We Tried That Brand Thing. It Didn't Work.

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Sean busy Paul DS and Jay gz talk about the tendency of many businesses to obsess about their logo their website and the need to drive more leads to which Sean suggests concentrating first on customer experience and Jay agrees it's better business he says to make your customers happier than to keep trying to find new customers but Paul has his doubts you can have your internal house in order as I do he says and you can have a great website as I do but it's not driving new business to us at the moment plus sha Paul and Jay react to recently publicized strategies to address the labor shortage such as giving out raises more than once a year and encouraging new employees to take a vacation before they start work 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 newsletters 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 we can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews joining me this week on the podcast are regulars Shan busy CEO of Kinesis which is based in Portland Oregon and works with small businesses on marketing culture and strategy Paul Downs who is CEO of Paul Downs cabinet makers which is based outside of Philadelphia where it makes custom conference tables and NJ goz whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason home the episode is titled we tried that brand thing it didn't work welcome Sean Paul and Jay for a few reasons that I think we'll get too quickly i' I'd like to talk about branding today and I want to start with you Sean I know you've been thinking about what brand means for small businesses and what that suggests about how you position your own business Kinesis can you tell us a little bit about that what do you thinking yeah you know and this was sort of sparked a little bit by an earlier conversation we had on the first show I was on with Jay and I was trying to describe how we work across multiple areas of the business and not just marketing which has kind of been our history in terms of brand awareness so we've really been kind of searching for a term to express what does it mean when you align your culture and your people and your customer experience your Market presentation you know it's a it's a tough idea that um maybe doesn't have just one word but somebody in our somebody in our group is is really pushing for the idea of of owning the idea of brand as an entry point to what we do you know we when we wrote marketing from the inside out there's a framework in there that you know kind of starts with the core which is your mission your vision and your values and then Works outwards to your customer experience and you know in between is employee engagement your way of working and whenever I would talk about that idea to clients or potential clients I would really end that and say you know that's not actually really marketing that I'm talking about really what I'm talking about is brand and I think most people get it but I'm I'm not sure because there's still a lot of folks who hear the word brand and they think logo or they think website or they think visual design design so we've been thinking about it holistically internally and that's how we approach our work um but I'm really curious about the the large the larger market and if it's ready for that kind of idea and if it's the right way to talk about it Paul in a conversation you and I had just a couple weeks ago you said that you think your company doesn't have a brand how do you react to what Sean just said uh I think it's entirely misguided it sounds to me like he's describing culture and just to the extent that culture is used is waved as a flag at prospective customers that could be a brand but to me a brand is does somebody think of you when they think of the thing you do that's it and so we have a great culture and we currently I don't think that anybody who was like where do I get a custom conference table Paul Downs I just don't think that anybody does that and to the extent that they don't I don't have a brand now now we've found a different way to connect with with clients which is through Google but Google doesn't require you to have a brand in order to it doesn't require that we have any anything other than the ability to be a good answer to the question who makes conference tables Jay what do you think I have a completely opposite answer though it's close I'm going to argue that you have a tremendous Paul you have a tremendous brand you're talking about brand awareness which is very different when you go to your website your website is first class I googled this morning knowing what we're going to talk about I Googled high quality custom conference table boom you came up first so you've got a great brand a great story I love how you've got everybody's picture on there it's a lovey doy beautiful website you got the American flag made I think you have a tremendous brand but yes clearly you don't have a high brand to wear which is not brand that's called marketing so um I think brand is what do people think of when they think of your company period end of the story and that means everything what does your truck look like what does your invoices look like what do your business cards look like what what do people look at when they look at your website it's how you present yourself out there and I had a funny experience I I was doing a speech probably 15 years ago to the Appliance dealer Association and I had these people in the room and I said start talk about brand and these two old guys in the front row they were like the two old guys in The Muppets you know like whispering to each other Whispering so loud cuz they're old guys he goes we tried that brand thing it didn't work so I said I heard that I said you have a brand either way the question is the brand you want but you all have a brand some people's brand are I run a dumpy looking store that's your brand everybody has a brand they do it's a the question is is it a good brand I