We Need to Go Back to Marketing for Humans

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Paul Downs tells Jay goz and Jackie Russo about the latest developments in his year-long campaign to stop relying so heavily on Google AdWords at a specially arranged two-day marketing event Paul got to sit down with a series of Architects and designers who had already been vetted and who he hopes will become repeat customers so far Paul says the results look promising plus we also discuss do you write your website copy to please Google or to please people is there any way around the skyrocketing property insurance rates why has Jay decided he no longer needs a Chief Financial Officer how big a disadvantage to owners are the new laws forbidding them from asking job candidates about their salary histories and would you reject a candidate simply for trying to negotiate a starting salary I know someone who would 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 will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report wi 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 Paul down CEO of Paul Down's cabinet makers which is based outside of Philadelphia and makes custom conference tables Jay goz CEO of the gos group whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason home and Jackie Russo CEO of brand Russo a marketing agency based in Lafayette Louisiana the episode is titled we need to go back to marketing for humans [Music] welcome Paul Jay and Jackie it's great to have you here Paul I believe the last time you joined us you told us you were preparing for a big event organized by the marketing firm you hired where you would be sitting down with a bunch of potential customers do I have that right and did that happen uh you are correct and it did happen yes how did it go I would say it went really really well um this was an event that put us in direct contact with a target audience that is very difficult to reach by other means why don't you give give us a quick update this is part of your marketing campaign where you are trying to reach a different audience we're trying to get Beyond uh Google searches driving our business and make inroads into a different way of selling our product that we have not had a ton of success with and that's through high-end Architects specifying custom tables for their clients and so we had 27 half hour meetings over two days and I have been working on four solid projects it sounds like speed dating is that kind of the idea it is like speed dating and it was actually a really well-managed event uh down in San Antonio in a fancy Resort and they delivered what they promised which was a chance for us to meet explain what we do and have an actual personal connection with a target audience which is pretty well insulated from Outsiders by any other means how did you get them to come I didn't get them to come event organizers get the Architects to show up and we asked most of the ones who we talk to like do you do this often and most of them had either been multiple years or their firm had been multiple years and this was their first year attending so the firm see value in this kind of relationship with the vendor where they get a chance to see what someone does without the you know the usual email and blah blah blah BL blah so so wait let's first of all it's not like speed dating at all and that you want to get everybody speed dating you're looking for one person so this is It's Crick me if I'm wrong is this not like basically a virtual trade show where they don't have to get on a plane and go to a trade show they get to talk to vendors and it's not virtual you do have to get out on a plane and go talk to people the difference between having a meeting with someone across a table and over Zoom is to my mind it's just incredibly different which makes sense that's what our product is all about which is getting people in the same room we had requested something like 18 meetings and then we found that quite a few of the people were requesting to meet with us because we do have a unique product that they were interested in so we've already got four active projects out of this with a value probably in the range of half a million bucks which to me is an enormous success and we haven't even started our follow-ups so much wow so was it like a oneperson trade show no there were there was maybe somewhere between a dozen and 20 different vendors okay and I think there was something on the order of 60 Architects and interior designers did they come knowing what you do and with a certain amount of interest uh to begin or were you starting from scratch with them so one of the things that was also good about this is that you have a lot of information going both directions so we filled out a description of who we are and what we do that was available for all the all the attendees to take a look at and then we had detailed information of every single person and we could make a choice out of everybody who was attending who we prioritized as wanting to meet and so I prepared with my marketing manager we sat down and went through through like the resume the LinkedIn the website for every single person and prepared a briefing document had their picture on it had their linked in had what they do had where their office was projects they were working on which we were provided with and then also projects that were similar that we had worked on so that we had a pretty tailored response to each person and