What’s Harder Now: Getting a Job or Starting a Business?

Hello everyone, welcome to the 21 Hats podcast. I'm your host Lauren Feldman. Despite the waves of uncertainty crashing across the economy, this week we hear from three owners who feel cautiously good about how their year has started. David C. Barnett budgeted for slightly less revenue in 2026, but he's operating more efficiently and expects to turn a bigger profit. Jackie Russo is hitting her revenue projections. And after implementing a profit first accounting system, she says the results have been eyeopening. And while Lena Maguire isn't quite on track to meet her aggressive goal of doubling her business this year, she's doing far better than she did a year ago. Along the way, we talk about getting runaway software subscriptions under control, figuring out how businesses get discovered in an AI world, and why Jackie's health plan charges almost three times as much to cover female employees as it does comparable male employees. We also consider a question that might have sounded ridiculous not so long ago. Has it become harder to get a job than it is to start a business? 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. In fact, that's the whole idea behind the 21 Hats community, engaging with other owners to get the kinds of insight only another owner can offer. If you're interested in learning more, you can sign up for the Morning Report newsletter, which offers examples every day of owners solving problems and seizing opportunities. Just search the 21 Hats Morning Report to subscribe. Joining me this week on the podcast are David C. Barnett, who is based in New Brunswick, Canada, and helps people buy and sell businesses, Lena Maguire, CEO of Spoka Kitchen and Bath, which is based near Syracuse, New York, and designs and manages home remodeling projects, and Jackie Russo, CEO of Brand Russo, a marketing agency based in Lafayette, Louisiana. The episode is titled, "What's harder now? Getting a job or starting a business." Before we start, I also want to note a correction from last week's episode about when, if ever, it makes sense for business owners to speak up about what's happening in the world at large. During our conversation, Kate Morgan said that federal law prohibits the firing of employees because of their political views. Actually, political opinions and beliefs are not a protected employment class under federal law. Welcome, Dave, Lena, and Jackie. It's great to have you here. Uh we've just about completed the first quarter of 2026. This continues to be an unusual time and that there seems to be more than the usual confusion about just how the economy is doing. So, I'm wondering if we could just start with each of you uh and get a sense of how your businesses have started uh the year. How about you, Dave? >> Oh, I knew you were going to ask this, so I did some work and I actually looked at the budget that I prepared over the holidays for the year. So, we kind of completed the first two months of the year. And um I learned during my budgeting period this year, by the way, by loading all of my transaction data into Chat GPT that I do not do 25% of my annual business in the first quarter. I actually do 29 a.5% in most years in the first calendar quarter. >> Interesting. >> So BA Yeah, my my Q4 is always slower every year. So, I thought that was useful because if I hold myself to that standard that I've calculated, I I won't feel overseed in the first three quarters of the year and then panic in Q4 and feel like I'm falling behind. So, if I under the assumption that I should be on track with 29 a.5% of my revenue for the year coming in first quarter, that would mean I should have 19.6% of my budgeted revenue in already today. And I'm amazed to report that I'm within $200 of that. >> Wow. >> Wow. That's pretty impressive. >> I was really blown away. Now, um, but I am ahead on earnings for the year because I have spent less than my budget, but I don't put too much stock in that because there's a lot of software that I pay for that is expensive that I pay on annual subscriptions. So the first two months of expenses may not quite represent, you know, two 12ths of the expenses for the year. >> Were you expecting uh to have a good year? What were your thoughts coming into the the year? >> Um so it's interesting that you say that because we had a team member leave in November and over the holidays when I was doing this budgeting and everything, I made the decision that I would not replace them. And I decided that if I, you know, we rebalanced the workload a little bit and maybe went forward with a little bit less capacity and then also raised our prices a little bit, we could actually have less revenue uh and maybe earn more money. So it it was it was a a very different kind of budget. So um I I actually budgeted to to shrink revenue this year. So, I'm I'm on track for what I budgeted, which I'm happy about. But if you if you want to talk about total volume of business, then then we would be down from last year, but on plan. So, it's like good and bad at the same time. You know what I mean? >> Did you do this out of the sense that you given economic conditions, you wanted to budget conservatively? >> Um, no. I I did it out of again analysis over the last two years in the number