don't know I mean that just sounds more to me like culture culture is a whole different thing the reason we have a good website is because we're I enforce a culture of craftsmanship and I want everything that we do to be well-crafted but I know a lot of people who do very similar business who just don't have that culture and so it's it's just different what drives it or not is a different story you're saying culture might drive your brand but the brand is the brand okay well let me let me throw this out it sounds like you guys think of of culture as being part of the brand yeah sure and I think of of brand as being part of the culture in other words there's a a fundamental way of being a Paul Downs cabinet maker that if everything is done the way I wanted to the brand ends up being the thing you see but your definition doesn't really address like okay what's the point of a brand without brand awareness let me explain that so you could have a brand you could look great from the outside except you could be a complete jackass but if no one knows that you're a complete jackass your brand is still your brand oh look there's a nice company that doesn't mean you are a nice company but you look like a nice company so my argument is your brand is the perception of what people see now to your next question of what good is brand brand yeah sure you need to Market your brand and get it out there no question about it but you are doing that I Googled just those few few phrases and you came right up number one that's great good I'll send a thank you note to Google because they did that no they didn't do that you did that I want to address actually Paul's comment because I disagree with him pretty vifly so my belief is that every company has a brand whether they like it or not right it's the perception of the organization from quote unquote the outside now where I extend that idea is I don't just think of customers I actually think of the employees so the employees have a perception of the company they have an experience with the brand that experience is something you're trying to shape Paul right you're trying to focus on craftsmanship attention to detail and those employees talk about your company when you're not around in a certain way now ideally they talk about your company in the way you want them to and that your customers talk about that company in the same way and I think that's the opportunity for small businesses is to align the that those internal forces and those and that external awareness I agree with Jay a th% what you're talking about is brand awareness it's not brand brand awareness is people being aware of what's going on out there and that you're the go-to source for conference tables for example that's customer brand awareness you might also have very low employee brand awareness you may not be somebody that people think about going to work for because you haven't done a good job of articulating what your culture is and what it's about whether that's true or not I don't know I got to tell you though someone goes to his website it reeks of just nice happy company so if someone do does nothing more than just go to his website I think he's already ahead of the game with that and every day just about I see a company that's just doing a terrible job with your brand management yesterday you know just like you get I'm sure I get 10 emails a day about people trying to pitch man services so this one guy calls me follows up on his email calls me two or three times and does a good job so I did something I almost never do I actually called him he's selling Freight Management Services I called him I said I just have to give you credit you did a really good job of following up most people never follow up he didn't put a bunch of baloney in there it was right to the point and I'm as I'm talking to him though I pull up his website and I hit about us and there's nothing in there it's about we started in whatever year I go who owns your company he couldn't even tell me I go you know what I'm not doing business with a company I don't know who's behind it and I that's my new philosophy as of yesterday any company that's pitching me if I go to their website and they hide I'm not doing business with them see I think I think you put your finger on the the thing I'm trying to address which is that most businesses do not appreciate that interconnectivity between the culture and the internal brand and the external experience so right there is a perfect example of that right like your interfacing with him created a perception of the company that then got kind of screwed up by how they managed it in the Public Presentation somebody made a decision that wasn't an accident they made a decision oh no I don't want my name on there right oh you want me to give you all of my inside information about my shipping prices and where I'm shipping and you won't even tell me your name so I can tell you somebody called me last year really good pitch he works for one of the biggest brokerage firms in the country you'd know it in a second a private wealth group and he's pitching me on why I should have my portfolio there and and he did a really really good job so surprisingly so I Googled the name of his company I see who the three principles are the first thing that came up the guy's name he was being sued for drugging and raping a woman and leaving her for dead in the New York Times I mean and better yet hit this button a video it's a video of him dragging the woman into the elevator in a hotel a video of it and I'm thinking wow there's some branding so he called me back I said you know got to tell you I did a little research on your company oh my God that's a nightmare that lady's crazy and he goes into his whole thing and I thought not cool were you there do you know what happened I I have a video in front of me watching him drag this woman into the he should have said you know what that was a really bad situation I wasn't there I can only tell you the case was dismissed if you'd like I'd