Are There Enough Hours in Your Day?
This week, Paul Downs, Sarah Segal, and Laura Zander discuss their daily routines, how those routines have been affected by the pandemic, whether they think they’re working too much or too little, and whether they would join a peer group where they would be exposed to other owners who might be working harder and having greater success. Plus: Laura places her bet on influencer marketing, Paul says his new marketing campaign has already paid off, and Sarah explains why not one of her employees has ever asked her for a raise.
— Loren Feldman
Guests:
Laura Zander is CEO of Jimmy Beans Wool.
Paul Downs is CEO of Paul Downs Cabinetmakers.
Sarah Segal is founder and CEO of Segal Communications.
Producer:
Jess Thoubboron is founder of Blank Word Productions.
Full Episode Transcript:
Loren Feldman:
Welcome, Paul, Sarah and Laura. It’s great to have you all here. I want to talk today a little about how you manage your time, starting with whether you have a basic daily routine. Let me start with you, Paul, you have a very methodical approach to how you manage your business, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you take a similar approach to managing your day. Do you?
Paul Downs:
Maybe. I am sort of a routine kind of person, so my day starts pretty early, because I like to have a very extended morning before I do anything much. So I get up 5:30 to 6, read the paper, blah, blah, blah. I don’t scurry off to work, because I’m in kind of a sweet spot right now, where the company is big enough that there’s a lot going on. It’s interesting to be here. But it’s not so big that I’m overwhelmed. And I’ve been able to offload pretty much all the minute-by-minute operational responsibilities to my employees, so I just have to keep an eye on things.
I have, in other years, been extremely busy, overloaded, house full of little kids, and all that. And I think I’ve now entered the happy golden years where I just don’t have to do a lot of that. And I’m enjoying not being super busy. So my morning routine is just: come in, check my emails, walk around the shop, see what’s going on. We have a number of scheduled weekly meetings, but they take up maybe six hours of my week. And I spend a lot of time slowly working on projects or just waiting for someone to come into my office and drop some problem in my lap. But that’s just me. I’m not super busy at the moment.
Sarah Segal:
So I’m totally jealous and kind of hate you at this moment. [Laughter]
Paul Downs:
Don’t hate me. I don’t make as much money as I could, because I’m lazy like that. I mean, there’s a cost.
Loren Feldman:
Wait a second, what you just described isn’t necessarily laziness. I suspect it’s not laziness at all.
Sarah Segal:
Delegation.
Loren Feldman:
And it’s probably the recipe for making more money, not less. Don’t you think, Paul?
Paul Downs:
It’s easier money.
Laura Zander:
Yeah, I don’t know. I’m with Paul.
Paul Downs:
You know, I make something on the order of 150 bucks an hour, and half my day is just reading The New York Times and Reddit. So, yay. I’m happy with it. I think that my business, it struggles. It sort of bounces back and forth between wanting to be a lifestyle business and wanting to be something else. And I am very …
Loren Feldman:
I kind of hate that term, “lifestyle business.” It kind of suggests that you’re not really serious, and you’re just sort of doing it on the side. What do you mean by a lifestyle business, Paul?
Paul Downs:
Well, one where my business life is integrated into a lifestyle that I find genial. And when things start to get out of control in business, I change it. And that means sometimes choosing not to do things that someone who is in a different stage of life or had different ambitions for how they wanted to dispose of their business, or how many years they plan to be in it—they would probably take a different approach than I do. But I’ve been basically doing the same job since I was 22 years old, and I anticipate doing it another five or 10 years. And so there’s no pressing need for me to change things today if I don’t see the need to do it. So that’s my lifestyle.
Loren Feldman:
But it’s not like you’re trying to spend half your time traveling, or…
Paul Downs:
No, I don’t like to travel. But one thing I do that affects my hours at work is I take time to exercise pretty much every day. Sometimes I ride my bike to work. Sometimes I go to the gym. But I always make time for that. And then the other thing is, I get home early. Like I don’t like to be here after 5pm or 5:15pm. I’m done with my day, so I go home.
Loren Feldman:
Are there people still working when you leave?
Paul Downs:
Some of them, because we have flex time. Usually there’s one engineer here who comes in about 10:30am after he gets his kids off and stays till 6:30pm or 7pm. And sometimes there are people out on the production floor working on something later. But as a general rule, I’m one of the last ones in and I’m also one of the last ones to leave, but it’s not that late. Like, I never work after dinner. I just refuse to do it.
