I’d Love to Manufacture in the U.S.

Introduction:

This week, Liz Picarazzi tells Sarah Segal that she’s taking another pass at finding a domestic fabricator. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, Liz says, but she’s hoping that now that her business is more established, she just might find an American factory that wants to partner with a growing business and would be eager to help her re-shore her manufacturing. She’s also decided she’s going to keep speaking out about the tariffs despite the hate mail she’s been getting: “I’m not going to be ashamed of manufacturing in Asia,” she tells us. “I had my reasons, and they were very good reasons.” Plus: Sarah talks about how she’s been using AI, including to create her own GPTs, which help her promote her clients. She’s also found a software platform she loves that makes it easier to find and file requests for proposals.

— Loren Feldman

Guests:

Liz Picarazzi is CEO of Citibin.

Sarah Segal is CEO of Segal Communications.

Producer:

Jess Thoubboron is founder of Blank Word.

Full Episode Transcript:

Loren Feldman:
Welcome Liz and Sarah. It’s great to have you here. Liz, can you give us a quick update on your tariff situation? Last time you were here, I can’t even remember what the numbers were for Vietnam and China—and I know they’ve gone back and forth several times since then. What do they look like today?

Liz Picarazzi:
So, I never thought that I would say that I felt lucky to have paid a 52-percent tariff. But I think it, because today the China tariff is 140 percent, so—

Loren Feldman:
Did you say 104 or 140?

Liz Picarazzi:
140 percent.

Loren Feldman:
Wow.

Liz Picarazzi:
Yes. And yesterday, it was 125 percent. We could use the whole show to talk about the number of tariff changes. But to sort of update you on where I am, I had my last two containers from China in March, and those were tariffed at 52 percent. Prior to the Trump presidency, I was at 7.5 percent. So had these two containers arrived on January 20, I would have been paying a 7.5 percent tariff. So it subsequently went up, and as it went up over and over and over up to now, today it’s 140 percent. I am really glad that I moved the Vietnam plan ahead.

It was a high priority in 2024 to diversify our supply chain. We moved it to Vietnam. Now, everybody who heard the reciprocal tariff announcement last week probably remembers that Vietnam’s reciprocal tariff is 46 percent, which for a couple of hours, before I got clarification from my customs broker, I thought that would be applied in addition to the 25 percent tariff that I already pay. But then I did find out later that day that there’s an exclusion on the Section 232 aluminum and steel tariffs of 25 percent, which were implemented in early February. So, long story short, I’m in Vietnam. I have three containers coming over, and all of them are going to be tariffed at 25 percent, unless something changes.

Loren Feldman:
That could never happen. Why 25 percent? We’re talking, I should say, on Thursday, April 10. Two days ago, the reciprocal tariffs went into effect. One day ago, they were lifted for most countries, but not for China. It was put at 10 percent, I believe, for most other countries. Why are you at 25 percent for Vietnam?

Liz Picarazzi:1
Because I manufacture in aluminum, aluminum is subject to what’s called Section 232 tariffs, which I believe are a carry-over from the first Trump administration. And that’s a tariff on those materials coming into the U.S. It can actually be from any country now. So like going to Malaysia or Indonesia or many other Asian countries people are moving to, it doesn’t really matter. I mean, if I manufactured in Canada, I’d be paying a minimum of a 25 percent tariff, because that’s aluminum and steel.

But right now, I am feeling relatively safe in Vietnam. But that’s because I’m comparing the 25 percent to the 145 percent. Last year, when I was moving the Vietnam plan ahead, at times I thought, “Am I being impulsive? Are we spending all this money and time going to Vietnam and then it’s not going to be beneficial?” So at several points along the way recently, there was a point when Vietnam and China were really close in what the tariff amount would have been, and that would have allowed me to have manufacturing in both countries. But as of right now, today, we’re focused on Vietnam while looking for U.S. options.

Loren Feldman:
So you’ve just received a number of shipments. Do you know when you’ll have to place another order?

Liz Picarazzi:
We are definitely going to need to be placing an order in the next four to eight weeks. We have sold a lot of some of our items due to great market demand in New York City. That’s been something that’s really helped us. The New York City trash can law changed in November, and now New Yorkers need to containerize their trash—not in a Citibin, but in a trash can—which means people have big trash cans in front of their homes now. And they’re looking for Citibins to enclose them. So we are almost sold out of one of our main components, but that’s also even more reason for us to look for a U.S. option.

