What Will Businesses Do If SEO Dies?

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Sean busy Liz picarazzi and Jackie Russo talk about how the marketing world is turning upside down for decades business owners have treated search engine optimization as something of a religion they may not have been able to explain it but they had faith that if they obeyed the rules Google would discover their sites and Rite them but search engines are getting a lot less generous about sharing links and Sean fears there's an apocalypse coming for businesses that rely too heavily on SEO Jackie is a little more optimistic there'll be other places to go get free traffic she says there always are plus lives gives us an update on our recent trip to Vietnam in search of a contract manufacturer and in a case study ripped right from the subreddit headlines I ask the three owners what do you do if a loyal hardworking employee starts a side Hustle sell a product that doesn't compete with your product but looks a whole lot like it 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 Inc 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 are regulars Shan busy CEO of kesis which is based in Portland Oregon and works with small businesses on marketing culture and strategy Liz picarazzi CEO of City bin which is based in Brooklyn New York and makes trash enclosures and package bins and Jackie Russo CEO of brand Russo a marketing agency based in Lafayette Louisiana the episode is titled what will businesses do if SEO dies before we get started I want to play a part of an interview I did with Steve Baker who is a vice president with our sponsor the great game of business I talk to Steve about what the great game does and what he's hearing out there as he works with businesses around the country so Steve listeners to this podcast are uh well aware Ware of the great game of business and if they know anything about it they know that you guys encourage companies to practice uh what is known as open book management can you just give us a a real quick primer on uh how you guys view that what what open book management is yeah absolutely in fact I'm glad you brought it up because uh it's a huge misnomer for us open book management that's like what we're known for we're the open book people and Jack stacked Inc magazine in uh 2009 called him the father of open book management I'm just going to put it out there if Jack were on the uh podcast with us now he would say I don't really like that term that much because see what happens Lauren is people uh hear it and they assume if they open their financials someone's going to magically care you know like they're going to somehow be interested or even understand it and so let's go back in history a little bit I mentioned before that Jack has used this analogy of a game for 40 years in reality he didn't even uh name it great game of business um in the beginning it was just this analogy of a game and those principles that I laid out know and teach the rules follow the action and keep score and provide a stake in the outcome all encircling a team goal well as they got more and more coverage at SRC through the 80s and into the 90s when the book finally came out uh I believe it was Lucian rhods at Inc magazine that helped to coin that term John case uh another Inc writer at the time who wrote uh uh open book management the coming Revolution a lot of that was about SRC he actually coined the term open book management uh and then Bo Burlingham from Inc uh co-wrote the original book with Jack and is still a very dear friend and uh and close uh partner of the game what I'm trying to say is that it you know I love all that collaboration but through the years when you simplify something down and it gets hung with a a marketing moniker you know sometimes it doesn't describe it the best way possible I was just on the plane back from Anchorage last night you know and somebody next to me what do you do and I was so tempted to say I'm the open book management guy but instead I decided to to kind of peel it back just a little bit and say well what's what's keeping you up at night and this particular person went on to tell me about you know ah everybody wants to work from home they want a limited vacation you know boning kind of the NextGen workers and I said what would happen if you could align everyone to a common goal and get them talking about things in a different way and actually believe that they could move the number you worry about most and for him it was talent and cash I'm just going to be honest and he was just absolutely blown away that someone could do I'm afraid if I would have started with open book management that he would have shut down put on his Bose noise cancelling earphones and left me alone but the key is I stopped for a second and listened and said what is your biggest problem rather than leading with we want you to open your financials and go open kimono with all of your people that isn't the point it's let's teach them some of the things you know and over time we'll give them more and more not only exposure and education is not just about transparency because that's worthless without education right but also more responsibility and accountability hey if this is your number tell me how you can actually move it and then we'll give you a piece of the action we'll give you some skin in the game so you're saying you you do open the books that's true it's just that there's a lot more to it than that yeah I think that it's the the simplification of it to open book management that really rallies people who know us but repels people who don't you can read a text version of my entire interview with Steve at 21h hats.com and now on to Today's Show welcome Sean Liz and Jackie