What it takes to run a business

Podcast

This week, Jay Goltz, Liz Picarazzi, and William Vanderbloemen discuss how their businesses are holding up and whether they’ve gotten past the labor shortage (short answer: No). The conversation veers into a discussion of how to finance growth and what to do when your bank is unresponsive (find another one!). And then Liz explains her intense distaste for dealing with lawyers, accountants, and insurance agents and how she’s trying to cope with it. “Believe me,” responds Jay, “I haven't paid enough attention to certain things that I should have, and it's cost me. But yeah, we can't every day just do the inspiring, cool, fun, oh-my-God, we-had-a-big-sale, look-at-the-problem-I-solved thing. It’s all part of the package.”

This week, Shawn Busse, Hans Schrei, and Sarah Segal explain what they would do if I gave them $10,000 a month to spend on marketing. As we all know, there’s a lot going on right now. No one’s entirely certain where the economy is headed, and no one’s entirely certain where digital marketing is headed. So it seemed like a good time to ask our regulars where they would place their bets if we offered them each an imaginary pot of money to promote their brands. Spoiler alert: Their responses gave us a good sense of what these business owners think is working right now—and it’s definitely not billboards.

This week, we welcome another new panelist to the podcast, Hans Schrei, who is co-founder of Wunderkeks, an e-commerce bakery in Austin, Texas. Hans tells Jay Goltz and Liz Picarazzi why he and Luis Gramajo, his husband and co-founder, sold a business in Guatemala, immigrated here in 2019, and started a cookie business from scratch, going from selling at farmers’ markets their first year to doing more than $5 million in e-commerce last year. Hans also explains why he doesn’t think it’s enough just to make a delicious cookie, why he’s trying to raise seed capital, and what would happen to his visa if Wunderkeks were to fail.

This week, in a special bonus episode, Kurt Wilkin talks about how he helped build several businesses, including most recently a recruiting business called HireBetter, and explains why he hates most business books. It has to do with the attention deficit issues he, like many entrepreneurs, tends to experience. So when he decided to write a business book of his own, he kept it short, and he structured it so that you can find the parts that are most relevant to you and skip the rest. It’s called “Who’s Your Mike?” and it features chapters on the kinds of hiring and management challenges all entrepreneurs confront, including situations involving employees like Mike. Who exactly is this guy Mike? Oh, you know. He’s the incredibly loyal and hard-working employee who’s been with you from day one but who isn’t necessarily growing with the business. Says Kurt, “We all have, or have had, or will have a Mike.”

This week, Sarah Segal tells Shawn Busse and Paul Downs why she’s never articulated a set of core values for her business and why she’s thinking about doing it now. But she’s wondering whether establishing her values will really make a difference. Do employees care? Do clients care? Both Shawn and Paul say they do. In fact, Paul says his core values have been extremely helpful when it comes to recruiting. And Shawn says he thinks sharing values can be the best competitive advantage smaller businesses have. Plus: We get an update on how Paul’s big marketing initiative is going, and we follow up on why Sarah feels compelled to participate in almost all of her firm’s client calls.