and I feel that that made the meetings much more productive like we really prepared for it Paul was this your event it's put on by by an English company called Bond organization and they do a variety of different shows that are of this type where they put vendors and buyers together they're really focused on the architecture and interior design Industries and they have managed to get pretty much the top firms in the world onto their train and so it was a great chance for us to go and meet some of the people who we really are d to do business with but it's hard to break your way through you know just by going and banging on the door and sending an email and making a phone call you just don't get the access that we get on the show so why I'm a little conf why wouldn't the Neons in Chicago it's the Big Show why wouldn't they just go to niacon What's the difference this is a very small thing is it a niche necon that there's a difference between the vendors who were here versus going to necon which is the big design show in Chicago once a year where well have you been in NE aan yeah years ago I haven't gone lately I mean it's just a gigantic scrum and I think that it's not actually conducive to conversations in the way that that this was and also I would never exhibit it neocon like there's it just doesn't make sense for me but this venue gets me to the to the people the subset of people who might possibly go to neocon that I'm actually interested so instead of having to Wade through 25,000 people I got 24 27 who I really want to meet know I totally get your side I'm trying to understand what was the sales pitch to these companies to come to this very mini trade show what was the sales pitch to them I don't know probably you're going to meet some vendors who are who are going to be useful to you and uh it's not neocon of the people that were there were you all custom mates there must be a common denominator to everybody that was there the common denom that's a good question there wasn't an apparent common denominator we weren't all furniture makers and I had first been approached by this outfit in 2018 and was about to actually do the show in 2020 when Co screwed that all up so it just took a while to get me around to it I'm not sure how Bond finds the people that they try to talk into doing this but that's clearly a curated bunch of vendors because otherwise The Architects would be like I don't want to meet these clowns you know like if if it was no it would have turned into another neon then is my question so were they mostly custom no um there was a couple that were sort of custom at this end of the of the architectural practice a lot of stuff is just custom like your your glass your building envelopes but there was a couple of guys who did like um I think there was one that was selling the air dry hand dry things you have in the washroom right you know everybody needs a pile of those so uh that made sense for them and they they had a pretty big uh showing there and I think different people just made a decision that yeah this is how I want to do it the total cost to me was about oh by the at the end of the day about 35,000 bucks 22,000 for the show and then the rest for all the other stuff we're doing around it which is part of the overall marketing campaign that you're spending a lot more on well I'm I'm kind of done with the spending parts of of that campaign in that we have built a new website uh developed content for it completed all of the filming and photography and market research that the marketing guys did like that's all done but those two things which were between them about 100 Grand that's all completed so next year I don't have to do that and and the new website is aimed at the same audience designers and Architects right is is aimed at this designers and Architects audience Have You released that that oh yeah yeah it's been up and we're starting to even get some organic traffic through it which I'm surprised at cuz we're not particularly pitching it to Google as uh we're not keyword stuffing or doing any of that stuff this is really meant to be read by human beings for their own pleasure as opposed to just written for robots Jackie you're in the marketing business have you ever done anything like the event Paul's talking about I have I'm just stuck on written for robots that's going to be I think the title of my next book it just feels like that's what everybody's doing right now I'm going to use the AI I'm going to try to stack the deck and it's painful we need to go back to marketing for humans I love this for you Paul and for everybody else that participated because this is what trade shows used to be it used to be about quality over quantity making real connections with actual decision makers this is awesome yeah I mean I'm quite satisfied so far as I said we met with 27 people sent them an all an email afterwards saying hey thanks you know you mentioned this project so we're here to help and the little time went by but now we've got four active ones where people came back and said okay here's the thing here's the drawing here's the project and one of them we should close within I would say mid January at the latest would you say these were mostly Niche businesses I mean there was no steel case there there was no you know the big company Herman Miller there was it was all nichy smaller businesses would you say yeah it was nichy nichy good way to put it but I think that a lot of what the Architects