it's great to have you here I want to start today by talking about SEO search engine optimization and I I want to do that for two reasons first because business owners have kind of been told that SEO is pretty much the most important thing in the world and second because I'm picking up signals that something big is happening here things are changing I've even seen suggestions that SEO may be dying perhaps because of the rise of artificial intelligence if true that would be a big deal for a lot of business owners who have spent a lot of time and money optimizing their sites um many I suspect without necessarily having a clear understanding of whether SEO actually does what it's supposed to do you guys are all kind of on the front lines of this Jackie and sha is marketing experts Liz is a business owner with an e-commerce website and I'm wondering if any of you have started thinking about this well so I'll jump in Lauren and I'll say I haven't thought about it a lot but I know that I also have a little bit of a stud stubborn stance on it I don't like AI generated web content I can see it from a mile away me personally for my own brand my company's brand I believe in real writing that has texture and has nuance and has creativity I work very hard on every word that we have in marketing whether it be something at a trade show to something that we have on the website but I'm going to be right it from the perspective of is this reflective of my brand and my product I never really consider is this good for SEO I know that I probably should be doing it but I don't like that type of writing period and therefore we haven't done it are you engaged in an SEO strategy at all is or is it is it just you know you believe in sort of content marketing and are using that as a I don't know maybe it's a sales enablement tool maybe something else so I mean we use things like like you know Moz H HRS some of those reporting to see for the keywords that are important for our product where we're ranking so we do look at that regularly we do have um a Blog writer who writes in SEO friendly ways I think a lot of that is also trying to make sure the keyword terms are in the writing so so far those have kind of been my steps and you know we do really well in SEO ranking for our category often the only kind of companies above us are Home Depot and Amazon which means in terms of an independent brand we're doing really well up there but that's as far as we've gone and I know that's not like having an outside person but it's just taking what I've learned about SEO to see what can we do there um but I would never I guess what I was saying before is I would never use a tool to do the majority of my writing I would use a human being and then maybe we scrub it from the back end for okay could we change this word trash enclosure to trash bin knowing that that's a frequently search term so I would say it's very um I would say sort of surgical very tactical and it's not like a holistic strategy before we go any further could either Shan or Jackie offer up a quick definition of what search engine optimization is I'll jump in please so search engine optimization is going through a series of points on a Google suppli checklist that the other platforms Yahoo Bing Etc have kind of followed or modeled that allows you to be a good match when a person asks a question of the platform so I go to Google and say I need to find a uh brand identity company a company is going to give give me a new logo now notice two different versions of the same thing brand identity logo and so Google will say oh this company is a good match and it will supply a list of companies that it feels are a good match based on those specific words I used in my question and the challenges much to the point uh that we're discussing right now you've got two different audiences then you've got the audience of the humans who are doing the searching and you've got the audience of the platform that's answering the question and they do not use the same criteria in what they need so you have to pick one or the other both you have to do things for both I have to admit my own bias as a journalist um has been that having great content is more important than having great SEO and kind of what Liz was saying before I I believe that if you stuff your content full of keywords it can't be great content of course that's what I want to believe am I wrong about that is Liz wrong about it what do you guys think Sean and Jackie I mean I have a lot to say here I'm trying to kind of sit on my hands for a minute you know we have a really extensive history in we were probably some of the first to Market in it in terms of our strategy back in the early 2000s was what was at that time called article marketing and so what you would do is you would write an article about something important and valuable to the customer and then the search engines would would pick it up and eventually Point customers your way and you know just sort of as a credibility piece we were first page of Google for highly competitive keywords for many years terms like brand design logo design website design Marketing Portland you know like like really very what are today exceptionally competitive words we were on page one often in the top spot and what I've observed with um even prior to AI is that the um you know the industry's matured and in the early days of most technology the technology is super advantageous to the user so in effect we were getting customers for free and I mean you know we had to put energy into writing content and at the time um there was a lot of these like stuffing words and even like using white text on white background I don't know if y you all remember that I do so it's kind of been