“I Think I’m Screwed”

This week, Jay Goltz tells Shawn Busse and Karen Clark Cole about a dream he had recently. It was a dream, of all things, about this very podcast, and on it, someone—it was a guy—was talking about how his business was faring: “I think I’m screwed,” he says in Jay’s dream. But who was it? And why was he screwed? Jay woke up before those answers were revealed. So we did some interpreting on this week’s real podcast. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t that hard to interpret! Plus: Shawn explains why he thinks his website is no longer performing. Karen explains why she thinks it’s actually easier to onboard an employee who will work remotely. And Jay and Karen discuss whether it’s time to give up on things going back to the way they were.

— Loren Feldman

Guests:

Karen Clark Cole is CEO of Blink.

Shawn Busse is CEO of Kinesis.

Jay Goltz is CEO of Artists Frame Service.

Producer:

Jess Thoubboron is founder of Blank Word Productions.

Full Episode Transcript:

Loren Feldman:
Welcome Shawn, Karen, and Jay. It’s great to have you all here. Jay, I want to start with you today, because you called me recently to tell me about a really interesting dream you’d had. And it was actually about the podcast. Want to tell us about your dream?

Jay Goltz:
Yeah, I have very vivid dreams every night. But this one was far more realistic. There wasn’t any weird stuff. I’m dreaming that we’re on the podcast, and we’re on with some guy. And we’re talking about what happens to businesses eventually. So I said, “Well, here’s my experience.” And I said, “It seems to me three things happen.”

Loren Feldman:
Three things happen when…

Jay Goltz:
At the end of your career when you own a business.

Loren Feldman:
There’s reasons why a business might fail, right?

Jay Goltz:
Well, not even fail. There are three things that can happen to your business, eventually, if you’re doing it long enough. So one is, the market changes. My father had a dime store. It kind of just dried up. I see dry cleaners closing now. And I’m not saying they’re going out of business, but there’s less of them than there used to be. The market could change, and whatever your business used to do that was relevant and purposeful, the demand goes down. Or maybe you just get tired, and you’re ready to retire. And you just close it.

So that happens a lot. That happens, probably 75 percent of the time. Then there are people who have their relatives, kids, nieces, nephews, or professional staff that they’ve groomed over the years and can take over the business and keep it going for another generation. That happens. From what I’ve read, that happens 20 percent of the time.

And then the last part is your business is profitable, and has a good EBITDA, and is in a market that people want to be in. And you sell the business and you hand it off, and you take the cash. And sometimes it works out great, and sometimes it doesn’t, but you got your money, and you’re done. So those are the three outcomes. And then you said …

Loren Feldman:
That’s not what you told me when you called me to tell me you had the dream, Jay.

Jay Goltz:
It was pretty close.

Loren Feldman:
No, you told me this guy was worried about where his business was going. And you said that there are three reasons why businesses go out of business.

Jay Goltz:
Well, he’s worried about where the business is going. I said, “Well, there are three outcomes.” Sometimes they just lose their edge. Sometimes the market changes. Sometimes they sell it. So then you said to the guy, “So what do you think?” And he takes a pause, and he goes, “I think I’m screwed.” And then I woke up. And I called you because I found that interesting.

Loren Feldman:
And then we had a conversation about who this guy might have been. Was it somebody who is on the podcast? Or was it somebody who’s not on the podcast?

Jay Goltz:
So that took me several hours to analyze. And I’ve concluded that that guy was me.

Karen Clark Cole:
Well, of course! It took you how long to figure that out?

Jay Goltz:
A couple hours.

Karen Clark Cole:
Dreams are always about you.

Jay Goltz:
Yeah, I didn’t know that. So you’re more dream knowledgeable than I am.

Loren Feldman:
Well, at least he got there.

Jay Goltz:
Yeah, so the point being, of course, subconsciously, I’m not going to say I’m worrying. You know, there’s a difference between when you’re conscious and when you’re sleeping. I mean, when I’m conscious, I feel okay about everything, and I feel like I’m on the right path. But I can’t control what I dream about. And yeah, there’s subconsciously. And I figured out where it came from. Just the day before, I gave a tour to a guy from England who came here who was in the frame business.