be happy to have you talk to one or the other and all I'm thinking is these guys are managing millions millions like hundreds of millions of dollars for people and that guy's picture is still on their website so I have an idea for you I think you should do something called a brand audit that you go into a company and you look at there aren't 500 I'm sitting here as we're talking I made a list I think there's probably 30 things you could look at everything from their invoices to business cards to website to the truck to their cars to the way they dress to their hours to the way their office looks to where their office is and you could just do a brand audit and say who you saying should do this Jay who should do an audit not me it's not you Lauren I think that leaves just Sean is there a problem what's the problem no I think it's a good idea actually can I jump in and say we're talking about brand as if it's one thing but actually brand for a small business and brand for American Airlines two completely different things Jay when you pick up a Coke and drink it do you give a damn whether the CEO paid his taxes last year or not no there's different scales to it well I gotta tell you though maybe I don't care if he paid his takes but I might care if I knew he was giving a lot of money to a cause that I'm venly against that that would make a difference okay okay what what's in your fridge I don't drink Coke because I think it's it's poison I think it's poison drink tell me what the CEO is up to on every single product that's in your fridge like I'm not looking into it I'm perfectly happy to say that when we talk about small business brand which is I think where where Sean started yeah that's a different conversation and that some of my comments on the value of brand are more thinking okay we're we're incorporating this concept which is to people know who you are and the part that we haven't talked about yet is to people care about all that back office stuff if the product itself is satisfactory I have the answer to that and the answer is that people can dismiss every single thing I say and oh no one cares what your card looks like no and the answer is okay you're probably 90% right but 10% of the people do in fact pay attention whether your cards look a certain way some people do care if a if the partner in charge of their if their finances is a rapist some people care some people don't care but it's there's there's probably I'm guessing now 30 things you could put on this audit sheet to decide whether the impression they're giving to the outside world matches what they think they are let me cut in here a second I before we get too far away from the disagreement between Shan and Paul about Paul's branding or lack thereof is this just semantics does it matter what you label it I mean we all agree that Paul has a great brand uh well we don't all agree we we all agree that that Paul needs more brand awareness and he is thinking about ways to achieve that does it matter what we call it is this just semantics or is there something deeper here I think um man we're just bringing up so many Rich topics here we could talk about but part of the reason I brought brought this to table is I was curious what would happen cuz when I am out in the marketplace and I say you know Kinesis provides marketing services for example immediately people frame in their mind what they think that is and if I then say you know part of our services is we help people reinvent their hiring process and rewrite their job descriptions they'll be like wait a minute that's not marketing and so then there's like confusion or in the best of case it's like curiosity that's great so I think that yes it's semantics and there's no agreement you know in terms of what this word means I mean just listen to the three of us we've all got various versions of this truth but I I do think it's an important thing at least that's been my experience is that when I see small businesses get it right they really dominate that you know because it's it's an alignment that mean back to Jay's point you know several episodes ago right it's an alignment opportunity it's saying internally this is what we believe do and say externally this is what we present do and say and I think the problem for small businesses is when they don't recognize that they have a brand a a public facing brand and also an internal way of living in the world that misalignment is what pisses customers off the most um you know recently as an example I use a Big Brand uh Sonos which is a speaker company I love the product it's great it's wonderful I have a bunch of them I had one break and engage with the company through their customer service it was a terrible experience that was the first time I really had a bad experience with that company and I reached out to their you know kind of Next Level support and I was like this is what happened this is my experience and they were amazing they like made it right they they went above and beyond you know so it's like companies have a have a real opportunity to impact their customer experience as well as their customer loyalty and advocacy and I think that word they want to use when they say that is brand and and I don't I can't think of a better word because if I say h i I don't know what to say you know like that that is a brand experience you know yeah it's a customer service experience but it's everything right now my perception of the company has really been salvaged and now I'm an advocate again and I think the more small businesses think like that they think about you know hey if I don't hire great people internally we're going to lose customers and I think that's part of the brand and I think most companies do that intuitively and without a deliberate thought but I think that's actually an opportunity I think what you're doing is having operations alignment so that their brand matches their intentions I you're not putting lipstick on a pig here you're not going there and saying oh we're going to get