The Temptation of Private Equity

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Sean busy Jennifer Karen and William vanderlan discuss private Equity both William and Jennifer have been getting emails and calls from representatives of PE firms who come promising all kinds of gifts connections expertise money to invest in the business and money to take off the table which is why the Temptation can be great if anybody even offered me a 3-day vacation and I think I would jump at it Jennifer jokes but of course PA firms do exact a price possibly including control of what used to be your business which is why Jennifer says she wonders whether she should even take the phone calls entering those conversations she says feels a little like entering the Garden of Eden do you take a bite of that apple plus Sean thinks he's found a better way to manage his company's credit cards and Jennifer gives us an update on her new website even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations brought to you by our principal sponsor the great game of business we'll let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report when Jak magazine named the best newsletter for business owners and which you can subscribe to for free at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews joining me this week on the podcast or regulars Sean busy CEO of Kinesis which is based in Portland Oregon and works with small businesses on marketing culture and strategy Jennifer Karen who is CEO of SB expos in events an events management business based near Baltimore and William Vander bluman CEO of Vander bluman Search Group a houston-based recruiting firm that works with churches and other faith-based organizations the episode is titled the temptation of private equity [Music] welcome Sean Jennifer and William it's great to have you all here Jennifer I gather you've been getting some phone calls from potential investors of late that must be kind of fun and encouraging I would think tell us about it sure I started uh getting some of them during covid as we switched to Virtual conventions and now hybrid conventions on the technology suddenly I think private Equity likes Tech surprise surprise right so as we started getting into this world I started getting for the first time ever emails from private equity and um they've increased in frequency in the past year so I can't tell if this is born out of they're excited about my company or this is desperation of what's happening in the PE space so I don't know it's been interesting I've talked to two of them and uh and just trying to figure out do you just ignore the emails do you take the time to talk to them tell us about those conversations what what did you learn and talking to the the ones you did talk to so it was two very different conversations on different ends of the spectrum the first one I took um it was from a company that's already in our space that's backed by pe and they were wanting to expand their services and they reached out to me I was a newbie I had no idea what I was asking so I basically just listened they talked a lot and then I asked some questions very rarely I think I gave up too much information in the beginning when I think about it ultimately um it just my company wasn't at the time it was just about nine months ago at the right fit and then I took another conversation where I started bugging them with questions why are you calling me what's it about my company who's backing you what do they want and they didn't have any answers so I was like goodbye and I've listened to all of your ups and down uh podcasts with Jay about ESA I love the concept of an ESOP so I take these private Equity calls just to learn about what's out there I don't know every business owner should always supposedly say have an exit plan I don't have an exit plan so I'm thinking ah maybe I need to think about one did they know anything uh uh of substance about your business did they have a sense how big it is or how it's doing how many employees you have the first one did they knew a lot about it they had targeted me specifically um the second one did not and and did it leave you at all tempted sure I mean you know the Grass Is Always Greener if you offer any small business person who works as many hours as I work like what seems like a Lifeline right here here's some potential money it's very tempting and absolutely and I think what I learned in this though I need to understand this space better I completely do not understand I've learned a lot I should say a lot more than I did 9 months ago when calls first it started over a year ago but learned a lot more what even private Equity is versus startup Capital versus Angel Investors versus family offices or financing those words meant nothing to me last summer you know what it's not pretty typical that a company just or or maybe it is a company just starts up bootstrapping it right that's another word I didn't know bootstrapping you did it before you knew what it was I did it before I knew what it was that's exactly it I'm learning the financial lexicon of this world that is so intriguing terrifying and tempting all at once it's kind of like I don't know I'm in the Garden of Eden with the apple and God's telling me not to eat it that's the right metaphor Jenifer and and of those three words you use the middle one terrifying is the one you should focus on because private Equity over and over and over I have just seen this they are salese and so I'm curious before I start condem ding them and throwing them under the bus oh I think You' started uh I'm I'm curious what was their sales pitch to you what what did they offer you besides oh here's a pile of money what what is their reasoning for approaching you the first one was we are looking to get into this space and instead of building it we thought to buy it the second one was very vague was hey we're in this space and we're looking at companies to