Loren Feldman:
And you feel, obviously, like this is working for you?
Paul Downs:
Oh, I could throw a resume down there, and you guys could evaluate whether I’ve been successful or not.
Loren Feldman:
That’s not what I asked. I hear what you’re saying.
Paul Downs:
Let me qualify that. I’m in a Vistage group, and I’m the least successful guy. And every time I leave a meeting, I’m like, “Shoot, I should be doing more.” And then I go to other contexts and meet people who’ve tried to do the same industry that I’m in, and didn’t achieve anywhere near what I achieved. And then I’ve experienced strokes of good fortune in my life that allowed me to be successful at some other endeavors, like being a writer, and I have a lovely wife and nice kids. And so yeah, I’m pretty successful.
Loren Feldman:
But when you leave Vistage meetings thinking you should be doing more, are you thinking that you should be trying different things, different strategies, different approaches? Or are you thinking you’re not working hard enough and not putting in enough hours?
Paul Downs:
Probably the latter. I mean, I just see people working so much more than I do. There were many years when I did all that, and I just can’t do it anymore. I’m just not interested.
Laura Zander:
That’s what I would ask, Paul. Like, all of those guys that you’re talking to and seeing, how long have they been doing it? I mean, you and Jay and I, this is 20-30 years. We’ve put in our time, and we’ve done the 80-hour weeks. We’ve done everything that we needed to do, and worked our tails off so that we could, you know, coast for a little while.
Paul Downs:
Yeah, that’s exactly how I feel. And those people in my group? No, they’re different. They’re younger. They’re smarter. They’re hungry. Or they’re this, they’re that, or the other thing. They’re just not me. They haven’t experienced the arc of my life.
I mean, I’ve had some personal issues that definitely affected my ability to work long hours. I have an autistic son and raising him was no joke. So everybody goes down the path they go down. I’m not apologizing for it, but being in that group does certainly open my eyes to different ways of running a business and different ways of thinking about how it integrates into your life.
Laura Zander:
You know, it’s funny, I got a phone call yesterday and an email just kind of out of the blue from a Vistage chair who’s trying to put together a group here in Reno. And I tried EO, probably about seven years ago for a year. I’ve been thinking about doing Vistage, and I know you do and Jay does. But part of the reason I don’t want to do it is because I don’t know that I want to be surrounded by people and constantly walk out of these meetings and feel like I’m doing a crap job. Or feel like, “Oh, I should be doing what they’re doing.” Or, “Oh, if only I were working harder, if only I were more successful.” And like, do I really want that right now? Do I really want to look around and pay to compare myself to other people all the time?
Paul Downs:
Well, I say, yes, I find that very valuable. And there are a couple of aspects of Vistage for me: One, the peers. I just have guys that I’ve known now for 10 years, and they’re a tremendously useful resource. So you’re wondering, “Okay, who’s got a lawyer who can do this particular thing?” You can ask around. And also, it gives you insight into what problems are particular to whatever industry you’re in, as opposed to problems that everybody has.
And then the other thing is, we get a lot of outside speakers who come in and give you sort of the management theory of the minute. And some of those are good, and some of them are horrible. And so, again, it makes me think about, “Okay, well, I want to do this. Is this a good idea? Is this a bad idea? Other people are treating their employees this way or that way. They make money off it. Is that something I personally can stomach or not?”
So having that group has given me a ton of perspective and made it easier for me to sit in my office and read the paper, because I’m now aware of what I’m missing, what I’m giving up, what I gained from it. And it’s just that outside perspective that’s very, very hard to… Well, I never had access to it until I joined Vistage. Maybe it’s just easier these days. But the first 20 years of my business, there was no internet, there was nobody, nothing. I had nobody. I had no idea what I was doing. So I like having that outside perspective.
Loren Feldman:
I want to ask Sarah in a second why she hates Paul. But before I do, Paul, one quick question for you: You told us earlier this year that you’re hoping to double your revenues over the next couple of years to improve the chances that you would be able to sell the business, should you choose to do that. Do you think setting down that path, making the decision to try to double your revenues, will require you to change your daily routine and adjust some of the thinking that you just explained?
Paul Downs:
Yes, but I’m going into it eyes wide open, and thinking about the different options of how to do this, and taking into account what I want personally for my life. Like for instance, I’m exploring moving out of our facility, which we’ve been in for 20 years now, into a place that would be bigger and more adjacent to sort of the center of where my employees are.