were looking for was in my case anyway a way to get a product that didn't involve working through 15 layers of a steel case bureaucracy and the dealers and all that stuff which I totally get because even when I've gone to the show oh I want to buy some chairs it's just not an easy thing they send you to a dealer and then maybe the dealer couldn't care less about a company myself so I'm going to guess that it wasn't just nichy but they're trying to curate this that goes direct from the seller to the buyer versus what you just said a lot of that industry is now going through dealers which just makes it all much more difficult yeah everybody hates dealers they suck all right that was Paul that said that yeah and don't don't ask me why yeah no the the but the Architects are not buying for themselves they're specifying for their clients but right they do have to often go through furniture dealers and uh that can be an ordeal for everybody involved because this is a controversial thing let's just say that that uh in general the industry is not focused on service and understanding the needs of the client what they are focused on is meeting their quota of what's in the catalog and just trying to push that Paul can you describe what those half hour conversations were like did did you just start with a pitch how did that go well I told them story because it's a great story which is the I believe we've told it here but the the very quick version is I was just a little nobody made one conference table and then Google decided that that one on my website was going to be the top search result for borom tables back in 2003 lightning strike and ever since then we've done that business and now we work at the very very highest levels and uh but we don't interact with the selling path that these Architects and interior designers are on so they didn't know that we existed and then you walk in you say oh yeah we just did this project we did that project we work for these guys we did this stuff and often it was projects that these firms had been involved with they just didn't know we existed so that's an easy that's a very easy story to tell Paul I think one of your clear goals with this uh was to develop customers who will be repeat customers is that something that came up and do you have a sense that you're headed in that direction yeah again when when people heard the story they're like oh yeah you can do what we need to do we just didn't know you exist so that to me is the start of a good relationship and now we're starting working on actual projects and the nature of the market is that these the designers are involved with a project a couple of years before the furniture needs to show up so this is very longterm but I'm presuming that if our initial response looks credible then we'll continue to get more opportunities so far it looks like that's happening and that's how marketing should be it should be direct and personal it should be targeted and specific and when we focus on quality over quantity we're going to win every time and how do you make sure that happens for your clients Jackie well I think it's finding opportunities like that I mean that's always important and then creating those opportunities when they don't I I was on a call this morning with a prospective client and I said so tell me about your target audience and he said oh we work with everybody from a toz I mean it's startups and it's billion dooll companies and I was like okay we can't work together because that you can't be successful thinking like that those two things don't match the language is different the needs are different the problems are different buyer different one's using their own money and the other one is some corporate employee who just doesn't want to get in trouble 100% Paul you talked about how your second website is aimed specifically at an a a a niche audience and you're not stuffing it with keywords you're not trying to reach everybody but you have your main website which still is um SEO driven and still is trying to find the the customers you've always been looking for have you learned anything through this process that's going to change the way you approach your original website the more I look at my original website the more I hate it uh because of the way we structured it in order to be SEO strong and and you never know exactly whether the decisions you make to make Google robots happy are detrimental to how human beings experience the site but my suspicion is they are because what we did was basically took a page that had three let's say you had three uh three sub points about tables like how big should it be how much should it cost B and you broke that out into three separate pages with backlinks into an in IAL page and it all just made the whole thing more complicated to navigate and to my mind not as pleasurable to interact with on the other hand the traffic keeps going up so you know what do you what do you do I don't have an answer for that I don't like what Google is asking us to do but I can't piss them off that would be a bad move all right I want to give Paul and Jackie a chance to pick apart some of Jay's decisions let's start with insurance Jay we talked recently and I think you had a a big Insurance surprise uh it's mostly property insurance it's not workman's comp it's not car insurance it's mostly property insurance we just pulled up what I was paying for property insurance in 11 2011 and if you look at what I'm paying