I’m walking through my warehouse, and I showed him. I go, “You know, I don’t know where the thing’s going for sure, but you see that cart that guy’s using? I bought that in a place that went out of business. I’ve been to about six liquidations of people that were in the frame business.” And I go, “Listen, for all I know, in 20 years, my pallet racking and the forklift and all the stuff’s going to be sold off in an auction.” I go, “I’m sure that’s what planted the seed,” and it came out as, “Gee, is my business going to actually survive me?” And I have learned that for my dreams, I can always find something that spurred the thought, and I’m sure that’s what did it.

Loren Feldman:
When we talked about it the other day, you did express some concerns about business in general—things that you thought might be weighing on you, things that might have prompted you to come up with, “I think I’m screwed.” Even if it’s your subconscious.

Jay Goltz:
I think my delusion works better when I’m awake. I can steer it better. Maybe, I don’t know, I don’t think I’m… I’m not worried about it. I’m really not. Emotionally, would it be a sad thing if the business just fell apart one day? Certainly. But I’m not gonna go broke. I own the real estate, I’ll be fine financially. So I don’t think it’s that I’m worried about it.

I also had a company reach out to me a couple of weeks ago that wanted to buy me. It would have never gone anywhere. It was absolutely ludicrous. It’s somebody who’s in the industry who has absolutely nothing to do with what I do, and I would not do that. I’m not going to go sell it to someone knowing they’re going to mess the business up. So I have certainly thought about all these different options, and I’m very comfortable with where I’m at at the moment.

Loren Feldman:
Well, I think we can agree, you’re definitely not screwed. But there probably are some things that you’re thinking about. How has your business been of late?

Jay Goltz:
Listen, I live next door to Highland Park. And that whole shooting up there was just… I can’t even put into words how distressing, and I know it’s happened all over the country. It’s always distressing. But like, I think it messed people’s heads up, and business for that first week of the month was horrible. And I think that people were just depressed. So is it just a temporary blip?

And then, between the inflation and the current Ukrainian war, I mean, there are so many things going on. I keep telling people, “You can’t ask anybody, ‘How are you?’ You need to say, ‘How are you holding up?’” It’s more appropriate, because it’s rough right now, just emotionally. Business isn’t horrible, but it’s definitely softened. So is it going to continue?

And then if you’re dumb enough—which I am—to watch the news, and you get all these experts on there, it’s like, are we headed for a recession? I don’t know. Meanwhile, it’s difficult to hire people. I’ve lived through six recessions. I’ve never been through a recession where you’re having a hard time hiring people. So I wonder whether we’re going to hit the recession, because maybe we’re okay, because we still seem to be at full employment. So, I’ve learned not to think about it much, because there’s nothing I can do about it.

Loren Feldman:
You have had some turnover of key people there of late.

Jay Goltz:
Yes, I have, which is interesting—to me at least—in that, I’ve been in business 43 years. I’ve got lots of people who have been here 20 years: 20, 29, 15. And I’ve had four people leave in the last six months. And I’ve had a major revelation from this, in that I always say, “I run a collaborative company where everybody says what’s on their mind and we all work together.”

At the opposite end of that scale is dysfunctional, and I’ve come to realize that I thought I was a collaborative, and I was really a cooperative, which means you’re working together, but people are putting up with each other a little bit. And companies outgrow employees, and employees outgrow companies. And the four people who left, it was a good thing they left—for their sake, for my sake. It didn’t fit. The company grew bigger. What they used to do and they loved doing, they’re not doing anymore because they got other responsibilities. And there was a mismatch, and I’m in much better shape now.

Loren Feldman:
I don’t think you were sure that was going to happen before they left.

Jay Goltz:
No, absolutely not. And I look back, if you would have asked me a year ago, I certainly didn’t predict that. I recognize that I wasn’t as aware as I could have been—should have been—about the little bit of the mismatch. And like I said, it wasn’t dysfunctional. It just wasn’t working as smoothly as it should have worked. There were people who were frustrated. And it all worked out, because I do have some solid people here.

Loren Feldman:
Did you have people who were ready to step up?

Jay Goltz:
Absolutely, they were the reason part of it got caused. Yeah, they’re all different situations. But it all worked because eventually, either I figured it out, or somebody came to me and said, “You know, this isn’t working.” Or in one case, somebody came to me and told me it wasn’t working. I mean, it was all variations of a theme, but the pandemic certainly made it more obvious. And then the pandemic probably—not probably—made it worse. If somebody was already frustrated with something, it got worse. Living through the whole pandemic situation has just put more stress on things, and it kind of forced the solution. So actually, it worked out okay. And it worked out well. But I absolutely would have never predicted that.

