When There’s an Illness in the Family

Introduction:

This week, Jaci Russo tells William Vanderbloemen that she’s a little surprised, given all of the uncertainty in the air, how well her marketing business is holding up. Marketing, as we all know, is often the first thing businesses pull back on. Jaci says her strong results may have something to do with the changes she’s made in the way her agency closes sales. We also get Jaci’s and William’s takes on the conversation we’ve been having about whether owners should consider their employees’ personal circumstances when making HR decisions. But our main topic today is weightier than usual: William’s wife and co-founder Adrienne recently received a cancer diagnosis and has begun treatment. Long-time listeners may recall that William has spoken in past episodes about his efforts to make sure the business can run without him. “And oh my goodness,” he tells us, “how thankful I am that we started that process so long ago.”

— Loren Feldman

Guests:

William Vanderbloemen is CEO of Vanderbloemen Search Group.

Jaci Russo is CEO of BrandRusso.

Producer:

Jess Thoubboron is founder of Blank Word.

Full Episode Transcript:

Loren Feldman:
Welcome, Jaci and William. It’s great to have you here. Jaci, I want to start with you. We’ve had a number of conversations here with owners who feel that the uncertainty coming out of Washington, D.C. has some people pulling back a bit, waiting to see what happens, reluctant to commit on big projects. When companies pull back like that, it’s often marketing that they hold back on first—as I’m sure you’re well aware. I’m wondering if you’ve seen any evidence of that.

Jaci Russo:
Wait, Loren, people cut marketing first? That’s crazy. [Laughter] Yes, and I have been preparing myself for that. I fully expected that this year we would see that, and really, I thought it was starting last year with people unsure about how the election would go. And then roll into now, the elections happened, and there’s a lot of uncertainty because of not knowing tariffs. You know, we’ve heard Liz talk about that, et cetera.

And so I’ve watched with trepidation and wonder and curiosity. And here we are. Unlike after 9/11 or the financial crisis of ‘08 or the oil and gas energy crisis we’ve had two or three times in my area—which used to be a predominantly oil and gas energy sector—now here we are, and I’m not seeing that yet from my clients. So I’m not sure if it’s because we’re a little bit insulated in the B2B space.

My clients make products and services that people need in their everyday lives for the businesses that they run, so that could be part of it. They’re not a luxury item. I don’t know if it’s because people have finally appreciated what we’ve seen scientifically and historically. Every time there’s a downturn, the companies that either stay the course or even-up their marketing are able to gobble up market share. And so people have realized that that’s true, and they’re doing their best to stay the course. But we are seeing high levels of positivity. Now, I don’t have any government contracts, and I only have one client that has government contracts, so that could be a big part of it.

Loren Feldman:
That would help.

Jaci Russo:
Yeah, and I know a lot of people individually who’ve been absolutely affected and laid off, and I think we’re going to see more and more of that. So this is not to say that I am not sensitive to the plight of those who have been directly impacted. I am just shocked at this point, pleasantly surprised, that so, far so good. Knock wood. Please don’t turn this into reality. Let it just be a hypothetical conversation.

Loren Feldman:
You know, I’m a little surprised to hear that, Jaci, as well, in part because you’ve told us over the last couple of years, even in relatively good economic times, that you’ve had issues with some clients who keep saying they’re about to sign on the dotted line with you and then don’t quite pull the trigger. Is that still happening now, or are those people signing up?

Jaci Russo:
Absolutely. We are starting to call that what we lovingly refer to as the mid-year doldrums, because we saw it happen in ‘23 and ‘24. But through the end of ‘24 and now the beginning of ‘25, almost to the end of the first quarter of ‘25, we are not seeing that. Our closing rate is at 80 percent right now. Now, to say that, though, we’re doing some things differently. We aren’t going to a proposal phase in the second step. We’ve moved that phase way down the line. We are still having our typical discovery, and out of that, we are now saying no to about 80 or 90 percent of the people who ask to meet with us.