everyone to believe that you've got nice people working there no you're fixing their hiring process and management you're fixing the operations so I think what you're talking about is matching their operations with their intent and then making sure that their brand matches both of those things and and you're right a lot of companies aren't doing that Jay let me ask you do you feel your brand is where you'd like it to be do you think in Chicago people know there's a difference between your framing stores and other framing stores I work on it regularly um I make sure my website looks better I make sure the front of the building looks better um my storefront looks better my store inside looks better I've got better people have I figured out how to make sure that I can communicate that in the best possible way that it's difficult because the fact is I'm my frame business is 20 times the size of the average frame business and as a result I've got much better resources I've got a much better inventory I've got but I it's difficult to advertise that without just sounding like you're bragging or something you know like an adline saying we're 20 times bigger than is not necessarily going to sell more picture framing but there are some inherent advantages of the fact that we are much bigger the other thing is we're much bigger because we do a better job it's not any more complicated than that it really isn't it's not like I'm spending eight million dollar a year on Advertising we do a better job my retention is way higher than most places but do your customers know that I think so we try to communicate that I think they feel it here's the thing I think they feel it do you know why they walk in they the same person that's worked here for 20 years yeah yeah they feel cared for I've got three people in the showroom that have been here for 20 years I don't have to say it they see it and then if there's ever a problem with they we always take care of it are there some people that are mad at us for some reason because uh uh they think the price was too high or because somebody was mad and I feel bad about this we delivered their artwork to their condo left it in the um we gave it to the coner thing and it was in a clear plastic bag and he was mad that didn't that his his his neighbors could see the art and like it sounds silly but I get it I wish we didn't you know I didn't think about it we don't do that anymore I mean there's some people that are mad about something but we take care of customers it's not any more complicated than that and I can tell you because I know this number for sure 90 three% of our customers are either repeat or their friend sent them in I mean so the my business was not built by advertising it was built by keeping customers happy well I think Jay's idea of a brand audit is actually very good that's a great service and it's probably not a ton of work and it would be a great way to open a conversation with a client what we found is when we say to folks you know hey you can't read the label from inside the bottle most everybody kind of you know kind of like yeah I know you know so and that's it even goes for us like we've hired people to evaluate us and and part of that process is like interviewing our customers because customers will tell a third party things they won't tell you as a as an owner um and go both good and bad if you're really concerned about your brand whether that's public perception or employee experience which I think it's more and more important you know it's it's like many of these businesses are you know in Fierce competition with what they do I mean Jay's a great example of this building frames and M and putting art in frames is something that a lot of people could do but somehow he's figured out a way you know to win out over the competition for many many years and I would argue a large part of that is the experience the customer has which is a direct result of the employee engagement which is a direct result of his care and compassion for his employees I can just draw a straight line to that I can give you some simple math and I show people if I keep 95% % of the customers really happy and someone else keeps 90% happy simply because they close early sometimes or the lighting is bad whatever lots of reasons that over 40 years it's going to be the difference between having a really big business and not a really big business it's it's we're talking about being five or 10% better that's all we're talking about and over time that's what separates the companies that grow and the companies that don't grow so let let me jump in Sean if if if you think the things that I think culture or brand what in your mind is culture I mean I think it's sort of like asking the question like what is sauté and vegetables you know it's a form of cooking right so so I think about I'm thinking about cooking I'm thinking about the whole Act of preparing a meal and culture is a component of that and I I think like a really important component um but I really like to think about it through the lens of brand because I want to see culture aligned with the external presentation like I want I want internal culture to match customer experience and expectation and I I I think brand can be a way to unify those ideas you know and the more we see especially people struggling to hire employees you know it's no longer like I want to hire an employee to do a job it's like I want to hire an employee to be part of something and those are your best candidates those are your best employees and to do that I think you have to present them with a larger Narrative of purpose and meaning you know whether that's hey be part of a a group that cares for one another it can be as simple as that it can be you know be a Craftsman and the best person at your art you know that could be part of your brand and then that's something that like customers I think care about Paul so so I I see culture as a subset of brand that's probably as or more important than your Public Presentation