this arms race right you have the search providers Google bang Etc and then the SEO people whether those are Consultants or individual businesses you know doing the hard work and trying to figure out the game and what I observed you know sometime in the I don't know teens um was that slowly but surely the um search providers especially Google were pushing away from organic content from actually really valuable content to towards monetized content and so you started to see like sponsored content and you remember when it was in blue remember that like it was like highlighted as like the set aside thing as paid like they made it really clear what was paid and what wasn't paid and then over time they've made it less and less clear what's paid and what's not paid and today um I would argue that a a Google search is actually quite terrible um that the results it provides you have to work really really hard to find something good because it's been either overwhelmed by paid which is their incentive or it's been um it's the folks who who game the system you know kind of to your points everybody here folks who are putting quantity over quality and and there are always exceptions to this you know I think Google does in some cases try to put good content forward but to my other point I think it's an arms race and two things happened especially recently that I think are really important for people to pay attention to one is AI is going to turn everybody in their brother into a quote unquote SEO person you know so I think you're right to observe Liz that the content is garbage a lot but it doesn't mean that people won't use it it's sort of like when stock photography came onto the scene you know I would be like this is terrible you know a real photographer is what we want here but stock photography has one you know it has ultimately dominated uh everything cheaper cheaper and worse so I think we're going to see content become progressively worse progressively cheaper to produce Sean could I stop you for a second I'm not sure I understand what you meant when you said that AI is going to turn everybody into an SEO person it's going to both dumb down and democratize SEO so you can do things like hey chat GPT what's a strategy for keywords to optimize for my business which is XYZ and it will not only give you the content I think it will also give you a a quote unquote strategy but if everybody has access to the same thing it's going to really change the landscape I think for the worse and I I I I just I worry for the small business owners who aren't aware of these really seismic changes that are coming that that have already been coming for actually quite a while and that are going to accelerate as a result of AI you can now write content you're going to you're not going to need a writer to write a blog post and and I know like a grosses me and Liz out for sure we all value like thoughtful information but it doesn't mean that you know folks will not default to that so you're going to have folks you know pumping out content that's um mediocre and and maybe even get better you know but then it'll all be a lot of me too so I think I just to kind of put a bow on this then the trajectory will be how do you break through all that noise as a business and I think it's going to be pay to playay I think it's going to be you're going to have to pay to get access to customers that's my theory paying the search engines paying the search that's their goal right if you think about it their goal is to control the buyers and the sellers they want to become what Amazon has effectively Done Right Amazon has effectively controlled the buyers and the sellers within their ecosystem Google wants to do the same thing and so my other piece aside from AI was the goo the recent uh Google event where they actually came out and said it they said we want you to make Google your choice for making decisions we want Google to make it easy for you to make a decision so the future not only is there an AI arms race in terms of content creation what Google is want to do is they want to become the intermediary between you the buyer and service providers so instead of it pointing you to multiple web pages it's going to just give you the answer it's just going to say oh well you know the best restaurant in Portland is XYZ they're not going to point you to a website that has that choice does that does that make sense to you do you guys Jackie are you seeing uh similar things oh absolutely I think Sean's spot on and that's the part that really becomes a challenge because can we really trust Google to know what's best for us do we not want to have some ability to go look at different websites get a feel for the vibe do some research make a decision you know it's like the people who go to a restaurant and just say bring food and whatever the chef wants you to eat that's what you eat that's not how we are yeah yeah it's it's I I mean I listen to a number of tech podcasts you know one of my favorites is uh Cara swisser she's been doing this forever she is such a cred credible journalist in the tech sector and when she came out and said SEO is dead I was like whoa I kind of thought that but like to hear somebody of her credentials say that and it makes complete sense Google absolutely wants to own the rails and I think what small business owners need to start acting on now especially if they have an SEO strategy they need to start building other ways to get to customers this is something that I really admire about you Liz I think you've done two things really well one you said hey we're not going to be single channel in how we get to customers so you do PR really well I've noticed that I think you do really good job on social and then I also think