Why Isn’t This Product Selling?

Introduction:

This week, Shawn Busse, Liz Picarazzi, and Sarah Segal talk about how long to keep trying when a product isn’t selling the way you expected. For Liz, the problem product is her package locker, which is designed to defeat porch pirates but hasn’t really taken off—especially considering how widespread the concern is. Could the glitter-bomb guy be the answer to Liz’s marketing challenge? Or is it time for her to back off? Plus: In the age of Zoom and remote workers, what have the owners figured out about running effective meetings? And if you’re pricing a range of services in a proposal, do you price your offering a la carte? Do you always charge the same prices? And is there a way to ease a client into a monthly retainer?

— Loren Feldman

Guests:

Liz Picarazzi is CEO of Citibin.

Sarah Segal is CEO of Segal Communications.

Shawn Busse is CEO of Kinesis.

Producer:

Jess Thoubboron is founder of Blank Word Productions.

Full Episode Transcript:

Loren Feldman:
Welcome, Shawn, Liz, and Sarah. It’s great to have you here. To start today, I want to talk about meetings. I’ve deliberately avoided this topic, mostly because I’ve spent too much of my life in bad meetings. But a lot has changed in the last couple of years. With the technology, with more people working remotely, in some ways, I think it’s gotten a little bit better. In some ways, it’s gotten much more difficult. But there’s also this constant, growing awareness of how bad meetings are. So I’m wondering, has anything changed for you guys? Have you figured anything out? Has it gotten better? Has it gotten worse?

Shawn Busse:
Honestly, you just sort of set up like the typical meeting problem with that, which is creating engagement. It’s so much harder to create engagement when you’re in a virtual space. That’s just been my experience.

Loren Feldman:
Well, let me point out something funny about that, Shawn, because arguably, we are having a virtual meeting right now. And people actually go out of their way to listen to our meetings that we have virtually. And I have a sponsor that pays me to be associated with these meetings. So in a way, that kind of suggests that it is possible, right?

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, yeah. Well, we’re just amazing. [Laughter] I think that the real challenge that I’ve seen is that it’s easy to be passive. It’s really easy to be passive in a virtual environment. And so to your point: Why do people listen to our meetings? The reason is, I think, two things. One, you’ve got a highly engaged group in the meeting. Everybody’s here voluntarily. We’re excited to share our experiences and learn from each other. So we’re a highly engaged group.

And then I think the other key piece is you’re the facilitator. So Loren, you manage to kind of keep things moving forward, prompting people, asking the right questions. And so the experience I’ve had is that running a meeting puts a lot more work on the person who’s facilitating the meeting, because they not only have to present what they want to share. But if you want to make it a great meeting, they have to engage everybody in the room. And so to do that, you’re fortunate you have a bunch of entrepreneurs. We have no shortage of things we want to talk about, and we’re all quickstarts. So that helps a lot. But in an organization, you’re going to have introverts, you’re going to have folks who maybe are nervous about speaking up.

And so one of the things I’ve found that’s really helpful is to help prepare people in advance. So to say to them, “This is one of the topics we’re going to talk about in the meeting. And I want you to think about X, Y, and Z.” And then we’re going to go around the room or have kind of a popcorn style of feedback to get folks participating and to up-level the energy in the meeting. Those have been some of the insights that I’ve had.

Loren Feldman:
Shawn, let me just follow up on that quickly. You said, “go around the room.” When the pandemic hit, you gave up your office space. I assume you’re using that term metaphorically. Are most of your meetings virtual, at this point?

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, I mean, probably 80 to 90 percent are virtual, at this point.

Loren Feldman:
And what impact has that had?

Shawn Busse:
Personally, I’m seeing that, over time, I don’t love it. We’re looking for office space this year. I think we need to change that ratio to maybe 60/40, so that we’re actually seeing each other in the real world. And I think there’s a good argument that a lot of meetings are kind of a waste of time, so eliminate those. And then there’s another type of meeting that’s more functional. I think that’s pretty good for an online meeting. But then I think the really important meetings, having them in person, there’s a lot of value to that. So trying to shift more toward that in 2023 is important for me.