of projects we worked on. Uh how much you know profit we were earning from those projects, the amount of my time that was going into those projects versus employees time. Um and it just it it made sense to sort of uh retreat a little bit on the growth plan that I initiated at the beginning of 2024. The coming year is modeled more after what we did in 2023 with a slightly smaller team. >> When you were saying that you are paying for software subscriptions, I'm doing the same thing. They tend to be pretty heavy in the the first part of the year. Do you take that and divide it by 12 and put it in as a liability and then just bring it over in your accounting so that you're budgeting more accurately? No, I I I don't I I just um these big bills, you know, there's there's probably eight or nine of these big subscriptions I have, which can be anywhere from $800 to a couple a few thousand dollar. They're spread throughout the year. Um, I I don't I I honestly focus more on the sales um when I'm looking at monthto monthth and then I look at the expenses on a year-to-ate basis and um I wouldn't normally be doing this much work on the first two months of the year except I knew that Lauren wanted to have this conversation. Yeah, I started mine in October looking to see what things are going to be and I'm very heavy on the subscriptions coming due in January and I don't have others to balance them out throughout the year. I do take them so that I can put it across all 12 months so I get a better idea of what the actual cost of running the business is. >> I know this is a favorite topic of Jackie's. Are you all checking to make sure that you're actually using all those software subscriptions? >> Yeah, looking into that. I have a couple have to drop. It's embarrassing, but >> it's awful. I don't use them as much as I had hoped and I'm switching some software now. I just got back from an industry trade show and I'm switching from one software to another just because the flow of things is going to work better and as I'm working with more 1099 subcontractors, it just makes it easier to have certain types of software. So, I've been looking at that quite a bit. >> We did a comprehensive review. So, so this was one of the things we did at the end of uh December and into early January is all of these kinds of subscriptions go into one credit card for us. So, I just took all the credit card statements and put them in the chat GBT and asked it to produce a list of all of the software subscriptions it saw and there were no surprises. So, so we didn't see anything there that we we weren't sure what it was or or if we were using it. But we actually looked at some of the tools and we we moved away from two tools and I had someone on my team do some research and we moved to a new tool. So we moved away from the CRM we were using and from Slack and we've adopted ClickUp which is giving us all the functionality we were using in our CRM and the team chat capability of Slack as well as all the project management stuff that we wanted to start using and um and so we saved quite a bit of money on that. >> I'm doing the same thing. I'm leaving from the software I'm going into and using a more robust uh job tread that incorporates all of those things. So, I can also start looking at getting rid of some other things. >> Alan Pence says you're just going to start building your own software. That would be awesome. >> Yeah, I I I believe that that that will be pretty normal in a while. Um I'm not ready to just build all that stuff yet, but I I can see it coming. Totally. Dave, you're obviously making uh creative use of chat GPT. I think you said you threw all your transactions in. Is that like going back years to to determine what percentage of your sales normally fall in the uh first quarter? I >> I just did it year by year. And because it's a you know, I run a consulting business, it's not like there's a lot of them. You know, I might have four or five, six journal entries per week in the accounting software. So, when I just asked my bookkeeping software to create an output of all the sales in, you know, 2024 and all the sales in 2025, it it wasn't that big of a list. It was just a PDF and I put that into chat GPT and asked it just to to do breakdowns of the sales. I asked it to notice any patterns or slow periods. I I gave it some pretty open-ended questions. Um, and um and one of the things that it kind of brought to my attention was this uh regular slowdown in Q4. And I don't know if that's just like the holidays maybe, you know, people get focused on on um you know, family gatherings and all that kind of stuff and we help people buy and sell businesses. And when I was a business broker, there was basically a two-eek period where nothing would get done anyway. Um kind of Christmas, New Year's weeks. So it it doesn't surprise me a whole lot actually. >> Were there surprises that chat GPT helped you find by going through this? no real ahas, but that it actually put some numbers to my instinct about it, you know, like and and and it's allowed me to to be more precise in doing the the exercise I did before coming on today in just knowing what I should be expecting to find uh in the first two months of the year. Uh if I didn't know about this minor seasonality in my business, I might