that you you pivoting to the government and public sector you've said let's go find new customers so you're like constantly looking for new channels and I don't mean to put words in your mouth but I think that lesson is what owners right now need to start working on because two years from now it's going to be an apocalypse it will be an absolute apocalypse how's that for positive that's nice no that makes me feel really good because sometimes the things that we work on seems sort of desperate but when someone like you from the outside identifies and validates the thing that I have been working really hard on it I have to say it's very validating but like what I'm coming out of this conversation is the idea that oh my God there's something wrong I need to come up with my AI strategy by Friday at 6 PM like I need to quell that sort of worry but I do agree that I'm going to need to adopt parts of it and you know learn more about it I just whatever I'm 51 I don't know if that's too old to learn more about AI but I've been very close-minded about it and maybe what I should do is look at it sort of a like it's going to be a little bit of a learning curve but maybe I can have like a hybrid where like 75% of my content is real and organic from our voice and 25% is placed in there I'm saying to owners out there who do marketing you've got to have more than just one strategy and in fact I would start to reduce my Reliance on SEO unless you want to be in the pay to-play business which Liz you have a lot of experience in payto play right I mean you come from the advertising world you do a lot of advertising for your clients what's your take on that you know I mean Jackie sorry um I meant Jackie like that's your perspective that's your world I'm curious what you think about that well I think everything's got an Roi and so you've got to examine where are you going to get the return on the investment of whatever the resource might be time money frustration and so I think that there's always a way there's always a way through and so as the system changes we're going to adapt new systems and those are going to work in some ways Google works for us but in other ways it's not working for us it's working for itself it's a PO for-profit entity and so we've got to find a way to work the system in our favor I I saw a lot of people abandon their sites and go all in on social media until they realized that meta wasn't really altruistic and for them and all of a sudden it was like wait you're gonna restrict my content wait you're gonna just shut down my page without warning wait you're not going to protect me from hackers and I can lose my page for months at a time or maybe forever oh well let me go back to my website and my database and something I can actually control right yeah that's such a good point I remember that it's like an era right there was an era where especially small businesses were like this is fantastic I've got this Facebook page I might pay for some ads I can get lowcost leads like to your Roi point it was a great deal until it was a terrible deal yeah and I guess that's where I'm coming to this from is like the the Sands are shifting in a really big way yeah and and to recognize that change is coming hard is really important that's if I can leave people with one message it's it's that um the the days of free traffic I think they're coming to an end really fast for that resource right now but there'll be some other place to go get free traffic there always is the thing about marketing is it's going to continue to evolve and change and so the trick to me the only real trick is to never think you can set it and forget it you've got to be willing to adapt and change as it adapts changes yeah that's I think that's such a good message because I you know I think a lot of folks are being have been conditioned you know you need a digital strategy you need SEO you need a Blog you know like that's an old Playbook like I think Liz like you're really internally Innovative and that kind of constant iteration of marketing and placement and product really serves you well uh I don't know that a lot of business businesses operate that way I don't see that like I don't see that a lot in a small business space I want to step back for a second and make sure that we're Connecting the Dots here the the theory if in fact SEO is is dying is that chat GPT and other AI platforms not all of them by the way but many of them are just giving answers they're not giving links so you ask a question you you get the answer and they kind of cut out the middleman they don't show their work they don't show you where they've gotten the information from and that's going to hurt those people who provided that information and lived off uh those connections you know for the past however many years 20 years yeah if that's the theory what is what is that telling business owners right now what should they be thinking about and I guess before I ask you that I would just say it's it's intriguing to me that it sounds like Liz has put herself in a really great spot because she never believed in SEO it demise is not a problem for her well she hasn't built her entire Kingdom on one pillar of SEO sounds like you're doing some of it Liz right y very surgical yes I think you've outlined the theory of the case Lauren and you know there's a question you know sometimes people say well why would Google like bite the hand that feeds them Google needs content right it's absolutely harvesting it everywhere why would it decimate the content production world my point is they've already done it once they did it to journalism like they eviscerated journalism they don't care they don't really care like they they're they are rapacious information thieves