What If I Get the Contract?

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Liz picarazzi tells Jay goz that she's pursuing multiple sales opportunities and Ponders what would happen if those opportunities actually came to fruition would her company City bin be able to handle the additional volume in my fantasy world where I am a lot Liz says I look at where this could go and just like you Jay I go to how in the world would I produce all of these Liz and Jay also talk about the pros and cons of pricing transparency do you volunteer your premium price up front on your website even or do you wait until you've made your sales pitch and gotten your customer excited plus we indulge a little further discussion on the merits of the 21 hats brand even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners and which you can subscribe to at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews joining me this week on the podcast are regulars Jay goz whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason home and Liz picarazzi who is CEO of City bin which is based in Brooklyn New York and makes trash enclosures and package bins the episode is titled what if I get the contract welcome Jay and Liz thanks for joining me today there's a lot I want to talk to you guys about let let's start what what's going on with you Liz so I've got a couple of really exciting things going on um I'll just mention two so the first one is that New York City Department of Sanitation has an initiative to keep trash off the sidewalk and um it has City Bin's name all over it so the RFP we got it we replied um or submitted a proposal uh to the RFP and um we should be finding out in the next couple of weeks um so it's really exciting we've been actually watching this program for a couple of years it was kind of temporarily shut down during the pandemic and now it's being resuscitated what are they looking for somebody to do what what are they asking for so they're looking to containerize trash that's it nice it was Time Square the business improvement district in Times Square is going to be using City bin trash enclosures to keep trash off of the sidewalk wow well isn't that I'm a little confused it's not really keeping it off the sidewalk isn't it just putting your bins there and then the trash is inside your bin so it there's still something on the sidewalk it seems right there will be um a very goodlook outdoor container as opposed to a plastic bag with trash in it right well except my argument to that is and sometimes the plastic bag's just not there and I don't know how often it is there but and I've certainly been in New York a lot I'm always taking a backass to the bags of garbage on the street but so now the question is how often are the bags sitting on the street are they there every single day or are they just there for a day or two and now you're going to have been there for seven days a week well trash is on the sidewalk all the time in New York everywhere whether it's commercial trash a residential or business improvement district um there's a lot of different types of trash but it's just you know it's pervasive even if you walk by a school I was always amazed when I picked my daughter up from school how many hundreds of bags after one day they put out there for Department of Sanitation to haul away I mean for a Chicago and you're we're taking a back because the Chicago has alleys because of the fire of 1871 they rebuilt the city with alleys and nowhere in the city of Chicago do you ever go where you see bags of trash on the sidewalk well the other exciting thing is that trash has been in the news a lot um because the new mayor has been criticized for not taking action on a lot of the sanitation initiatives um and just yesterday there was a big expose on New York trash that I have to say I'm glad to see because it points to the need for the product that I sell and I care so much about I mean I live in the city as well so I can't stand and seeing the trash everywhere so that sort of pressure on the mayor can only help my business which begs the question New York's so big I I hav even done the math I I assume you've done isn't this hundreds of millions of dollars worth of trash containers yeah I haven't done the math but I know that it is so how would you even begin to it's not like your General Motors how would you begin to address that if they flick the switch and go okay everybody's got to have bins out front it's a it's for one year and so learning from that pilot you know and this is I didn't get the contract I've just applied for it but like in my fantasy world where I am a lot I look at where this could go and just like you Jay I go to how in the world would I produce all of these um but I have at least a year to figure out and that's if I get the contract so do you have any clue how many people put in for that contract I don't but I have an idea that it was not a lot meaning less than 10 yes far less than 10 wow which also gives me makes me it's very encouraging well when you say pilot is that mean it's in a restricted they've taken eight blocks or 10 blocks or whatever or it is it's actually just one block okay all right well that makes perfect sense okay so that's easy you could certainly handle one block or 10 block okay but you could still get to that point uh that Jay was describing where suddenly except there's people looking at these contracts and they're going to know they're going to ask her what is your sales volume and they're going to they're not going to go give a contract for $50 million to a a tiny company so and I the question is are any do you know if you're against some big players out there that are putting in for this contract I don't this is my time my first time ever going in on a contract so I'm really feeling in the dark and um that's also part of the reason I wanted to bring it up on the show because um you know as an entrepreneur sometimes when you're going through something you've never done before you just want to talk to a couple of people that can say this is what you can expect here these the questions you want to ask or you