Loren Feldman:
So tell us about this. I mean, you’ve spent years looking for a U.S. option. You now think you might have some options?

Liz Picarazzi:
I think I do. However, I haven’t gotten pricing yet. So last Wednesday, there was the reciprocal tariff announcement, and for a couple of hours, I thought I was going to be tariffed at 71 percent. I was actually on an airplane at the time. I watched the tariff announcement from the plane, and I immediately drafted an email to send to fabricators in the U.S. And these are five that I hadn’t spoken with before, based on a conversation I had from a fellow in EO who manufactures, actually, aluminum and steel cabinets, lockers, and other things. And I finally put two and two together and realized I know someone in the U.S. who manufactures lockers for packages, which is actually also a product I do.

I reached out to him, and he gave me a list of five metal fabricators to contact that he has worked with in the past. So I didn’t wake up as panicked on Thursday morning as I would have been if I hadn’t done that reach out. Because even though this reciprocal tariff, luckily, is not applying to me because of the aluminum, the instability that those reciprocal tariffs caused really shook me into realizing: I am going to give this U.S. option one more try. And I’m going to be even more deliberate and highly involved. I’m not just having my assistant run this process. I’m hands-on, talking to people, meeting with people, doing the NDAs. And I’m feeling optimistic about it.

Sarah Segal:
When you say “one more try,” had you tried that initially, when you first started? Why one more try?

Liz Picarazzi:
So when I first started the business, I manufactured in New York. Then I moved it to Pennsylvania for about a year, and then I moved it to Connecticut for about a year and a half. And so I got the experience of working with American fabricators and dealing with the price, and it was a price that I could not afford. So that was sort of my first attempt in the 2015-2017 range. And then, after I’d been in China for a year or so during the first Trump administration and those tariffs, I again resumed the look in the U.S.

And I did that kind of once during the Trump administration, probably twice during the Biden administration. And I want to think that I wasn’t thorough enough. I just want to believe that I wasn’t thorough enough, and that there might be more appetite to work with a company like mine, because maybe there would be a good feeling about helping a fellow American company work together and to help me re-shore. Some of the conversations I’ve had sort of make me think that they would be happy to help me if they could. Mathematically, it needs to make sense, but the American companies, they haven’t been like, “Ooh, told you so, you should never have moved stuff over there.” There is a feeling of wanting to help a fellow American company.

Sarah Segal:
For all of the places that you have worked with or approached in the U.S, was price the thing that’s either stopped the relationship or never started it?

Liz Picarazzi:
So when people say you can get price, time, or quality, I definitely did not get the price in the U.S. I got good quality, and I got really inconsistent timing, which you would have thought in the U.S. that I would get faster production. For most of the time that I was in China, I actually got all three. And I know people, as Americans listening to this, do not like to hear it, but I got price, quality, and time, and that’s being in China.

So I didn’t have a great experience the first couple of times around, but maybe I didn’t look enough. Maybe I should have spoken to 20 companies and not just eight. Like, it’s almost like a salesperson. You just need to call and call and call until you get someone to bite. I guess what I’m saying is, I’ve had a very negative experience and perspective on Made in the USA, because I’ve never been able to affordably do it. And I’ve been doing this for 12 years. I want to believe that there’s something different right now. There’s more of a will to accommodate that will maybe make someone like me—a purchaser and a supplier—maybe negotiate and meet in the middle a little bit.

Loren Feldman:
Is there a reason, Liz, that you’re optimistic about the price this time around?

Liz Picarazzi:
I don’t know. Maybe I’m just really, really wishful thinking, but I feel like there’s more of an interest, and there could even be potential strategic partnerships that could help lower my price. I don’t want to really get into that.

Loren Feldman:
How do you go about finding a fabricator? Does somebody have a register?

Liz Picarazzi:
So, there are a lot of directories, such as Thomas. Thomas is almost like a Yellow Pages for American manufacturing. They have it in paper, I believe, still, and online. I have found that one to not be as useful as actually Googling, because then you’re going to find companies that may be more active. They’re updating their pages that have a portfolio that’s more up to date. That’s one way.