Loren Feldman:
Shawn, Karen, do you guys dream about your businesses?

Karen Clark Cole:
Many years ago, when we were thinking about selling—gosh, it’s probably 12 years ago—I had a dream that I was being walked to my new office, which was at the very end of a bay of beige cubes. And my office was actually just a big cube at the end of all the bays of cubes, and everyone sort of had this look of they might have been zombies, but they looked sort of deadish. And everything was very beige. And I woke up. I was literally sweating when I woke up. And I was like, “This is not gonna work.” And it never went any further.

Jay Goltz:
So I do think your dreams do bring up stuff that maybe you’re not conscious of during the day.

Karen Clark Cole:
Of course they do.

Jay Goltz:
Okay, you seem to know more about dreams than I do. Did you read a book? What’s going on here?

Shawn Busse:
Jay, just come to the West Coast. Come to the West Coast!

Jay Goltz:
Ahhh, I forgot you’re on the West Coast. That explains it. All right.

Loren Feldman:
Jay, they’re your dreams. They’re in your mind. Something is driving them that is on your mind.

Jay Goltz:
Well, I told you, I’m absolutely confident that me looking at this—I mean, if you go to my factory, I see the green, two-wheel cart that I got from my father’s dime store that my father closed in ‘94. I’ve got a table with wheels that I got from my first boss, when he went out of business literally 50 years ago. So it’s like an archeological thing going there.

So I can’t help but look around when I’m talking to somebody… You know, when you stand at an auction for a place that’s similar to yours, it’s kind of jarring. It’s kind of like, wow, one day you’re in business, and the next day people are paying 10 cents on the dollar for your molding and buying your cart for 12 bucks. It is an interesting experience.

Shawn Busse:
I mean, and then all the news is doom and gloom. So I think it kind of shifts you into a mindset of the crap that’s gonna happen to you, instead of what’s possible.

Jay Goltz:
I’m good at navigating that, though. When I’m conscious, I am dealing with stuff. It’s not like I’m walking around depressed. I’m not. I feel really good. But like I said, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t wear on your psyche.

Loren Feldman:
Shawn, how are you doing?

Shawn Busse:
You know, I’m usually pretty optimistic. I have my dad to thank for that. He’s the eternal optimist. It’s been a struggle for us for the last few months. I’d say that the flywheel effect of marketing and business development really carried us for quite a while, and we’ve just been struggling in that arena in the last, I don’t know, six to nine months.

There was a period of time where there was a lot of interest and people seemed reengaged and motivated and then: war in Ukraine, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera. And I just get kind of a sense of malaise, and that’s just not good for our business. Because our business is about potential and optimism. So all the metrics on marketing and sales are in the toilet right now.

Jay Goltz:
There’s a little bit of the Lucy-and-the-football thing going on. We keep thinking of the pandemic, “Oh, finally, no masks. Okay, we’re all done.” It’s back! I mean, this is now the third round where we all thought like, “Okay, we’re through the worst of it now.” And it’s back. That’s part of the problem, too.

Loren Feldman:
Jay, how is it affecting you right now?

Jay Goltz:
I know several people who are sick from it, not terribly sick, but like, everybody’s wearing masks again. And when you go into stores and stuff, people are wearing masks. In Chicago, it’s supposedly going wild.

Loren Feldman:
The good news with that is that the latest round is much more contagious. There are a lot more infections, you can get reinfected fairly rapidly, but the bad outcomes are much lower, less hospitalizations, less death.

Jay Goltz:
That’s what they say.

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, my team is very cautious, and multiple members have gotten it. Some have gotten it now twice. And it’s actually pretty tough to run a business when you have people get wiped out for a week unexpectedly. I’m seeing more masks now. And even the other day, there was an article in the news about the hospital system here starting to get overwhelmed and then asking people to wear masks again. So that’s just frustrating.

Jay Goltz:
It’s that, and then the Ukraine thing is just like, who would have ever thought that some other country would just go and obliterate another country and bomb apartment buildings? And like, we watch it on the news now. We never saw stuff like that. And then you add on the shootings, and it’s a lot. It’s a lot. And it’s just a slow drip, drip drip. And then on top of that, now you hear the whole Earth’s melting, apparently. So, I mean.

Shawn Busse:
How’s business for you, Karen? Because you’re more in the corporate space, I assume?

Karen Clark Cole:
Not really corporate, but we’re product. We’re heavy in tech.

Shawn Busse:
Oh, okay.