And so, that is, I mean, you can just say I’m massaging the numbers. But at the end of the day, I only count as a yes or no if they get a proposal, so they have something to say yes or no, too. And by moving those proposals further down the line, yeah, we’re increasing our close rate significantly. But what we are doing is better identifying who’s a good client for us and moving them out of the process, giving them referrals, giving them other resources, providing other suggestions, but really saying: This is the list of who’s right for the agency. And if you’re not right for the agency, we’re not moving to the proposal stage.

Loren Feldman:
William, the last time you were here, you told us that your business was performing quite well in the new year. Are you spending money on marketing?

William Vanderbloemen:
Everything we do is marketing. Every email we send is marketing. How you address people, how you sign an email, it’s all marketing. Is that right, Jaci?

Jaci Russo:
That’s correct, 100 percent.

William Vanderbloemen:
You know, marketing for us, Loren, I think we started our friendship over a conversation about how blog posts are marketing, and most of our marketing is content-based. I guess where are my dollars are going right now—

Loren Feldman:
Yeah, I was just going to say, it’s not free. I mean, somebody has to write those blog posts—although I bet you’re using AI a little bit these days. [Laughter]

William Vanderbloemen:
Not as much as you’d think. Our salary dollars go toward content that gets produced, because everybody here produces content. I’ve got another book coming out in October, and we decided we’re going to hire the same PR firm we used last time because they did such a good job, and frankly, didn’t think twice about it and baked it into the budget. And I’m trying to find some wood to knock on, other than my head. But you know, there’s an old joke that liquor and religion are both recession-proof. [Laughter]

Loren Feldman:
So you’re planning on opening some liquor stores to go with—

William Vanderbloemen:
Right, maybe that’s what I should do. It’s like years ago when Unilever bought Ben & Jerry’s and SlimFast in the same week, kind of a self-perpetuating business.

Loren Feldman:
I didn’t know that.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yes, pretty funny story. Anyway, we are spending normally. Our business is lumpy. We don’t sell 100,000 units of anything in a year. So one month of sales is nothing to get excited or depressed about. But now that we’re midway through the quarter, we’re still probably 30 percent, year-over-year ahead, and I don’t have any idea whether that’s tied to politics. I mean, I know some people are uneasy. I know a lot of small business owners are very bullish because of what’s going on in Washington. So I think it’s a mixed bag.

Loren Feldman:
For those, Jaci, who are seeing people get tentative and are struggling a little bit and wondering, “Is this a time to pull back or not,” do you have any advice for somebody who’s having that debate? I mean, obviously, if there’s no money there, you can’t spend on marketing.

Jaci Russo:
Oh, I wouldn’t spend. Oh, that would not be the first thing I would do at all. To me, when you are tempted to pull back, when you see a plateau or a decline, even worse, I think the first thing you have to do is assess the situation. Give a real good look at what’s working and not working. Why were you selling last year but not selling this year? What is your pivot? Is it your competition? Is it that your audience has changed? Is it that you have changed or that you haven’t changed? Something is triggering it.

And so, I think about the client that we have with government contracts. They are understandably hesitant, to say the least, to do anything moving forward. I fully appreciate—although they haven’t said this to me—their inclinations, probably just to sit under the desk and hope nobody notices them for a little while. You know? It’s a scary time out there, and poking your head up out of the hole could maybe be disastrous.

So the advice that we’ve given them is: Start to look at private opportunities. What’s available to you in the public sector? What companies need your goods and services right now more than ever? And so replace that one big customer who accounted for 80 percent of your business—which, let me assure you, their agency told them years ago that was not a good idea. And so now listen to the advice I gave you. And so it’s not about spending money. It’s about spending some time and some mental energy to say, “Where are my opportunities, and how do I go get them?”

Loren Feldman:
Jaci, do you have anything else to share on—you said you made some changes that maybe has accounted for the higher close rate on your clients. Anything that would translate for others who are hoping to do the same?