today if you factor in inflation it used to be three so I put it in four to compensate for some of the higher years my insurance is literally doubled um in my building where I have a factory warehouse is most of the problem it's 85,000 ft it's sprinklered but it was built in 1903 so the insurance company is not counting it a sprinkler because the pipes are too small and the blah blah blah and you say oh well if the insurance is going up $100,000 it's going $100,000 a year from this year to next year yeah so you'd say oh well you ought to just fix the sprinkler yeah that's going to be about 78 $900,000 they would have to completely take all the pipes down bring a whole new pump in and it gets down to the you know cost benefit analysis of the insurance guys tell me this stuff goes back and forth that the prices could drop dramatically next year so I don't know that it's worth spending the 6700 but it is up a lot and I would it's not just me I think anyone that owns a building the insurance has gone up a lot in the last three years between real estate taxes and insurance my occupancy costs have gone up pretty dramatically what would a fire cost you uh 10 million bucks which is why trust me I thought about well maybe I should just self-insure and I realized that if the place burned down which is obviously a long shot we haven't had a big fire since 1871 you're talking about Chicago not your business Chicago if my building burns down to the ground okay the land's still there so that's worth something but if I had replaced all the inventory and the building like yeah I'd have a check but I'd be out of business so I realized I'm gonna have to pay the piper and just pay for the insurance because I in self-insuring is not really an option so you literally have to just build it into your business model and say okay insurance is going to cost more Jay is your sprinkler issue just a niggling insurance company problem or is it a safety issue is it something that you should well first of all there's not a safety problem because it's not a Housing Development if there was a in there people would run out of the building and I do believe the sprinkler would work the problem is the insurance company it's not up to their standards but one of the problems I have is I'm in the framing business so I've got lots of wood there on racks so that freaks them out and the insurance company you know says the pump isn't up to stand now I just put a new pump in I don't know that was a six figure expense but yeah the pipes are they're literally 120 years old they're too small and they want me to put a whole new sprinkler system in and if it was $200,000 dollars okay great do it because you'll save make it back in insurance premiums but it's going to be far more and I have to just I have to decide is it worth the money to go ahead and and the insurance guy says it's a competitive market sometimes the insurance just goes back and forth they take some bad losses and all the insurance companies raise prices then all of a sudden they say oh wait we can get some more business if we lower our prices and that's the way the commercial insurance business goes It Go swings back and forth so maybe next year it'll only cost me $40,000 more so so spending that kind of money to put a a brand new sprinkler system in is not necessarily a good investment so I'd like to take your um sprinkler wood and compare that to my cinder block building that is only 50 years old downtown Lafayette we have no wood because the walls that we've built Are all uh done with you know metal studs and sheetrock and literally cender block the exterior of the building the entire way around a cinder block so I mean I guess there's wood in the kitchen cabinets but we don't have stove we have computers and people and some printers I mean we're not talking anything that feels flammable and in 21 our insurance doubled wait wait how big is the building uh 8,000 square feet okay so it's literally 10% on what the size so so what did the insurance go from 10,000 to 20 uhhuh and then it doubled again and it doubled again and here's the crazy thing we've owned the building since ' 05 we've had um no claims ever we did have a a little uh flooding problem and so water came in under and flooded into the conference room didn't make a claim fixed it myself same insurance company all of the 17 18 years and just all of a sudden double double double double so we switch companies and we're able to at least get it back to our 2022 rates but that's crazy so how much is the insurance now um well I was able to get it back down to we're sitting right at 17 now which is funny cuz think about it percentage wise wise it's exactly what mine is you're building's 10% the size of mine and my insurance in that building is about 190,000 so it's literally it's it's the exact same dollar per square foot except to your point you don't have racks of wood there correct you have other issues Jackie you're in Louisiana is this a climate issue it could be sure but you know we don't have um hurricanes here I'm 22 miles from the Gulf I'm not saying hurricanes don't come to Louisiana I mean knockwood but I'm saying in the 18 years we've owned the building there have been three named storms that have quote unquote hit Lafayette but no damage to the area in which I'm in at all let me tell you another extremely interesting part of the story My broker who I've been with for 45 years 45 he's two years older than me he sold the company to