for small businesses and I think that's a little bit controversial because I think the emphasis is almost always on well how do we look better how do we have a better logo how do we have a better website and that's important you know but I think the experience the customer has from a long-term perspective is how you build compounding returns because if you create a great customer experience and they come back to you and they refer business to you like that is so much more valuable than paying a ton of money to go get new clients that at least that's been my experience the math would back that up it's it's cheaper it's better business to make your customers happier than to keep trying to buy new customers and I actually believe I have at least for myself I'll just say for myself I feel very comfortable that I can Define corporate culture in three things simple one how far will you go for a customer we do whatever we need to do two what do you expect from employees I don't want to run a place that people are working 70 hours a week I I think they need to be here when they need to be here but I do not push people that hard and I don't want to run a place like that that's just my personal thing and three what are your e expectations or standards for the way they treat each other I will not have people working here being disrespectful to each other and I have had some very painful firings that I've had to get rid of some people that were really valuable that just couldn't stop being jerks to other people and after three four Sation and after saying if this happens again you're going to leave me no choice but to fire you and I'm going to be sick about it but I'm going to do it I'd had to do that several times because some people just can't stop from being jerks so I think that's what corporate culture is personally Paul did you get an answer from uh Sean and Jay oh yeah didn't you hear any of that Lauren I mean the the day we don't get an answer from Jay oh my God my brand all right now here's the most important question then and be honest do you guys think 21 hats has potential as a brand anybody I think it already has a brand I don't think it's about potential I think you have a brand of having honest conversations about things that you'd never hear that i' never hear anywhere else I think that's the brand real life conversations from real life business owners you are in a particularly difficult situation because your space is dominated by other brands that are up and functioning and you're competing for attention with people who've had a lot of practice in grabbing attention so I think that's the part of the discussion that we haven't really touched on yet which is what's the value of a brand I mean uh I agree with Sean that it's very important that you have an internal brand SL culture that is not repellent to new possible job applicants particularly in this environment let's this stipulate yes that's true but in terms of being out there in the wide world hoping that somebody who's looking for a good or service is going to connect with any particular business their brand is functioning in a slightly different way and you can have your internal house in order as I do and you can have a great website as I do but it's not what's driving new business to us at the moment we're still stuck on Google and Lauren you're in exactly the same situation you've got a great product and you I mean presumably the the voices in your head are all in alignment CU you don't have employees but did I tell you about the voices in my head if you don't remember then that's a bad sign but you know what I'm saying is that it's not just an internal an internal set of decisions it's about how how it operates in the marketplace and I think that that's like an entirely diff different discussion so I'll just throw that out there and now now Sean and J can have at it I think you keep mixing up brand with marketing everything you just described as marketing it's taking your brand and getting it out there to get business that's called marketing and I I in my mind I don't I think there is a very clear distinction your brand is what you are and how you come off and how you look to the PO to the public and marketing is how you get that out there and um I think that you're right 21 hit while I believe has a very strong brand clearly it's difficult for Lauren to compete with American Express when they want to go out there and you know pitch their whatever okay let's put it a different way unless you've succeeded in your marketing you don't have a valuable brand you just have a set of you know a logo and some letter head or whatever you got okay I won't argue with that one looking at it from the the actual what's happening in the marketplace and just saying oh it's a marketing problem okay yeah it's a marketing problem but how do we solve the marketing problem particularly for smaller businesses what do you have to do so that you start to build that awareness that's where I'm stuck because my brand is not bringing me new business new business is bringing me the opportunity to build the brand that I want wait wait wait wait how can you say your brand your website does a lovely job of communicating your brand and you just said you get lots of traffic from Google how I got business when I had a crappy website the way C customers find us is is really driven by Google not necessarily by what I have on my website again that's marketing not brand you have a very solid brand when they do find you they find out oh this guy cares about what he does and does a nice job that's your brand can we Circle back to Lauren uh for a minute here I think Paul makes some great points as usual um you are in a in a bit of a crowded Market there's a lot of folks you know giving business advice or giving insight into business I think your brand position is unique in that you're looking for authenticity and deep conversation and that's really different than the that you know all these other companies are putting out whether