Jaci Russo:
Well, I mean, we started to realize that there was a definite bucket of people who weren’t saying yes. They were kicking tires. They were using us to fill a quota—we need so many proposals to say we’ve got three or five, or whatever their magic number is. And so we’re just not playing that game anymore. So that’s part of it. It’s less time wasted on us.

We used to have incredibly customized proposals, and then we got into a high volume of proposals, and so because of the quantity, we couldn’t be as customized. We think that had a direct impact. So we’ve gone back to what we now feel is a really nice blend of some real targeted customization. “You said these are your challenges, and this is how we want to solve that”—and some really nice information around who we are, what we’re about, and how we do it, so you kind of get the best of both sides. We’re able to move through the generating of the proposals still in a timely manner. They’re not sucking a lot of time from the team. But they are more customized like they need to be. And that’s working. Since that has happened, we’ve only heard one “no,” and that’s in four months, maybe five months.

And then, like I said, if they aren’t that, if they don’t meet every one of our criteria—and to be clear, I’m the one who always says, “Yeah, but they’re close enough”—the team is now 100 percent empowered to say, “No, follow your own darn rules. What are you doing?” And because they’re calling me on my stuff, I’m paying more attention to it. And so, it doesn’t matter that they’re my friend. It doesn’t matter that they heard me speak at a conference, and they keep telling me how great I am, because that’s usually how people get to me, is flattery. It wins every time. It doesn’t matter that I think they will be big enough to be one of our clients one day. You know, all of those excuses that I used to make for people because I want to help. My team is holding me accountable, and we’re doing a much better job of providing other resources that they can still leverage.

So, that’s our example. But, you know, Loren, we haven’t talked about this, but we have this space in our building that used to be occupied by our creative team. We built them a whole other really, really nice space. Like, it’s the space they dreamed of. They got to be directly involved in it. It was a very collaborative endeavor. We spent a ton of money, and they are just as happy as could be in their new little nests. The old space, which is a big, open room, whereas now they have walls—no doors, but they have a doorway. And so it accomplishes my desire to still have an open workplace, and their desire to have quiet away from, well, me, I think. I mean, I’ll say my team, but mostly me, because I do talk all day long, to be fair, and I project. And you can be all the way across the building and still clearly hear the interview that I’m doing, or whatever. So they got away from me, which, that’s fine. My feelings were only a little bit hurt for a minute.

Loren Feldman:
It’s great for podcasts.

Jaci Russo:
It is great for podcasts. So I sat for about a year really contemplating, “How are we going to use that space? What’s going to be the best use?” And the whole time—and I’m telling a little bit on myself about how I’m not the smartest sometimes—I get these calls, because part of our remodel was building out the really nice meeting space that I use to teach classes, and people rent. We call it the downtown workshop. And so it’s used for events all the time.

And I get calls a couple times a week from people saying, “Oh, I want to rent the workshop.” In the conversation, I can quickly identify that they need a desk. They’re not having an event. They need a small, inexpensive place to work. They don’t want to go to a coffee shop anymore. They’re tired of being work-from-home and isolated, whatever it might be.

And so, I would give them a list of names, “Hey, go call Kevin with Downtown Development or Destin Opportunity Machine, or this organization, that organization. Somebody can help you.” Well, those places all got filled up. So I reached out to people in the downtown area and said, “Y’all need to build this co-working space that everybody’s asking for.” So I’m going to admit it took me a year for the people asking for it, for me telling somebody else to do it, and me realizing I have the space. I might as well be the one to do it. We are starting construction on Monday. We should be done in about three weeks, because there’s just a little bit that needs to happen: making some doorways, building out some things to better insulate them.