the big conglomerate insurance company and now they're going public right I called him I said you know I really don't love the this way this whole thing's been going and he AP oliz and he says I've got some internal problems here and he literally said to me Jay do what you have to do to take care of your family which is basically saying yeah we're screwing you over because my company's going public so like once again your reliable old vendor sells out to the big conglomerate and the customer pays the price for it so I'm changing Brokers after 45 years well and good luck with that because what I found when I started to shop around is that the Brokers have this like gentleman's agreement and you can't get another company to quote it because they quote unquote own you for sure whatever the word is they don't want to quote the same building to two different Brokers is that right or wrong I don't know maybe well we'll see I'm gonna start doing it I brought up Marsh and mcclinon he goes oh that's the biggest company in the industry but they're not going they're already public maybe they're better but like I said I was rather taken back he basically you know like I said he said to me twice Jay do whatever you need to do he's like throwing up the White Flag cuz he knows I'm getting screwed around and he's not a commission anymore he told me Paul you have a big Factory and a lot of wood have your insurance rates G up not all that much um I was just looking looks like we're going to spend on on all of the insurance this would be Life Insurance liability workman's comp and business catastrophe we spent 36,000 last year probably spent 38 ,000 this year wait wait do you own the building no right that's the difference you don't own the building it's totally different animal yeah it's the property insurance of the money I'm spending most of it's going to the building Insurance well I'm sure we're going to get that somehow they're going to pass it through to you yeah but my idiot landlord just didn't bother to do that for the last 20 years so they're finally figuring that out and so they're catching up but uh they didn't realize that that they're in a rear going back to 20 2003 so when we did our lease renewal they were talking about causes of default and I just put in a sentence and said any pass du common area charges are not a cause for default they didn't notice that I added that to the draft they just signed it and executed it how old is your landlord uh the old one was in his my age and his son has taken over and he's in his 20s so I was going to say the problem frequently is the landlord dies or sells it and the next thing you know you know again the renter pays for it we added a bunch of space too so there was a new lease and blah blah blah blah blah but these guys don't read what comes back from their tenants before they execute it so that's their problem so the moral of the story is occupancy costs are going up between High interest rates in Insurance many people's occupancy costs are going up and somehow you got to cover that in your pricing because you got to pay for it well I think it's worth knowing what percentage of your revenues your insurance costs are too so last year it was 77% for me and this year so far it's about 1% it's not the biggest line item on my on my list by a long your rent as a percentage of your business I'm going to guess 5% something on that range yeah let me see last year although we signed a new lease so it's higher this year last year is 4.21% this year 5.27% okay yes yeah Jay you had another interesting situation recently uh we had spent a good bit of time I don't know maybe a year or more ago talking about your attempts to hire a Chief Financial Officer I think you you've recently come to the conclusion that you don't actually need a Chief Financial Officer can you explain I fumbled the ball very badly on that one I had someone who was here for over 20 years did a good job with keeping all the financials and everything going well he retired and went out looking for a replacement and the first thing I should have done is I should have not looked for a CFO I should have called it a controller and we hired someone what's the difference um the CFO first of all I'm not a public company I'm not buying and selling companies uh they're not going to oversee I didn't need them to oversee HR I don't need them to oversee the insurance it's just lesser of a job and besides which I fully take responsibility I didn't pay enough attention I left it up to my HR person and him and I interviewed the person and she's gone now she did not have the background or the experience to do this job and I said to her at one point did you know what you were getting into when you took this job without any hesitation she said in no way shape or form so um I did a really bad job and if anyone gets anything out of this I always tell everybody correct me if I'm I'd be interested in your opinions I believe of all the jobs all the 21 hats that we wear hire and firing got to be the number one and two ones because if you got the wrong people I don't I don't care what your strategy is I don't care what your advertising is I don't care what or anything is it was a bad fit she didn't have the right background for it and now I'm going back to Reinventing the wheel now of what do I really need do I really need a full-time controller and then my my accountant goes oh maybe you should get a fractional CFO I did the math on that and for