But this recent reaching out to someone who also fabricates out of aluminum and steel, I have to say, it was sort of an aha moment I had a couple of weeks ago that I can’t believe that I didn’t think of before. Because this is actually someone who has been a bit of a mentor to me in the past few years. And I mistakenly thought that he manufactures in Asia, and once I found out he manufactures in the U.S., he was able to give me a list of five companies to talk to. So I guess I should say I’m feeling optimistic because I’ve had some really strong referrals from a very successful business, and so far so good. I’ve had three of the five contact me. We’re in NDAs with three of them, and I’ve had meetings with two of them already.

Loren Feldman:
Does it matter where these companies are in the U.S., in terms of getting the product to you?

Liz Picarazzi:
Not really, anything can be trucked to us. Before, I was sort of looking primarily in the Northeast. I’m going outside of the Northeast, even as far as the West Coast, Florida. One’s in Ann Arbor—actually, total extreme points in the U.S. With the Ann Arbor possibility, Loren, you will not be surprised that I’m going to try to schedule a visit to that factory when I’m there. [Laughter]

Loren Feldman:
Liz, invite him to come to our 21 Hats event, and you can negotiate with him in front of us.

Liz Picarazzi:
We’re laughing, and it’s sort of funny, but I should say that this fellow reached out to me after he saw the Bloomberg article. And this has happened three times now since I started being more vocal in the press. You know, I’ve been in Bloomberg, Reuters, a bunch. I was actually on NPR today.

If these companies contact me, I see that as a really good sign, because that shows a bit of compassion that they see that I’m going to try this. Even on our website today, after the NPR story, we got a couple of pings from people, fabricators, who heard the story. So I’ve taken a bit of a risk by being so vocal about this, but if it actually helps me find an American fabricator, it definitely will be worth it.

Loren Feldman:
Why do you say you’ve taken a bit of a risk?

Liz Picarazzi:
Well, to be very vocal about the reasons why I manufacture in Asia. A lot of people don’t like to hear that. And a lot of people who manufacture in Asia are ashamed to say it. I’ve decided, probably four or five years ago, I’m not going to be ashamed of manufacturing in Asia. I had my reasons, and they were very good reasons to do it.

So now, if I’m being vocal about it, it can attract attention from people that are pro-USA in a very negative way. So, we’ve gotten some hate mail. One of the messages was actually very threatening and did make me and Frank—who’s my COO, we work together—have a serious conversation—

Loren Feldman:
And your husband.

Liz Picarazzi:
And my husband, most importantly. We had a very serious talk after that piece of hate mail—should I do any more interviews?—and realized that I should, because this is part of the story of American businesses that needs to be told. And I feel almost like an activist about it. So if I have to get some hate mail, I’ll do it.

Sarah Segal:
You’ve gone from being the rat lady to the tariff lady. [Laughter] No, I’m serious. I’m always really impressed by the amount of press that you get yourself.

Loren Feldman:
We should explain that Sarah. People may be wondering why she was the rat lady.

Sarah Segal:
Well, New York, because obviously the trash attracts rats, right?

Loren Feldman:
Right, exactly.

Sarah Segal:
She solves a problem and is just very, very well versed in it. But, also, I think it’s fantastic that you’re running a business, but you’re a thought leader. You’re sharing the truth in a very candid way that is going to benefit other people, and also give people that may not be personally impacted by the tariffs a better appreciation and understanding of the challenges that you face as a business owner.

Liz Picarazzi:
It is such an important story that impacts so many people, and small business needs to have a voice in this. Something like the Chamber of Commerce, they advocate for small businesses. I want to do it too. Maybe my article as a manufacturer can sometimes pop out more.

But you know, the advocacy for small businesses is not as fast as media for small businesses. So if I’m going to be really involved with something, I’m going to be involved with something that I think can move faster than going as a delegation to DC and meeting with councilmembers, meeting with congressional leaders—which I would do, but the feeling of: Is there anything being done about this? I feel less certain of it than if there is media.