be fooled into thinking I would be doing, you know, one 12th of the perform of the annual budget every month and I would have told you I was way ahead, but in fact, I'm just right on target. >> Do you have a sense that your business correlates with any macro metrics, anything you use to to judge the vibrancy of the business for sale market? It's a it's a good question. Um, in my in my own experience in this world, which dates back to 2008 specifically with buying and selling businesses, um, you know, I was running a brokerage office during the great financial crisis and the market was still active. The buyers tended to be we get buyers, for example, who had lost their jobs and had a severance and decided to look at buying a business instead of trying to find a new job. um over the last you know 10 years of this market space I don't need as many of those people because it was always easier to get a job but if there are you know lots of job losses and layoffs etc then you know well actually I I'd have to say in the last six months I've spoken to more people than I have in a while who are looking at this market as a way to replace income versus finding a new job because they've been laid off like a lot of tech people. So, I don't know if it's going to be good or bad for me. It just maybe changes the makeup of who is curious about this. >> Lena, how about you? How's your year started? >> Much better than last year. I'm in kitchen and bath remodeling. People don't do anything from like Thanksgiving till March because we're in the central New York area. Nobody wants to remodel in the winter. So, I typically don't have much income and last year I had no income for 5 months, but I had reserves because I know about these cycles. business survives, but now I'm working towards having income coming in on a regular basis, so it's not so cyclical. So, I am surprisingly doing better than I thought I would. Um, I've given myself some aggressive budgeting, forecasting for the year, and I don't expect to meet it because it would be more than doubling what I did last year. But I'm shocked after looking at my numbers for two months that I am about 75% there based on the first two months. So, I I'm not too far behind where I should be. >> Do you have any idea why more people seem to be interested during the those cold months than in previous years? >> I think it's because customers started sooner and I've I hired a marketing agency last year. So, I have put some money into the marketing and the phone is ringing. Not a lot, but the people who are calling are pretty pretty wellqualified. self- selecting to um do business with me or not. So, um I'm getting about four calls a month and signing one of them. So, I'd like to get to the point where I can sign two of them and that would double the business. And I'm also working with more ideal clients. So, I'm saying no to people who are not a good fit. So, not only are they self- selecting out, but when they do come through, if they think it's a maybe, then we can have that first initial call and um determine if we want to move together, move forward together or not. And that seems to be working. So, the quality of work, the level of projects, and the time I can commit are all starting to fall into place. >> Are are you still putting time and energy into trying to buy a building for your business? >> I am. There is nothing available. the town that I'm looking in, they only have like four buildings a year that come up for sale. And most of the ones that are for sale right now are um not suitable for the business that I'm doing. So, I keep looking. I'm looking at other areas as well. But in the meantime, I just keep putting some money into the reserves and I'll have less of a mortgage. So, not all bad. It's still very cramped in my studio, though. I would really love to have a bigger space, but we're getting by. Jackie, how about you? >> It's all right. We're up 1% over what I projected. So, I'll take it. It's a win. Uh because we have a lot of stuff in the pipeline. Uh you know, if even a little bit of it comes through, which usually a little bit more than a little bit does, we are going to have a banner year. So, that's my expectation. We're still early, but it feels really good. You know, I I've talked about the fact that we've adopted um profit first and so that's been eye openening in terms of how we have thought about profitability and cash flow before and so that's going much better. I like that a lot. Uh now I think lean is like a super user. I'm just a baby basic user but I'm already seeing impact. >> Yeah, profit profit first is amazing. >> It really is. >> I've gone from the basic accounts this year. I've um added some additional accounts um because I do a lot of pass through when I'm hiring subcontractors like plumbers and electricians. I don't mark that up, but you know, it could be thousands of dollars. You know, if I do a flooring installation, it could be $20,000. That's not my money. I get paid to supervise and do the paperwork on that. So, I've added another category for subcontractors and a different one for cost of goods. I take that out before I start looking at my percentages that I'm going to move. And it's really made a difference. Now I can see where the money is. I think that's been very