Karen Clark Cole:
So what that means is, our clients we’re seeing, it’s still what we call sort of green/yellow. So normally it would be green. And so right now, we’re gauging everybody’s spending appetite. And it’s moving a little bit into yellow, but they’re still proceeding with caution, because they have to get their products out. And so luckily, their products have to be good, and so they need us to do that.

And then the other side of that is, if there are layoffs, if that starts happening, then that’s actually even better for us, because they still, again, have to get their work done. And so they can use a vendor or contractor and have us come in and get the work done. And then they don’t have to pay for that headcount. So in past years, when we’ve had bad years in the economy, that’s actually been pretty good for us. I mean, we started the company in 2000, so it was amidst chaos.

Shawn Busse:
We started in 2002. When you went through 2008 and ‘09, did that happen, in terms of people laid off the internal teams and then they needed to still get the work done, so they went to you?

Karen Clark Cole:
2009 is the only year that we actually did layoffs ourselves. Because we were over-staffed for what we thought was appropriate at the time, but even then, we did okay after we right-sized, because of the same thing. A lot of head counts were being reduced, but they needed to get their work done.

Jay Goltz:
The bizarre part of this whole thing is amidst all of this, and inflation, and everything else, I’m still having a hard time hiring people to work in the warehouse. Like, just as hard as it was a year ago. So with all of these problems out there, it seems like most people are working. So I don’t know that this is going to be the traditional quote-unquote recession that’s coming. I’ve never seen a recession that had high employment rates.

Loren Feldman:
I think we’re done with tradition. Everything is different.

Karen Clark Cole:
Yeah, exactly.

Shawn Busse:
Yeah.

Loren Feldman:
Karen, how are you doing with the whole remote work thing?

Karen Clark Cole:
It almost seems normal now for us, honestly. I was in the office yesterday, and it was the most people I’ve seen in, what, three years now? And it just seemed like a regular day. No one was wearing masks, and there were people meeting in rooms, and people having lunch together. And it was lovely.

And again, we’re all proceeding with caution. And I don’t think anyone—who I know, anyway—would get on a flight without a mask or go to a crowded airport without a mask, but I think in our office, no one’s allowed in unless they’re vaccinated. So I think that helps. And we know that that doesn’t mean you can’t get it, but it helps. So it’s a controlled environment.

But it’s good. We’ve never had a problem with remote working because we all work on our computers largely, so we can do that anywhere. I think what we’ll end up doing is—we haven’t started doing it yet—we’ll end up reconfiguring our offices to be more collaboration spaces. And we’ll get rid of the desks for the most part, because people can do their heads-down work at home, and then come in for a meeting to collaborate when the clients are in town. We sort of have all-day-long workshops. We do a lot of that kind of work. So the offices will kind of be repurposed for that sort of thing.

And honestly, we don’t have a choice. Because if we didn’t have a flexible work environment, and if people weren’t allowed to work from home when they wanted, we would be able to hire no one. And our hiring rates have been really high. We’re meeting all of our hiring targets. We’ve got great retention. And so that’s largely, not because of that, but if we didn’t do that, we wouldn’t be able to hire anybody.

Loren Feldman:
And have you struggled at all with the collaboration and creativity aspect of having people working in different places?

Karen Clark Cole:
Not really, because we’re distributed anyway, and so we’re used to that. So we often have somebody involved in Seattle or San Diego all working on one project team, and then the client could be in Chicago. That’s not unusual for us, so we’re pretty good at it. And there’s lots of great tools.

I mean, we’re not used to being so extreme—how we had to be in COVID. If it had been three years earlier, when we didn’t have multiple offices, it would have been a lot harder for us to adjust. But since we had to do that anyway, we were ready to go. And now, we’ve just got it all refined. And so, in my opinion, it’s the best of all worlds.

We get to collaborate when we want to now. Thankfully, we can come back together, which is important. I mean, everyone agrees, we definitely have to get together. But it can be once a month, or once during a project when we have a big long workshop, and we really need to have time for just sitting around and looking at the sticky notes on the wall or pausing and taking a break. And that’s much harder to do online, but it’s not impossible.

Loren Feldman:
Shawn, you talked some time back about how much you hate remote work—both for you, personally, and also for what it means for the business. Have you had any further thoughts on that?

Shawn Busse:
Still hate it. To clarify, the piece about it that I hate is that I feel like it’s really hard for new employees to get that osmosis of what the culture is like, and what it’s like to be supported by their teammates in a real space. I don’t know how many thousands of ways of communication happen that are nonverbal, and that gets pretty wiped out. You have to work a lot harder to offset that.