Loren Feldman:
Liz, I wonder if the publicity might have helped you in another way as well. You’ve mentioned that, in the past, when you’ve dealt with American companies, they were willing to work with you in certain ways, but timing was an issue. And I wonder if—back then, you were a little bit more of a startup—they weren’t taking you as seriously. They had larger clients whose needs they would put first. And now you’re more established. And especially getting the attention, I wonder if they see you as more of a sure thing and more of something that they can grow along with you on. Do you think that’s possible?

Liz Picarazzi:
I think it could be possible. I would guess that probably less than half of the places I’m talking to would see it in a strategic way. We have a quote that we got from a New Jersey company that we’ve gotten quotes from, like, three or four times over the last few years. They always come out really high. We were feeling optimistic that maybe they’ll be able to come down. Maybe they’ll want to. Maybe they’ll want to partner with us and come down. And a piece that we had priced out for them from last week was over double, and it actually was considerably more than we even sell it at retail.

So what I would say about them is, we may end up getting priced out everywhere. I guess the point is that there’s some factories that I feel like I’m going to a bank for a loan, where we talk for a really long time, I feel like it’s going to go somewhere. And then, ultimately, they punch some numbers into the computer and then you get declined.

Sarah Segal:
There’s not customized responses.

Liz Picarazzi:
It’s definitely not, but I could see this time: You know what, I am a much more established company. And if they look at it, they may see, “Wow, we could have massive business from this company. Let’s strategically try to figure out how we can make this work.” And like, one of my ideas is: What if I were to actually co-brand something with them? They could get revenue from that.

I mean, it would depend, of course, on who I picked. It would need to be a place that actually does have an established brand, but one of the companies I’m talking to does have an established brand. And they actually don’t know this idea, so hopefully they won’t hear it. They probably will. But I’m starting to think really creatively, because I have to. How can I get them paid that isn’t just a straight way? Could I get them paid through a revenue share on some sort of a co-brand? You know, I’m sort of just thinking aloud here, but I have to. I have to think really far outside of the box.

Loren Feldman:
If none of these places do work out—hopefully that’s not the case, but were it to happen—could you live with Vietnam with the tariffs where they are now?

Liz Picarazzi:
I absolutely could. I could—with a price increase, with where it is now, the 25 percent tariff, I can deal with it.

Loren Feldman:
Last time we spoke, you had announced to your email list that you were going to raise prices, but you gave people a window of opportunity to buy at the existing price. Where do you stand with your price?

Liz Picarazzi:
So we did the price increase, but we’re actually phrasing it a little bit differently. So we were about to go into Shopify and basically go in and raise all the prices by 12 to 15 percent, and then I spoke with a fellow friend who has an online store, a Shopify store. She said, “Why don’t you just do a line item, sort of in checkout or in the basket?” which is what they do, because then, if it’s variable, it goes up and down. Then you can lower it and raise it.

Loren Feldman:
A line item that would identify it as representing the tariff?

Liz Picarazzi:
So ours says, because we have implemented it, “Section 232, aluminum tariff, 25 percent.” Well, actually, no, we’re not going to give them the 25 percent. It’s going to be 12 to 15 percent, depending on the product. But that was a sort of an aha that only came up in the last week when we were thinking really closely about the perception of price. If someone has been looking at something for a long time, and they actually know what the unit price is, they are going to see that it will go up a bunch. And we felt that that felt more permanent than putting it as a line item in the bottom with an explanation of, “This is a surcharge, essentially. It can be taken out.”

And then, in terms of sales that came in before the tariff being implemented, we did have a good number of clients that were sort of on the fence, that knew that if they bought a little bit faster than they had planned for, then they would get the lower price. We did get some people who called and asked, “Can we get the same price in six months?” And of course, the answer is no, but we had already factored in that there were certain strategically important clients that we would honor the old pre-tariff pricing for, just because that’s how much we wanted the business. But that’s only because we’re in Vietnam. We would not have that flexibility if we were still in China.

Loren Feldman:
So the advantage of doing it as a line item is, one, it lets people know what the explanation for the price increase is. And two, it gives you flexibility, should they continue to change?

Liz Picarazzi:
Yes. And then one other thing it does is that it very specifically shows that we’re not applying the surcharge to any of our services, such as installation, such as removal of an existing bin. We want them to know that we’re not gouging. We’re not applying it to whole invoices. We’re just sort of surgically putting them against product.