and so if if journalism is you know won't give it to them or they're out of business doesn't matter they'll go somewhere else you know so it's fundamentally they want to own the rails in this if you look at Amazon the Amazon is the future of s what SEO will become right if you look at these poor businesses selling on Amazon they they get on there and at first it's amazing and then pretty soon they're being not only ripped off by Cheap you know Chinese knockoffs then they're being ripped off by Amazon itself their Amazon is producing the same product as that small business okay so that framework you apply apply that to Google right Google is now going to basically say we have the information uh and by the way uh business owner if you want to have the customer who does that search if you want to be the the business we recommend pay us money and the people who will be able to pay the money are corporations which is you're already see it this is back to my point Google searches today are crap compared to what they were 10 years ago and they will continue to get quote unquote worse in terms of like really good like gems of information and they will become it will become commoditized and so that's why I'm raising my hand and saying red flag here for those of you who are using that as their only strategy you need you need more you need more and I think Liz is a really good case of that and I think Jackie's message of like Roi new things will arise and that's true new things will arise and you have to like be looking for them or generating them yourself yeah I would say one more thing on this is that there's some channels that I use that I'm going to really dial up so I do a lot of PR you know maybe I'll do a little even more PR maybe I'll be even more strategic about planning my PR or trade shows that's face to face that is such a great way to win more business to interact with our existing customers so for me those sorts of human to human interactions are um probably what I'm going to lean into even more and I will need to adapt a bit with AI but I have zero interest in doing that and I'm incredibly resentful about it to be perfectly honest I resent AI that is my statement Jackie is it possible that that new source that you're referring to might in fact be chat GPT and and similar platforms forms and you know two years from now we may be talking about you know instead of an SEO strategy a chat GPT strategy how how you get people to to discover you there oh I don't think it's two years from now I think it's two months from now okay and I don't want to anger Liz because I like her a lot and I want her to like me but I think that in a lot of ways we almost have to look at AI as as we looked at the coming of the internet or the introduction of the computer it's going to be everywhere and so we can hate it but how do we harness its power and use it while we hate it because it it's just it's intrinsically interwoven now into everything and there's no getting out of it you mentioned journalism uh a couple of times uh Sean and in some ways I mean it clearly journalism has been decimated by social media and by search engines and you know the internet in general uh but those who've survived I think think are in some ways a little bit ahead of the curve now you know we've lived through Craig's List which took away classified ads we lived through Facebook which was a you know a conduit of content until they decided to turn off their news feed and now this is coming but the adaptation has been that every publication that still exists now has 134 newsletters and their email newsletters and their effort is to reach readers directly and not not rely on the help of uh people who they thought might have been their friends back in the day uh when they were more naive about where the internet was going I wonder is is that direct contact the direction that business owners should be thinking I really like owning a customer relationship versus renting a customer relationship and so when people were were flocking to Facebook you know if if they didn't use the right strategy they were effectively renting the customer relationship and some folks figured out the Smart Ones figured out oh I'm going to I'm going to get in front of people using Facebook for what it is and then I'm going to build the relationship where I own that relationship and I think that's the the difference there you know in in that in that description and I think things like yeah it is interesting to see email newsletters kind of have a Resurgence I think that's a reflection of a growing skepticism of these Tech platforms and their objectives are versus what a business's objectives are and I think the mistake that a lot of folks made in thinking that they were there for us that they were here to help us um and you know that's it's just not the case and I'm I guess what I'm saying to the SEO folks is the tide is coming you know it's it's it's it's a wave and it's going to be accelerated by Ai and buckle up build other ways now you know and if you don't don't know how to build them you know hire Jackie you know or call somebody you know like just you know leaning on your SEO agency to optimize and optimize and optimize I think that Playbook is um is going to run out and unfortunately a lot of the shops that consult on this stuff they're like Hammers and there's one nail you know they're hitting over and over and over again and and what I'm arguing is that you you actually need a diversity of strategy um and and Now's the Time to to start that for sure well I want to move on to an another topic uh but before we go I just want you to know that I ask chat GPT if SEO is dead and it says no so we could be wrong about all this well clearly Liz we've