helpful. Um, moving forward, you know which levers to pull, push so that you can raise prices or cut back on expenses. And it's making a big difference for me. >> We should point out just for somebody who isn't familiar, Profit First is the name of a book that uh Jackie has talked about here in the uh the past. And the basic idea is that you budget your profit the way you would any expense uh just to make sure that that profit is actually going to be there. How long have you been doing it uh Lena? >> Uh about 5 years. >> Wow. >> Yeah. It's wonderful to take the profit first and just set that aside and then you get your dividends every quarter. So it's pretty good. >> Jackie, you just started doing it. The the last time you talked about it, you were pretty excited about it. A little bit more time has passed. Do you have a sense that it's uh that it's working? And have you had to make any cuts as a result to make sure that that profit actually is there? >> No, we were profitable, but I'm smarter about it now. It's more intentional now. It's allocated now. It has its own account now. And I subscribe to the theory that, you know, your tasks are going to fill whatever space you give it. And so your expenses are going to fill whatever's in the account. So, it's just a disciplinary thing when I see this reduced amount in my operating expense account. That's all I have to work with. And so, I see it and I know like I'm not dumb. I know I have these other accounts, but I'm not looking at them. They're hidden. And so, that's what I have to work with. And I find myself being smarter about expenses, spending less, just being a better entrepreneur. So, it's good. It >> does make a big difference. Jackie, do you think your uh positive start to the year is representative of things you're doing right with your own marketing or is it the regional economy or the national economy? Why do you think things are are looking up? >> Oh, I definitely think we're being more intentional and smarter about our own marketing. you know, we we like to test things on ourselves first. And so we started last year really getting into making sure our website was AI ready. And so we've put in place a ton of smarter systems and I'm seeing the impact. I mean, we are getting proposal requests, meeting requests from people that don't subscribe to our email, don't follow me on LinkedIn. I didn't meet them at a conference. They're like strangers. popping up out of the blue and we don't have we did not used to have a lot of those and they're coming from our website. So, I love that. And uh now that we've tested on ourselves for enough time, we've started offering it to our clients to say, "Okay, we know now what we're talking about. We know this is working. We will gladly do it for you." And so, that's been good. >> What is it that you're doing? What did you change on your website? >> Well, we have two sets of rules now. We have um SEO rules following the published rules of Google, which we've been very uh attuned to. You know, Google says this is exactly what you're supposed to do and how you're supposed to do it. And they change those rules every few months to make sure that people don't try to game the system and they actually follow them with protocols. The AI platforms haven't really published a set of rules the same way. But we do have a lot of insights into uh their desire for clear pricing, thought leadership, good content, smart uh trustworthy backlinks. There's just some things they've kind of given us some clues on and so we've built systems in place to make sure we're following what we think their rules are and it seems to be working. People tell me that they found us in a search on chat GPT. They found us in something they asked Claude. I'm like, "Okay, let's go." That's great. I love that for us. >> Sure. Have you had clients take you up on the the offer to do this for them? Are you Are you >> Yes, absolutely. >> And is it working for them as well? Well, it's new. It's still early days. We just started u offering it to them in January because again, I'm not going to make my clients a guinea pig. We're the guinea pigs. And so, you know, after testing it on ourselves for 6 months and feeling like we know what we're talking about now, I'm willing to risk the client's investment on that. So, we don't have results for them yet, but we uh I think will in the next few months. Ask me again in uh three or four months. >> I'm sure I will. >> I'm sure you will. >> So, Jackie, is this a new category? like instead of SEO optimization, you're talking about AI optimization as an add-on package. >> Correct. Um, you know, some people call it GEO, some people call it AIO. And so that's not even an industry standard yet, but so I call it SEO and AIO because I think that makes it very clear to people we're talking about two different things. And so we have said here are the rules for uh just if we host a client's website, there's just things we do automatically that are good form and best practice. And then there's add-on things that clients can have us do because it's about the search terms. You know, it's like what are people searching for that you want to be found in and who else is optimized for that term and then how do you get optimized against them? That's sort of the shorthand of it. And it