What Will Businesses Do if SEO Dies?

Introduction:

This week, Shawn Busse, Liz Picarazzi, and Jaci 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 rank them. But search engines are getting a lot less generous about sharing links, and Shawn fears there’s an apocalypse coming for businesses that rely too heavily on SEO. Jaci’s a little more optimistic: “There’ll be some other places to go get free traffic,” she says. “There always are.” Plus: Liz gives us an update on her 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, hard-working employee starts a side hustle selling a product that doesn’t compete with your product but looks a whole lot like it?

— Loren Feldman

Guests:

Shawn Busse is CEO of Kinesis.

Liz Picarazzi is CEO of Citibin.

Jaci Russo is CEO of BrandRusso.

Producer:

Jess Thoubboron is founder of Blank Word.

Full Episode Transcript:

Loren Feldman:
Welcome, Shawn, Liz, and Jaci. It’s great to have you here. I want to start today by talking about SEO, search engine optimization, and 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—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: Jaci and Shawn as marketing experts, Liz as a business owner with an e-commerce website. And I’m wondering if any of you have started thinking about this.

Liz Picarazzi:
I’ll jump in, Loren, and I’ll say, I haven’t thought about it a lot. But I know that I also have a little bit of a 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 writing 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.

Shawn Busse:
Are you engaged in an SEO strategy at all, Liz? Or is it just you believe in content marketing and are using that as a—I don’t know, maybe it’s a sales enablement tool, maybe something else?

Liz Picarazzi:
I mean, we use things like Moz, Afhrefs, 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 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 far, those have kind of been my steps.

And 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? But 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 scrub it from the back end for, “Okay, could we change this word “trash enclosure” to “trash bin,” knowing that that’s a frequently searched term?” So I would say it’s very, sort of surgical, very tactical, and it’s not like a holistic strategy.

Loren Feldman:
Before we go any further, could either Shawn or Jaci offer up a quick definition of what search engine optimization is?

Jaci Russo:
I’ll jump in. So search engine optimization is going through a series of points on a Google-supplied 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 brand-identity company, a company that’s going to give me a new logo.” 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 challenge is, much to the point 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.

Loren Feldman:
So you have to pick one or the other?

Jaci Russo:
Both. You have to do things for both.

Loren Feldman:
I have to admit, my own bias as a journalist has been that having great content is more important than having great SEO. And kind of what Liz was saying before, 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, Shawn and Jaci?

Shawn Busse:
I mean, I have a lot to say here. I’m trying to sit on my hands for a minute. You know, we have a really extensive history in SEO. 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 pick it up and eventually point customers your way. And just sort of as a credibility piece, we were on the first page of Google for highly competitive keywords for many years. Terms like brand design, logo design, website design, marketing, Portland, you know, what are today exceptionally competitive words. We were on page one, often in the top spot.

And what I have observed, even prior to AI, is that the industry has 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. I mean, we had to put energy into writing content. And at the time, there was a lot of these, like, stuffing words and even using white text on white background. Y’all remember that?

Liz Picarazzi:
I do.

Shawn Busse:
So it’s kind of been this arms race. You have the search providers—Google, Bing, etc.—and then the SEO people, whether those are consultants or individual businesses, doing the hard work and trying to figure out the game. And what I observed, sometime in the, I don’t know, teens, was that slowly but surely, the search providers, especially Google, were pushing away from organic content—from actually really valuable content—towards monetized content. And so you started to see sponsored content. And you remember when it was in blue? Remember that? It was highlighted as this 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, I would argue that a Google search is actually quite terrible. 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 the folks who game the system. You know, kind of to your points, everybody here, folks who are putting quantity over quality. And there are always exceptions to this. 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 and their brother into a quote-unquote SEO person. 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. I would be like, “Ugh, this is terrible. A real photographer is what we want here.” But stock photography has won. It has ultimately dominated everything: cheaper and worse. So I think we’re gonna see content become progressively worse, progressively cheaper to produce.

Loren Feldman:
Shawn, can 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.

Shawn Busse:
It’s going to both dumb down and democratize SEO. So you can do things like, “Hey, ChatGPT, 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 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 just worry for the small business owners who aren’t aware of these really seismic changes that are coming, 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 not going to need a writer to write a blog post. And I know it grosses me and Liz out, for sure. We all value thoughtful information. But it doesn’t mean that folks will not default to that. So you’re gonna have folks pumping out content that’s mediocre—and maybe even get better. But then it’ll all be a lot of me, too. So I think, 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-play. I think it’s going to be you’re going to have to pay to get access to customers. That’s my theory.