know make sure that the city pays you within X days like I'm going to learn it if I get the contract and I move forward but I definitely feel I guess I could say a little bit vulnerable right now that I don't know how it's going to go I can just be hopeful that I get it and I'm going to stay in that place for now no for sure and being in the dark is where most of us are all the time so I can relate to that but yeah that's interesting Liz you said you had two pieces of uh news I think yes so the second is a little bit of intrigue or at least I'm feeling it that it's a little bit of intrigue so I've had a competitor call me twice in the last year it's an online retailer of trash cans and trash enclosures so it's exactly what I do and he called me and said that he wants to start selling my trash enclosures in his store his online store it's an online store St and it's very specialized um and again I'm I've never done this before so I'm feeling a little bit not at ease but there's a few things I really like about the way it would work and there's a few things that I don't seem to like about how it would work um so the first thing is I mean if he's got search traffic coming in for Bear prooof enclosures and I don't yet cuz I haven't even launched that product yet that means everyone's going to go to him so to place my product there would be actually a very good thing the other thing I like is that they do sell trash enclosures like for a living so they have a whole customer service team that can talk about shipping and installation some of the things that I really dislike but we do and you know those were a couple of things I liked they're definitely in some channels in government and higher ed that I have my on and have for a couple of years so I guess I'm viewing them in in much more favorable light when he first called me a year ago I just was not at all interested because I just viewed him as a competitor not as a collaborator and now that's I'm starting to look at him now the cons this is the big one and it's that he would be rebranding my product as his so instead of the city bin brand plate being on the side and on the box and on everything it would have his brand name and he says that he does that with all of his manufacturers so everything can be uniformly branded I guess I I don't I don't like the idea of that I'll just be honest I mean it's my brand it's my product I have trademarks and patents on it um so I don't like that but I look on the other side at what I could achieve by selling through a retailer that is already so established in the space that I want to get further into does this uh competitor manufacture any product or is it all selling other people's products so that's not clear to me and honestly I asked that question and he wouldn't answer which is another thing that kind of gives me pause w i get the sense that he's probably at least 75% reseller um but I didn't understand why he wouldn't answer that question there's only one explanation I can come up with he doesn't want to admit he doesn't make anything because he thinks it makes him look better if he pretends like he makes the stuff and he's putting his own brand on everything he doesn't want to give you competitive advantage of being able to tell people oh we make our own products you know cutting out the middleman he is the proverbial middleman it sounds like not there's anything wrong with that but he's he just doesn't want to necessarily you know broadcast that to everybody the question is you left out the biggest piece I think what's the markup so it would be 25% margin meaning off the top which is different than markup okay so his markup I think that he actually would be marketing up so his price would be more than mine by a certain amount so he can feel like he's recovering a bit but we are moving ahead with um a pilot you are moving ahead with a pilot with this online retailer I am yes I guess I'm burying the lead l but um I am we're going to take two products we're going to run them on his site I'm working with his team I figure I haven't signed anything nothing's agreed but we can see how it works you know how is the relationship how do I feel about working with him um how is their marketing there's a lot of things that could come up that I could see I wouldn't like but I've decided just for now to get over the branding thing well is this are you giving him a product that you already use yourself and of your own name so you're giving them The Identical product you're already marketing under your name yes totally identical do you have any patents on anything I do yeah I have designed patent I have my trademark have you talked to your lawyer it seems to me you just violated your own patent I mean you just might have made your own patent worthless maybe I'm not a lawyer I'm just I would think you need to talk to your patent attorney to see if you give someone else your exact same product they put their name on it it seems to me you just violated your own patent that's the way I feel about it as well that's where I'm really taking pause and trying to look at the pros that I really like around selling servicing shipping those are big valuable things in my mind is that valuable valuable enough to give up my brand plate well those are two completely I just want to clarify those are two completely separate things that's certainly something you need to think about but I'm talking about just on a legal thing of protecting your patent are you destroying your own patent or violating or whatever the word is by giving it to him so now all of a sudden for whatever reason you had the patent you no longer can enforce your patent because you just gave the design to somebody else to put his own name on it but like I'm not a lawyer I don't know maybe there's a way to do that I think there probably is a way to do it if the product is different in some way and that might be what I need to do is create a separate almost like a private label with the let's say the siding color is different there's some sort of difference in it so that's the legal question the Practical question also is do you just