acquire nothing of substance Jennifer did it sound like they were interested in just taking over you business or investing in it and maintaining uh a role for you the first one I think the investment and a role for me the second one I have no idea and when you said before that you were a little bit tempted maybe would it be for either of those options or just one I think the Temptation comes from as I've said in previous podcasts right now my company is going through a pretty significant transformation and a great one but it means I'm working ridiculously long hour so if anybody even just offered me a 3-day vacation I think I would jump at it right but I think when I realize the effort I'm putting in now I'm going through the and I forget the terms when the caterpillar turns into the butterfly right that's what's happening right here in this Company Metamorphosis is that it right but what's been intriguing to me is knowing that I'm sort of peeling back the veil to understand there's a whole world world out there of the financial building up or taking down of companies that I didn't really understand right I didn't understand any of this world and now I'm I'm I'm really just getting a feel for it is it that you're intrigued because uh if you had more Capital you could hire people to take on some of these jobs that you're having to do and you're working 2 3 4 21 hats rolls uh is that is that what you're thinking Jennifer I think that's part of it I think there's also an incredible fear that all of my eggs are in this basket and so to deleverage some of my risk right oh did they did they use the term take some chips off the table they did they definitely did good job Sean that's amazing total shocker I know right William yeah hey we were talking about Garden of Eden William I mean you know all about the snakes I do I feel like they're they're presenting the apple right they're presenting the apple and say don't touch it yet the snake saying take it it's delicious I I I'm guessing Williams gotten some of these phone calls too and I want to ask him about that but first to to Jennifer's point maybe we should Define these terms let me take a crack at it private Equity is a pool of money a fund raised by investors who are looking to in either outright buy or invest in uh businesses it's different from venture capital in that venture capital is generally looking for uh startups they can take from you know zero to unicorn private Equity tends to buy uh existing businesses that have a a a track record and may continue to to run them for a time you know when I think of private Equity I think of an extractive model where the investors are looking to get a return and then run the business for 3 to S years and then sell it to another usually to another private Equity who thinks they can do the same thing and they often do it uh using leverage they they buy a company they borrow against the assets of the company that they're buying which often you know it puts a lot of debt on that company and can make it very difficult for it to succeed long term but the investors tend to get their money out that's one of the horror stories you hear William how often do you hear from uh would be investors oh two three times a week yeah it's cooled off a little bit I I think uh for a while you know when debt was basically free I think you know private Equity was looking for places to park their money besides the market and and really went on a buying spree but having said that I think you know the merger and acquisition pendulum swings back and forth in every industry and right now in the search industry it's it's definitely a hot thing so I haven't taken any of those calls seriously yet Lauren I I took enough of them to start to understand what I think the market currently would value us at I'm not interested in selling but it seems to me nearly every small business owner thinks their company's worth more than what other people will pay for it there's a universal truth and I mean you know you if you started the business you ought to be its number one fan right you ought to think it's just the best thing in the world but I I I took enough calls to start to understand options and uh I really love our work I love what we get to do I've also noticed quite a few friends who've caught some form of lightning in a bottle with their company and think that they'll just go do that again and it's not quite that easy so I for me it'd be more of a question of how many options am I leaving open for an exit and let's stay on radar with PE in case that's the one we want to do you know uh we might do an ESOP we might just take passive owner income and hire a CEO that's better at this than I am I do think that you talk about the snake in the garden it is so funny the the old King James version you know like the 1611 that was used forever and ever when it described the the snake it said now the serpent was the subtlest of beasts yes oh this is good so when I think of some of my friends in p and E they're pretty subtle in the way they state things I do think I have seen some redeeming value in you know friends that have used PE and been like you know we started this thing but neither one of us have a business degree we don't really know what we're doing and having a professional management team plays actually is good but I tend to agree with you all if you go down that road you can forget ever controlling your company again yeah the one thing I liked about these calls one I'm naturally curious and so it's been intriguing to me to to see this whole world I don't know anything about but also I am very naturally attracted to an ESOP and I'm trying to temper my natural inclination or enthusiasm with more rational thought and so by looking more into PE I can hopefully see the pros and cons of Esa better right I'm not sure but I'm looking at it from comparison did you um William or Jennifer in your conversations did you ever get