sounds like a very good value proposition that's differentiating you because eventually everybody's going to talk about AI optimization and you're already doing it as like a specific line item. >> Absolutely. >> I think that's pretty smart. >> Thanks. Thanks. I try. >> Jackie, have you had any surprise expenses so far this year? >> Oh, Lauren. Uh, so I'm going to answer that with two parts. In the first part, yes. I've had a couple of things. uh through my work with Profit First and in the midst of updating our uh budgeting and how we budget, I did the deep dive into subscriptions and found just vast amounts of subscriptions, most of which we use on a regular basis. Probably 70 or 80 are legit, authentic, real subscriptions that we are using and they are part of what powers this place and I've got no complaints. But when I started to find duplicates and so you know it got everything got moved to one card so we could track it and then there's another one. So maybe there's an annual but then there's also a monthly. I'm like why do we have two subscriptions to the same thing? >> And you've been watching this too cuz you raised this issue I think a year or two ago. >> It was exactly two years ago and a year ago and so now I'm putting it on a six-month rotation. You know it's not that my team is doing anything nefarious. Please don't hear that. That's not it. And I don't think any of us are irresponsible. I think it is quite simply that we use a lot of different tools in our tech stack. We move quickly. We have a a a shared document that tracks everything. And I'm the one who's put myself in charge of responsibility and I'm apparently sleeping at the wheel. And so, you know, we had to have a very lengthy conversation with Adobe last week because the entire creative team is on one massive account and then there's these two other charges that Adobe can't explain. I can't explain. They're not attached to any email that we have or have had, but they're getting charged to my card. >> What did Adobe say it would do? >> Well, when you figure out what email it goes to, let us know. >> Really? >> So helpful. >> So helpful. They they they'll continue to take your money. Oh, glad. >> But they're not going to be too helpful. >> This is when you take advantage of the arbitration services of the credit card company. >> Yes. And the arbitration services of the credit card company said, "Well, it's kind of complicated because you've been paying this for a few months now, so it looks legitimate and real." I'm like, "Oh, I don't doubt that it is, but I need to get this fixed." So, I thought I'd be smart. And so, I said to the credit card company, "Okay, here's what I want to do. I want to cancel this card. I want a whole new card number. I do not want you to allow anything to get pushed through. Everything needs the to be manually entered the new card number so that we know everything is clean and fresh. And the credit card company said, "Oh, great idea. Yeah, let's do that. That's that's a great plan." I'm talking to a live human person. Let's do that. I was like, "Great. Yes." And wouldn't you know that I went through and re-entered every single charge as it would be, you know, bounced back. I'd go enter the new number, enter the number, except the one company, Adobe, I was trying to fix, they have some magical I'm a really big company and my stuff gets pushed through no matter what. And so those charges are still there. >> Oh. >> Oh jeez. >> It's so annoying. So annoying. So yeah, good times. >> And and Adobe won't just >> They can't Lauren. It's the system. The system won't allow it. If we can't enter the email address, it doesn't matter that I know exactly how much the charge was, the day it was charged, the full card number, uh, all the details. They cannot do it without the email address, and they can't just run a search for our extension. They can't just look for branduso.com. It has to be the user at branduso.com to be found. It's almost as if they know. Sometimes people start a subscription and leave a company and then or they use their personal email or whatever. Almost as if they know and they don't care. So, I will get it figured out. Don't you worry. And then I'm going to get a credit for every single penny. >> You think? >> Oh, I know. >> Oh, yeah. As you should. >> Yeah. >> So, it sounded like you had another expense that you uncovered. >> I did have another expense. Thank you for remembering. So Lauren is is encouraging me to repeat something I wrote to him in writing and in an email and I'm happy to do it. What I said jokingly and sarcastically is I'm going to stop hiring women. So the humor is number one, our company is 90% female. Two, I run these women's summits at sea and I'm a huge advocate for women entrepreneurs, but we just got our Blue Cross renewal and it's gone up 20%. Well, let me rephrase. All of the women on our health insurance policy have gone up 20%. None of the men have incurred any increased charges. So, you look at a young single male who works here in his late 20s, his cost is $386 a month total cost. So, it's not his cost because we obviously pay for a large part of it, but the cost. A woman in the same demographic category, also late 20s, is $878 a month, almost three times as much. Also single, also in good health. >> Is that