We used to buy lunch for everybody on Friday, and gather around. It was optional, you didn’t have to attend. But the camaraderie that grew out of that, and just fun, and levity, and ending the week on a high note really helped our business. It really helped our culture. We had single-digit turnover for years. And if you compare us to, let’s say, a traditional marketing or PR consultancy, that industry had 30-percent to 40-percent turnover before the pandemic.

So the things we were doing were really effective at creating a sense of shared connection and camaraderie. So I don’t know that those are quote-unquote meetings, but they were really important, in terms of getting people together. And replacing that with Zoom, it’s okay. But call me a skeptic. I just don’t think it’s the same. I know it’s not the same. I promise you.

Loren Feldman:
Liz, how about you? What’s it been like for you?

Liz Picarazzi:
Well, I should say that my attitude toward meetings is largely informed by what corporate meetings were like when I worked at American Express. As in most corporations, there were way too many meetings. I remember there was sometimes a meeting about a meeting, sometimes a meeting about a meeting about a meeting, and it went from there. Sometimes they called it an “alignment meeting.” But before the alignment meeting, what would happen before you went to a decision maker with a bigger meeting is you might have a pre-alignment meeting.

So that’s what my reference point is. And so I kind of feel since I became an entrepreneur 10 plus years ago, that I’m kind of in heaven with not having a lot of meetings. Having said that, there are some things I’ve learned along the way that seem to have really helped. The first one is kind of similar to what Shawn said. If you let people know what the meeting is, and you also maybe give them a teaser of what to think about or what to bring—nothing big, but so they know that they will be asked to participate. I had a meeting last week that was like that. I gave people two questions about a week ahead of time. And so they came to that meeting prepared to talk about, in our case, best client and worst client of the year for 2022. And it was fun. We do it every year.

Sarah Segal:
Did they have to bring reasons?

Liz Picarazzi:
No, they didn’t have to bring anything. I think most of us have had experience with those clients, and luckily, we don’t have that many bad clients. But when we do it, it helps to talk about it. And then usually we joke about it, because there are sometimes some ridiculous people.

But so back to what my learnings were, the first one is: Engage them ahead of the meeting. The second one is: Have someone who is like a scribe, who’s taking notes on what the action steps are, who’s doing it, what’s the deadline. In our case, it’s usually Frank, actually, and we did not have that role of scribe and follow-up notes before he joined the company. He’s COO, so that’s part of it. He wants to make sure things are moving ahead. But that was a step that we took that was really important.

And then the third thing that I learned is: There’s a very big difference between a meeting of knowledge workers and a meeting of doers. And I prefer the meeting of doers, because then there’s kind of a mix of thoughts, discussion, and action discussion. My installation team, we don’t meet with them that often, but when we do, there are very solid actions that come out of it that are not in the knowledge realm. They’re more in the doing realm.

Oh, but I do have one other thing I should say, and that is, when I was in corporate, sometimes when I wasn’t invited to a meeting, I didn’t like that either. [Laughter] You got left out. I was not considered necessary at the meeting. And in many cases, that was probably true. But in some of them, when I really thought I should be there, that would get to me. So it’s a little bit contradictory, a complicated relationship with meetings. But overall, I really like meetings more as an entrepreneur than I did as a cubicle worker.

Loren Feldman:
“It’s really important that I come to this totally unnecessary meeting. Please invite me.”

Shawn Busse:
I mean, I think that’s the thing about it, especially as you get into the corporate structure. So much of it is about politics and power. The attendance and an invitation to a meeting becomes a symbol of that, versus in a small business, it’s a lot less of that BS. And that’s really cool. I’m kind of curious, Liz. I love the scribe. It’s such a valuable role. I’m kind of wondering if we could replace Frank with AI. [Laughter] I’ve seen all these uses for AI that are really stupid, but I’ve been thinking about summarizing meeting notes. And I think that you could potentially just put a recorder in the room, record the room, and throw it into AI.

Sarah Segal:
I think that Otter.ai does that. We record all of our meetings, and I think there’s a new function on it where it will give you a summary.

Shawn Busse:
Yeah. I had a client do that recently with ChatGPT.