On Tuesday, I went and looked at a building, and it was like many industrial properties, when you’re looking at them. It was in terrible shape. But just imagining, “Okay, now I’ve gotta get in the car and drive to this place. And now I’ve gotta sit in a particular office, as opposed to one that has windows, do I really want to do that?” And it was part of my thinking: “Hell no. This place is horrible, and I don’t really want to be there.” So that’s off the list.
And so, yeah, I’m thinking about bigger goals. And now it makes me think, “Okay, how could we accomplish those revenue goals without moving?” Any boss who makes a decision and somehow doesn’t factor in how it’s going to change your personal life… I can’t imagine making decisions that way.
Loren Feldman:
All right, Sarah, why don’t you tell us a little about your daily routine.
Sarah Segal:
Well, I aspire to be like Paul. I’m just not there yet. And I think PR, just the way that the business works, it’s really hard to take yourself out until you’re a much larger company. So yeah, I have a lot of goals, in terms of growth, so then I can eventually step back and be in more of Paul’s role and be the person who’s the resource to solve problems or looking at bigger decisions to be made for a company. My daily routine—just to preface this, I have two teenagers, so life is spent sometimes throwing in a ride here and there until they get their driver’s licenses.
Loren Feldman:
And then everything gets really easy.
Sarah Segal:
Oh, I know, I know. I have discovered that if I get up at the crack of dawn in the morning and spend that time reviewing documents, my brain is sharp. I’m drinking my coffee. I usually have my laptop in bed. And I’m literally just reviewing any client-facing documents that really need my visibility. So that’s kind of where I spend that time. One of my staffers who runs our social media department pinged me yesterday and was like, “Do you need to look at our quarterly social media reports for clients?” And I’m like, “Only if you want me to.” Because I trust her, and I trust her ability to have somebody else on the team who will check it.
So I’m trying to take myself out of that micromanagement. I was like, “If you want me to micromanage, by all means.” But there’s a level of trust I have with my staffers. And then I really dive in. I think I mentioned this probably on another podcast [episode], but we’ve set up our schedule with our meetings with our clients where we only meet with our clients every other week, not weekly. A lot of PR agencies do weekly calls. We discovered that people are kind of over Zoom and exhausted by calls. We also like to have that week where we can just be heads down working on content for our clients.
So right now, we’re in the middle of meetings week, and it’s exhausting. I mean, by the end of the week, you are ready for a very large glass of wine. But everybody loves it, and I’ve definitely asked everybody on the team if they still want to continue to do it, and hands down, 100 percent, everybody likes to be able to have, “All right, next week is just going to be a focused, creating content, and driving results week and not being distracted by preparing and recapping meetings.” I am more involved in just high-level reviews. I’m also really busy with new business. I spend a lot of time pulling together proposals and presentations, because we’re starting to do not just PR, but creative campaigns.
I am happily married to a creative director, and we get a lot of startups that say, “We really want to do PR,” but you look at their content, you look at their website, and you look at their creative campaigns, and you’re like, “Yeah, you’re not ready. Maybe you should talk to Ben before that.” And so we ended up doing kind of a creative-campaign-slash-PR-program, so a lot of time on that lately.
But I have to say that I put a lot of pressure on myself to grow the company, increase profits, all of that. But I am very black-and-white about making sure my employees have a good work-life balance, because I worry about burnout. Because you can just keep going with this stuff. I could literally work on the work that I have 24 hours a day, because there’s always something else that we could add to the fold. But the last thing I will add to this is that I have discovered that because I have that need to kind of work all the time and drive the company forward, I signed up and I have been doing this for a while to coach an athletic team. At the end of the day, I go over onto a field with a bunch of high school kids, and I coach an athletic team Monday through Friday.
Loren Feldman:
What kind of team?
Sarah Segal:
I coach cheerleading, and I have been for years. And it stops me thinking about work, and it boosts my endorphins, and it brings me back fresh. So sometimes I’ll come home, I’ll eat dinner, pull up the laptop again, throw out a couple more pieces of work, and feel good about the end of the day. But like, my day-to-day is kind of frantic right now.
Loren Feldman:
Do you feel like you’re doing something wrong?