lose your entire thing of look at we make our own stuff it's all patented and now they find oh they can get the exact same thing in a different color from this guy yeah I think it would be confusing to the consumer also how big an operation is this are you tempted to do this because you think you're going to sell a whole lot of enclosures through it yeah I think that there's potential really high volume and I do need to kind of find out from him maybe not his level of sales but at least traffic to his site but the other thing that's really attractive to me is that they have a lot of government contracts so like GSA were they're specified within like the government purchasing portal and um I'm not in those channels yet and I've really wanted to get in those channels same thing with higher so if it could give me access to that that also would be quite valuable have you looked into GSA cuz I happen to have some experience with that because we're doing it there's companies you hire and they get you in they get you into the GSA contract it's not it's not that hard yeah I I had a company actually that I worked with for our three months that was not it was not worth it at all what do you mean it wasn't worth it they charged too much for what they delivered I had certain C terms such as trash enclosure which is the most obvious one for what I produce and we were not getting Returns on actual government contracts that were procuring those but you did in fact get into their system did you get authorized whatever it's called to get so you didn't in fact get into the GSA contract world but then it just didn't drive you any business I would say I just didn't actively pursue it because I had a lot of other local government things come up that I knew I would be better at tackling I kind of dip my toe in but I also am one I don't like I don't like bureaucracy are you sure this is the path to those contracts because GSA or whatever government entity you're talking about is going to be dealing with your competitor and not directly with you yeah I have thought about that Lauren that's another reason so if they say to me oh we have access to all these customers that you want and those are customers that I've never tried to get why wouldn't I go try to get them before I go through through them the other thing that occurs to me is you've talked a lot about you know with with all the supply chain chaos having enough supply of your product do you need this Outlet when you're I assume already still fighting to have enough product available in your existing channels Lauren you know where to poke those holes yeah no it's a really good thought because at this point when things are really tight it's almost like there's a bit of rationing that needs to happen not so overt but if one customer can get it that means another customer can't and would I rather sell to the federal government or the city of New York I would actually rather sell to the city of New York if I had to choose I assume you'd be relying on the service provided by this company do you know that they do as good a job of dealing with customers and setting up the product and making sure that everything works the way it's supposed to so they do have a very helpful website with a lot of FAQs a lot of videos and assembly manuals I should probably test drive I guess when I was American Express we used to call that mystery shopping where you would shop at a competitor and take note of every little thing that happened I should probably Mystery Shop them or have someone else do it to see how that process goes well I assume there's some online ratings for them like there is for everything to just see what Google says or they're really highly rated they have very high ratings oh all right so that's a that's probably accurate I would think do they sell everywhere they do I'm sure that's attractive yeah well it's also attractive because this recent track out to Aspen as fun as it was and how interesting it was it was really a schlep and you know everything dealing with installation that's not in New York City we can do but it is a lot of effort um so if this company is able to walk people more through the assembly especially as we expand Nationwide any anytime there's a sale outside of the tri-state area there's an extra level of support that we need to provide to make sure that the assembly goes well on the other side do you have any idea how big this company is I don't but I'm a little bit concerned Jay that because he wouldn't answer my question about how much he manufactures that he might not also want to provide his Revenue well he might not want to I agree but um I'd be interested if he wouldn't and and one way around that is simply say oh how many employees do you have because I found that people will give that up pretty easily you could guess fairly close I just think that would be kind of interesting to know what his resources are yeah for sure definitely I've got a lot of research to do you're right there in New York that's your main geographic uh target market have you ever thought about opening a popup store where people could just walk in and see your product and touch it I know I know people can walk around the city and they see them but having a place where someone could ask questions and um and find out what what's involved with setup and all that is is that something that you would try we haven't some of that stuff is really expensive one idea that I've explored but we haven't done is to actually do kind of like info sessions on the day of installation with a client provided they actually agreed to it where they could invite their neighbors over to see like the end of the trash enclosure installation and then actually on the spot especially if they're a neighbor get an instant estimate visit at their house to see what sort of model would work best for them that's just a little fantasy I have hasn't happened yet but I think that could be a good idea to get the word out with the public because you've got the trust of your neighbor or your let's say your black Association some sort of an event where someone on the