it's American Express or the inks or the Forbes right they're putting out like the 10 things you need to do to make your business Prosper right it's just really surfacy written by journalists I just don't think it's very meaningful and so when I tuned into the podcast and when I did when I was not here I appreciated the fact that you are having real conversations with real owners struggling and trying to achieve things like from a brand position you carved out a very unique space um but I also think Paul is right in that you have an awareness challenge you have a you know marketing challenge of getting the word out there getting people aware of it you have a competition for time and eyeballs challenge because everybody's trying to go digital and podcast now because the pandemic and other reasons so they're they're different challenges I think you have a brand I think you have a position you have a point of view you have an experience people have when they use it those are all really great things is 21 hats a good name well you you've used it for two years so you know yeah that's your brand at the moment that's literally your brand the brand is the thing you stick on the side of the cow and then it's marked after that right there's 21 things an entrepreneur needs to do and that's what the show's about we're talking about all the nuances no there's 21 hats yeah I I think that's a I don't think that's the question for you to be asking Lauren I I think you've worked on building a brand around that around that brand identity so you have a brand identity which is 21 hats and that has a visual presentation you know you've invested in those for two years so there's some equity in it and then the question is is how strong is that Equity is their brand confusion with other companies I mean like that's a deep long- winded conversation and I would just say probably it's fine and you should just stick with it yeah all right that's what I was looking for would either of you say that my my my explanation of what I believe corporate culture is that how far you go for a customer what do you expect out of employees and how you treat each other does that fit Paul does that fit what that's culture oh it fits what I think culture is perfectly I think the brand can be very different and you can have a great culture and and and and not have like what if you're what if you're in a business that doesn't engender warm and fuzzy feelings like suppose you're running a tow truck or something that just picks up people have just had a crash by the side of the road do you care about a brand no but you can you can have a kick-ass culture you could have the most wonderful tow truck experience but nobody really nobody's going to care whether you have a brand because they don't use that product or service in a way that gives a brand any value all right you've just walked into my trap you did exact what I just said you said no one cares about your brand and I would argue if you just had your new BMW in an accident you want a truck driver showing up that's not going to wreck your car worse than it's already wrecked so I do believe some people are going to care about your brand when the tow truck shows up I just think you're what you're highlighting Paul which is really cool is the idea of how much friction do you have in your organization so in the tow Che example I think it's a really good example because there are companies like that where they're either the activity they do you know is like not exactly amazing uh and or it's perceived as like let's say payday lenders is a good example of that right you know you can work really hard to make that internal culture Rah and exciting but at the end of the day when somebody goes to a party and says I work for a Payday lender the person probably is going to wince and like go find somebody else to talk to and that has an impact on the people working there there you know it's friction you know you can overcome it and just like the tow truck like you know right and you say yeah I work at this tow truck company people are like oh tow trucks man like there's a public brand perception so I I think most business owners don't have that problem hopefully but if you don't have that problem that that then then why have artificial friction and that's my that's my point is like let's say you know Jay had a really great internal culture and treated his people really well um but yet you know when somebody showed up in the store like how about this retail experience when you walk in at 10 minutes till close and the first thing somebody says to you is hey we close in 10 minutes it's like what and I can assure you that's one of my things that my employees would never they know they never do right right so so that injection of friction you know just makes more work for Jay and makes the makes the customer experience worse makes it more expensive to get customers turnover higher so I think the elimination of that friction between the internal brand and your employee spirits and cult and your external presentation is often a really cool opportunity I do think that the brand out there is we're doing a good job but that doesn't mean that I think I'm doing the best possible thing with brand awareness because I am always trying to figure out how can I you know I'm on public radio they give you 15 seconds and they're extremely restrictive what you can say you can't use any Accolade you can't say rated best framer in Chicago I'm constantly trying to figure out what can I say to get the message across that we really are better and that's because they're trying to maintain the fiction that they don't take advertising even when they're taking advertising yeah let's stop here we're just about out of time and I want to run uh a few ideas past you that I've been reading about recently about companies addressing the labor shortage but first let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor I'm here with Rob Levan co-founder of work better now which provides businesses