sell it's not like clicking on a link and reading an article it's an investment it requires an investment of time for someone to decide and nobody's looking for new ways to to waste time um not that I think this is a waste of time but if I Corner somebody and I talk to a business owner and I explain them what to them what this podcast is about I get really positive reactions and there actually there are quite a few people here who are helping me S because they're already listening to this podcast but uh it it it's challenging if I could talk to everybody in our target market one on-one for 10 minutes I think I could build this podcast I'm not sure how to do it without that opportunity so that's it like you're doing it there are people who aren't who have a podcast and they're don't have a morning report and they're not really talking about it but they brought somebody on to do it for them and it's just not the same so that's great all right all right did we forget to ask Jay what's new Jay anything new with you uh my CFO of 22 years who's 64 has decided to retire so I need to go find a replacement which is you know a pretty big game changer after 22 years so the company's much bigger one than it was when I hired him and his far more technology needs now so I'm looking for a a CFO Who oversee the accounting and oversee computers which means we're going to have to upgrade stuff and change things so um going to be a new experience are you hiring a recruiter no not at the moment because I want to write a really good ad talking about our company culture our mission where we're going how we're going to get there and see if I can attract somebody who says wow this is the kind of place want to work if that doesn't work I'll go to the recruiter route can they work remotely that's funny you ask that cuz my HR person asked me about that I'm not I'm not making that one of the top five things I don't want to push that because I would just assume they not but I'm not going to make a blanket no you can't work from home but if that's their number one concern they should really work somewhere else um I want someone who wants to be here who wants to be involved with everything I was expecting a flat no uh close but no I I can't say no my my thanks to Paul Downs Jay GS and Dana White as always thanks guys wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's L ren21 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 kind conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcasts follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by Jess Theron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]