Sarah Segal:
Well, we’re in a weird situation where we have an imbalance between our tech team and our consumer team. We need more people on our consumer side. We have like 15 proposals out there for pending work. It’s a hurry up and wait situation, where it was like, “Oh, we’re really interested, we need to do PR. Fall is really important because people are shopping, and that’s where we go into the black.” And then it’s nothing.
So there is a concern that all of a sudden, we’re going to be hit with all of these people wanting to sign on the dotted line. And so we’re trying to find potential people to join the team. It’s just a really complicated time right now.
Loren Feldman:
Got it. How about you, Laura? What’s your routine like?
Laura Zander:
So, I don’t have a routine, just because of my travel. You know, every week, every month is different. Like in August, I’ll be home for three weeks in a row. And so by week three, I’ll start to develop a routine, but then I’m on the road again. And I’m in a different place than I normally am.
Loren Feldman:
Are you still spending a couple of weeks in Texas every month?
Laura Zander:
No, I was in Texas in the first week of June, and I’ll be there the first week of August. So now it’s kind of every other month. But then it’s just random. You know, we had a trade show. We’ve been taking a couple of vacations. We were in Costa Rica last week. Friday, we’re gonna go to Idaho for vacation, and then we come back for a week. Then I go to Texas for a week, and then I’m back for a week, and blah, blah, blah. And we have a fair number of trade shows that we’re attending. We probably have four this year. And then we’re going to India, blah, blah, blah.
So is not having a routine working for me? I don’t know any other way. I mean, I’ve never really had a routine. I’ve moved my whole life. I’ve never lived in a house—except for the last house—longer than two years in my entire life. So I don’t know what it’s like to have that stability. So it is what it is.
Loren Feldman:
Do you struggle with finding enough hours in the day? Or are you at a point where you feel comfortable with the amount of time you’re putting in?
Laura Zander:
Now, I’m kind of with Paul. Now that this whole acquisition thing has passed.
Loren Feldman:
Without you making the acquisition, right?
Laura Zander:
Yes, exactly. So that was definitely like a bubble of crazy energy and crazy time. But since that passed—and I think that was May and June—no, now I’ve got plenty of time. I’m running again. I’ve got a kid in middle school, so I’m spending time with him. I talked to Jay, and I’m like, “Jay, sometimes I wonder: What’s my job?” And he’s like, “Your job is to be a mom. Your job is to spend time with your kid while you can.” Because we’ve gotten the business to the point where the business can kind of take care of itself.
So right now, my semi-routine is when I’m home for a week, we’re all in the office Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So I go to the office after I drop Huck off, around 9am or 10ish, and then I’m there till about 2:30. And then I go pick Huck back up, and then I’ll work maybe an hour or two at home. I get up at 5:30am or 6am. And I usually check email and do stuff for an hour or two before I’ll go for a run or something. But it really depends. I mean, it also depends on the weather. So like right now, it’s starting to get hot. So my routine has changed, in that I need to get outside at six or seven in the morning, versus in the shoulder seasons.
Loren Feldman:
Is it hard for you to leave the office when other people are still there working? Are you conscious of that?
Laura Zander:
No, not anymore. I’m past that. I mean, we have such a good team, and they’re taking care of everything. I’m kind of, like Paul said, in these golden years. And I’m really enjoying it. So I feel like, as long as we can continue to grow the business slightly, but more importantly, if I can keep growing the people, then they will continue to grow the business. And that’s really what we’re looking for.
And sometimes I feel like I don’t have enough to do. But I’m enjoying that, and I’m appreciating it, because I know that that’s not forever. I mean, something could change. One of my key people could leave. One of my key people left a couple of months ago, and so for about a month, I had to go heads down to pick up her work and figure out how to redistribute it and really figure out what she was doing and what she was working on. But we adapted pretty quickly. It wasn’t as long of a slog as it has been in the past. I think we’re just getting better at it—after 20 years.
Loren Feldman:
Do you ever struggle to turn it off at the end of the day?
Laura Zander:
Not now. But we don’t have any huge big acquisitions, or any big, huge things. It took me a while to transition into this lifestyle, if you will, that I’ve got right now. But again, really following Paul’s lead and Jay’s lead, I’m setting goals for myself to read a chapter of a business book every day and to focus on really trying to learn and observe and read more and think more.
Loren Feldman:
Have any of you changed your routines because of the pandemic? And are you happy with the change?