Sarah Segal:
I haven’t played with it yet.

Shawn Busse:
It was amazing. I was like, “Whoa. That’s pretty good.” So anyway, just a thought, because we do that with our clients, and it’s really valuable—especially when you get months down the road and you’ve made decisions way back when to be able to refer back to like, “Well, we made that decision. Why did we do that?” I’m thinking that’s a good application for AI.

Liz Picarazzi:
Right, I like the idea of it because it’s all indexable.

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, that’s great. That’s actually really great.

Loren Feldman:
Sarah, how about you?

Sarah Segal:
First of all, I think that most of you know that—I want to say a year ago—we switched to having something called “non-meetings week.” We were finding that during COVID and just too many Zoom calls that people were getting burned out having to prep for client calls. So we only have meetings with clients every two weeks, and we’ve never had any pushback from that. In fact, most of our clients are relieved that they don’t have to talk to us every week. But the way that we kind of sell that as a feature is that we’re on Slack with them all day, every day.

So really, the meeting that we have every two weeks with clients is just to talk about things that aren’t effectively talked about on a Slack chain. We send out an agenda for our calls with clients. We have a scribe on every one of our client calls, and then we send out action items. So that’s basically our, “This is what we talked about.” It’s a Google Doc, and we just cut and paste and update it, and it’s for the entire year. So you can search it pretty easily, which is nice.

One thing I try to do is, I make sure if there’s a meeting that involves my greater team—we have a weekly meeting on Mondays just to get all of our ducks in a row—is to make sure that most people have some sort of ownership, where they have to run through what’s being done, so everybody gets called on, and it’s not a surprise. So it takes those people who kind of like to not be on the center stage and makes them kind of participate.

Shawn Busse:
Do either of you have all-hands meetings, or monthly team meetings—any kind of a way to distribute to the whole company what’s going on?

Sarah Segal:
We have one every Monday.

Loren Feldman:
Even in your non-meeting week?

Sarah Segal:
Yeah.

Loren Feldman:
So you do have internal meetings?

Sarah Segal:
We try to arrange them where, if there are people who are not on certain clients, that we address those clients and the things that we need to do for those clients early on, so they can drop off the call, so they don’t have to stay the whole time. But yeah, even our contractors are on that call.

Shawn Busse:
What about you, Liz?

Liz Picarazzi:
Yeah, we do meetings every Tuesday. Actually, I shouldn’t say all-hands-on-deck. It’s the office team and not the installation team. And with that, everybody just brings what they’re doing, and we go around the room and we talk about it. We’ve got a scribe.

The one thing I would say that doesn’t always go as well is we don’t often follow up on what is to be done. There isn’t anyone playing that enforcement role. And so I don’t think it’s bad how it is, but I think it could be improved a bit. And I’m actually the worst person, because I’m like the entrepreneur with ideas all over the place. I’ll volunteer myself to do things, and then I won’t do them. And I won’t remember, because I didn’t take notes at the meeting either.

Sarah Segal:
You’ve gotta get somebody to put it into your project management system and then assign it to you.

Liz Picarazzi:
Absolutely. Because sometimes, especially if they’re writing tasks, I am one of those people where I am a good writer, but I have to be inspired to write. And that may take three weeks. So if it’s something that’s due, having that person follow up with the action items is something I need to put in place.

Loren Feldman:
Why isn’t your scribe Frank following up and keeping track of what you’ve committed to?

Shawn Busse:
That’s why he needs to be a robot!

Sarah Segal:
I would actually pass that baton, Liz. Whoever is asking you to do that writing project, or the project that you said that you volunteered yourself for, say to them, “Hey, keep following up with me on this.” And put it on them, so it’s not on you, if you don’t have a checklist that you go by.

Liz Picarazzi:
Yeah, and I sometimes do that, but inconsistently, to ask the project owner to follow up. But I feel like I’m the bottleneck a lot of the time, and I hate that feeling. So I really need someone to also enforce that with me.