Block invites everybody to swing by sort of like a Weare party a city bin party it's a garbage bring your garbage by in W see how it fits so you know the rent thing first of all I did have a popup in uh New York and thank God I only did it for nine months because I was paying a a ton of money and rent but I needed to try it out because my Jason home we sell nationally and we have a lot of customers in New York and it was you know I learned a lot of things from it um in this particular case I don't even know if you need a pop up as much as find a landlord that's willing to do a month-to-month rent which I got to think there's plenty of empty space in New York at the moment and see whether the expense of the rent is efficient it might be a cheap form of advertising though you do have to put a human being in there to stand there which is where it gets more expensive I would certainly leave that as a potential though I would definitely keep it as a potential my office is actually within a kind of a Design District where they have you know ABC Carpet and home there's a Design Within Reach like on the campus where I am Jay did you really learn uh interesting stuff having the popup for 9 months did change how you do anything um I learned that I really don't want to pop up anywhere you learned you don't want one okay and I learned that um this is part of my H hypomania that yeah I did that got it out of my system and I really don't need to be sending people in trucks around the country and working that hard I just don't so um the sales were not they were okay I mean we did okay there I just it was this is how I've always had to learn by you know I only learned by putting my hand on the hot stove I needed to find out that yeah I really don't need stores around the country so that's what I learned was it worth the significant amount of money I lost uh maybe because I I always say and this is I'm not going to be that guy on his deathbed going I wish I could have should have I I tried everything I've tried it and I I learned my thing from it and I moved on so um yeah I would have always maybe wondered oh I wonder if we what what would happen if we open a store in New York and now I know it would be a lot cheaper today I think well and I wasn't stupid enough I I'm I've got my hypomania under control I didn't sign a lease for 10 years I did a I think it was it was six or nine months I you know I did it for long enough to get a feel for things so it was contr you know I don't bet the ranch that's kind of the point and there and there are people to do and I I've gotten smarter than that or more controlled or less delusional or whatever you want to call it all right I want to talk about pricing uh specifically how quick you are to reveal your prices to your customers let's take a quick break to hear from our [Music] 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 assistants in one of two ways they will either use them much like I've been using my assistant for the past 8 years as an executive assistant handling my calendar which takes up so much time email management database file management personal tasks creating documents for me and then a lot of our clients basically operationalize our assistance so 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 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 three 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 15minute consult just mention the word Lauren we'll make sure to give that $150 off for each of the first three months thanks Rob and we're back so uh I recently had a webinar where I invited uh Marcus Sheridan a uh a marketing Guru who I first heard about because uh I attended a conference where he spoke where he talked about how he saved his pool business by answering questions that his customers always ask but that he had kind of been taught not to answer and he claims to have saved his pool business by blogging constantly just answering the questions that he always got from his customers he started by talking about the price even though uh the sales Theory often is you you put off that discussion as long as possible hoping that they'll go for as many bills and whistles as possible but he started telling people what it would actually cost to get a pool you guys were both kind enough to show up at the webinar I'm curious did that have an impact on you any thoughts yes um and it actually reminded me that I have his book and I've picked it up a couple times I had an employee read it um I think that his advice is really worthwhile on several fronts um with regard to pricing I don't have it like flashed right like I say on the homepage of my website or on the front of my brochure but I do make it easy to find um and I make sure that like on my website on my selling pages that it's very clear where you can see the differentiation between my product and let's say a Rubbermaid shed so the distinction of Premium which then drives premium price is visually shown and then if you put that next to a rubber made trashed people instantly understand why there's a big difference but you're showing on your website that there is a competing product that costs less I am yes interesting it's not direct it's kind of indirect so we have this PDF that's called what can go wrong with a trash enclosure and we have a picture of a really gross trash enclosure and then we have arrows pointing to everything that's wrong with it so Rusty screws broken hydraulic arms poor craftsmanship you know poor materials presumably not a city bin trash enclosure I'm guessing no it's it's a it's like a competitor but that's attempting to do ours it's actually a copycat and we don't get into that this person tried to knock us off but what we say is in the execution of a trash enclosure there's so many things that could go wrong we've done all of those over the years and that's why we've perfected this one and that's why it costs more so I don't have any problem talking about my premium value which is tied to price I think it would be harder to do if I was less differentiated like if let's say I just had kind of a mid-priced product to compare