Sarah Segal:
I have to be a little bit more rigorous about finding a place to stop, so that I don’t burn myself out. Because before the pandemic, you’d be going into an office, and you’d leave the office and you’d leave your work behind. When you’re at home, your work is still there in front of you.
That said, my team is actually going to be going back to the office starting in August, just one day a week, just to kind of get people back in seeing each other, breathing on each other. But yeah, it’s really hard to leave it behind. I definitely had to make changes, in terms of leaving my office and closing the door and just having some time with my family.
Paul Downs:
When the pandemic came along, it was a great excuse to not jump in a car and go see people for things that really didn’t deserve it. I’ve altered my medium-distance travel quite a bit and taken a lot more Zoom meetings, as opposed to going to see people. And a lot of times, those meetings really weren’t worth an hour or two in a car, and so I’m very glad that we haven’t resumed that as an ordinary practice.
Now, my shop never really shut down, other than for a couple of weeks, so I’ve always gotten up and gone to work, and people were at work. We can’t run a factory from home. So a lot of the pleasures of seeing the work being done and interacting with the people, I’ve never really had to give up. But I really do not miss driving. I probably cut 10,000 miles a year out of my driving, easy. And that’s been great. Because I don’t like to drive.
Sarah Segal:
Yeah, we used to do our pitch-proposal presentations in person. We’d go and we’d do our dog-and-pony show. We’d all travel there. It would be a day out of our work life to go do those proposals. And we have not done one in-person proposal since the pandemic started.
Loren Feldman:
Has it affected your batting average?
Sarah Segal:
I don’t think so. Because I think everybody kind of acclimated to it. I mean, I do think that there’s a benefit of doing in-person, because half of what we do, in terms of getting selected or finding work, is about whether or not we gel with the client. If you have a good personal dynamic with them, you’re gonna get the job.
When it’s just a video call, it’s really a transactional experience, so you’re not necessarily getting to that next level. And I think it makes it harder for the client also, to choose what agency to go with. Because they’re not seeing these people in person. They’re not getting to that kind of colleague zone with them, for lack of a better way to describe it.
Loren Feldman:
Are you hoping to return to doing your pitches in person?
Sarah Segal:
That’s a good question. This has become such the norm now that we would, if somebody wanted us to, for sure. My team loves getting on a plane and traveling. But it hasn’t been requested. But that’s a good idea. I mean, we might start saying, “Hey, we’ll hop on a plane and come do this in person if you’re open to it.” Just because I do think, Loren, that it would help our batting average. Because people are ready to meet in person, and that might be a good way to boost our win rate.
Loren Feldman:
All right, next topic. In the podcast episode we just published, I asked everybody—Sarah was there—to tell us what you would do if I gave you $10,000 a month to spend on marketing. We’ve talked to Paul a good bit about his new marketing scheme. But I did want to ask Laura. Laura, I imagine you’re spending quite a bit more than $10,000 a month on marketing, but if I could give you $10,000 in addition right now to play with, what would you do with it?
Laura Zander:
It’s a great question, and I was thinking about it. And I was actually dreaming. I’m like, “I wonder if he’s got somebody who is really going to give this money to us, to whoever has the best answer.” [Laughter]
Loren Feldman:
Laura, you never know who’s gonna listen to the podcast, so that’s not out of the question.
Laura Zander:
Exactly. So whoever’s listening, please choose me. You know, I was thinking about it. So we spend a lot of money, like you mentioned, mostly on Google AdWords, Facebook, Instagram, and various other things. We actually spent a fair amount of money as well on—and this is, I’m sure, very specific to us—creating samples. We’re creating samples of the products that we sell, creating samples of the products that we produce. And we spend a little bit of money on influencers, and so I think that that’s where we double down. And you know, I was really thinking about it, and just the way the world is right now, post-pandemic, I’m really focused on spending money on people—and like real people, not people with an LLC at the end of their names.
So I would double down and come up with some better programs to support up-and-coming designers who would design things using our yarns, using our products; on bloggers; on influencers—basically on men and women who are independently run businesses, micro businesses, micro influencers, to help them create a business out of what they do. And that’s really where all of our businesses are headed.
In our mission statement, for instance, for the Texas business, it’s, “We’re here to help strengthen this industry. And we believe that we strengthen the industry through helping successful small businesses be able to make a living through their art.” And so that’s where I would put it. I’d grassroots it. I’d put it right back into the industry and right back into the people.