a handle on hey you know I can sort of see that this industry is valued at X multiple of eida I know every business broker listening right now is going to be like but Sean it's not just a multiple it's a lot more than that whatever did you get a sense of that you know William yep I did what's what's your what's kind of the range that you see in there well so no one's gotten inside our books to like take a serious look right so wide variance in our industry and it depends a lot on how you run you know how much of this is personality dependent if it's a guy who's got a great book of business and he wants to sell you know you're looking at 1X gross revenue maybe maybe five or six times net now on the other hand if you get a firm that's fully self-sufficient that does not depend on personalities that has uh a good balance of new business and recurring clients and it has some digital components with some recurring Revenue through software then you can get up toward 15 on a net on eida or net operating income iida yeah so you know there's not a lot of depreciation in search firms so even a net or much closer than like a manufacturer would be very very different yeah yeah yeah very very different but I think the the key is uh if you're if you're buying a guy that's not worth near as much as if you're buying a process and a system with some software tools added on so yeah which has kind of been your journey right William I mean it's I mean it seems like you talk about making yourself less relevant every year yep yeah it's far far easier than my ego would like I I bet you you've been pretty good on the Opera I bet the marketing side is the hard side for you to um well it's what I love doing yeah it's what I love doing so now you know my my game for marketing I'm more like brand ambassador so I've got a book coming out in November and since the firm has the same weird name as me the author that's sort of kind of Halo marketing for the firm without my marketing efforts being viewed as essential to a potential buyer does that make sense yeah totally and and it'll it'll be it's a research-based book that tells stories about the common habits we've seen in the very best people we've interviewed now that we've done 30,000 face-to-face interviews so it's it's pretty cool and it will position the company as uh experienced and a trusted advisor and so that kind of Mark I'm still involved in and U but the the day-to-day stuff I'm really getting out of the way William in the approaches you've gotten from investors have they mostly been from um investors who are just interested in search in general or do you hear from people who have figured out that you have a distinctive firm with a you know a very distinctive Focus both yeah and I mean you get the you end up on a list I'm sure because it's it's everything from we help with exit strategies to we private Equity to hey we buy search firms and you look appealing so I I just got invited to a a thing next month I'm not going to be able to go to where I think it's put on by two dozen PE firms and they're inviting Boutique search firms wow I mean the interesting thing Jennifer have you gone down the path of like well the difference between private equity and Investment Bank for example uh no I went to one of those sessions though that William was talking about where a a law firm put on one of these all day Retreats that you could go and listen to it and I remember I left it feeling so strange because they invited CEOs of small businesses to come right it was like tell bragging at how great they were and telling us of how important they were and I don't know it just rub me the wrong way and then when I brought up ESOP they were like oh that's the stupidest idea ever it it cost too much money right it was a I didn't really um get a lot out of it or learn about it but I had a speaker at one of our Visage groups talking about investment Banks but I don't know that much the difference I think my shorthand is essentially an investment bank is looking to sell a business and private Equity may be a buyer so that's another approach you could take right you could work with a firm that positions you for sale and then they play the different uh Capital groups against each other that's the ideal situation if you want if you want to sell and and you know you want somebody to help you navigate that process that's the Investment Bank um route you know and they collect a fee and that whole thing but there's advantages and disadvantage but they're all going to tell you ESOP is terrible because they can't make a commission on it right like that's or not as big a one yeah or not as big a one yeah I met an entrepreneur who uh he sold his third company as private Equity Firm it's like what are they called the Bolton right and I asked him I said you know they say that that saying of every business owner is like a boat owner you should figure out how you're going to exit right when you're going to sell your boat the first day you buy it and vice versa when you start your company had I was like did you really is that true he's like absolutely I absolutely think of an Exit Plan and I was like oh and he said did you I was like it's never occurred to me that I could exit like I felt some way so I just have to I just want to I want to learn and understand this world but but Jennifer I think you must know that you are not alone in this I think it's probably I mean Sean you would probably know best it's it's unusual for a business that's still kind of in the growing stage to already be thinking about exits I mean what is really interesting to me cuz I think last time we were on together Jennifer you shared you were you were just below 5 million but over two you know somewhere in that you know so and thanks for sharing that cuz what's interesting is that they're being aggressive with you and and to be aggressive with a company at your size tells me they're very bullish on the