talked here a good bit about your manufacturing challenge uh you make your trash enclosures in China uh where they've been subject to tariffs that both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are promising to increase dramatically that's why you recently went to Vietnam to check out a factory there how'd your trip go so I think the trip went really well it was organized by our contract manufacturer that we work with in China so back in I think it was 2018 they set up shop in Vietnam after the Trump tariffs hit and over the years they've you know said here and there might you want to consider Vietnam but we didn't really have any reason to do that until now um so they bid out our work to various factories to then have samples made which then were made and that's what we are going over to see so we had samples made for two of our products um you know they're using the same drawings as are used in China so that's kind of a benefit of using an intermediary like that because they you know they share all the documents and basically it was a replication process so what I would say is that they replicated it very well there were only a couple of tweaks that I would make to the way that they fabricated it but the only concern I had there was that I can tell like in their hands of the people working in the factory they don't have my product in their hands like they don't have it in their fingers how to put it together and so for me it was a little bit of a watch out when it came time to test the product while fully assembled I could see there was n't a familiarity with it that I've grown accustomed to so my Factory in China I've been with them for seven years they know every screw every weld Mark they know everything so for me that was something where I raised it you know I know it's going to take some time if we do move things over to familiarize yourself but that was for me something that I um I kind of knew I wouldn't like if I saw it and I have to admit I was sort of looking for it but I was looking for more more familiarity with the modularity of my product and you know that was that was the watch out was that the same thing you observed when you first started in China I know there was a learning curve but because it was like my first entree into it I didn't really look at it around the familiarity because it didn't seem really applicable like they were kind of a fresh start so yeah I would say that was the the one concern is that I want for them to understand that these aren't just samples this is one of like 12 different products that all you know in terms of functionality are very similar and they fit together but that sort of were a suite of products that work together it's definitely addressable you know and I did ask for them to address it and maybe it was a little bit like it was sort of set up as you know Liz and Frank come to see the samples of this one or actually two products and there wasn't the feeling of we're coming over there to decide whether we work with this Factory period I would have liked to have seen more of that understanding to make that real sort of decision is this the factory for us if the question was did they do a great job on the samples that would be yes so I don't know if that makes sense you think the manufacturers rep just kind of set up set up the wrong expectation or some other Communication Breakdown what's your thought on that I honestly think that there's a step that needs to happen where we do almost like a I know a zoom where I take the factory through our product line and how it how it works together to get at that high level that the opportunity for this Factory is not just to replicate the one thing that we asked them to replicate the opportuni is to take over the whole line and let's make sure you understand what's coming down the pipe so yes I don't think that my manufacturers rep did anything wrong but I would say if I were to do this again I would make absolute sure that that kind of foundational understanding was there with the factory and are you are you asking them to do this work for free the samples yeah the samples or do you pay them for that we yeah we pay them for the samples y Liz you've talked in the past about trying to develop a China plus one strategy but you just referred to the possibility that you might move all of your manufacturing to Vietnam how are you thinking about that I would actually say that all to Vietnam is not a great possibility even though I made it sound that way I mean more like if I wanted to move it all over would I feel comfortable moving it over and the answer to that right now is no if through doing some Productions of multiple products I decide it makes sense to bring it all over I would but there's a way still more questions than there are answers I can go into to what some of those are separately but I'm looking at it from a hybrid so which which products would make sense in which place and you know my us search is on again so that is something that I really want to try again it will be my third attempt to work back in the US I actually posted an article on LinkedIn on Monday about my Vietnam trip and about some of the outstanding questions I have and there were a good number of people who jumped in and gave me some very good referrals so there's a guy named David billstrom who read my piece and he actually works with American companies that are trying to resore um their product and he had a bunch of good tips and advice for me but he also connected me to a potential um metal fabricators in the us both of which though would not work um one for Price reasons like we know already and the second one is too small so this sort of you know putting out my challenge to LinkedIn you know it's a