Loren Feldman:
Have you had much success with influencers thus far?
Laura Zander:
Yeah, absolutely. And again, no pun intended—or maybe I do intend it—but we’re a close-knit business. I mean, it’s a close-knit industry. And people really are the lifeblood. You know, it’s funny you asked this question, because we did just double down. We just hired somebody who was an influencer, a part-time contractor, to help us really participate more in the community.
So how do we help sponsor micro events that are out there, events with 20 people, 30 people, 40 people? How do we get our name out there and rebuild our brand and make sure that everybody in the country knows who we are and that they know that we’re a real supporter of the community? That’s kind of our goal. I don’t know what the ROI is gonna look like on that, that there’s going to be really super measurable ROI. So it’s a bit of a PR play.
Sarah Segal:
Can I ask how have you worked with influencers in the past? Are they all paid relationships? How do you find them? What has your process been with that?
Laura Zander:
It varies. It’s a small industry. So in terms of how we find them, I don’t know. It’s like intuitively obvious. I mean, you just know. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s just the popular kids, right?
Loren Feldman:
So it’s just people that you become aware of, as opposed to instituting a search where you go looking through social media channels to try to find the right people?
Laura Zander:
Yeah, I mean, it’s a small community. So it’s just not that difficult.
Sarah Segal:
What do you ask them to do once you’ve connected with them?
Laura Zander:
It depends. It depends on: Are they a nano influencer? Are they micro? Are they macro? And are they influencers because they’re designers? Are they influencers because they’re just personalities? Are they up-and-coming? So some people we work with, we ask them to design things for us and maybe post about it. Some people are more personalities and so we will collaborate with them and partner with them and maybe give them a percentage of sales, based on products that we’ve co-branded.
Loren Feldman:
Have you thought about how you will try to determine the return?
Laura Zander:
No, you mean for the $10,000 that we’re not actually going to get?
Loren Feldman:
Or in general, the money that you spend?
Laura Zander:
Our social media manager, she just allocates a certain percentage. I mean, for the affiliate sharing, it’s really easy. You can obviously see that, it’s tracked. For the stuff that’s a little softer, a little more on the PR side to community building, it’s a very intuitive approach. I don’t even know if stuff like Clout exists anymore.
Sarah Segal:
No.
Laura Zander:
Okay, yeah, I’m sure there’s something out there where we could measure our amplitude, if that’s a word. You know, we can see by Google search results, as we do this: Are more people coming to the site? And comparing that to our competitors. But you know, you can kind of tell. You can kind of tell.
Loren Feldman:
Sarah, do you take a particular approach to trying to assess the return you’re getting when you set up influencers for clients?
Sarah Segal:
Yeah, 100 percent. I mean, we first of all work with clients who identify for us: What is the goal? Are you looking for brand awareness? Are you looking for people coming through and purchasing a product? Are you looking for people to engage with these posts? We create a kind of measure of success that we’re constantly working towards. So I could talk for an hour about the different tools out there that are available to even the smallest businesses, and just tips and tricks about: How do you find the right influencer?
Because they may have a beautiful, beautiful page. But if they’re only getting like 25 likes and they have 50,000 followers, there’s a discrepancy there. And there are a lot of red flags out there, in terms of influencers who are not going to be worth your time. There are also best practices. I think we talked a little bit about this last week, about: What are the things that you want your influencers to include in their posts that are going to be the most beneficial to you?
You mentioned affiliate links, which is fantastic. But is there a call-to-action on every post that they have? What do you want people to do when they see that post? And that’s usually the first question we ask people: What do you want to happen when we engage in influencer relations for you?
Loren Feldman:
Paul, I didn’t mean to skip over you. Do you have any kind of update over how your new marketing plan is going?
Paul Downs:
It’s going. We reviewed a bunch of interviews that my consultants did with the target audience. They had lined up eight different firms and talked to people there about our product and how they go about buying it without identifying us as the interested party—just like, “How do you go about buying tables?” And it was well worth doing. Like, if I just stopped right here—and I’ve paid, whatever, $20 grand—there were some surprises in there.
Loren Feldman:
Can you give us a hint? What kind of surprises? What did you learn?
Paul Downs:
One of the things that we learned is that some of the skills and approaches we developed, in order to deal with a general public buying audience, are not as valued by a more professional—like, we’re trying to target architects and interior designers. And a lot of our methods right now are based on just showing people, “Here’s what something’s gonna look like.” And the architects and interior designers just don’t care about that that much. That’s not their main priority. They need information presented in a different format. And we’d never really thought about how some of the things we do just are irrelevant to one group of possible buyers, as opposed to what we’ve been doing.