with highly talented virtual assistance Rob I've noticed that owners tend to have certain questions about virtual assistance for example what exactly can they do yeah Lauren we get this question all the time uh because people really know deep down that they need an assistant but they're not exactly sure how it works and what they can do for them I would say that our clients use our assistance in one of two ways they will either use them much like I've been using my assistant for the past eight years as an executive assistant handling my calendar which takes up so much time email management database file management personal tasks creating documents for for me and then a lot of our clients basically operationalize our assistance so we have assistance with titles like project manager marketing associate operations manager and customer service representative I think some owners worry they'll spend more time managing their assistant than it would have taken them just to do the test themselves how do you respond to that right right right this is a deadly trap not only with assistant but really with any employees which is oh I can do it faster myself and the reality is you might be able to do it faster yourself of course it's impossible to grow your business if you're doing everything yourself I was very much uh of a similar mindset and what I did with my assistant is I basically told him what needs to be done and had them document it I hate documenting tasks but I know the processes are so important now we have a manual full of my uh tasks I only had to tell him once that he can follow time and time again and if he's out somebody else can follow and also think about it this way if you're a business owner making something like let's say $200,000 a year which is about $100 an hour you're basically paying somebody to do administrative work at $100 an hour if you're doing these tasks yourself that makes a lot of sense what does it cost the cost is $1900 a month and as you know Lauren we are offering 21 hats readers and listeners $150 off per month for 3 months just by mentioning the word Lauren there are no contracts also very important for people to know can you promise a return on that investment if you're not getting a return something's not going right all of our clients are not only getting a return with the first assistant they've hired but many of our clients are now on their second third and fourth assistant where can we learn more work better now.com and again when you sign up for a 15-minute consult just mention the word Lauren we'll make sure to give that $150 off for each of the first 3 months thanks Rob and we're back so this labor shortage isn't going anywhere and I keep reading interesting stories about companies trying buying different things I want to run a few by you guys to see what you think we recently highlighted in the morning report that some companies have decided that annual raises are not enough they are going to review raises more often have any of you guys thought about doing that think it's a good idea I don't do an annual raise to start with what do you do I do an annual pay cut now that's culture that's culture Paul Paul gets an annual raise his employeers get pay cut it's great no I mean it's first of all I think that once a year sitting down and having some big scary conversation about pay hasn't worked for me tried it for a while it's just not not a good fit for where we are and the second thing is that the my ability to pay people is very closely tied to how the company is doing and so I put a lot of effort into keeping everybody a breast of that constantly and uh generally I try to even get out ahead of anybody who needs better pay but I've given people raises much more often probably a 10 to1 ratio to people who've asked for them and that may be because the rest of the culture is pretty amable and we try very hard to make this a good place to work there's 10 million surveys that say pay isn't the most important thing and I tend to agree with that that in my experience as long as you're paying people sort of a baseline can they support themselves and I'm doing that for all of my employees all right here's another one we just published something in the morning report uh in the last couple of days there are companies now that are offering two weeks of vacation to employees before they start you sign up for the job you set a start date but you get paid for two weeks before your first day of work thoughts that's just a signing bonus is not necessarily if they're truly giving you your two weeks vacation which means at the end of the first cycle of the year you no longer have any vacation acred it really is an assigning bonus they just gave it to you up front so we that's a gray one we don't know whether at the end of a year are they getting another two weeks then or does it go back to you have to earn it that's a good question I don't know the answer to that I wouldn't do that I mean but that sounds like it might be good in a in a situation where a company doesn't normally offer vacation I mean what what are we talking about here are we talking about people who are trying to staff a burger stand or are we talking about software Engineers or what are we talking about so those are just different situations I think it's higher level I I think it's skilled employees uh at higher level salaries honestly I would never do that because anybody who'd take that offer I wouldn't want to hire them anyway exactly I mean this just feels like a a publicity stunt and B a continuation of like the trans actional mindset that has got Employers in this position in the first place you know I I just I I find it to be kind of insulting it's like well we've treated you like crap for so many years but now we're going to do something special for you it's like people see through that you know I fully agree like they you know they look on glass door and they go like what's it like to work there and how you know do the people care and and I don't know it