it with a rubber made that might be a lot more difficult how about you Jay you you've talked from time to time on the this podcast about getting push back on the price of picture framing how quick are you to volunteer what it costs as far as complete pricing transparency you know in Jason home with the prices are right there so there's really nothing to you know prices there it is what it is in custom picture framing you know we talk about price but I can't really get into specifics because literally if somebody brought a 24x 36 in picture in and they wanted it framed that could cost anywhere from I don't know $140 to $33,000 if they ordered a gold leaf finished Corner frame with Museum matting linen I mean there's just there's a gigantic range there so I just don't know what I could do to go ahead and give people more idea of and then on top of which it's a computer screen it's it's really to go show someone a magnificent Gold Leaf frame on the screen looks just like some piece of garbage you can't tell the difference looking at the computer screen what the difference is so I I don't know that it would be serving my customers any better or myself to go ahead and show two pictures of here's here's a $3,000 version and here's the the $150 version yeah they'll look different but you certainly couldn't appreciate the difference between it looking on a computer screen where the image is broken down to now the frame is about what an eighth of an inch wide or something so the part that I found most compelling or interesting about his thing was that he actually went on there and talked about five other competitors that do a good job and I just find that just remarkable he wrote a blog post in which he said here are the other pool builders in my area uh that you should consider and he listed the other builders that he most frequently loses deals to and he said nothing but positive things about them but he posted it on his website knowing that anybody who read that blog post would be on his website and he hoped that that would lead them to check him out as well that resonated with you Jay would you consider doing that not in a million years then why did you bring it up no I brought it up because I'm trying to tell people didn't listen to his by the way I am going to publish that podcast right I just I'm just trying to tell people what his story is and what he's saying and and I'm not arguing with it it clearly worked for him I'm just saying you know what is the average pool cost uh you tell $440,000 I would think it's not five right well you know he would say that your objection to giving out the prices uh is something that he hears all the time and that he doesn't buy that the same is true of uh of pools that there is a very broad range but but in his case he said it was enough to give a range no I fully accept that I just don't know that selling $40,000 pools is whatever lessons were learned there I don't know that I can take that exact exp uh experience of him selling at $4,000 pool and go oh it's the same as selling a picture frame I don't know that those two things are even close to the same I think there's another thing at play here that he may not have like mentioned specifically and that's that content like that ranks really well on Google so for SEO even though he's giving away the names of five of his competitors by being so generous with the information Google will recognize that and will send more people that way so he's kind of taking a risk but I bet if like we googled that article it probably or something like it it would totally pop up no that and I have to tell you that makes perfect sense what he's saying is yes you will lose some business to your competitors but you will more than make up for it because everybody or most people are going to end up looking at your site so at least you're in the game maybe right now you bid out jobs and you end up getting a third of them okay you'll still only get a third of them except it'll be a third of a bigger number because more people are come to your website okay that makes perfect sense I also think the pricing thing makes sense for you Jay I there is an intimidation factor I know for people walking into a framing store concerned about what it's going to cost and if you gave a little more information like what give me an example aange a range I I just told you the range is could be anywhere between $150 and $3,000 is that helping anybody no no well I think you could do better than that maybe I put pictures of people up like here's Lauren Feldman he came in and here's what he was wearing and here's the kind of car he was driving and here's where he went to school and he spent $493 and then there's Liz who came in driving a Range Rover and went to Northwestern and she spent $914 is that helpful I mean I just don't see how to do it I don't think you're I have a way I have a suggestion okay excellent so if you could photograph some of the work that you do the framing that you do and without mentioning any customers but certainly getting their permission showcasing those um in let's say your website or your Instagram and on that you could somehow put in what the price is there was the problem though even in a trash container you could show a beautiful trash container sitting on a street in New York and I'll get it like oh that's nice and oh it's made well forget the $3,000 frame job the the $800 frame job probably doesn't look a whole lot different than the $300 frame job on a computer screen but if you saw it in person it's like buying a men's suit you know there's nothing like putting on an $800 beautiful wo suit that's tailored well and you think wow this is an $800 suit and then when you go put the $200 suit on you can tell the difference I think at least I can I don't believe I'm going to be able to translate that onto a computer screen where literally the frame ends up being an eighth of an inch thick I mean it's it's uh and the people that are online doing framing I've heard this from numerous people they all learned keep it simple the people that are doing online framing are really selling basic they