little bit of a vulnerable place to share what's going on with me especially when you're talking about stuff with pricing I don't want necessarily everyone to understand that I'm you know thinking about a price raise but by putting it out there you know I I connected with another small business owner who just like me is going to have his tariff go from like 7 and a half% to 25 and then he a couple days later after that posted his own introspective piece about what he was going through with the China China tariffs so you never know if you put something out there who's going to come to help and I know there were a lot of people just you know wanting to give me moral support you know as I look particularly to figure out if there's a fit again in the US I mean everybody wants that to work I want that to work like who doesn't want it to work but people don't understand that this process for a small business owner is so far bigger than you could possibly imagine there's so many moving pieces I mean even if I were to move it to Vietnam what if then they put on a tariff on Vietnam and they consider what companies like I'm doing is is dumping or do the same thing on Mexico it's just um there's a lot of unanswered questions and even the you know us Trade Commission the office that sets all of the Tariff rates they have a hotline you can call to try to figure out what exactly is going on with your HTS code which from in my case it's aluminum consumer goods we have gone back and forth for almost two weeks now by phone by email by second in command type people and we still don't have Clarity is my tariff going to 28% and is it happening on August 1st like yes or no just please answer the question because for me if my containers come back after August 1st I actually have an incremental $68,000 tariff bill with my daughter starting College the next month so for me please government agency I'm a small business tell me what it's going to be because I'm going to have a shortfall of $68,000 and what I'm planning for this year because you've only given me 70 days advanced notice I want to run a situation by you guys it's from a question that I saw on the small business subreddit let me read it quickly it's from a business owner who wrote I own a handbag company and one of my employees small team only seven office staff has just started a shoe company he has been with us for three years and will soon be promoted to creative director so handles all things creative with two reports working under him he has become a very good friend of me and my family his brand launched last week the shoe company and it is irely similar to ours the creative photos copyright Etc and social strategy is nearly identical he doesn't pose any competition as our products are not competitive but I believe that it is taking things too far I've had multiple friends and family members approach me and comment on how the brands can barely be told apart aside from the product itself the overall marketing strategy is basically the same he still shows up for work puts effort in but I can't help but think that he is also strategizing for his own brand when doing our work um in a I'm in a tough spot because he is a loyal great team member and has already worked very hard for us but I think this is too far I feel like uh if I comment or make a meeting around this it will be seen as a lack of support on my end I want to support but I feel ripped off uh please help if you have any advice the responses tended to go in two directions uh on uh on Reddit one was quick get a lawyer the other was why is this a problem um I'm curious what you guys think I think Jackie should take this one I'll jump in yeah Jackie would be best so I I see it from both sides I appreciate the need of someone in a creative uh space and who has that creative juices flowing through them to constantly be creating that that is a part of what makes them really good at their jobs and that is necessary and also uh I would imagine that if this creative director is working a full-time job for the handbag company for them to also have the resources mental physical and time to have this full-time gig as the launcher of this all new secondary company you can imagine that they're using some company time to do their personal work that's just how it feels right now twice in that uh passage they said the the original poster said I don't feel like this is working I think this is a problem I don't see where we're how we're going to fix this and so that tells me they're already leaning towards knowing that there needs to be a break but the time invested in the relationship has been the thing that's kept them from doing that I also and and Sean you may be able to speak to this I think there are some uh graphic designers creative talents who can do a remarkable job of changing the style based on the client and so the work really looks like the client and the client's Target customer those people belong at an agency because they're able to move from client to client from industry to Industry from Style to Style and keep their own personal style at Bay and they lean into the style of what they're creating some incredibly talented graphic designers cannot their style comes through their look is their talent and you want that you don't want a Picasso to be able to change and look like a brand and a Monae you want it to look like Pago and so I always advise people when they're shopping for a graphic designer to hire or a graphic designer like inside or a freelancer they're going to do work with ask them to show you different styles and then you have to decide if you think they have the ability to adapt to your need or if you're hiring them for their style those are two very different approaches and