new this year or have you seen that previously? >> It is not, but it is a wider disparity than it was since all of the women increased 20% and none of the men did. Again, by the way, this is not the first time the women have gone up and the men have stayed the same. >> Did you make any phone calls to try to figure this one out? Oh, I did. I did. Um, I had some chats with my agents and then we all had some chats with Blue Cross of Louisiana and they said, "Yeah, women are more expensive to insure just like teenage boys cost more for car insurance." Oh, well, the bigger problem is in the state of Louisiana, we really only have 1.5 insurers. We have Blue Cross and then every once in a while, United Health is able to slip in, but Blue Cross has done a really great job of blocking everybody else, so there's no competition. And if there was, I'd have left. But we've been with Blue Cross since 2001, the day we opened our doors, because there's no other alternative. >> I've never heard this before. Do you know if this happens in other states as well? >> I do not, but maybe some listeners can tell us. >> I would be very appreciative if they did. If this was a widespread issue, I think we'd be aware of it. >> I'm just trying to think of why. I mean, is it is it because of uh Jackie, you're talking about people in their late 20s. I mean, that's childbearing age for a lot of people. So, I know men and women have children together, but I'm I'm guessing that the the bills for the birth and care of children is probably tacked on to the to the lady at the hospital. Would that be one of the drivers? Well, I think I think that the fine folks at Blue Cross don't understand the way the babies are made, which you apparently do appreciate. It's men and women together to make that happen because they believe that only the women should bear the cost of the potential impending pregnancy. I mean, we want to keep this conversation going down the path because I have more thoughts. >> Jackie, the rates for family plan, do they reflect a big difference? They do. But interestingly enough, if the man has the kids, it is almost 50% cheaper than if the women have the kids on the family plan. Like if the it's a male employee with dependence, significantly cheaper than if it's a female employee with dependence. Because again, those women can just keep getting themselves knocked up all by themselves, racking up charges. >> I'm sitting here burning up. Oh, I've been fuming for days. >> Yeah, >> I don't understand this at all. And I'm hoping we do hear from some people who who explain it. You did mention the um male and female driver issue and the fact that males uh have to pay more because they're they're more reckless drivers. That actually makes sense to me. Do you agree with that, Jackie? >> Well, to be clear, that was Blue Cross's analogy, not mine. And I appreciate that there might be some statistical evidence that some male teenage drivers get more tickets, accidents, whatever. But that means we're punishing all men for the choices of some men. So by that are we saying that we are punishing all women for the choices of some women? I mean like I don't think the analogy is quite fair. So I agree with you. It's not the same. But that's how Blue Cross justified their choice. Is there any kind of regular maintenance costs that that are being covered for the women that are not for the men? Like does this do the does a plan cover contraception? Like things like that? >> Well, that's a good question. I don't know >> because if you if if if uh you know most of the women are having like a regular monthly expense for these prescriptions and then I I could see how that would add up quickly because it's no longer insurance if someone gets sick, if something happens. Now you're talking about a cost built into the system. >> Well, but then I'll go one further with you. If the women in this hypothetical scenario are in fact um blowing their salaries on contraception, which should be a two-part um state, then they are not about to get pregnant. Therefore, why are my costs up for a potential impending pregnancy? >> No, it's a good question. Good question. >> Well, we're going to have to just leave this one. I hope we come back to it and uh and figure it out. I just can't believe that that's a widespread issue and none of us were aware of it. That just doesn't seem possible. >> I have been aware of it for years because for as long as I have been the administrator of our plan, there has been a discrepancy between the two, but they used to be so much closer together, >> right? >> And so honestly, it didn't phase me and I didn't sit down and do the grid of how many are in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s. It just was, yeah, some of the women are a little bit more than some of the men. Okay. But it has become glaringly obvious because it's 20% more for the women. 20% more for the women. 20% more for the women. 