Loren Feldman:
Could you explain that, Paul? It seems counterintuitive. I would have expected designers and architects to be very concerned about what the product would ultimately look like.
Paul Downs:
They are and they aren’t. They have a different way of thinking about the relationship between what something looks like and what its value is than our other clients, let me put it this way. And it is counterintuitive, because what architects and designers tend to do is choose a company based on an image of something they’ve designed—and I’m going to use some prejudicial language here—sort of the most facile level of analysis, like, “Oh, I like this table because I like the way the base looks.” And then they go down the road of working with that company. And then there’s a lot that happens after that initial choice, but that initial choice is very important.
Whereas our other clients, they don’t know what they need. And a lot of times people say to us, “We don’t know what we want. We’ve got an empty room. We need to sit people. But we’ll know it when we see it.” And then we make a huge effort to put something in a very easy to understand image in front of them. And then also to explain what it is they’re looking at, because when you shop for furniture, it’s really easy to look at a photo and kind of focus on the wrong thing. And the way furniture choices are presented in 2D is often a photograph of something that isn’t really the most important part of experiencing it.
The easiest way to explain this: A chair can look really cool, and then when you sit in it, it’s torture. But people will still buy things because they look really cool. And the professional trade is more biased toward the, “We’ll buy it because it looks really cool.” And the person on the street who’s paying big bucks with their own money wants to make sure the chair’s comfortable. So you end up with this divergence in what the product could be. That was something that was reemphasized for me by this report we got from our consultants.
So that’s been good. And now we’re going to be crafting messaging and figuring out how to approach this audience using the information we’ve gathered. So everything’s working according to plan to me. As a matter of fact, we’ve already gotten a big win out of this, because one of the people who the consultants approached, the interviewer said, “Wow, we’ve never had anybody from a furniture company ask us why we chose bup-bup-bup-bup. We want to meet these guys.” So we’ve been introduced to a firm in Texas, a big firm, that could potentially be a very, very valuable client. And that in itself may be as good as I need from this whole campaign.
Loren Feldman:
That’s amazing. You’ve told us that you don’t need a lot of connections here. If you get five or six clients out of this, you’d be thrilled.
Paul Downs:
Yeah, we already have the introduction that we wanted, just by asking questions. Apparently that’s very unusual in our industry.
Loren Feldman:
All right. We’re almost out of time. Last question I want to ask each of you: We’re in this unusual time right now where we still have kind of a labor shortage, still a little bit of The Great Resignation thing going, but we’re also hearing lots of reports about the possible recession. And I’m wondering how that’s affecting your employees. Are you still getting a lot of requests for raises, for example? And given the uncertainty of the time, I’m curious, if you are, how you’re dealing with those questions. Has anybody been knocking on any of your doors lately asking for more?
Paul Downs:
I’ve had a couple, but not in any way the majority. I would say, I’ve had three out of 26, who asked for a raise. And one of them was somebody who wanted a raise for years and kind of cornered me, finally. Another one wasn’t a valued employee, actually.
Loren Feldman:
Did that employee get the raise?
Paul Downs:
Yeah, she got a raise. I mean, she hadn’t gotten a raise in four years—for reasons. But she wanted a raise, gave her a raise. And then I had another employee who was recruited for another job, and I had to give him a raise to keep him. And a year ago, I had another employee in the same situation. But I would say in general, No, I’m not getting a million people pounding on my door.
Loren Feldman:
Anybody else?
Sarah Segal:
We only do raises at the end of the year.
Loren Feldman:
You’ve been able to stick with that through The Great Resignation period, and that’s worked for you?
Sarah Segal:
Yeah, because we actually pay better than most agencies, and all of our employees get a cut of the business at the end of the year. We do bonus, and we bonus much better than any other agency that I’ve ever worked at or known about. So no, we pay them above market, and they will be rewarded at the end of the year, if we are successful as a business. So I have actually never been asked for a raise.
For most of my people, they’re young enough where title is more important than money. Because I don’t have anybody on my team who’s full-time and that is married with kids. We have some contractors who I will up their rate proactively. But I’m actually pretty good about that, where I can see somebody is doing their job beyond what they’re supposed to be doing, and I will recognize that.