Sarah Segal:
Liz, you use Shopify, and I know that Loren mentioned the new shift in Shopify’s hiring [in the Morning Report], a couple days ago, about no longer hiring employees without proof that the job can’t be done by AI. And I’m just curious, as somebody who uses Shopify, did you have any reaction to that?

Liz Picarazzi:
I had not heard that news, and also, I am not a big embracer of AI, so if Shopify changes the way that they do things to make it more AI-friendly, I’ll just sort of scan it, but I’m not going to see that as news that I’m going to use or take advantage of. I know this is probably dumb to be saying on a business podcast while we’re all supposed to be embracing AI.

Loren Feldman:
You’re not alone, Liz. I can assure you of that.

Liz Picarazzi:
But I would not let AI anywhere near the main things on my site. And so that news, I hadn’t heard it, and don’t have a big thought on it, other than: AI and Shopify? Not for me quite yet.

Loren Feldman:
I’m intrigued by that, Liz. I didn’t know exactly what your thinking was on it, but I do know that Sarah is taking a different approach and has been trying to implement it. Tell us what you’ve been doing, Sarah.

Sarah Segal:
So, we’re a smaller agency, and we are very tech-heavy. I embrace tech probably more quickly than any other agency in the San Francisco Bay area, if not the state, or even the West Coast, or—I don’t know. We adopt technology really quickly, but it has to be technology that we think will help us do our job smarter, more efficiently, and just get things done faster. Because I have fewer people than a competitor’s larger agency, I need to make sure that I’m giving my team the tools where they can do twice as much work in the same number of hours.

We have a kind of a rule of thumb around here, where, if you do something once, and you know that you’re probably going to have to do that same thing again sometime, you’ve got to templatize it, or systemize it—one of the two. So that’s kind of built into our foundations. So, AI—I went to two conferences last week. One of them had a panel discussion, and there was a representative there from OpenAI, and I ended up grabbing her after her panel discussion and peppered her with a bunch of questions. She was fantastic, but one thing that she mentioned, which was really attractive to me, was kind of a big picture. And then there was a second thing that was more of something that I could easily start implementing, which I have been working on.

The first one she said is that she does the majority of her work—like everything that she does during the day—within ChatGPT. I don’t know, Liz, how many programs you use on a daily basis, or Loren, how many you use, but I use a CRM, a media database, an influencer tracking system, a project management system. I mean, I have a laundry list of programs I use, so like, at any given time, there are way too many tabs open on my screen.

And what she was saying is that—some of it’s in beta testing, and they haven’t released it yet—but the end goal would be to put all the functionality of those tools into your ChatGPT, so that they’re communicating. So, say I get off a call with a prospective client, I’ve taken the notes on the prospective client in my ChatGPT, and then in there I can say, “Add this to my CRM. Put in a reminder for me to follow up with them in two weeks. Ask Emily to start drafting a proposal for them.” And it will do it for me. I’m not there yet. I haven’t been able to set that up yet, but I am starting kind of with the basic things. So the first thing that I’ve started on is creating my own GPTs. Have either of you heard of those?

Loren Feldman:
I’ve heard of them, but why don’t you explain what they are.

Sarah Segal:
So basically, what you’re doing is you’re creating—I’m sure that there’s appropriate language for it—a custom educated folder about a specific thing. So a lot of people will do it with thought leadership, for example. So I’ve created a custom GPT that’s called Sarah’s Brand Builder. And I go in and—

Loren Feldman:
Sarah, this is within ChatGPT?

Sarah Segal:
Yes, sir. So if you go into ChatGPT—you have to have the paid version, which is like 20 bucks a month. You click on the button that says, “Explore GPTs.” In the upper right-hand corner, there’ll be a button that says, “Create.” And when you go into that and create it, it’s a split panel, and you say, “I want to call this new GPT, ‘Loren’s thought leadership GPT.’” And what you’ll do is you’ll educate it. You’ll say, “This is my tone. I’m self-deprecating. I’m very thoughtful with how I speak. I love to use alliterations.”

Loren Feldman:
I don’t have to be honest?

Sarah Segal:
No, I mean, you could say whatever you want, but like, “I love three-syllable words.” You can be as weird as you want. You can say, “I talk like a surfer,” whatever it is. You can put in details about how you communicate. In addition, you put in your bio. You put in, “I run this company.” And you put information about the company. You put in your goals. What are your goals of why you’re doing this brand builder? “I want to get more clients. I want more people to listen to my podcast.” I want whatever that is. And so it creates this place.