Shawn Busse:
Back to your question, Loren, around what has changed, and what have you given up? When we were really in fast-growth mode—30 percent, 40 percent a year, fastest growing company in Portland five years in a row—what we were doing in that era was, every month, we were reviewing the month past and talking about all of the success and wins that we had had. We would do open-book financials and talk about our growth, and we would go through new sales, new-customer acquisition. It was really a momentum building kind of activity every month.

And then at the end of the year, we would have a review. And basically, what I would do is, I would take all those meetings—which were pretty slide heavy—and I would compile them and kind of do a year-end review. And what was really cool about that process was that it generated a lot of awareness around what we were achieving as a company. And I think that’s a real value to a meeting, in terms of sharing what’s been accomplished. Because it’s really easy to forget what you’ve done, especially over the course of a year. And bringing people into that momentum as a company was very, very powerful.

The reflection I’ve had on that in the years since is that it puts a lot of onus on the owner, if they’re kind of like the center of that kind of ringmaster cheerleading kind of thing, which I was at the time. And that can be kind of tiring. So I think taking the good of that, of reflections and momentum and sharing, is a very good thing for a meeting. And I think it’s easy to forget what you’ve accomplished as a company, because you get so focused on doing the work and delivering the work.

Sarah Segal:
Oh, that’s important. We’re terrible at that, in terms of recording our wins, because we’re so focused on just doing the day-to-day. We work on submitting for awards, but we’re very bad at being like, “Oh, okay, we got all this coverage.” Or, “We did this wonderful thing in March,” and it’s like December, because we’ve moved so quickly and so far beyond that, and we didn’t record it in any way. So that’s a really smart way to get everybody excited about the momentum of the company.

Loren Feldman:
Sarah, your regular staff meetings, I assume you have a mix of people who are in the office and people who are on Zoom. Is that right?

Sarah Segal:
So we have a new office, as I mentioned, I think in previous podcast episodes.

Loren Feldman:
Have you moved in?

Sarah Segal:
We’ve moved in. We’re still furnishing. Everybody who’s on staff was in the office on Tuesday, and it was so nice. And there was just this buzz in the air that I think everybody was excited about. I asked everybody what they wanted to do, and our team meeting is going to continue to be on Mondays. But everybody plans to be in the office on Tuesdays.

So we made kind of our rule of thumb for being here is: If you’re within 15 miles of the office, you have to be here two days a week. If you’re outside 15 miles, you have to be here one day a week. And they kind of all figured it out on their own that everybody’s gonna be here on Tuesday, and then the rest of the folks are going to come on Thursday. So it’s just nice to have everybody here and have those opportunities for larger conversations if needed.

Loren Feldman:
Did you say that your meetings are on Monday or on Tuesday?

Sarah Segal:
Mondays. So we do them on Zoom, but they involve our contractors, and they’re not here.

Loren Feldman:
You’re choosing to do your meetings on a day when you don’t expect everybody to be in the office.

Sarah Segal:
Well, because our contractors are on our [Monday] team call.

Loren Feldman:
Well, some people do choose to do the mix, and that’s what I was going to ask you about. And I understand why you would want to try to avoid that. I was wondering if you’ve tried it at all. It is challenging to have a mix of people in the office and people on Zoom, obviously.

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, so we just do it on Zoom. People who dial into a call like that, it doesn’t feel like they’re really there or part of the conversation. They’re just kind of listening in. So we’re gonna keep the Monday team call. Those are people who can’t come into the office because they live in other parts of the country. So I think that that’s kind of the way we’re gonna move forward.

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, I will add, that really fires something up for me, Sarah, which was, we had one remote employee before the pandemic, and she would kind of Zoom into those all-hands meetings. And in retrospect, that’s a shitty experience. I’m pretty sure that that’s a bad thing, to have that mixture of some people remote and some people in-person for meetings that are important.

Sarah Segal:
I agree.

Shawn Busse:
I think it’s fine if it’s kind of functional, like data is being transmitted. But any kind of leadership or culture building or anything like that, I think you need to accept that if you’re going to have remote employees, have fewer of them and make them in-person. Or have them all remote, like you’re doing.

Sarah Segal:
Well, it depends on the size of the meeting, too. If it’s just three or four people, and you can have somebody Zoom in, you’re all on and it’s more engaging. But as soon as you go over five, it’s not productive for somebody to be Zooming into four other people talking.