industry or the solution because usually PE doesn't want to talk to you until you've hit like 5 million or have a million in earnings in in in eida and so I think what's going on here is you're in a hot Market or you've created something that's hot and I think you want to really keep that in perspective persective as you go forward that there's a reason they're talking to you and you have the value and they're going to portray it as like oh we can help you and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah but at the end of the day I think you've got the leverage here that is great Insight thanks John I had not thought about that at all and that is to go back to Williams uh they're being subtle with me huh well they are the subtlest of creatures and and the other thing too Jennifer is and William brought this up the capital markets have radically changed so money is not cheap slf free anymore so I suspect that the PE folks are starting to look at businesses that have good net operating income and a well-run Professional Services business should have really good net operating income and what they probably see with you through their lens is like uh you know Services people are moving back into to real life events this is an upward you know Zoom is going to go down events are going to go up and they probably see it as a opportunity to squeeze margin out of your business by optimizing it so if you say let's say you have 10% net operating income or 15% they're going to want to drive that to 20 25% and how they do that is the painful part so that's the thing I I suspect they're moving towards margin and away from speculation because the capital markets have become so difficult for them and I've read articles that say basically the private Equity model breaks in a highin environment and and that'll be interesting to see over the coming years I should point out I've talked to business owners who sold to private equity and were very happy with the way it turned out it it does happen same here Lauren same here you know based on my entirely unscientific uh anecdotal survey those companies seem to be in the minority and that's certainly what you tend to read about but every fund is different and has different uh characteristics and interests and focus and I think sometimes the the the stars do align it is possible I know one company it's technically a private Equity uh business but their name is permanent equity and their strategy is to buy and hold and to keep the owner involved as long as the owner wants to be um uh and they've done that with all their Investments they don't make that many they really just focus on bringing in not professional management to take over but professional help to supplement what the owner has been doing so there are other flavors out there I'm curious Lauren you know I when I first heard about the permanent Equity idea I was like actually that could work but that was before interest rates went up and you know I'm curious if that's changed that's a great question I have not spoken to anybody there uh since interest rates went up so I I don't know the answer one thing I do know about them is that unlike some places they don't feel compelled to invest if they don't have an investment that they find attractive available so they'll go you know more than a year without investing in a business if that's what they think is the right thing to do and maybe you know as they say they're keeping their powder dry right now well they are the subtlest of creatures so I mean I mean That's a classic sales strategy I hate to say it but like saying well you know we're really busy and we I we might be able to take you on I mean that sorry for the cynicism but um I I I think you know you could build a model that's you know there are certain industries for example where the margins are sufficient to service the debt from an outside investor the problem is is a lot of owner run businesses just don't have the margin to support that type of outside investment and so so when the investment comes in they've got to find the money somewhere and usually that means cranking down on costs in the business and and that's where then the culture suffers the employees leave yeah so so the owner might be happy not to be poo poo but uh I Having learned quite a bit and still learning about culture I think if the private Equity does well and they grow at a you know Tri in 5 years kind of rate the culture is going to suffer cuz culture does not withstand fast growth yeah yeah that's that's a good point William that's kind of damned if you do damned if you don't right I think that's right so the interesting thing about Jennifer's situation I she told us that she's a was a little bit tempted because she as she's described here in previous episodes is in what what Sean called uh the valley of death She's at this stage where she personally is working really hard the business is growing it's doing well but she doesn't quite have all the people in place that allow her to you know grow comfortably and and live a a normal life William I'm curious did you ever go through a stage like that and were you approached by investors at that point yes we went through that stage it was probably seven eight years ago eight years ago yeah we had a really big hockey stick growth and then had a great PR firm that helped us get our first book out and got a couple of big placements Chicago Tribune wrote a thing about the rise of pastoral search firms and so those calls came and it was an easy decision because you know I got a bunch of young kids at home this was not going to be life altering money if that makes sense you know I was going to have to go find something else to do after some time off and I didn't know what that'd be and I don't and I'm was convinced and still am that we haven't even really scratched the surface of the of our Market um so I turned it down pretty quick and uh you know then our growth