I think that’s actually one of the things I’m really good at, is making sure that people are being paid for their work appropriately. And probably it’s because I struggled with that when I worked for other people. I would be asked to do things that were outside of my job responsibilities, but it was never rewarded—at least from my perspective, it never was. So I make sure that that happens for my team.
Loren Feldman:
How does your bonus system work? Are you giving up a percentage of profits? Or what is it?
Sarah Segal:
Yeah, I have a mathematical equation. It took me forever to figure it out. And I could talk a little bit more. I’d have to have it in front of me, because it’s really one of those things that you work really hard on for a couple months, and then you forget about until it becomes bonus time again. But it’s based on performance. It’s based on what we have left at the end of the year. And it’s based on their level in the company. And I put together a nifty little spreadsheet that lets me drop in that information after we’ve gone through the review process. And then I can always tweak it if I don’t agree with the final numbers, but it’s been pretty good.
Loren Feldman:
Laura, how about you? Are you getting asked for raises?
Laura Zander:
No more than usual. Nothing pandemic related. But I think, like Sarah, we’ve worked really hard to be proactive. When somebody takes on more, talking with them when they’re taking on more and saying, “Okay, let’s give this 90 days. In 90 days, let’s review your compensation and see if these additional responsibilities stuck and if it’s something you want to continue doing.” So no, we really haven’t.
Loren Feldman:
The proactive point is interesting. It sounds like you don’t think it’s necessary to wait until somebody asks for a raise.
Laura Zander:
No, I don’t ever want somebody to ask for a raise. I feel like, unless there are extenuating circumstances—and this might be what Paul was alluding to—the times usually that somebody is asking for a raise, it’s because they actually don’t deserve it.
Loren Feldman:
Why do you say that?
Laura Zander:
Because some people, they usually aren’t good culture fits. They’re usually people who feel like they’re contributing significantly more than they’re actually contributing. So yeah, we have had one or two people, and they don’t work here anymore. Because how they view their contributions is significantly different than how the rest of us view their contributions. So they’re typically not a good culture fit or a good performance fit. But for people who work their butts off—
Loren Feldman:
Do you view it as a red flag if somebody comes to you and asks for a raise?
Laura Zander:
No, because we’ve already known. There are so many other red flags that we’re not surprised. They usually don’t even come and officially ask for a raise. They passive aggressively say stuff like, “Oh my gosh, I worked eight hours and 15 minutes yesterday. Did you realize that?” We’re like, “Yeah, we also saw you on your phone for four of those hours. So maybe that’s why blah, blah, blah.”
So there are so many other red flags. It’s not them asking. That’s just a symptom of a bigger issue. I would be devastated if one of our really good employees came to us and asked for a raise, because it means I didn’t do a good job. And I wasn’t proactive enough and recognized their value.
Sarah Segal:
I agree with all of what you said. I think that’s great. I don’t necessarily think it’s a red flag, but for me and my perspective, when I hire a contractor, I say, “Okay, what’s your rate?” And that is on them to tell me how much they think their work is worth, and then for me to negotiate what’s going to work for us. But it’s not my job to proactively give a contractor a raise. I feel like they have to come to me for that.
Loren Feldman:
Paul, how about you? Do you wait for somebody to come and ask?
Paul Downs:
Yeah, sometimes. I mean, I don’t think there’s a correlation between a good employee and a bad employee and asking for a raise. At least, that hasn’t been my experience. So there may be issues where I hire someone at a wage that today is required to get them in the door. And then you look at the total compensation for everybody, and there might be someone you hired 10 years ago, who is more experienced and just needs to be brought up to something so that there’s not a disparity. And in those cases, I’ll retroactively or just go in and say, “Hey, you’re doing a great job. And I want to make sure that you’re being compensated fairly. Boom, here you go.”
And then I’ve had people ask and I’ve had every possible scenario. So it’s just on a case by case basis with me. And I try to, at the end of the day, understand how much people are getting compensated in total. A lot of these discussions for me play out in terms of whether we’re providing health insurance or not, because that’s expensive. And so that’s a form of compensation and I may volunteer to take a little more of the load or a little less of the load depending on the rest of the circumstances, but I don’t have any blanket rules about it.
Loren Feldman:
All right, my thanks to Paul Downs, Sarah Segal, and Laura Zander. As always, thanks for sharing, guys.