Loren Feldman:
Paying the search engines?

Shawn Busse:
Paying the search engines. That’s their goal, right? If you think about it, their goal is to control the buyers and the sellers. 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 recent 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, but what Google is wanting 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, the best restaurant in Portland is XYZ.” They’re not going to point you to a website that has that choice. Does that make sense to you guys?

Loren Feldman:
Jaci, are you seeing similar things?

Jaci Russo:
Oh, absolutely. I think Shawn’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.

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, I mean, I listen to a number of tech podcasts. One of my favorites is Kara Swisher. She’s been doing this forever. She is such a credible, 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 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 a really good job on social. And then I also think that you’re pivoting to the government and public sector, you’ve said: Let’s go find new customers. So you’re 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?

Liz Picarazzi:
That’s nice. No, that makes me feel really good, because sometimes the things that we work on seem sort of disparate. But when someone like you from the outside identifies and validates the thing that I have been working really hard on, I have to say it’s very validating. But what I’m coming out of this conversation with is the idea that, “Oh my God, there’s something wrong. I need to come up with my AI strategy by Friday at 6pm” 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 learn more about it. 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 like: It’s going to be a little bit of a learning curve, but maybe I can have a hybrid where 75 percent of my content is real and organic from our voice and 25 percent is placed in there.

Shawn Busse:
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 pay-to-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? I mean, Jaci. Sorry, I meant Jaci. That’s your perspective. That’s your world. I’m curious what you think about that.

Jaci Russo:
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 for-profit entity. And so we’ve got to find a way to work the system in our favor. I saw a lot of people abandon their websites and go all in on social media, until they realized that Meta wasn’t really altruistic. And all of a sudden, it was like, “Wait, you’re going to restrict my content? Wait, you’re going to 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.”

Shawn Busse:
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 low-cost leads.” To your ROI point, it was a great deal until it was a terrible deal. And I guess that’s where I’m coming to this from. It’s like, the sands are shifting in a really big way, and to recognize that change is coming hard is really important. If I can leave people with one message, it’s that. The days of free traffic, I think they’re coming to an end really fast.

Jaci Russo:
For that resource right now. But there’ll be some other places to go get free traffic. There always are. The thing about marketing is, it’s gonna 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 and changes.

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, I think that’s such a good message. Because I think a lot of folks have been conditioned— you know, “You need a digital strategy. You need SEO. You need a blog.” Like, that’s an old playbook. I think, Liz, you’re really internally innovative, and that kind of constant iteration of marketing and placement and product really serves you well. I don’t know that a lot of businesses operate that way. I don’t see that. I don’t see that a lot in the small business space.

Loren Feldman:
I want to step back for a second and make sure that we’re connecting the dots here. The theory, if in fact, SEO is dying, is that ChatGPT 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 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 those connections for the past however many years.

Shawn Busse:
20 years, yeah.

Loren Feldman:
If that’s the theory, 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 intriguing to me that it sounds like Liz has put herself in a really great spot because she never believed in SEO. [Laughter] Its demise is not a problem for her.

Shawn Busse:
Well, she hasn’t built her entire kingdom on one pillar of SEO. It sounds like you’re doing some of it, Liz, right?

Liz Picarazzi:
Yep. Very surgical.

Shawn Busse:
Yes, I think you’ve outlined the theory of the case, Loren. And, you know, there’s a question. Sometimes people will say, “Well, why would Google bite the hand that feeds them?” Google needs content. 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. They eviscerated journalism. They don’t care. They are rapacious information thieves. And so, if journalism won’t give it to them or they’re out of business, it doesn’t matter. They’ll go somewhere else. So fundamentally, they want to own the rails.

If you look at Amazon, Amazon is the future of what SEO will become, right? If you look at these poor businesses selling on Amazon, they get on there, and at first, it’s amazing. And then pretty soon, they’re being not only ripped off by cheap, Chinese knockoffs, then they’re being ripped off by Amazon itself. Or Amazon is producing the same product as that small business. Okay, so that framework, apply that to Google. Google is now going to basically say, “We have the information. And by the way, business owner, if you want to have the customer who does that search, if you want to be the business we recommend, pay us money.”

And the people who will be able to pay the money are corporations. You’re already seeing 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 really good gems of information. And 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 more. You need more. And I think Liz is a really good case of that. And I think Jaci’s message of ROI, new things will arise—and that’s true. New things will arise. And you have to be looking for them or generating them yourself.

Liz Picarazzi:
Yeah, I would say one more thing on this is that there are some channels that I use that I’m going to really dial up. I do a lot of PR. Maybe I’ll do 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 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. [Laughter] I resent AI. That is my statement.