And so now we’re launching this. I made one comment on social media of, “Hey, we’re going to have this thing soon, if you know anybody who’s looking.” I’ve got a waiting list now. That’s all from people who are starting businesses, who are leaving the safe job they’ve had and jumping into this market because they see opportunities. So that whole long story was just to say: There are people who still see optimism on the horizon and an opportunity to go take advantage of something. If I can go fill 20 desks, that tells me that people still see opportunity.

Loren Feldman:
All right, I want to run a debate by both of you that has kind of broken out here on the podcast and also on the 21 Hats Slack channel. It started with a conversation we had with Paul Downs, who, unfortunately, has had to lay some people off. When Paul was on the podcast, he told us about that, and he told us that, in deciding whom to lay off, he took into consideration some personal factors, like who had just put a down payment on a house, who just had a kid, and he did it in the context of: This is part of the reason why he’s loved being a business owner. He really likes his employees. He really likes getting to know them and know them well. And it’s hard not to take that into account at a time like this.

We’ve also heard from people who’ve reacted strongly against that and said, “This really should be a decision that comes down to what’s best for the organization,” in part because no owner can have perfect vision of all the lives of their employees and really know what’s going on. And if you get it wrong, you can forfeit some credibility in doing that. I’d love to hear what both of you think, especially William. This is kind of your business. You’ve been through layoffs yourself. What do you think of this debate?

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, I think there are probably smart people on both sides of it, and I think there are probably compassionate people on both sides of it. You know, somewhat of a North Star for me came from a friend of mine who’s also a client. His name’s Dave Ramsey. He’s a radio personality. He’s the “get rid of your credit cards, save your money.” Most people would know the name.

Anyway, sometime back, I was talking to him about taking investor money or not, or what have you. And you know, “We could probably scale up if I went and raised $10 million or $20 million real fast.” And he said, “Well, William, the whole point of making money, for me, is to have peace of mind. And if the way I’m making money robs me of my peace of mind, what’s the point?” That stuck with me.

And I don’t know that it lands me on one side or the other of this debate, but I think it’s a great question for me to ask myself. And maybe it helps some listeners too. Is this decision going to give me peace of mind about how I’m making my money? And if it is not, then what’s the point of making the money to begin with? So, the for instance, for us: The only significant layoffs we had to do was when the lockdown happened in 2020, and it wasn’t a convenient excuse to let go of people who were just barely getting by. We cut way past the bone, and I made a list of who I thought should go. My COO made a list of who he thought should go: “Let’s compare notes, and we’ll see.” And somehow, providentially I’d say, the lists were identical. And I don’t think we took into account, “They just had a baby,” or, “They just bought a house.” But that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t.

I mean we’ve had, unfortunately, two employees—one lost a spouse, one lost a child, both to the same kind of brain cancer. And I would have had a hard time letting one of those go during those seasons. But I don’t know that people who would do it for the sake of the business itself are necessarily wrong. I guess I would just ask: What’s the motivation? Is it save every penny you can because we’re a business, and that’s the way it is? I guess it’s a free country, and you can do that. To me, it’s: What’s going to give me the most peace of mind and has some compassion?

And then the last thing I’d say is, I grew up surrounded by attorneys. You know, my brother’s an attorney, my father’s an attorney, everywhere you look. And I guess that’s embedded in me a constant question about: What precedent am I setting? And I think that, to me, that’s the most dangerous part of the, don’t fire somebody who just bought—what’s the precedent there? And what kind of risk are you setting yourself up for with a future employee? Texas is an at-will employer state, so it’s not as big an issue, but those are the things that roll through my mind just off the cuff.

Loren Feldman:
How about you, Jaci?

Jaci Russo:
I agree with William—he’s always so eloquent—that there are smart people on both sides of the issue. And I need to remind myself that I have to start every conversation with that, because that’s a nice way to level set the rest of what’s to follow. I would not want to take on—if I was in that position—the evaluation of who can mentally or financially afford a layoff and make a decision that way. Because then that means I’m always looking at it, in my opinion, too far from the employee’s perspective and not enough from my job, which is the company’s perspective.