And so I think that the collaboration side of it, the kind of making friends and getting to know each other, I think all that’s really hard to do in a remote space. I don’t miss the commute. I don’t really want to make people commute, and I think that’s crazy. But just the ability to work together on a hard problem in the same room, I think it diminishes when you’re doing it remotely. At least, for our business.

Jay Goltz:
You also left out, to me, the biggest thing, which is: You hired a new employee. It’s much harder to just monitor what they’re doing and see what they’re all about. I mean, it’s not just about them getting used to your culture. It’s about you figuring out: Who did I hire? Because it doesn’t always work out.

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, I mean, the employees that we hired post-pandemic, or even right before the pandemic, our success rate with them is just nowhere near what it had been before the pandemic. So that’s pretty much all the data I need to know. There’s something about the way we work when we’re in person, and the way we create community. I have an employee who just celebrated 17 years with us. I have just really great retention and good morale.

But the message I’m hearing from the team—for example, we hired a consultant to assess how they’re feeling and what’s going on. And the message I heard over and over and over again was the lack of clarity, a lack of insight, a lack of understanding of where we’re going, what we’re doing. So that’s on me as the leader. I’ve gotta create that. But I’ve never had that kind of feedback in 20-plus years. And so I just think there are a lot of detrimental effects that we’ll realize later on.

Jay Goltz:
The difference between what Karen does for a living and what I do is 180 degrees. I’m sure it’s working great for her. They do mostly computer work. There are very few jobs in my company that one can do from home, that there’d be no difference between being in the office and being at home: Payables, ordering, there are always some other issues that they can talk to the person next to them, or the buyer, or somebody. So there are very few jobs that I have that it’s seamless and perfect, and it’s been working out great working from home. Very few.

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, I just think it’s so much hubris to think that we’re going to offset tens of thousands of years of evolution of working together in a community. If you want [to see] a really interesting thing, watch the show Alone, which is a reality show about being out in the forest. And you watch these contestants. They have no community, and they’re trying to survive. And most of them melt down—not because they don’t have the skills. They give up because they’re alone.

I think that the video concept is just a poor substitute for what is wired into our DNA, what has made us remarkable and unique. I know you’re really into art, Jay. If you look at the artists who have created great meaningful work throughout history, there’s this myth of the lone artist working in his or her shop. And actually, that’s not true. Most artists work really well collaboratively, whether it’s with a partner or with fellow artists, or meeting in salons and talking about ideas. The greatest innovations of humanity have been done, really, face to face. So I don’t know, I think it’s a little bit like cherry flavor versus actually eating a cherry. It tastes similar, maybe. It’s red. But it’s not the same thing.

Loren Feldman:
Shawn, you were talking a couple of minutes ago about not liking the signs you’re seeing for your business. Are you considering making any changes?

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, we’re not going to sit still here. I think I’ve basically had a website that’s been ineffectual for the last three years now. I’m getting, actually, almost no new business through it. We made a really big change in 2020 to the messaging and positioning, and it’s just not working. So we’ve just got to scrap it. We’ve got to start fresh.

Loren Feldman:
Do you have any idea why?

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, I think that the foundational idea behind it was probably pretty good. And it was crafted early in mid-2019, which was about aspiration and hopes and dreams and the ability for small businesses to be awesome. And so we really spoke to owners realizing their full potential and aligning their business to that potential. And I think that’s a good thing. But then you had a freaking pandemic, racial injustice, and it’s just on and on and on. And all this trauma, that’s just not the message that’s gonna resonate for people, let alone if they’re even coming to the site to begin with.

Jay Goltz:
I think you’re onto something. That’s very interesting, because you’re right, it’s just one thing after the other. And I think you’re right that people’s mentalities have changed a little bit. I think, perhaps, the message now is more concrete: Here’s what you can do to run your business better. Because they’re getting more into survival mode.

Shawn Busse:
Right. So the pivot we’re making, Loren—that at least we’re kind of in the sort of shaping phase right now—is just getting very specific on the things that we can do to help people. For example, we’ve built a recruiting and employee onboarding and retention program. It’s actually a set of programs that work really, really well. And I know everybody’s like suffering from this problem.