20% more for the women. So now it's two and a half, three times more for the women. >> All right. Next thing. I sometimes, as you know, uh like to pull something out of the small business subreddit and get your reactions to it. I found an interesting one today from somebody who posted that today starting a business is actually easier than getting a job. And I'm curious what you guys think of this. Let me let me read it to you quickly. This person writes, "It's never been so hard to find a job before. You apply to 300 plus roles just to get rejected one after the other with no sign of hope. What's worse is you don't even get efficient responses anymore. I've seen many times where people are getting told they've been rejected a year after they've applied, like WTF. Even when you do get a job, it's not like the good old days where you actually had security. Nowadays, you can just be dropped at any moment and become jobless again. It frustrates me so much, honestly. And with vibe coding being so powerful now, you can literally build anything in a matter of weeks. For example, I just built a full stack production grade SAS that would have previously taken at least a year to build. And guess what? It took me two weeks. If that was two years ago, it would have cost me at least 50K to build and a full dev team. Now, obviously, building a business and actually getting customers is a whole different story. But then I was thinking if I swapped all that job hunting time of sending dozens of applications per day to outreaching to customers instead. I feel as though it would be plausible to actually acquire paying customers. What's stopping us from starting a business revolution? Wouldn't this be better anyway and desaturate the job market? Wondering what others think. What do you guys think? Anybody? >> 100% agree. >> I agree also. It'd be less risky for less risky for the person too because when you have a job, you got this customer concentration called your boss who gives you 100% of your income. If you start a business and get 20 customers, you you have more, you know, resilience if one of them goes away. >> It's so interesting to me that you all agree. I I'm quite confident that if I'd asked this of you 5 years ago, I don't mean you specifically, but most business owners would have laughed at the possibility that someone would think that starting a business is easier than getting a job. >> But you're talking to three people that started businesses. >> Yeah, we're a little biased, >> right? >> But you didn't think it was easy, right? My son when he was 13 couldn't get a job so he borrowed my lawn mower and started a little business right like whenever I see something about small business failure rates you know being very high I always wonder how many of them are just little incidental businesses like that you know and and people have always been able just to get you know 100 business cards printed in a cell phone number and call themselves uh you know a consultant or some kind of business like that. So what the person is saying is absolutely correct. you can start the the challenge obviously is going to be for this person to come up with an offer that will be compelling that people will want to buy and then making sure they can deliver the service in a you know profitable fashion. >> That reminds me, I forget who some comedian had the line, why does everybody think it's so hard to quit smoking? It's easy to quit smoking. I've done it hundreds of times. Same thing's kind of true about starting a business. It's easy to start a business. Um you could do lots of them. building one that actually lasts is a different story. >> Sure, >> we are having something of a a revolution here. I mean, the there have been more business starts um in this country and I'm I'm guessing in Canada too, Dave, than there used to be. The trend started with the pandemic, but it's continued since uh since the pandemic uh let up. >> Maybe because it's easy to start. >> Yeah. And it's getting easier and easier. You know, you can think about online stuff, but let's think about a regular old retail store. I mean, I remember at one point people had to spend a couple thousand dollars on a cash register. Now, you just get an iPad or a tablet of some kind in a Shopify account that you can just use in your retail store and you're there you go. You have a a retail point of sale. Everything about business is is moving away from large upfront costs into these subscription models, which makes it easier for people to experiment. You know, I've seen people, for example, start selling something at a farmers market and then evolve to maybe a storefront, you know, business or or something of that nature. And you can see people do this kind of over the over the course of time as they accumulate capital and kind of bootstrap themselves. And I I think if somebody figures out how to do something that is a business that where they're making money, I think they can just they can move along that trajectory even faster now because you you don't require these the the capital investments that uh that were once required for someone. >> You also don't have to um worry about where you're going to get information from. I mean you have to check your resources but the availability of information on the internet and coaching. I mean coaching used to be you know thousands and thousands of dollars. Now you can sign up for a class for $150. There's a lot more available help and a lot more ease at getting it. You can do self-paced courses at night. I It's just very different than it was even 10 years ago. So I think with the ease of starting a business and then the ease of getting