Shawn Busse:
Liz, I don’t think this probably applies. Maybe it does, I don’t know. Do you have any experience with this?

Liz Picarazzi:
Not really, I mean, we have an office. We have one employee who works virtually four days a week. So with her, we easily just use Zoom or Google Meet. With contractors, they don’t usually come into the office. Kind of like Sarah, the contractors don’t come into the office for the meetings. They’ll be coming in virtually. But as the company grows, I know that the structure and the number of meetings are going to change, but I’m pretty happy with how it is right now.

Loren Feldman:
Sarah, when you draw the distinction between employees and contractors, do you actually have a requirement that employees come into the office? Or can employees be fully remote?

Sarah Segal:
If you’re on staff, you have to live in the Bay Area. I want to see your face. [Laughter] And we have contractors that we love who live outside of it. But I had a long discussion with my operations manager, and they’re just not as invested in the success of the company if they’re not here. And the team is a pretty tight-knit team. They like each other, and we want to add to that. And you can’t really get to know people on a personal level if you’re entirely remote all the time.

So it was a tough decision. But we came to the decision that if you want to be on staff, you have to come into the office—if you live within those parameters right now. The hybrid work requirements will probably change by the end of the year. We’ll just keep upping it, based on social norms and what people want. But it’s a nice vibe when people are here and having real conversations, and you’re just more productive. Because you’re not waiting for somebody to get on the call. You’re not having to log in. You can literally turn the corner, or look across your desk and say, “Hey, what do you think of this? Hey, can you look at this?” It’s a time saver, too.

Loren Feldman:
What are you going to do when a valued employee tells you they want to move across the country, but remain an employee?

Sarah Segal:
I will cry. [Laughter] I don’t know. I can’t tell you what I would do. I have one employee who loves to travel. And she will go live in Mexico for a month, but come back. And I have no problem with that. But if one of my staffers decides to relocate to Florida? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know how I would approach that. If they’re too valuable, obviously, there would have to be some deep thought into that. But I prefer for people to be here.

Loren Feldman:
Shawn, have you confronted this?

Shawn Busse:
Oh, yeah. I mean, we confronted it before the pandemic, when I had an employee who said, “Hey, I have bad news. I love it here, but I’ve got to move to San Diego. My family’s there. I need to be with my family.” And I was like, “Well, we’re gonna figure this out,” because she was just too valuable. And luckily, on the West Coast, the flight from San Diego to Portland was pretty tenable. And so we flew her back and forth a lot. It helped us figure out Zoom before we needed to figure out Zoom, which was great. So I have her to thank for that. She’s still with us, which is great.

And then in the pandemic, I had another employee who was like, “Hey, I’ve gotta move to Maine. I have a young child. I have family there. I really want her to experience her grandparents.” And I was like, “I can’t argue with that.” And so we’re like, “All right, we’re gonna figure it out.” And we’ve made it work. But we’re hiring for a new role, and we’re hiring in Portland. And I think those two employees have worked out pretty well for us, because they’re long-tenured employees. They’ve been with us a long time. I can count on them. I trust them. They work hard.

We had an employee who we hired in the pandemic who promptly moved away, right after we hired him. He didn’t even ask. He just moved to another town. And I was like, “Wait a minute. We didn’t say this was a remote role.” But there were other employees who were working remotely, so I could understand why he would make that assumption. We made it work. But he ultimately didn’t work out as an employee, and I’ve reflected on this a lot. And I think that he missed out on the mentorship, the one-on-one connection. He missed out on the kind of cultural norms that we established when we’re together. He missed out on a lot of camaraderie. I have thought about this a lot. Onboarding somebody remotely takes real discipline, and it can be done. I’ve seen our clients do it. But it’s a whole different thing. And so going forward, I’m not going to do that anymore.

Loren Feldman:
All right, next topic. Liz, you’ve told us a few times that you’re feeling some pain in regard to your package bin line. My quick summary—correct me if I’m wrong—is that you believe in the product, but you haven’t gotten the sales you expected, and now you’re feeling some pressure to focus on other products that are selling. Do I have that right? And what’s your current thinking?