And we don’t say anything about that anywhere on our website. And so I’m just going to be like, “Okay, here’s something we can do for you. It works. Here’s evidence of it working. Here’s a way you can buy our services that’s a pretty low risk and get this experience.” It’s a little more transactional. It’s a little less transformational and relationship. But I think I’ve just got to move into kind of a war footing, so to speak.

Loren Feldman:
Tell me about the pivot you’re imagining, especially with the website. Do you know what you want to do? Are you going to go through a process to figure out how to address this?

Shawn Busse:
We have a process that has been super successful for years now called True North, and it’s essentially learning the insights of what’s possible, understanding the competition, interviewing employees and customers so that we learn what’s going on inside the business, because a lot of times owners will spin a story that actually is the truth. So it’s a great process, but it’s pretty robust. And a lot of times, I think clients don’t know exactly what it is they’re getting, even though when they come out the other side, they’re like, “That was amazing.”

So what we’ve done is we’ve kind of broken it down into core components and said, “Okay, would you like to understand what’s going on within your culture? Yes? No? We can help you do that.” So we’ll take that little slice of True North and engage in that process of not surveying employees—surveys are a terrible way to understand really what’s working—but actually having conversations with them and looking for themes: Looking for themes of success, looking for themes of struggle, understanding, “Well, gosh, why did we lose all the employees we hired in the last three years, yet we can keep the long-timers?” That’s a good example of a common problem. So we’re going to just break it down into kind of the individual component parts, and then try to understand what a business owner is struggling with right now that they can put their finger on and say, “Yeah, I can’t get enough people in the door,” as an example, “to fill these positions,” or “I’m losing people.” Why is that?

Jay Goltz:
In my mind, your whole message is simply how to help you build a more effective organization. Are you running at 80 percent? Are you running at 90 percent? Are you running at 95 percent? I don’t think most business owners would say, “Oh, yeah, I’m running at 98 percent.” I think they would recognize, “Yeah, you’re right. I’m sure we’re not,” and to say, “Okay, we’re going to help you get from 82 to 92.” And to me, that’s very tangible. And that would resonate with me.

Loren Feldman:
I find it interesting, Shawn, that you’ve developed this process for your clients, and now you’re going to use it on yourself.

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, we tried to use it on ourselves during the pandemic, but I think that was pretty much a failure. And the reason it was a failure, I think, is two reasons: One is, most of our employees were experiencing some form of the trauma of the last two years, whether they were people of color literally looking around and feeling that, or they were empathetic to that, or they had family members who were getting sick. Like, pick your trauma, right?

And so all our excess energy was going into keeping clients happy, keeping clients in it to win it with us. And we really had very limited client turnover, which is wonderful, from a financial standpoint, but the person who got the short end of that stick was basically Kinesis. So we’re doubling down. We’re taking it a lot more seriously. And we’re gonna take a second shot at it. And we also have hired some outside help, because it’s the same thing clients say to us. We can’t read the label from inside the bottle.

Loren Feldman:
What kind of outside help have you hired?

Shawn Busse:
So we hired a consultant to interview our employees in a confidential way—and that’s what I was talking about earlier, about how there’s a lack of clarity in the organization. I didn’t know that. I was like, “Oh, I thought I was being really clear.” Our mission here is to help owner-operated businesses to be successful, and to help them grow in their community, and to do good work. And I just don’t think the full team sees it, especially those who are newer to the company, like those who were hired during the pandemic. I just don’t know that they understand the mission as well as those who’ve been here a long time.

Jay Goltz:
Let me ask you a question. When you say something like, “They can have confidential conversations,” I cringe at that a little bit. So they’re going to go and say something, and they’re going to be promised, “Don’t worry, I’ll never tell anyone you said that,” instead of allowing you to have a conversation with that person and giving them the ability and the confidence to be able to say, “Well, now, Shawn, since you asked, yeah, let me tell you, I was uncomfortable”? And they have an honest conversation to help you understand it versus, “Don’t worry. We won’t tell anybody where this comes from.” I don’t know—that’s certainly not collaborative to me—if that’s what you’re looking for.

Shawn Busse:
I get what you’re saying, Jay, but I think it really can depend on the power dynamics and the employee and their place in their career. So yeah, I could go to Michelle, who has been with us for a really long time. Man, she is the truth-speaker. We call her the oracle. She’ll tell me like when I’m getting out of line or we’re just not on target. And she’ll be really honest and candid.