Loren Feldman:
Jaci, is it possible that that new source that you’re referring to might in fact be ChatGPT and similar platforms? And two years from now, we may be talking about, instead of an SEO strategy, a ChatGPT strategy: How do you get people to discover you there?

Jaci Russo:
Oh, I don’t think it’s two years from now. I think it’s two months from now. 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 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’s just intrinsically interwoven now into everything. And there’s no getting out of it.

Loren Feldman:
You mentioned journalism a couple of times, Shawn, and in some ways, clearly journalism has been decimated by social media, and by search engines, and the internet in general. But those who’ve survived, I think, are in some ways, a little bit ahead of the curve now. We’ve lived through Craigslist, which took away classified ads. We’ve lived through Facebook, which was a conduit of content until they decided to turn off their newsfeed.

And now, this is coming, but the adaptation has been that every publication that still exists now has 134 newsletters. And they’re email newsletters, and their effort is to reach readers directly and not rely on the help of people who they thought might have been their friends back in the day, when they were more naive about where the internet was going. I wonder, is that direct contact the direction that business owners should be thinking?

Shawn Busse:
I really like owning a customer relationship versus renting a customer relationship. And so, when people were flocking to Facebook, 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 get in front of people using Facebook for what it is. And then I’m going to build a relationship where I own that relationship.” And I think that’s the difference there 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 what their objectives are versus what a business’ objectives are. And I think the mistake that a lot of folks made is thinking that they were there for us, that they were here to help us. And, you know, that’s just not the case.

And I guess what I’m saying to the SEO folks is: The tide is coming. It’s a wave, and it’s going to be accelerated by AI, and buckle up. Build other ways now. And if you don’t know how to build them, hire Jaci, or call somebody. Leaning on your SEO agency to optimize and optimize and optimize, I think that playbook 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 they’re hitting over and over and over again. And what I’m arguing is that you actually need to have a diversity of strategy. And now’s the time to start that, for sure.

Loren Feldman:
I want to move on to another topic. But before we go, I just want you to know that I asked ChatGPT if SEO is dead, and it said, “No.” [Laughter] So we could be wrong about all of this.

Shawn Busse:
Well, clearly.

Loren Feldman:
Liz, we’ve talked here a good bit about your manufacturing challenge. You make your trash enclosures in China, 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?

Liz Picarazzi:
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 said here and there, “Might you want to consider Vietnam?” But we didn’t really have any reason to do that until now. So they bid out our work to various factories to then have samples made, which then were made, and that’s what we were going over to see.

So we had samples made for two of our products. 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 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, in the hands of the people working in the factory, they don’t have my product in their hands. 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 wasn’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. I know that it’s going to take some time if we do move things over to familiarize yourself. But that was, for me, something that 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 familiarity with the modularity of my product. And that was the watch-out.

Loren Feldman:
Was that the same thing you observed when you first started in China?

Liz Picarazzi:
I know there was a learning curve, but because it was like my first entrée into it, I didn’t really look at it around the familiarity, because it didn’t seem really applicable. They were kind of a fresh start. So yeah, I would say that was the one concern—that I want for them to understand that these aren’t just samples. This is one of, like, 12 different products that all, in terms of functionality, are very similar, and they fit together—but that we’re a suite of products that work together.

It’s definitely addressable, and I did ask for them to address it. And maybe it was a little bit like it was sort of set up as: 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 say whether we work with this factory, period. But 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.

Shawn Busse:
Do you think the manufacturer’s rep just kind of set up the wrong expectation, or some other communication breakdown? What’s your thought on that?

Liz Picarazzi:
I honestly think that there’s a step that needs to happen where we do almost like a Zoom, where I take the factory through our product line, and 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 opportunity is to take over the whole line. And let’s make sure you understand what’s coming down the pike. So yes, I don’t think that my manufacturer’s rep did anything wrong. But I would say if I were to do this again, I would make absolutely sure that that kind of foundational understanding was there with the factory.

Shawn Busse:
And are you asking them to do this work for free?

Liz Picarazzi:
The samples?

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, the samples. Or do you pay them for that?

Liz Picarazzi:
Yeah, we paid them for the samples.

Loren Feldman:
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?

Liz Picarazzi:
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 decided it makes sense to bring it all over, I would. But there are way more questions than there are answers. I can go into what some of those are separately, but I’m looking at it from a hybrid, so which products would make sense in which place?

And, you know, my U.S. 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 U.S. 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.