Liz Picarazzi:
Yes, so you got it absolutely right, Loren. In 2022, there was a lot of discussion about whether we would even keep our package lockers going. I’m very much in favor of doing that, and I have won that argument. We are going to continue our package lockers. They are profitable, but barely. So the background on this is that, after we had our trash enclosures, there were people who saw the potential in our trash enclosures as package lockers. So as much as I would love to take credit for our package locker, it was actually our own clients who saw that potential and brought it up with us. And so we adapted our trash enclosure to be package lockers, and we’ve been selling them now for four years.

We have two different types. Now we have a second one that I developed, and we launched during the pandemic. And that one has not done quite as well, but it is one that we developed because carriers can deliver into that package locker without having to use a lock. And that is one inhibitor of the first package locker that we developed called the Parcel Bin. So the conundrum is that we are really known right now as that trash enclosure company, that company that’s in Times Square. And we get a lot of press for our trash enclosures, and we rarely get much attention for our package lockers. However, we were in Curbed, which is a division of New York Magazine, last month for the holidays, which was really good. And that was one that I successfully pitched to them.

So for me, it’s almost less of a financial issue, and it’s more of a brand issue. And that’s that I really came to understand Citibin as evolving toward an outdoor storage brand, really to be the outdoor storage of California Closets. So California Closets is all about interior storage. Citibin is all about exterior storage. And that can be a package locker, it can be a trash enclosure, it can be a mailbox, it can be a deck box. And we have all of those products now.

If you look at Citibin marketing three, four years ago, you’re going to see it’s very much about the outdoor storage brands that can be modularly combined together. So it’s a very unique product to be able to combine trash and recycling enclosures with a package locker with a mailbox, and actually with planters. It’s in the California Closets model of modularity, and being able to add on. That was something that really, really excited and continues to excite me. But it does mean to continue investing in components that aren’t selling nearly as much as the trash enclosure.

And the other reason I’ve been very attached to that is, if I ever were to be acquired, if I were the acquirer, I would like the idea of acquiring a portfolio of products that work together. The modularity, I think, is incredibly valuable. And so to kind of let go of investing, whether it be time or money, in the package locker, it feels a little painful.

Loren Feldman:
Why do you think the bins haven’t sold better?

Liz Picarazzi:
So I think it’s that we haven’t really put much money behind marketing. I think that aspect of having the carrier need to unlock the bin is an inhibitor. The package lockers on the market are just a drop function, so the carrier can drop the package in without having to use a lock.

Sarah Segal:
So Amazon, I want to say, has a feature that we tried briefly, where they can automatically open our garage door and drop packages in and close the door. We stopped it because our dogs were attacking them, literally ended up with a driver on top of a car after our dog got out after them. But could you do something like that so that the accessibility for the driver is easier?

Liz Picarazzi:
I don’t think we would ever go that direction, actually.

Sarah Segal:
Too high-tech?

Liz Picarazzi:
It’s too high-tech, for one. Second, our main market is New York, and people don’t have garages or driveways or alleys. Here, there’s really nowhere but inside an enclosed bin to leave something. And then the other thing is, I don’t think Amazon’s offering has been very popular. I know when it first came out, I felt a little threatened, and that went away.

I mean, the other thing Amazon is doing—and probably a lot more successfully—is they have their lockers in a lot of 7-Elevens, gas stations, Whole Foods. And that, while it’ll protect the package, it’s certainly not convenient. If you buy something online, it’s largely about convenience and to have it delivered to your house. If you need to get in the car and drive to Whole Foods and go to a locker, then that takes away that convenience factor.

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, I love the concept of it. And I think it’s worthwhile, especially in my area. People are constantly getting things taken off of their front porches. I mean, if you look at TikTok, there are thousands and thousands of videos of people sharing their Ring cam of somebody stealing. There are people who sabotage people who steal packages. Maybe it is a marketing thing.

Shawn Busse:
The glitter bomb guy.

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, the glitter bomb guy.

Loren Feldman:
For those of us who haven’t heard of this, I can guess, but tell me, what’s the glitter bomb guy?