what they charge per hour if they even work just one day a week it's going to cost me the same as a fulltime employee so that doesn't make any sense so we're okay at the moment everything's running fine I got three solid people in accounting very solid working together so I'm reassessing what I need in that department and It's Tricky so I got a recruiter this time I'm using the recruiter that works at the accounting firm and I don't have the end of the story yet I'm still figuring it out one of the reasons I'm intrigued is that I had just kind of assumed that a business of your size did need to have a CFO and then of course you've always had one Jackie Paul do you guys have CFOs no no if their size the man doesn't work it doesn't make any sense at all what are they gonna do what do you have me it doesn't surprise me yeah I'm the eye of Sauron when I'm looking at my finances I'm just zooing in and and uh I'm pretty clear on what we're spending money on I don't know Jackie how big is your company uh we're about 28 people um we do close to three this year okay so you're a little smaller me but not much we're in a bit of a flux this is our third wave and so we had somebody inhouse who was more of a controller because I was new and we handled at that time we were primarily media buying so we handled $5 million of other people's money and that made me very uncomfortable so somebody need to be in charge of that and then as we transition from being a media buying agency to being a um strategic brand planning and implementation agency our profit margin went way up we went from 15% margin to a 90% margin and our overall sales went way down so it was less money to deal with and so most of the money flowing through here was ours so that was easier to keep track of so our um controller moved on to go somewhere else and we used a combination of In-House and outsourced accounting firm who kind of served as a double blind check and CPA Taxas and now we've evolved again to it's a lot of software that I think is pretty well connected together and I mean I'm two weeks into this transition so it's a little new but still have an outside resource to make sure that I'm not doing anything that's going to throw me into jail I actually have an accounting degree but the fact is I never went into it because I don't I like the creative side of things so I've been the first to admit I haven't paid enough attention to it I should have I am now and I'll tell you a problem I don't have a problem with most government regulations going on it's all fine except for one piece this new law I don't think it's in every state but in Illinois it is you can no longer ask someone what they're making at their last job and it is really really inhibiting it like at least if you know somebody was paying them X dollars they probably were worth it but in a job like this you don't know whether the person was making 90,000 at their last job or 180 and it's extremely frustrating and I understand why they they did it so that so there's more pay parody that you know women and particular aren't paid enough so they figured okay well at least if they're going to a new job you won't be able to use their lower income and continue that on okay I got it was all good intentions and probably has helped that but it has put the business owner it's really it's really makes it more difficult you don't have any any any way to evaluate what they might have been getting paid so you just make up a number in your head I mean you know what you want to offer for the job but you don't know what right at least if you know aren there other ways to determine that Jay like what see what kind of they're driving I mean no no what no what kind of experience they have what they've been doing you can I got to tell you you could have a $90,000 person and $160,000 person and their stories could be exactly the same oh I oversee all the accounting but but at least if somebody was making $160,000 a year for five years you have to believe they probably were worth it or the company wouldn't have been paying it whereas if they were working 90 companies do make mistakes sometimes for sure but at least it's one more bit of information I'll tell you the Breakthrough I had though lately this is really interesting we're hiring an assistant HR person now we're doing the other thing we're playing by all the rules we put the range in the ad now fair enough they say that your response gets much better so we put right in the ad whatever it was 45 to 55 it's right there out in the open okay we interview her we like her she says I don't have a lot of experience fair enough we offer her the job we give her a little more than halfway like whatever 51 and she comes back and she says gee um can I get three weeks vacation no we're not we give two weeks to begin with and then she comes back again and says can I get $2,000 more now we're starting to get uncomfortable like you know what maybe she wants to make more money she she did answer this ad she knows she has no experience so since the ad said 45 to 55 she certainly shouldn't have expected the higher of the range but this is where it gets interesting we thought long hard about it and rather than we send the offer we sent her an email that said you know I have to tell you I'm starting to get uncomfortable this might not be the right fit we told you what the range was we made you a good faith offer after giving it a lot of analysis we think this is really a good offer and