We don’t have, I think, the same kind of redundancies that other companies might have. So if I’m having to make a layoff in the graphic design department, well, there’s only so much of that. You know all of our departments, I mean, we’ve got great capacity, but everybody does something different. And so I can’t necessarily, at this stage of our growth, play that kind of evaluation of, “Somebody’s got to go, and it can be any one of these 10 people.” It’s really job and performance specific.

We have, I think, a really great team. I mean, almost everybody’s been here for at least a half a decade, if not more than a decade. And so, I would be hard pressed, because somebody’s got something. They’ve all got a sick family member, a new spouse, a new kid, student debt, whatever it might be. I could only look at it from the perspective of: What does the company need?

Loren Feldman:
One of the issues that people brought up is comparing this situation to another one, which is paying people differently based on their personal lives: Do you pay somebody more because they’re supporting a family, even though they’re doing the same job as somebody who doesn’t have a family? And I think that goes off in a different direction. I’m curious, do you guys see this as a comparable issue or very different?

William Vanderbloemen:
I might be a bit of a curmudgeon on that. I don’t pay people based on need, and we have a particularly difficult, well, nuanced situation, in that many of our employees spent part or all of their career before coming to us working in nonprofits or churches, where that is standard protocol: “Oh my gosh! They have more needs. So we need to help them.” Nonprofits pay like they’re employing individual nonprofits, if that makes sense.

Loren Feldman:
Interesting.

William Vanderbloemen:
It’s really stupid. [Laughter] So we’ve almost had to be, pardon me, but kind of a hard ass about that around here and just say, “Hey, guys, we’re helping schools, nonprofits, churches, that sort of thing, but we aren’t one.” And I say all the time, “I really believe you can do good and practice good business at the same time, but that doesn’t mean we’re a nonprofit.” So I might be a little more hard line on that one than the first part of the debate.

Jaci Russo:
I’ll just jump in real quick on that, because I think I can approach it from a little bit of a different perspective. So for some context, I have heard often, and I imagine most people have, the statistic that women make 80 percent less than men. There’s a lot of ways to interpret that statistic.

Loren Feldman:
Eighty percent less? Or 80 percent of—

Jaci Russo:
80 percent of men, 20 percent less. Sorry, thank you for the correction, Loren. Yeah, I mean, we’re not working for 20 cents on the dollar, we’re working for 80 cents on the dollar. And obviously there’s some variables there with regards to persons of color and geography, and I’ve heard it’s as low as 72 cents on the dollar, but I was going with 80 as a nice, even, round number. I’m assuming some of my girls have managed to get us up a little bit in the averages.

So that statistic has stuck with me for a while, and I have heard lots of explanations and discussions around it. If we’re looking at it over the course of an entire career, is it because some women leave the workforce to go have kids? Is it because of the kinds of jobs that some women have that are lower-paying than some of the kinds of jobs men have? Lots of discussion and explanation around it.

As it’s on my mind, two things have come forward. One is, inevitably, when I am interviewing men and when I am interviewing women, the men—almost every one of them, I can’t think of one who hasn’t—will very early in the process clearly state exactly what it is they need to make, without question. Women almost never bring it up in the interview process. And when I do, “I mean, I’d like to make around this, but I could go lower if you need me to.”

And so, as an employer, am I gonna fight the good fight to help women get their average up? Or as an employer, am I gonna get the best person for the job at the best rate? You know, I have to balance both of my interests. So I read this article just the other day that said, “1.2 percent”—I’m gonna round up to one and a half percent just for ease—”1.5 percent of women-owned companies get to a million dollars a year in revenue.” That is startling to me—startling.

And the article gave a lot of really good information around how women price their business when they are the decision maker. Because I’m thinking about when I started this company and how I priced myself. And just like I see women sitting in that interview seat, this article was talking about women entrepreneurs and the way they price things versus the way male entrepreneurs price them, how they value themselves, all of those kinds of things, right?