So now when I go into it, I can click on my GPTs, go into my brand builder, and I can type in, “Create a LinkedIn post about my 21 Hats Podcast [episode] that’s out today with myself talking about ChatGPT and how I’ve implemented it, as well as the discussion of tariffs with Liz and the challenges she’s facing.” I’ll put a link to Liz’s business profile. If I can find some bio information about Liz, I’ll probably drop that in, and then I’ll tell it to tag Liz, tag Loren, tag 21 Hats Podcast. It’ll do it for me, and will do it in my voice. It will sound like me. And then you go in and tweak it.

And with my team, I’m really specific. I’m like, “I have no problem with you using ChatGPT, as long as it doesn’t take away from the creative process.” Because there are certain things that ChatGPT can’t know, like how to do an effective grand opening for our new facial company, where we’re having influencers come in, and know kind of the soft stuff. It can’t do the soft stuff. And so, yeah, sure, use it to give you a starter, and then tweak it, and make it sound like you, or whatever your brand is, and then go from there.

We just started with a new restaurant chain, and so I went in and created a GPT for that. I dumped in everything that I know about that one so far. I can keep adding to it and configuring it and making it smarter about this brand. I can add in its menu. I can do all these things. So if I need to draft a press release about their new line of spring cocktails, I can share this. I can share it with my social media team, and then when they’re having to create some social content, they could tap into it and see whether or not it comes up with anything better than they did.

Loren Feldman:
Liz, are you zoning out, or are you getting interested?

Liz Picarazzi:
I’m very interested, Sarah.

Sarah Segal:
Oh, Liz, and I know that you have a lot of great blog content. Like, drop in your keywords. What are the keywords that you want? You still need to go in and make it sound like you and your brand and values. And it’s only as smart as you make it.

Liz Picarazzi:
But what is the output? So I see what you’re putting into it. What are the outputs that you’re asking to come from the information you put in?

Sarah Segal:
Oh, okay. So far, I’ve used it for a handful of LinkedIn posts where it’s like, I went to these two conferences and they had huge, super long agendas. And I’m like, “I want to do a post,” but I’ve been out of the office for two days. My inbox is absurd. I want to get this out in a timely way, but I’m not going to sit there and go through all of the things that were discussed in these conferences.

So I upload the conference agenda. I upload a list of all of the people who spoke. And I give it a little bit of flourishing prompts like, “Draft me a LinkedIn post that talks about my experience at the conference.” If you go to my LinkedIn, the last two LinkedIn posts about each conference are in there, and one of them—because it was led by this fantastic Harvard professor that I’ve been to his workshops before—it’s done better than any LinkedIn post I ever created.

Loren Feldman:
Sarah, would you also use it for a proposal for a prospective client?

Sarah Segal:
What’s interesting is, I’ve been doing this a long time. I know kind of how to put a proposal together, but sometimes what I’ll do is I’ll do my proposal, and then I’ll be like, “Eh, let’s see what ChatGBT has to say about it.” And it’ll make a suggestion. I’m like, “Oh, I should add something about that. That’s a good idea.” But sometimes, if you go straight to it, it’ll add things that you’re like, “Yeah, no, I’m not gonna touch that.”

I was talking to a prospective client yesterday, and I had done just that after I had put the proposal together. And it was making recommendations about something that’s not a service that we really provide. We’ve done it, but it’s not our core capability. So I didn’t put that in. But, you know, there were some definite things that I was like, “Oh, that’s not such a bad idea.” But I have other tools I use for proposals. I use PandaDoc for my proposals.

So I’ve really worked at making the fundamental stuff that we do kind of who we are, how we approach projects—all of that kind of stuff is in there. So when I put a proposal together, it’s customized, but about 25 percent of it is customized. 75 percent is more like: This is our approach. This is what you get if you work with us. You’re not going to get a cookie-cutter company. You’re going to get a company that is showing up to your events and jumping on calls to get more information and working with you as part of your team. So a lot of that’s consistent across every client that we work with.