Liz Picarazzi:
So there’s this YouTuber named Mark Rober. He actually used to be a NASA scientist. And about four or five years ago, he started doing videos where he baited packages. He had cameras all around with glitter that he had engineered to basically explode when the thief opened the package. In subsequent releases of it, he even put iPhone cameras in all four directions to be able to video the perpetrator, but also to upload the video to the cloud to be able to then give to police. One of the last functions he added was actually a fart spray, where when the person opened up the box, they got sprayed. And so in the videos, you will see these thieves being sprayed with the fart spray. [Laughter]

Sarah Segal:
Okay, you need to partner with him. I’m serious. You need to partner with him. He needs to be your spokesperson. And you need to do a campaign that is like, “This is the solution so that you don’t have to have a PhD to catch people in the act.”

Liz Picarazzi:
I mean, I would love that. And the thought has often crossed my mind, but his sponsors are all big brands. So I just assumed he wouldn’t be interested.

Sarah Segal:
Well, there’s him, and then there’s plenty of copycats that do similar things. But it’s just the idea of making sure that all of your marketing goes toward those people who are lamenting about packages being stolen. If you go on Nextdoor, Nextdoor is full of this.

Liz Picarazzi:
I know, and I actually used to advertise on Nextdoor, as well, for the package lockers. And that was not worthwhile.

Shawn Busse:
You talk about a portfolio of companies, and you’re killing it with the simplicity of your message right now, which is: Anti-rat, get rid of the trash, the PR. You are of the moment, and if I look at companies, I think the parallel is Solo Stove, which is, Solo came up with a genius idea. It’s actually not made that well. It’s okay. There are better ones. But it came up with a pretty genius idea of a smoke-free outdoor fire pit. They created a category of product that was all their own. They just dominated, from a marketing perspective. So I see you’re doing the same thing, right? You’re dominating from a marketing perspective. You’re creating a category.

And what they did is, they sold to private equity—which makes me sad—but what private equity then did is injected a ton of money into marketing, and scaled it even further. And then they went after adjacencies. Then they started adding the Solo Pizza Oven, and the Solo this, and the Solo that. And basically, what they’re doing is they’re capitalizing on the customer base, which at that point is big enough to really sell new products to.

Your challenge, I think, with the package thing—I mean, I love the package idea, I want one—I think you’re starting to fight a war on two fronts. And if you had a lot of capital, if you were like, “Yeah, I’ve got capital,” then I would assign somebody to be in charge of this product line, who I would hold accountable to certain performance, blah, blah, blah. But you don’t have those kinds of resources, right?

Sarah Segal:
Could you split the brand? Could it be its own extension? Maybe what Shawn is saying is that you’re confusing your core audience. And maybe it’s an offering that’s under a different umbrella.

Liz Picarazzi:
I mean, it has its own brand product name, Parcel Bin.

Shawn Busse:
But I think your idea of, “We’re the California Closets of the outdoors,” that’s cool conceptually, and I get it. But I don’t think it’s a thing that enough people are passionate about except you. Whereas people are passionate about the rats and the trash and like solving that problem, and it’s just so good. And then I think there are probably people who are passionate about parcel theft and, and fixing that problem. Look at the guy who does the glitter bomb, right? So there’s a passionate group over there.

I don’t think there’s a ton of overlap between the two. So having two separate brands, I think, makes sense. But I’m just talking energy and time, and you’re so good at what you’re doing right now. And you’re scaling it, and it’s killing it. This feels like maybe not quite as [much of] a distraction as the bear-proof stuff was, but a thing that maybe you put down for a little while and then come back to, once you have more horsepower.

Loren Feldman:
Along those lines, Liz, I love the idea of the modularity and the fact that these products all work together, but you’re really focused right now on selling your trash enclosures to business districts, municipalities. And their need for a modular package bin that fits along with it is probably non-existent, I’m guessing.

Liz Picarazzi:
Non-existent.

Loren Feldman:
So that gets in the way of you seizing that moment right now, when you’re doing so well in that particular area.