has as Lauren knows has been intentionally at the speed of cash and not uh ever intended to be sort of hockey sticks so we've had nice growth but not anything that um has put us at a at a a new place of saying now it's time to take those calls do you think you got out of that stage where you were working too hard and stretch too thin just by keeping at it no no for I think we did I think we did for good or bad restrain some growth by beginning eight years ago me taking a little less ownership uh over the day-to-day decision taking a little more time in the Summers getting me out of doing searches we need to get William out of searches he can't be doing the searches you know we got to save him for other things so our young sales guy is talking to this church and say well this is the fee and you know William involved no William's not involved if you want Willam involved it cost you another $25,000 and they're like well we definitely want that then because that's got to be cool so total backfire we tried it for like a year and I ended up with more searches than ever said well you are subtle subtlest of search firms so I you know so we we did turn the SP it off a little bit on what can we squeeze out of William being involved in the name of a more peaceful long-term Venture I don't know that I'm building a hundred-year company Lauren but the tugboat idea you know like let's make this sustainable let's be a small giant that kind of came on radar let's get serious about uh a growth that can live past me and and that has taken a long time and not without some ups and downs culture going sideways having to get rain back in I mean it's not been a you know a totally up and the right Journey but but I like the decisions we've made so far Jennifer does that sound like a viable approach for you yeah absolutely I think right now this hockey stick growth that we're in to use his analogy is is because of what happened postco and this entire New Market of hybrid conventions and I almost feel like I'm in The Perfect Storm of opportunity that if I don't take advantage of this now like it's just the perfect time to me jump on it I can't sustain this pace of me personally working this growth forever and I feel close like a lot of things have happened recently new hires uh let some people go I have a fractional CFO that realized the strain I'm under and who said to me Jen you know what I'm taking a more active role cuz you can't make you just can't do all of it and she got involved and she's been making decisions and brought people in right and left so I feel like the pieces are finally I I feel the edge of the desert let me put it that way right um I feel the edge of it so to to what William's saying is yeah I like I like the tugboat idea I like it I also like I said love ESOP um it's just tempting because I'm I'm working every weekend but we're getting through it Jennifer can you charge your clients $25,000 more if Jennifer is involved yeah I remember those days we were in line at Space Mountain in Disney and a and a sales call came through and I had our youngest on my hip and my phone in my ear and Adrian said what are you doing taking a call right now and I said well how do you think we got to Space Mountain oh it's just you just you know it'll pass a PR promise it'll pass if you playing for the Long Haul did you really know it was going to pass at that stage William you really don't want to think about how much money I left on the table by not being on the road all the time but I think that uh I'm happy with where we are Jennifer I love hearing what you said about your CFO do you have anybody else in your organization that access that Lieutenant for you that like gosh they they know what I need to do next and they're helping me do it before I ask them to do it yeah I have um a person that I hired I've known her for 20 years she came in in a different role and in the last nine months has realized okay Jen and I don't know if I mentioned this before but I'm the Visionary and so I gave her that book Rocket Fuel great book fantastic book everyone listening should read that book it'll take you one day yes totally agree and so she's like okay I get it I'm the integrator you're not you're not the detail oriented integrated you see the future of what's happening with hybrid conventions you're the speaker you're the person who understands how to combine this new technology with the services she's I'm going to help be the integrator because to be honest I don't need Business Development I am I have slowed down growth we get so many rfps so many calls I don't need more growth and so yes to your question She's Been instrumental and the CFO jumping in and I have some other people that I've hired that are now they're stepping up to that role we had a senior Leadership Retreat two weeks ago and it was they all said to me I think William what probably your staff said to you years ago they said uh Jen you need to get out of this decision making and do the stuff that you're good at and we need to get you out so we're we're on our way this is going to be my prediction in a year your life is going to be dramatically different I I think you've got it you'll get there thank you well Sean my 30th wedding anniversary is next year I was a bride so you're 42 yeah convincing my husband we're going to go for a two week trip to Europe my husband's from Poland and so we're going to travel around the South part of Europe he's never seen Italy or Spain so I'm hoping that I don't have to look at email except to run payroll so we'll see talk to me next July after my anniversary make that part of your onepage plan and let your team know that that's what you want to do let them know that's your vision all right I want to hit a couple of uh other points in the limited time we have left Sean you've recently decided to change Banks can you tell us what prompted that honestly the the pandemic and the PPP experience was