But you know, an employee who’s only been here a year, and has rarely even seen me or the rest of the team face to face—new employees, they have a lot of concerns about, “Am I doing a good job? Am I safe in this position?” And so, this has been our experience, Jay, is that when we talk to employees within another company, they say things they won’t say to the boss. And I think we have a pretty candid and open company, but I don’t want to be blind.

Jay Goltz:
I fully accept that, 100 percent. My only question is: Do you need to tell them it’s confidential? That’s my only question.

Shawn Busse:
It does make a difference. At least, that’s what we’ve seen when we talk to our clients’ employees. We say, “Look, we will share what you said. But we won’t share who said it.” And that’s what I mean by confidential. So everything that an employee says is open season for us to hear. But who’s saying it is anonymized.

Loren Feldman:
Karen, Shawn was talking about the remote-work situation and the difference between a new employee versus someone who really knows the culture and has been there a while and has an easier time adapting to remote work. Have you seen a difference between new employees versus employees that have been with you for a while?

Karen Clark Cole:
I think it’s easier for the new employees, actually, because they are coming into the job expecting that we are in a remote kind of situation. A lot of them are younger, and they’re really comfortable with video and with the idea that a lot of it is happening face to face, but there’s a computer in between us. And I hear what everyone’s saying. We are human, and of course, that’s not going to change. We do love coming together. But for us, it’s really not been a problem, because we can focus, get our work done, and then come together now, thankfully, when it makes sense.

And Shawn and I have talked about this a tiny bit, but we developed probably 10 years ago a cultural framework that has proven it works, whether you’re remote, whether you’re in one country, another country, one side of the country, whatever your job is. It’s based around things like what Shawn had mentioned before, around clarity. People don’t have clarity on where the organization is going, or why we’re here, what we’re doing. One of the main pillars of our cultural framework is clarity, and we work really hard. We have all kinds of systems in place to make sure that everyone’s getting the right information at the right time about where the company is going, in terms of what I talk about, what we talk about in onboarding, how often we meet with people.

We run our culture like a business. And the results are, we have been able to onboard about 50 people over the course of COVID, and it’s seamless. I met people yesterday in person, who I actually didn’t even realize that I hadn’t met in person. I feel so connected to them. And it was just sort of like, “Oh yeah, that’s weird. We actually haven’t even met in person before.” Yet, we were able to build this relationship. They hear from me on a regular basis about these different aspects of our cultural framework that we measure. And we’re getting constant feedback, and it’s like everything. It’s nothing that 24 hours of constant attention can’t fix. So, yes, it’s a lot of work. I worry when people give up hope or despair about the new world, because the reality is, we have to adapt. We don’t have a choice.

Loren Feldman:
Has there been any one particular strategy that you’ve employed to bring on new employees that you think accounts for how well this is gone? Because again, I’ve got to tell you, this is the biggest complaint I’ve heard across the board. Even people who are very open to remote work say that they have struggled with this particular aspect.

Karen Clark Cole:
There’s not one strategy, but there’s many. It’s a big strategy, and it involves all kinds of aspects. We’re taking greater care in our onboarding, so more time than we might have, because we don’t have that hallway chat. We don’t have that learning by knocking or tapping on someone’s shoulder next door.

And so we’re more intentional about all the different things that we know happen organically in the hallway or in the kitchen, and so we’re creating sort of the micro environments to create that kind of collaboration with colleagues, in one way or another. And I have a coffee chat—I have one this afternoon—with all new employees every couple of weeks. So anybody who’s new.

Loren Feldman:
Virtual or in person?

Karen Clark Cole:
It’s virtual, because we’ve been doing this since COVID. It used to be in person, and so now we just switched immediately to Zoom. And we have six people—including me—max, so we can see everyone’s face nice and clearly. Everyone gets enough time to talk. And I just do that as often as we need to so that everyone has at least some sort of connection with me and the history of the company. Everyone knows I’ll do that all day long, if I need to. If anyone wants to have a coffee with me, they can.

Shawn Busse:
I think the lesson I take, Loren, you just said, “Is there any one thing?” And it’s like, “No way,” right? Like, there’s no silver bullet, but if you want one guiding principle, I think it’s that most owners are radically under-resourcing this area. And if you listen to what Karen is saying here, I mean, she’s spending a significant amount of her own time. She’s got a whole team.

And I think that’s the tension, Loren. It’s that businesses just haven’t leaned hard enough into this. I still hold to my belief that you need face-to-face time. You probably don’t need as much as we had in the old paradigm, but man, if you’re gonna try to do either hybrid or full remote, you’ve got to spend the money—money, time, whatever you want to call it.