she comes back and she admits and I give her credit for this she goes I'm sorry I'm sorry if you were offended I took my advice from my my mentor and somebody else that works this is Jay everybody's been told every day between YouTube and Tik Tok and everyone oh always negotiate your salary that isn't good advice because there's some cases where that's not going to come off well so the answer is from now on we're going to go we're g to make you an offer and we just want you to know it's non-negotiable if that doesn't work for you just don't take the job and that way they don't have the pressure of thinking they left money on the table and we don't have to go through this can we hear from Jackie on this has it been a problem for you well it it hasn't been a problem for me I don't hire as often as I think y'all do so we have a set team that we've kind of been set for a while we also have an internship program so we basically test drive each other for three months through the internship program and the best of that Bunch makes it to a part-time paid position and then when they graduate a full-time position so it's kind of a stair step of we're all making sure we're on the same page the whole way through which really helps we also did a round of raises over the past year and so our payroll increased by almost 100 % and we added in that no work on Friday's thing that Jay loves so much so we're kind of sitting pretty with my inbox is probably hit with five times more resumés now of people looking for jobs that aren't even open and that's kind of changing the negotiating seat for me for when we hire next so that's my question though is there negotiation or do you say okay you give them the number they go great I'll start Monday that's exactly how it goes here's the number thank you very much I don't want to negotiate starting salaries I give them a good faith offer that I think it's worth it we don't try to get the cheapest we we think of their experience and we we put the range in the ad so we we're playing Fair it's all right there and transparent so we're so Paul tell us your view on that uh well I don't think you can really knock someone for trying to negotiate if it's a moment when negotiation is not an unusual thing I mean when you're when you're working out a salary why wouldn't you ask for something more I think that I an employee who has the guts to ask for something you know I would be like okay you get some points for for trying do I want them taking the job knowing that they're not making what they want to make uh that's not necessarily what it works out to now with when I negotiate it sort of depends on who I'm hiring for but I often will on hourly people uh we can legally ask what they were making and so I do and then I ask what do you want to make and I get an answer and often times if it's someone who is attracted to me I'll say I'll pay you that and I'll even pay you a little more to start with and here's the deal if you're no good I'll fire you and uh but if you're good you know you're worth it that's very different you've they told you what they're looking for you gave it to them that's not negotiation you gave them what they were asking for no but but I'm saying that I live in a different information environment you're trying to get information that you can't just straight out ask but you're also making a very negative judgment on someone who's sincerely doing their best to to take care of themselves and given given the Ze Guys these days is oh yeah it turns out that a lot of people are really bad at negotiation and maybe if you can just get your head around it for one day you might actually get a great payoff maybe you should try it like I don't blame someone for trying it okay the point is you said you can't you're wrong you can't but I can I can do whatever I want you can do whatever you want maybe you don't want to hold it against them I do I put in the ad here's the rain I very clearly said here's where the number came from you don't have as much experience and we lay it all out we tell them this is what we believe the number is and I'm gonna just I don't really want to negotiate it all right well I mean that that's fine listen we can all hold anything against anybody we want I and and this is where it makes it easy we're going to tell them up front there it's not negotiable so they don't have to go home and hear from their mother father cousin oh you should have asked for more money no we're going to tell them up front we put the range in the ad 45 to 55 you have very little experience but but we like you and we think you've got some skills we're going to give you 52 okay period well let me ask you Jay would you be willing to make a menu that breaks down all the ways you could get from 45 to 55 if you did this sure if you could do that no problem would you put that in an ad um I don't know that i' bothered I would tell them in the interview that listen as soon as you get more skills and bl I mean she she said it the at the interview she put up her hands I just want you to know I have very little as our experience I mean we're all on the same page so it's not like we gave her the bottom of the scale we came in and she oh oh I left this part out and she admitted she goes Oh I thought that was a very good offer but then someone told her oh you should still ask for more did it cost her the job to ask for more it could have could have absolutely could have if I had three other great applicants that