really one of the first dominoes right I learned really quickly how grateful I was because I had two banks at that time I had a local community bank you know shout out to beneficial State Bank uh which is a borp bank Bank really really great organization what did you use them for uh they helped me with the PPP so I was in the middle of transitioning my accounts to them when the pandemic hit so I still had Bank of America as my primary bank and I'd had them forever and the difference in experience of getting PPP funds from Bank of America versus beneficial was dramatic because I applied to both organizations at the same time and beneficial came through and Bank of America like a year later was like well ready to help you with your PPP I was like sorry so you know Community banking you know was you know obviously a big deal for me and you've you've heard Jay talk about this a lot you know on the show as well as others that having a relationship with your Banker is really important especially when you don't need them because I what I find is that they really want to be your friend when you don't need them so build the Friendship then not when you're desperate and then the other thing that happened is I learned that because of our credit card still through Bank of America I learned just how little control you have with a credit card and and how vendors can charge to it once they have access to it and I was really shocked I had a vendor who threw a $5,000 charge on the card pretty much fraudulently but the effort it took to unwind that was this was a subscription type business right yeah yeah I had a subscription it was $200 a month and I canceled the subscription and they said well now you owe us for 3 years you know per your contract which actually I hadn't signed the actual contract that they were citing but then I was stuck in the bureaucracy cuz it it's all automated right so it was tons of time and hours on the phone with Bank of America I finally got it reversed but it took a better part of two months 3 months and a lot of my time so yeah it it just it just was a real eyeopener to the credit card world and the banks that run them and the the control or lack of control that you might have so what are you doing for credit cards now yeah I found a fintech company this uh was assisted through kind of the LinkedIn Network that I have so I I kind of put the situation out there on LinkedIn I was like there's got to be a better way and I sort of proposed hey wouldn't it be cool if there were like a virtual credit card company and somebody said well there actually is Sean and it's called divy and what it does is it allows you to spin up virtual cards with all kinds of controls on them so you can say hey I want this card to have a $200 monthly limit because I'm going to use it with this vendor that I'm not sure about and isn't doesn't have a proven track record and then you can assign a cancellation date you can say hey this card is going to expire in 6 months you can assign the card to employees in the company it's really powerful and now the downside is there's no points there's no lines of credit you have to pay it off every month but it gives me like absolute control over where my money goes which is fantastic Sean do you pay everything or did you on your credit card or did you have sort of a direct deposit whatever set up kind of a mix so the bigger stuff and the stuff where we have a high trust relationship we would do a but there's just a lot of subscriptions that we use technology I'm sure it's the same for you right Jennifer I mean like tons of technology and you know it's 30 bucks a month 50 bucks a month and the problem with everything going to subscription is that you know these companies they they can change things willy-nilly speaking of private Equity I had a great software vendor wonderful it was kind of expensive it was $600 a month but it was fantastic they were bought by some sort of private Equity company they jacked up the rates to $900 a month and they're like oh yeah we can do that per our agreement and you know it was like Wow but we you know we weren't paying attention right that's what they kind of lean on is that you're not really focused you know cuz it's like it's a proven vendor you've PID them over and over so your bookkeeper may or may not flag it um as as he or she is processing your your books so I think there's a bit of a predatory environment out there with the ability to have subscription and I think some companies kind of count on that that you aren't looking very closely so I've I've just taken a lot more control recently and it's feel it feels good to be back in control do you miss those points I don't I I don't you know to be honest with you I think it's tripping over dollars to save dimes oftentimes uh I I just it just doesn't motivate me Jay goz would argue with that I think Jay is prouder of the money he gets back from his credit cards than he is of the business that he built I but see Jay's at a different point right like Jay's got a much larger organization so the money gets back is Meaningful you know when you're you know in that $1 to5 million range yeah okay maybe get a free plane flight once a year or something my time just to Jennifer to your point my time is way more valuable than that free flight and so I'm looking for ways to basically scale up my efficiency not to get you know 50 bucks here or 100 bucks there I'm curious Jennifer what's your yeah how do you work well it was um it's been all American Express okay and same thing Sean we have a lot of subscriptions and so um also my CFO is like look you're you got to change the way you pay for some of this stuff because it was either actual checks like I was actually writing a year ago manual checks oh wow it was crazy so we switched to bill.com H we use that too okay bill.com it's been great and then but AMX so a couple people have recommended divvy to me it's interesting you