call it Custom Framing for those of us in the industry it's not really Custom Framing Bare Bones oh here's 40 selection most frame shops have a th Corner samples because that's what it takes to really find the perfect frame that when you put it on the piece and the customer picks it up they gasp because it's so beautiful and like oh my that's what custom picture framing is I always say to people they always say oh framing is so expensive and my newth answer is okay framing is not cheap I'm not going to argue with that framing is expensive the question is why does so many people do it and they do it because this the framing get is magnificent and you look at it every day on your wall and you feel great about it I can't translate that to a picture on a computer screen I just wonder if you might pull some people who are a little bit intimidated into a store if they just have some sense of what the the range is going to be there's certainly something to that I could say for instance in a beautifully hand finished BL and give an idea the real life business issue is when they see it and they're in the store and they really understand how beautiful it's going to look they might close their eyes and go okay and they'll spend the whatever I might just have the person online say oh that's too much money and that's the risk and that's the challenge um I don't know that it's going to help any I could see it I could see it hurting as much as I could see it helping and then there's different kinds of customers I have customers that when you show them the beautiful Framing and they get it they hand over the card and they don't blink and I get people to take a little gasp and they go wow that's more than I thought and then they they do it and then there's people that are struggling with it I think the difference between me and many I don't know a lot of people walk out um uh at all all right uh next topic uh last week on the podcast I announced that I've sold 21 hats and that uh we're figuring out what exactly that's going to mean going forward um I'm going to continue to run it but there will be some changes uh happily I'll have some more resources and be able to do some things I haven't been able to do but one of the questions that we we mentioned is will we keep the name the uh entrepreneur who has bought 21 hats um his theory is kind of let's not assume that the things that I've been doing on a Sho string are necessarily the best path forward and we should rethink everything uh so we talked about that a little last week and I just want to read one comment we got from a listener Harry Elston who wrote me I just finished Tuesday's podcast and I'd like to chime in on 21 hats as a name brand when I came across the podcast in a general search for something busy to listen to during commutes and dog walks I came across the name 21 hats and I immediately knew that the podcast was designed for small businesses without even looking at the podcast description the name sang and was immediately recognizable as a small business resource of course you can't tell the quality of the podcast until you hear it so after about a half episode I subscribed and then went and binge listened to everything from the beginning so if your new corporate Overlord wants to change the name I would consider that kind of a jerk move on his part but that's just me any thoughts guys I want to send him a big box of cookies I couldn't agree more I what can I tell you I've said that I think and I'm thrilled to hear that it resonates like I thought it would resonate though what do I know I could be wrong and he's just one person but I I'm glad at least one person got it we know that now so that's good well I've got a couple thoughts on this and I mean the first is that if you are going to Rebrand now would be time to do it definitely and then the second thing is as much as I do like 21 hats and I feel like if in your various platforms um the podcast the Morning Report the site anything eventually you have there has to be something that maybe like a tagline or something that explains what it is cuz I know when I refer to people other entrepreneurs I guess I don't feel like they grasp onto it in a way that if the podcast name was a little more intuitive but then like Harry said as an entrepreneur you do know if someone says 21 hats you kind of know what that's about and that's a really unique thing to entrepreneurs we do have a tagline I don't think I've done enough to emphasize it it's 21 hats what it takes to run a business oh yeah which obviously connects the dots uh as you're describing but I I haven't um made enough out of that I don't think if someone can do better hey more power to on wallers what are you going to call it I'm kind of like that too I would say let's you should consider it but see what people put on the table the arguably better option is a name that refers to the Mothership I have been bought by an entrepreneur who is building his main business is a business that serves other small businesses and 21 hats has you know no relationship to to the name of the rebranded business that they will eventually have so uh a new name might reflect that other business okay there's an argument you made be consistent and have it match okay I you know I'd have to see what that name is but besides which uh it's a question of doing some analysis which I don't know how are you getting new business is 21 hats better bait to get new business or he has so many subscribers or customers that the first thing is to make sure that they get it and I can't argue with that if he says no we need it to match because I've got millions of people and I got to make sure they understand this is okay I can't argue with that my thanks to Jay goz and Liz picarazzi as always thanks for sharing guys really enjoyed it wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's L ren21 hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think you can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcasts follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by Jess thubron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]