just seems like it's a gimmick it's a gimmick yeah another story that we highlighted recently talked about companies that are all but giving up on resumés and focusing on skills tests instead and they're doing this for for a number of reasons including um to try to improve diversity in in their hiring what do you guys think of that well I've been giving skills tests for years for for 20 years and but that doesn't mean I don't look at a resume what it does is it gives someone whose resume may not be exactly to my liking an opportunity to show what they can do and it's also a very useful double check on people whose resumés are quite impressive like can you actually do five relatively simple things that you're going to need to do in this job so it's all of those things that really gets to the to the hiring process and a lot of small businesses don't have a a hiring process they just do it when they need to and it's a scramble every single time I think it's just another gimmick another ridiculous oh don't worry about resume oh and I'm not saying skills testing is bad do both but to suggest that you should know where they've been for the last 10 years and and and how long they were there and what they did and who you can call for a re that's just ridiculous the other thing is just like I ask people to send me a resume even for any job because I want to know whether they can respond to a very simple instruction you know like you're looking for a job you should probably have a resume and there's some cases where I don't do that uh for for serious Blue Collar work if someone is highly recommended to me oh I worked with this guy he doesn't speak much English but he's an awesome worker great I'll hire him I don't need a resume from that guy but for most people it's just a question of I'm asking you to do something give me a resume and then when you look at the resume you can tell a lot about someone did they use a spell check did you know like there there's there's so many things that are relevant in just the act of handing a resume over to my particular work situation I've gotten resumes to say things like they live in Chicago comma Michigan like oops forgot to change the state they I mean people send resumés in like like they didn't even like they did it in the dark it's yeah so I think that's just another gimmick that got into the newspaper so that Moren can read them and we can have some fun I think what Paul said has been my experience as well it's really valuable to to get a glimpse into how somebody operates in a real world environment and I don't think an interview is a very good indicator of that always um it's AR you know people get sometimes nervous they you know you know fumble on questions but they might be actually really good at a job and the opposite they've gotten really good at interviewing because they're horrible employees they're constantly getting fired so they got lots of experience looking for jobs one aspect of this is to try to deemphasize credentials that may not really be important when it comes to the job I mean for some jobs do you really need a college degree maybe you don't um and and that's part of the thinking here does that make sense to any of you sure totally the premise of the question is I am an organization that can't be bothered to look take a look at people as individuals I have a process that I've set up to you're going to do this and we're going to take a superficial analysis of whatever the you know whatever kind of this process is and we're going to pick a few out and at the end of the day it doesn't really matter how whether they're great or good are mediocre we need people we we Harvest this pile of resumés that's not the situation I'm in so my process is about treating people as individuals and if somebody has potential in any of the number of different things that I'm looking at then I might Overlook some of the other things but all of these some employers are doing this are just like they don't really fit a small business because a small business has the opportunity to treat people as individuals and if you're a running a small business and you and you shot somebody off the hiring list because they didn't go to Harvard you're an idiot you're going to fail and you're going to deserve it amen you know I have a really wonderful employer named Susie she's going back to college I hired her I didn't know she didn't have a college degree and and she could not get a job to save her life people passed her over because they're like well you don't have experience in this or you don't have a degree in that and and I was like I found her blog and I was like oh my God you are such a good writer you've got a job tomorrow I got 50 of those people it it's like she today she is such an incredible team player I I I can't imagine Kinesis without her and I just think about like all those fools who like passed her over and I'm just like God bless them you know like to to Paul's Point like that is our competitive opportunity as a small business is we we can work outside of that space absolutely I would say that four of my best employees never completed high school and one never even entered high school so you know like but they can do the job and so that your opportunity as a small business boss is to is to find those people because yeah they're way undervalued in the market diamonds and the rough so we've managed to end on a a note of agreement I do want to note that just kind of by the luck of the draw we wound up with uh three guys in this conversation for if you include me and uh we also set a record for profanity uh by a wide measure and I'm not sure what that's going to do to my brand but my thanks to sha busy Paul DS and Jay gz this has really been fun wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at lauren2 hats.com that's l r n at21 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 podcast follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by Jess dubron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]