said that they're like Jen I think you need to switch to divvy and so I've been looking into it to get out of um just the Reliance to your point on these credit cards that are on everything right my MX is on everything and yeah same thing happened to me with Salesforce oh wait why am I paying so much more money for my license oh okay yeah and the other thing too you know I'm glad you mentioned bill.com I think that's a really good tool um and we use it a lot especially for higher ticket items that are non-recurring the other thing I think about too and this is a personal experience you know somebody stole my credit card number through a website I don't know how they got it but we put our credit cards on so many websites you're just never going to know you know which website was compromised but as soon as they have that number the first thing they do is they start jacking up illicit spend right and then you're kind of in this awful situation where you've got your card at like 25 different companies and you've got to reset it and just that like time it takes and then you got to go to the credit card company and dispute the fraudulent charges and then that's a process and do you think that's going to be easier with divy if it happens oh for sure cuz basically I've just created cards for different vendors and so if that one card is compromised no big deal well our issue we have people travel nonstop yeah right and we submit travel expenses and so we just we've just finished this very complicated but syn between QuickBooks bill.com and expensify oh cool it's fantastic it's going to save us a lot of time but I don't want to do de just cuz I'm like I just finished this but yeah and we have like I have limits on everybody's American Express and then if they get close to the Limit I get an alert on my phone that so and so is getting close to their limit we're almost out of time Jennifer you've talked to us about uh working on your website can you give us a quick update on where you stand with that I'm so excited phase one of our new websites up please everybody take a look discover sb.com we um we have a brand new website and we are moving towards phase two which will have videos and case studies and more testimonials we've been doing a lot of taking b-roll footage at our convention so super excited by the first of the year we'll have phase two but phase one looks a thousand times better and I love it congratulations thanks what did you learn in the process chat GPT can really good at writing marketing copy interesting oh man you realize you're talking to an editor here um but second it is really hard really hard to find the right photographs to encapsulate what you do you know they always say an image is worth a thousand words that takes a lot of time to find the right Perfect Image on your website and we have good not great images so that's part of phase two is really trying to get great photography and great video so that's probably the second thing I learned and that um that having a professional to your website is worth the money amen says the professional I think I tried to I tried to do it too cheap for too long and it was silly it's really silly you should hire a professional they'll make it look great they taught us how to do some basic edit text edit changes in WordPress so great but um I should have done this a long time ago what did did you learn about using chat GPT for marketing copy I tend to write very business oriented the staff that I had wrote very business oriented we put them in and asked it to refresh for like a subhead or a heading and and worked it through where they came up with some you know chat GPT came up with some cool headers that uh I wouldn't have wouldn't have had William didn't you tell us that you put the information about your coming book into chat gbt and got a headline out of it oh yeah yeah I use it for we do I do a lot of writing you know whether it's Forbes or whatever but I use it for titles all the time I think the title is half the post if you're trying to get people to read and I don't know I'm not very good at titling or or they're very good at it or both do we call it they or is it it is it she or he what is chat GPT this is a good question it it's an it let's uh let's please not to turn it into a human William what have uh you figured out in terms of getting those titles from it how do you prompt it I usually put my existing title in and say retitle this now I I have found that the content that they produce like copy for things is not reliable I agree I think what I found is that I could write the paragraphs of copy but I couldn't think Crea ly enough on the the heads the titles and they helped me like one of them is like unleash the magic of outsourced meeting Logistics and I was like I would have never come up with that right like never in a million now Sean a company like yours your people you're more creative but our website dishonor wasn't a copywriter right um they helped me some of it they helped me organize stuff but I think that was pretty cool which that TBT could do well and you put your finger on something I've seen for a long time with real humans is that there are headline writers and they are body copywriters and and and each can do the other to some degree um like like I'm a headline guy I can write headlines all day long it takes me a long time to write full copy I can do it but I'm not that efficient at it all right I Su Jennifer and William and maybe sha too have to check and see if they've gotten any offers for their company while we've been talking here my thanks to Shawn busy Jennifer Karen and William Vander blumin and to our sponsor the great game of business which helps businesses use an open book book management system to build healthier companies you can learn more at Great game.com thanks everybody 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 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]