And so, to all of our points here, it is a challenge when you’re thinking about who you’re hiring, who you’re laying off, how you’re growing. All of this ties in, because there are inclinations to not fire a guy because he’s got a family to support. So does she. So it all factors in. I think, if I was to pick a side in this discussion, final wrap up, I would have to pick the side of: You got to do what’s best for the company and not take someone’s personal into consideration, because you don’t know who they are or what’s happening for them, really, when they leave that door at five o’clock.

William Vanderbloemen:
At the risk of contradicting myself, I’m gonna do one other thing, Loren. And it kind of does tie back to my friend Dave Ramsey. We’ve got a wonderful team member who’s been with me a long time, who doesn’t do a very good job of managing her or his money. I’m going to leave it androgynous so we don’t single anybody out. And I felt like, “Maybe I’ll give him a raise and that’ll help him.” And Dave pointed out to me, he said, “William, you could double their salary. They’re still going to be in debt.” You can’t solve people’s spending habits, and just increasing their salary is going to do nothing but create more levers to pull for more debt.

And I don’t know if it hardened me or clarified things for me that, short of something catastrophic happening, I need to let people live their lives and manage. We did, at that point, insist that all new employees take the course Dave offers called Financial Peace University. What they do with it is up to them, but at least we’ve given them a vehicle for: Here’s how you manage your money. We have a lot of young employees, and, frankly, their parents, a lot of times, just didn’t tell them how to save, how to have an emergency account. All the basics that most everybody listening already knows.

Loren Feldman:
All right, the last thing I want to talk about today concerns you, William. I was so sorry to see that you recently posted on LinkedIn that your wife, Adrienne, has been diagnosed with cancer. It’s been very recent. First of all, of course, how’s she doing?

William Vanderbloemen:
I don’t know, Loren. We haven’t done this before. I’m not trying to sound, you know, like a smart ass. I just genuinely don’t know. I mean, we’ve been truly humbled by the number of people who have reached out and offered positive thoughts and prayers and the like. Right now, while we’re recording this, I’m supposed to be keynoting at a conference out of town, and an acquaintance of mine—we know each other a little bit through work, but we’re not buddy-buddy—who is about my age and lost his wife to cancer a couple years ago, just called me out of the blue.

He saw our post. He runs a big research institute, and he said, “Can I give you unsolicited advice?” I said, “Sure.” He said, “If I could do anything over again, the time I had before we started the really hard treatment, I would have canceled everything. I would not have left town once. And you didn’t ask for this advice, but…”—he was actually the other keynoter at the conference today. He said, “Send me your notes. I’ll give your talk if you want.” Things like that have just—not that I’ve lost faith in humanity or anything, but boy, it sure shores up your outlook on humans when things get real.

Loren Feldman:
You apparently made a deliberate decision to talk about this fairly openly, posting on LinkedIn and offering to go ahead and do this podcast as well. Tell me about your thinking with that.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, I’ve had a little time to think on this. So I hope this doesn’t sound polished, but my first concern is Adrienne, of course, and I don’t really care about much else. So when we got the news, which was totally out of the blue—I mean, she was actually doing some preventive maintenance to try and figure out how to deal with recurring chest colds without using antibiotics. And she went and got a CAT scan of her lungs, which was completely clear, but they said, “You do have something funny going on in your abdomen.” And no family history, no nothing. So, stunning news. And none of the behavioral things: she doesn’t smoke. She barely, rarely drinks. I mean, all the things. So out of the blue.

The first thing, we were like, “Well, we’re going to have to talk to the kids. And then we’ve got to decide whether we’re going to be private about this or not.” And Adrienne said, “Well, my desire would be to have as many people as possible praying.” So I don’t want to make everything that I write or produce sound like we’re talking about her cancer, but she said, “Just tell everybody. I’ll use every prayer I can get.”