But one of the clients that we’re working with is somebody who, actually, I met through 21 Hats. And they have a very specific product with a very specific audience, and so I had to do some major personal research to kind of put that together.

Loren Feldman:
You said you think you may be as technologically forward as any agency in San Francisco, which is a technologically forward place. How do you keep up? How do you find the time? Because there’s just so much technology coming out these days.

Sarah Segal:
I just love to do it. I mean, I think every business owner—like, Liz, when was the last time you had a real Saturday and Sunday off? I’m in my office at home on Sundays, checking out, seeing if it works. I’ll sign up for a month and give it a go. I’ll try anything once, but I’m usually looking for something specific. I’m looking for something that’s going to solve a problem.

Like one of the big problems that I’ve been working on trying to solve is, there are government RFPs that are put out for work all the time, right? And for people who aren’t familiar with that, it’s a request for proposal, and it’s a really messy process. They’re listed on government sites. They’re listed on paid sites that you have to have a thing to search through. They’re just messy. But I found a third-party software, and they’re relatively new. They’ve only been around, I want to say, for a year, but I was like, “Oh, this kind of sounds cool.”

And so I had a call with them a couple weeks ago, and they walked me through the platform, and it’s genius. It pulls in RFPs, and you can be specific. You’re like, “I only want to find RFPs in these five states.” Or, “I want RFPs across the country,” whatever it is. And they use AI to tell the system your core competencies. So you’re only being delivered the ones to you that kind of match your skill-set. And in addition, what they’ll do, also, is help you issue FOIA requests.

So Loren, I’m sure you’re familiar with FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act. As somebody who’s submitting for, say, the city of San Francisco tourism, they want a PR agency to work on their blah blah blah celebration. I can submit a FOIA request through the system, and they’ll do it for me, where I can say, “Hey, can you look and see if there were any similar RFPs that went out for this same kind of project in the last three or four years?” Because I want to see the winning bid, like, who won it last time? Because government agencies are required to provide you with that. And if I don’t win it, after the fact, I can say, “Hey, can you pull me the proposal for the winning agency?” Because I want to see what they did that I didn’t do, so I can make my proposal better for next time.

Loren Feldman:
I thought only journalists used Freedom of Information Act filings.

Sarah Segal:
I didn’t know that it would be considered a FOIA, but it is. I mean, I know that if I pitch a government RFP, and I don’t win, I can call. I can email that person after the fact. We bid for Carmel by the Sea, which is just south of San Francisco, to do travel and tourism. I know another agency that did as well. We both didn’t get it, so I emailed the lead there, the person who was running the RFP, and I said, “Can I get a copy of the winning proposal?” And they have to wait until it’s in contract, but then they can send it to me.

So I can do it. You can just do it directly. You don’t have to submit anything for it. But some businesses don’t really want to do that, because they don’t want to annoy the prospective liaison. They’d rather just do it anonymously, and this service lets you do it anonymously. So yeah, AI is a good thing. And if I had to do that all myself and search—do you know how many platforms I look at for RFPs? Like, it’s kind of ridiculous. I don’t have to do that anymore. I look at one place and so AI is a good thing—at least in my world.

Loren Feldman:
Liz, you respond to RFPs, don’t you?

Liz Picarazzi:
I do. We don’t do it often, but we sort of do it the more old-fashioned way. We get the email about it. We’re in a bunch of directories. But then, at least for the city of New York, they have a system that is called PASSPort. It’s incredibly clunky, like you can only do it on certain browsers. Some of the drop-downs don’t work. And there was one contract that we got—and it was very important to us—that I almost didn’t apply to because I was so frustrated with the application system, PASSPort. And I’m glad I got over that.

Loren Feldman:
Does what Sarah is doing sound interesting to you?

Liz Picarazzi:
It definitely does. From listening to you, I have a lot of ideas about how it can be applied, particularly with consolidation of information that’s continually being updated. So I was thinking, for press mentions of Citibin, we’ve had so many in the last month, to just pull those into a list and have our whole press list be pulled together that way. We don’t even often update our website with the new press mentions. So that could have otherwise been sort of a manual process of going through Google and pulling them down. Do you use it for pulling press lists for your clients?