Jay Goltz:
There’s another issue just with wearing masks all the time. I have people who work for me who I’ve never seen their face. Since they started, they’re wearing masks, and that’s a little weird.

Loren Feldman:
You’re not objecting to them wearing a mask, I assume.

Jay Goltz:
No, no, not at all. I’m just saying it’s an odd thing. I’ve got a woman who started selling framing, she’s done a lovely job. She’s been here for a year and a half. She’s leaving, which is unusual for us to lose someone after a year and a half. And I realized, I’ve never seen her with her mask off. It’s just a weird thing. And it just adds a different layer of non-humanity.

Loren Feldman:
Kind of to Karen’s point, it can be easier over Zoom.

Jay Goltz:
Right, right. When she said, “I can clearly see their face,” I think to myself, “Well, that’s an advantage of doing a Zoom,” because sitting there with people wearing masks, you miss some of the human—and I’ll tell you, with customers, it’s awkward because you can’t tell when someone’s smiling or not.

Karen Clark Cole:
Yeah, but come on. Jay, you’ve got to evolve. You’ve got to look at their eyes. You’ve got to listen to their voice. We can’t just sit here and complain about it. It’s the reality. You’ve gotta be resilient.

Jay Goltz:
Okay, A) I’m not complaining. And I’m talking about customers who will come in, and then they’ll go on Yelp and go, “No one greeted me,” or, “No one smiled at me.” We’re wearing masks for God’s sake! What do you mean no one smiled at you? I mean, it’s not just us. It’s also the customer.

Karen Clark Cole:
So you just give a warm hello, right? Give a warm hello instead.

Jay Goltz:
Yes, they do that. It’s just it’s not the same as seeing a smile. It’s just not the same, so it just is what it is. I’m not complaining. It just is what it is. I’m assuming that one day we won’t be wearing masks. I’m going with that.

Loren Feldman:
Have you really had people go on Yelp and say, “Nobody greeted me”?

Jay Goltz:
You know what? I don’t know if it was, I don’t know if it was on my site or someone else’s I read, but it was to a company that was all wearing masks.

Loren Feldman:
Or a dream maybe?

Jay Goltz:
No, no, it wasn’t a dream. This is real—not that my dreams aren’t real. I think it was one of my sites, but it is a weird thing that just a smile and a nod used to do it.

Shawn Busse:
I don’t know. We have had some meetings in person with masks on, and I probably would take a Zoom meeting over a meeting with masks on—because you get more information. So for whatever that’s worth. I feel you, Jay.

Jay Goltz:
Yeah, the point is things are different. And it will get back to normal at some point, to some degree. But it’s just… it is different. I mean, there are very few people who aren’t having some level of stress, whether they know it or not, from—pick one of the six reasons.

Karen Clark Cole:
But you have to also realize that there is a new normal. We’re not going back to how it was. The world has changed. You must see it, Jay. They’re not living in big cities piled in anymore, if they have a choice where they can work from the beach in Tahiti. And I don’t blame them. I think it’s awesome. So I think it’s not going back.

Loren Feldman:
I think that’s more your world than Jay’s world.

Jay Goltz:
Yes, I was gonna say…

Karen Clark Cole:
His customers have got to be moving. They can’t all be crammed in the city anymore.

Jay Goltz:
Not a lot. It’s not like the city’s emptied out. A minimal amount of people have left. You’re right. There certainly have been some, but it’s not like 20 percent of the people moved out of the city. Is it 2 percent? Yes, sure. But it’s certainly not 20 percent.

Loren Feldman:
I think there’s some evidence that in a lot of bigger, older cities, the migration away has lessened, but people still aren’t going into the offices the way they used to. So it’s been tough on the businesses that lived off of that office business.

Karen Clark Cole:
Right.

Jay Goltz:
I can tell you, I went to a famous place in Chicago, Manny’s Deli. You know, every president that comes to town, they usually end up at Manny’s Deli. I’ve known the guy for years. He told me his Friday business is half what it used to be because people just aren’t at work on Fridays in the city. And he’s the perfect pulse of what’s going on. I’ve been going there since I was a kid. It’s the first time I ever walked into—its a cafeteria. And it’s the first time I ever walked in there that I didn’t have to stand in line. It was mostly empty. It was shocking.

Loren Feldman:
All right, we are out of time. My thanks to Karen Clark Cole, Sean Busse, and Jay Goltz.