We’re in MD Anderson, which is, you have Sloan Kettering up near you, but MD Anderson’s usually ranked one or two in the world in cancer, and it’s about two and a half miles from our house. We’re with the best doctor for this particular kind of thing in the whole world. But I think even with all of that, it will take more than just medicine. So she said, “Just tell everybody.” And we don’t want to make a Debbie Downer to end the podcast at all. We’re positive and hopeful, but sure do appreciate you asking.

I will say, we do a lot of succession planning as a business for other clients. And it made me, years ago, say I need to be a little less relevant every year around here so the thing can live after me. And oh my goodness, how thankful I am that we started that process so long ago. And, you know, I can’t just take off forever, but I’ve been able to pretty well shut down for the last two and a half weeks and just focus on being at home. And it hasn’t hurt the business.

Loren Feldman:
You have talked about that here a good bit. I think the example you’ve given most often is how you’ve expanded your summer vacation time away from the business very deliberately to give it a chance to run without you. This is a little bit different, obviously, but that’s what you’re referring to, I assume.

William Vanderbloemen:
It is. It is. And I mean, my ego would like to think we would grow faster if I were more involved. But thankfully, it’s been quite manageable right now, and the whole company is still on the adrenaline rush of just hearing the news, and everybody rushing to help. I mean, I think I’m gonna have to go buy another freezer for our house for all the food people brought by. It’s amazing.

And when that dies down, and we get into a rhythm of treatment and such, we probably ought to revisit on the podcast how I’m trying to manage work, life balance, and that sort of thing. But for now, everybody’s kind of amped up and rallying and going the extra mile to try and help Adrienne, which is really humbling.

Loren Feldman:
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Adrienne, who is lovely and delightful. She’s also been an important part of the business, your co-founder, I believe CFO, at some point. Has she been active in the business recently?

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, yes and no. Not in the day-to-day. She watches the finances like a CFO, but we have a director of finance. The more important thing is, you know, we joke all the time, and she says, “If I were the only one running the business, we would never make a sale. If William were the only one running the business, we wouldn’t have a penny in the bank.”

So, I don’t make any big decisions without consulting with her. And her involvement in the business is long walks with the dogs in the morning and talking through what’s happening and offering counsel that I don’t see. I tell people, she’s just almost perfect in every way, except for a blind spot when it comes to her taste in men. [Laughter]

Jaci Russo:
William, just to jump in real quick, I too was so sorry to hear the news, and I obviously am praying for both of you every day.

William Vanderbloemen:
Thank you, that means a lot.

Jaci Russo:
You’re welcome. I respect your approach. Also working with my spouse, I have always described me as all gas and him as all brake. And together, we make the car go. So I think it’s a very similar relationship, and I know how vital we both are, not just to each other and to our kids but to our company. And so I can’t imagine running this place without him.

Loren Feldman:
Jaci, have you taken any steps, or done any of the thinking that William obviously did, to kind of prepare the company for a period when you might not be available?

Jaci Russo:
I’ve done all the thinking. I am almost completely replaced here. I have really kind of two small things that I still do that could be handed over at any time, but I’ve gotta have something. I have to have a reason to be in the building. Because I believe that I have to be replaceable, because I know I’m not going to be inside this building forever and ever. And so, absolutely, we can’t grow if I’m still holding tasks.

Now, somebody will have that conversation with Mr. Russo, because we had our annual board meeting last year. It’s just the two of us, so it’s also a vacation, but we went to Michigan. We did the entrepreneur-in-residence retreat at the Edward Lowe Foundation, and we spent three days quietly—and then sometimes loudly—discussing both of our future plans. You know, 5, 10, 15 years.

And we came to some understandings that, at some point, I will no longer be the daily runner of this company, and he has to be okay with letting me ascend to a different role. Think of it as like a chairman, maybe. And at the same time, I highly encourage him to find ways to replace himself. He needs to be the creative director, not the creative doer. And so he’s working on it. He’s honestly, truly, now, for a time, actually working on it. For a while, like about 10 years, he just told me he was going to work on it. But it’s going to be really hard for him to let go, to the degree that I have.