were thrilled yeah maybe all right well I think it it's up to you as the employer to make a clear as you said we're going to give you an offer there's no negotiation take it or leave it great say that at the beginning yeah don't don't say that after she's come back and asked for more like don't spring that on her I I would be pretty upset if if an employer did that to me I'm saving everyone all out of grief I'm absolutely going to tell them beforehand we'll explain to you what we're make the offer and we just want you to know it just saves everyone a lot of grief so for sure tell them beforehand and then if they don't want to take it okay then but but I think telling people oh it never hurts to negotiate is not a good phrase sometimes it does hurt Lauren said it to me everyone does it no they don't no they don't they everyone doesn't do that I didn't mean literally everyone Jay but as Paul was saying this is a time when the standard advice is whatever you get for the first offer you should probably ask for a little bit more and see what happens I understand that which is why I'm going to take everyone off the hook and just tell them up front listen I just want you to know we don't negotiate starting salaries Jackie I'm curious I heard what you said about you haven't done a lot of hiring recently but but do you have a gut sense of whether the law prohibiting uh owners from asking for a salary history is in fact helping women you know I have a couple of you know groups of women friends in business and we haven't seen that impact us as much as our connection to each other has helped you know not the bad advice of no go back and negotiate for more because you're getting screwed not that but the standing up for yourself the making sure that you advocate for yourself I'm in a um a group an online group of about 50,000 women marketers and the uh lowballing and job scope creep and um I think gender-based expectations that come through I am appalled by on a regular basis I mean there's some horror stories on there but I'm seeing improvements what's the answer for that if not the salary law I don't think it's necessarily that we always have to go back back and negotiate because I'm with Jay probably not a phrase I'm going to use very often uh but I'll try it out for right now how come everyone that comes on the podcast feels like they're not initiated until they take a shot of me okay you're in now because we've always said hey this is the offer you know kind of a take it or leave it thing but we don't we don't low ball we are very fair we are at the top of Market rates because I want the best talent and I have to balance the fact that I have local people and remote people it's a whole thing but so I think it's communication I think that if if the whole goal is is to help women then what helps women is when we talk to each other and we help each other out and we don't look at each other as competition and we make sure that we are turning around and holding a hand out to the person behind us that's how we improve our lot in life keep in mind if you tell someone we don't negotiate and you say okay we like to offer you the job for 51,000 they certainly can say you know what I'd love to work for you but to be honest I I've gotten some other offers I really need to I really need to make 53 that's not negotiation they they know that they might have just lost a job but at least they can always throw out there I need 53 and you could still rethink it if you chose to so here's the point if you had four different people that were great applicants and they all would have been thrilled at that number and the fourth one isn't why would you hire the person who wants to make why not hire the one that's oh my God that's great I'll start Monday why wouldn't you do that well to Paul's point they all four might be thrilled with that number but they've been taught that you might as well ask well okay J Jay sorry tell me again this was for for an HR position an assistant HR assistant does this person need to assert themselves in any way at any time during their job um not at this moment she's very young and has no experience and no we're not going to set her freey start going out and dealing with sticky HR situations it's mostly to do payroll keep Rec records and as she matures and gets more experience with things certainly she will but at this point uh she's not there yet I mean if you were hiring a salesperson you'd want them to come at you for for more money maybe maybe a salesperson I mean there's plenty of jobs for being assertive it's is a plus and depending on how you do it but uh the total lack of spine is a red flag for me in a lot of situations I'd rather people stand up for themselves okay you're you're making it black and white if someone asked for money they they're assertive and if they don't they don't have a spine that's that's not there's a third category they don't and they have a spine there are those people out there like I've got 130 of them I've almost have never negotiated a starting salary and I don't have a bunch of wusses working here so all right I B your greater experience okay accepted on that note thank you for a lively conversation uh Paul DS Jay gz and Jackie Russo and to our sponsor of the great game of business which helps businesses use an open 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 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 Thon founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]