information, I mean just put it in Jet GBT and it's like, "Oh, I'm stuck here. What do I do? This is what I've tried. This, you know, what else can I do?" And I think you get some good information. We've been focusing primarily on the how much easier it is to start a business side of the equation. Do you all also agree what the poster said about how hard it is to get a job these days? >> Yeah, it's it's not pretty out there. >> The difficulty though about why it's so hard to get a job is because it's become so much more easy to apply. So I I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast we had someone leave our team in November and my first instinct was to replace them. So we actually put up a job ad on LinkedIn and in the job ad we actually put that we would not be accepting applications on LinkedIn and we put an email address where people could send a resume and we asked people to put a cover letter saying why they thought they were suitable for the role we advertised. We got 25 people who emailed, five of them put a cover letter on, but like 300 applied on LinkedIn, which we said that we weren't going to accept. But it just goes to show you like there are people that just look at the subject line and click apply. And because it's so easy to apply, um, I mean, that's why we put the email thing in there because we just knew we would get flooded with applicants. and uh you know people who don't bother to read the job posting I I don't think are good quality applicants. >> Were you happy with the quality of applicants you did get? >> The people that um did send in their the email in the application there were four or five of them that I could see could potentially have filled the role but and then and then I decided not to not to fill it. But, you know, when I hear people say, "I've applied for 300 jobs in 2 months." I I know this is what they're doing. They're just going on these websites going, "Apply, apply, apply, apply." They're just clicking. And it's it's to me it's not a real application because you're you're not reading the job application saying, "Hey, I could do that." had and then thinking about your past experience and trying to see how your experience in particular would make you suitable to that. And then trying to figure out how you might make a good impression through whatever communication you're going to send into that company. Or maybe you go look and see if you might know someone in the company maybe who can give you some advice on how to apply. And this is why you're reading all these headlines about companies saying they're having to revert back to networking to try to find applicants because people are just being overwhelmed and by the these applicants and and then AI is adding to the problem because some people are customizing their applications uh one at a time but they're doing it with Chat GP. Well, you kind of have an AI arms race where >> Yeah. >> the applicants know that the uh the businesses are reading their resumes with AI. So, the applicants use AI to try to improve their resumes so that they'll get uh actually get read and reviewed. How much do you think that accounts for the frustration level and uh people feeling as though it's it's all a nightmare? >> I'm sure that people do feel frustrated. There's no question. I I just know that, you know, and I mean, hey, I'm I'm a middle-aged person with lots of different experience. If I was going to go look for a job tomorrow and I saw a job that I would be perfect for, my my instinct would not be to just apply on the platform or within whatever fashion they were telling me to. My instinct would be to try to figure out who in this organization do I need to talk to and how can I get to them? Can I can I call them? Can I call a friend? Can I find someone on LinkedIn and send them a message directly? Like I would think that uh you know if I could get some time on the phone or in front of the person who had something to do with hiring that I could set myself apart from all the other applications because I I just would know that they're getting this flood of static. So the question is how do you break through the static? >> My thanks to David Barnett, Lena Maguire, and Jackie Russo. Thanks for sharing everybody. One thing before you go, everything we do at 21 Hats is created by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs to help us all learn together. If you get something out of listening to these podcast episodes, consider joining the conversation. You can do that by joining the 21 Hats sounding board, a Slack channel where you can tap the wisdom of a very smart crowd or by becoming a founding member and joining our monthly Zoom forum where you can be part of conversations much like the ones we have on the podcast. You can sign up for both by subscribing to the Morning Report. If you have any questions, you can email me at lauren21hats.com. And if you get something out of this podcast or out of the morning report, please tell a friend, tell an enemy, tell every business owner you know. Your word of mouth owner to owner will always be the most effective way to build this community for all of us. Thank you. It means a lot. This episode was produced by another entrepreneur, Jess Stubberon, founder of Blank Word Productions. Thanks for listening, everyone.