There’s a guy named David Billstrom who read my piece, and he actually works with American companies that are trying to reshore their product. And he had a bunch of good tips and advice for me, but he also connected me to a couple of metal fabricators in the U.S.. Both of which, though, would not work. One for price reasons, like we know already, and the second one, it’s too small.

So this sort of putting out my challenge to LinkedIn, 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 thinking about a price raise. But by putting it out there, I connected with another small business owner who, just like me, is going to have his tariff go from like seven and a half percent to 25. And then he, a couple of days later, posted his own introspective piece about what he was going through with the 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 wanting to give me moral support as I look, particularly to figure out if there’s a fit again, in the U.S.

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 are so many moving pieces. I mean, even if I were to move it to Vietnam, what if then they put a tariff on Vietnam and they consider what companies like I’m doing is dumping? Or do the same thing on Mexico?

So there’s a lot of unanswered questions, and even the U.S. Trade Commission—the office that sets all of the tariff rates—has a hotline you can call to try to figure out what exactly is going on with your HTS code, which in my case is 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 percent? 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 in what I’m planning for this year, because you’ve only given me 70 days advance notice.

Loren Feldman:
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’s become a very good friend of me and my family. His brand launched last week, a shoe company, and it is eerily 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. I’m in a tough spot, because he is a loyal, a great team member, and has already worked very hard for us. But I think this is too far. I feel like 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. Please help if you have any advice.”

The responses tended to go in two directions on Reddit. One was: Quick, get a lawyer. The other was: Why is this a problem? I’m curious what you guys think.

Shawn Busse:
I think Jaci should take this one.

Liz Picarazzi:
Yeah, Jaci would be best.

Jaci Russo:
So, I see it from both sides. I appreciate the need of someone in a creative space, and who has the creative juices flowing through them, to constantly be creating. That is a part of what makes them really good at their jobs, and that is necessary. And also, 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 passage, the original poster said, ”I don’t feel like this is working. I think this is a problem. I don’t see 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.

Shawn, you may be able to speak to this—I think there are some graphic designer/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 Rembrandt and a Monet. You want it to look like Picasso.

And so I always advise people when they’re shopping for a graphic designer to hire, or a graphic designer 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, not that company.

Shawn Busse:
That’s a great insight.

Loren Feldman:
Jaci, clearly you see this as a problem. What would you do?

Jaci Russo:
Well, we have a policy here that your 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 four-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 refreshed and into what they’re doing. So if graphic designers want to go 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 more landscaping clients. And if it evolves so much that you now want to do landscaping full-time, that’s great.

If the graphic designer’s side project is not landscaping, or car washing, or something else that has nothing to do with what 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, 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.

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, I have 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, but I would encourage the author to really do some self-reflection here and to not fear the conversation with this person. I would pick up the book Crucial Conversations and read it, and then use that framework to have a discussion. Because a lot of these feelings and sentiments, maybe that person doesn’t know that that person is feeling that. And maybe given the opportunity, they would say, “Oh my gosh, I really do value our relationship. I don’t want to jeopardize it. What can we do?”

And 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 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. Because, 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? It’s a complex issue. I think lawyering up is a big mistake. I wouldn’t do that in a million years.

Loren Feldman:
Is it possible that there just isn’t a problem here, if that employee continues to work hard and well, and sell shoes, not handbags?

Shawn Busse:
There might even be an opportunity here, right? I mean, I think that’s why I’m encouraging the person to have the conversation. What if this person builds a great brand, and it’s complementary to the handbag brand, and they’re helping each other out? Who knows? I would just be open to that.

Loren Feldman:
I like that.

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, why not? I mean, there’s a ridiculously successful consumer brand in Portland called Salt and Straw Ice Cream. And Kim Malek, who’s the co-founder, she came out of the world of Starbucks. Genius marketer, genius-level marketer. And what she has done, I saw her do it in the beginning. And I’m like, “That’s it right there.” So she would go find really bespoke, interesting, other brands like Tillamook Cheese, Rogue Creamery, you know, different foods. And then she would do 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 was an absolute win-win. And she’s just done this over and over and over again. So I think I’d really encourage folks to maybe set aside a little bit of this old-guard thinking of: Competition, competition, competition. And 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 just open yourself up to that potential. I’ve seen it work really well. So, that’s my take.

Loren Feldman:
Do you still have to call a lawyer before you try to do that?

Shawn Busse:
No, keep the lawyers out of it!

Liz Picarazzi:
I agree.

Shawn Busse:
The lawyers are gonna 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.

Loren Feldman:
That is a great place to end this conversation. My thanks to Sean Busse, Liz Picarazzi, and Jaci 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 greatgame.com. Thanks, everybody.