Loren Feldman:
William, I know this is all very recent. Is there anything you’ve already realized that you didn’t think of that you would have liked to have prepared for?

William Vanderbloemen:
Oh, wow. That’s such a good question, Loren. Let me think on that.

Loren Feldman:
Sure, it’s early for that question, I recognize.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, we’ve been so fortunate, I mean, so fortunate that, financially, we can pay the bills. I sit and look at, when we’re down at MD Anderson, which is, they call it here in Houston, “the best place you never want to visit.” And I look at older couples, older people who are alone, who don’t even know how to really work an iPhone and don’t know how to—you know, everything is through apps now at hospitals. And we’ve just been so fortunate and have so much health about us. What do we do to prepare more? I probably would have spent more time with Adrienne, you know, in earlier years. I probably wouldn’t have traveled as much.

Loren Feldman:
I’m also curious, you have your background as a pastor. I assume you’ve had countless conversations with other people going through similar situations. Has that been helpful to you?

William Vanderbloemen:
Actually, I think it’s revealed to me what an idiot I was when I was trying to be a pastor. [Laughter]

Loren Feldman:
Why do you say that?

William Vanderbloemen:
People say the stupidest stuff. I mean, for instance, if you’ll indulge me for a minute: A dear friend sent us a screenshot of the verse of the day that they’re reading in their devotional, or whatever. And it’s a line where Paul is writing, and Paul says, “God spoke and said, ‘My grace is sufficient for you.’” And it’s a fairly quoted verse among churches and things. It’s like, my grace is going to be sufficient for you. Oh, what a nice verse.

Well, the problem with sending me a verse is, I’ve actually read the whole Bible quite a few times. The context—I mean, this is how dumb I was as a pastor. I probably did the same thing. The context is, if you read just before that line, Paul says, “Three times I asked God to remove a thorn from my flesh”—or you could say, tumor from my liver—and he said, “No, my grace is sufficient for you.” [Laughter]

Jaci Russo:
Oh, ouch.

William Vanderbloemen:
I think I just said the stupidest things. I think what I’m learning through this is, I should have talked less. You know, it’s interesting, if you go to the Jewish or Christian scriptures to the book of Job, he goes through hell, and his friends show up, and they get a lot of things wrong. But the one thing they got right: It says his friends showed up for him, and they sat with him for seven days. And they didn’t say a word. And I think I’ve had to sit with a lot of families that have gotten bad news, and I probably tried to offer platitudes too quickly. Life’s messy and fragile.

The other thing I’ll say, on a very positive note, is it’s been, gosh, 16 years since I did any form of active pastoral ministry, really, 18 since it was full-time. And when I sat with people who had been through chemo and radiation and all these things, it was like: Let’s cut off as much as we can, and microwave the person, and zap them. And treatment has come light years since just, you know, 20 years ago. And new things are coming out, like, daily. So on the positive side, I’m so rusty as a pastor that I didn’t realize it’s a lot brighter outlook than it was 20 years ago.

Jaci Russo:
That’s good.

Loren Feldman:
That is great to hear. And I think a really good note to end this conversation on. Again, William, obviously not the easiest of topics, but you managed to actually make us laugh a little bit. And I think that’s probably the pastor training, to some extent.

Jaci Russo:
Yeah. How is it that I’m the one that got teary and choked up, and William is calm, cool, and collected?

William Vanderbloemen:
Oh, I’m Dutch.

Jaci Russo:
You’re in your right position, too.

Loren Feldman:
All right, my thanks to Jaci Russo and especially William Vanderbloemen. You guys are always generous about sharing your experiences, but especially this week, and I know we all appreciate it.

William Vanderbloemen:
Thanks, Loren.