you really need to know which one you want before you know that it's a good thing and so it's entirely possible that this creative director is super uber talented at their style and so everything they create for both companies is going to look like that Designer yeah not that company that's a great Insight so Jackie clearly you you see this as h a problem what would you do well we have a policy here that your um outside time is your time and I want you to use that time however it best refreshes you so that when we're together again we get the refreshed version of you that's why we do a 4-day work week that's why we have work from home and very liberal paid time off policies it's because I want people when they're here to be really refreshing into what they're doing so graphic designers want to go um on the weekends or on their days off and mow grass and have a landscaping company I'm all for it how can I help you promote it because if you come back and that has revitalized you let's go get you Landscaping clients and if it evolves so much that you now want to do landscaping full-time that's great if the graphic designer side project is not landscaping or car washing or something else that has nothing to do with happens inside this building but it is in fact doing graphic design for other people then we'll have a conversation and if doing graphic design for other people those people are your friends and family and very small businesses that could never afford the agency fantastic how can I help support you in this endeavor let me go find you more of them I want you to be recharged when you come in and yet sometimes there's a third category where it is a direct conflict either the work is really a different industry it's it's all altogether a different thing they're doing work for someone who is not a potential client of ours or a competitor of one of our clients but sometimes the work is too similar and so what they're doing for this client looks and feels like what they're doing for our clients then we have a conversation and a decision has to be made yeah I I've faced this issue a number of times and I've changed my attitude a lot over the years I used to really get wound up about it right but I would encourage the author to really do some self-reflection here and to not fear the conversation with this person that that I would I would I would pick up the book crucial conversations and read it and then use that framework to have a discussion because you know a lot of these you know feelings and sentiments maybe the person doesn't know that that person is feeling that you know and maybe given the opportunity they would say oh my gosh I you know I really do value our relationship I don't want to jeopardize it what can we do and I think I think Jackie makes a really great point that there are designers who cannot get out of their own style they just can't do it so I think it's I would really encourage the person to not look at it through the lens of this person is copying us as much as they may just not be able to do something different than what they've already done which to me says I don't actually think they're a creative director and because to that is actually a Hallmark of a good creative director is that they can get out of their own head and into different styles for different clients and so that's another piece I would consider if they're about to promote this person are they actually promoting them into the right position so these are it's a complex issue um I think lawyering up is a big mistake I wouldn't do that in a million years is it possible that there just isn't a problem here if that employee continues to work hard and well and sells shoes not handbags there might even be an opportunity here right like I mean I think that's why I'm encouraging the person to like have the conversation like what if this person builds a great brand and it's complimentary to the handbag brand and they're helping each other out you know like who knows you know I would just be open to that I like that yeah why why not I mean there's a ridiculously successful consumer brand in Portland called salt and straw ice cream and Kim Malik who's the co-founder she came out of the world of Starbucks genius marketer genius level marketer and what she has done I just I saw her do it in the beginning I'm like that's it right there so she would go find really bespoke interesting uh other brands like uh tiic cheese Rogue creery you know different foods and then she would do like collaborations with them and make new types of ice cream with these collaborations and so what that did is it grabbed a new audience that was a fan of the other brand and pulled them into her orbit and it also brought her fans into their orbit so it like was an absolute win-win and she's just done this over and over and over again so I think i' really encourage folks to maybe set aside a little bit like this Old Guard thinking of like competition competition competition and like can we build something new that's bigger together can we make the pie bigger that may not be possible here I don't know but like just open open yourself up to those that potential I've seen it work really well um so that's my take do you still have to call a lawyer before you try to do that no keep the lawyers out of it I agree the lawyers are going to bill you and create all kinds of paranoia and fear and it is really rare that that's beneficial in this type of a discussion that is a great place to end this conversation my thanks to Shan busy Liz picarazzi and Jackie Russo and to our sponsor 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 21 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 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]