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, so we use a program that’s very common in PR. It’s not cheap. It’s an investment, and every agency uses it. We use a company called Muck Rack. And there’s another one. It’s called Cision. Muck Rack is my preferred one. I’ve been using them for years. But it’s not a cheap investment, and that’s why it’s mostly used by agencies and not small- to mid-sized businesses.

Liz Picarazzi:
You can be my AI, Sarah. I can just call you on the old fashioned telephone. [Laughter]

Sarah Segal:
Oh my god, for me to pull all the coverage that you’ve had for Citibin over the last year literally will take me 30 seconds.

Liz Picarazzi:
I’d love that.

Sarah Segal:
The platform has added things, as well, where you can pitch reporters directly through the platform and use AI to generate your pitch and blah, blah, blah—and all that kind of stuff. We don’t use that as a team, because we have another program that we use to make sure our pitches are consistent and timely. But a lot of people like it. When we write a pitch and reach out to a reporter, we’re very cautious about not doing the blasts. We look at the reporter. We look at what they’ve written. We look at what they’re most interested in. We look at their location. We stalk them before we reach out. And that definitely takes time.

Granted, there are times when we’re just announcing, you know, a new location of a store, and you can send out kind of general stuff. But there’s still some manual stuff that you do. We still do call downs to newsrooms for broadcast. We send the email, and we send them information about it. But the Tuesday before the Thursday opening, we’re calling the newsroom, the assignment desk, and we’re saying, “Hey, did you get our information? Are we on your calendar?” You know, there’s still a lot of stuff that you kind of have to do as a human that AI is not going to fix—yet.

Loren Feldman:
Are your employees nervous, Sarah?

Sarah Segal:
No, because it’s just making it so we can do things faster. And, I mean, it’s not like relying on it. It’s probably 5 percent of the stuff that we leverage. There’s still a lot of stuff that we can’t use it for. No, it’s not like Shopify where, from what I’ve heard, it’s gonna kill programmers. Anybody who went to college for programming or that kind of route in terms of their career, I mean, I think it’s next to impossible to find a job these days.

Loren Feldman:
We are just about out of time. I have one more quick question to ask both of you. We’ve been through this incredibly volatile period where one of the things that’s really been moving around is the stock market. You guys are entrepreneurs, business owners. You take enough risk in your day job. I wonder if you have money that you’ve taken off the table and put in the stock market, and is that an additional stress factor during times like these? Or do you have some way of compartmentalizing that?

Sarah Segal:
You can’t look at it every day. I mean, honestly, there’s highs and lows. I mean, 2008, things weren’t worth anything. They came back. Honestly, I have purposefully not looked at my portfolio over the last several weeks, because I know it’s not going to be where I want it to be, but I don’t believe that it’s going to be forever. But I’m also young enough where I’m not worried about it. My in-laws, they’re in their 80s. So it’s probably a little bit more stressful for them.

Loren Feldman:
Do you think about investing in a conservative fashion to balance the risks you take as a business owner?

Sarah Segal:
Oh no. No.

Loren Feldman:
You invest like an entrepreneur.

Sarah Segal:
A dear friend of mine used to be the CFO of Wells Fargo. His famous quote was, “There’s blood in the water.” So if the market goes down, it’s when you buy.

Loren Feldman:
Liz, how about you? How do you think about it?

Liz Picarazzi:
Well, I have not been contributing to my 401(k) for years now. So we are in the process of getting that set up for the company and for us personally. I tend to take the long route. I don’t look at my accounts—any of my accounts, for that matter, I rarely ever go into the bank, is what I’m saying. I know that everything will work out, and that if there’s something that I need to know, that someone will tell me. But until then, I will have my head in the sand.

And with our investing for retirement, we usually make the decision at the end of the year, depending on how much taxable income we have, on how much we want to put in. So this year, we probably will put in less. Last year was the first one we did, so we were really excited about starting to contribute to it. But now we probably will have less cash at the end of the year. We’ll see. I’m not the right person to ask the question of, because I don’t look at that stuff. I don’t want to be upset. And I think long-term. In most of my life, I’m very impulsive and unpredictable, but on this sort of stuff, I just take the long road, and I don’t look at it day-to-day.

Loren Feldman:
That might be the reason you are the right person to ask, Liz. All right, my thanks to Liz Picarazzi and Sarah Segal. Thanks for sharing. Thank you both.