Liz Picarazzi:
Well, that is really what the challenge is. If I had an investor, and they saw the potential in our package lockers and wanted to help me hire someone for it, I actually think it could do really well. But am I really willing to take on an investor for the sake of that? There would have to be a lot of other things.

One thing I should say: It’s not like we’re gonna decommission or discontinue the package lockers. We’re probably just not going to be in a strong inventory position the next time we place an order. We normally order a lot of them, and they just take a lot longer to sell. On the next run, we may not order any, and then we wait for the orders to pile up. And then it’s just the every six months sort of thing, almost more like a Kickstarter model where you buy something knowing that it’s going to take a while to get to you. And then our orders would be based on what the actual sales of it had been.

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, I think you know the answer, right? I think you know the answer, Liz. You’re doing so well in this space. I agree with you: If you had an investor at the ready who said, “Hey, here’s $3 million to build this brand.” Then basically you would split your time as chief marketing officer between the two brands. But there are so many other duties you have around culture and recruiting and operations. I know Frank’s got a lot of the operational stuff, but like your vision and keeping it from being just a boring production-oriented thing—like, that’s your magic.

Sarah Segal:
I would not give up on it. I would just put it to the side, as when you do have more bandwidth or financial wherewithal, that that becomes your next brand that you launch. And it doesn’t get lost in your parent company, but it’s its own next thing where you can do it even better than you did Citibin because you’ve learned so much.

Loren Feldman:
I want to try to hit one more topic. Sarah, you’ve talked about struggling a little bit with the way you do your proposals and how you quantify items that you put in your proposals. Can you tell us a little bit about your concern there?

Sarah Segal:
I’m a menu person. I love a menu. I love to look at the thing and know my Coca Cola is gonna cost me $2, my burger is gonna cost $8, whatever it is, and be able to check those boxes off and be like, “All right, here’s what you’re going to do, and this is going to be across all the boards of every single client.” And it’s not that.

My proposals are really like me gauging past experience, what I think the client will have to invest in, whether or not it’s worth it for our portfolio to reduce our baseline fees. I haven’t found the secret sauce. My question is, Shawn, is your pricing static? Do you have set pricing for everything that you do? Liz, it’s a little easier for product, because you know what goes into the product, and here’s your price. But in terms of the service industry, it’s just this foggy gray area that I struggle with.

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, and the pressure, a lot of times from buyers, is they want a la carte, too, right? They want to be able to buy this but not that, and that adds complexity to the sales process. What we found works really well—and I don’t know if this can work for you or not—the early-stage work we do with a client, we productize that. We call it a thing, we call it True North. It’s a set of certain activities that we’ve done over and over and over again and are really valuable, and most clients haven’t done 80 to 90 percent of them. And so we have kind of a choose-your-own-adventure set of activities that go into True North, things like customer interviews, employee interviews, market analysis, etc, etc, etc.

And then what we do is we customize that based on the client situation. We might delete something if the client’s done a good job with it and they’ve already done it. We might amplify something that’s needed more. But it’s more of a fine-tuning than a full-sale, “Here’s your buffet, pick and choose what you want.” And then the price is consistent. And we say to them, “Look, we’ve done this over and over again, we know what it costs to do. It’s X dollars per month for four months.” And then at the end of that we have a much more customized thing we’ve produced for them that they create with us.

So the upfront stuff is known, and it’s a product, because people like to buy known products. And then once we’ve built trust in a relationship, that’s when we move into more of the a la carte, or more of the choosing what’s right for the client. But we also frame that up as, “It’s going to be a range of prices from $10,000 to 20,000 a month. And we’re going to figure that out together.” So I’m setting expectations in the beginning what pricing is going to be all the way through, with greater range further on down the road. Does that help? Or does that make sense?

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, it does. It’s interesting, because I was thinking on my drive to the office today about a product. Something that we do for almost every one of our clients, at some point during our relationship, is we do these gigantic competitor reports where we look at all of their competitors and tell them where they’re doing well, in terms of public relations and social media. I was thinking to myself that this would be a great product to offer up. And I could definitely put a quantified number to that for sure. But I was like, “Would people want that?” I’m assuming: Yes.

Loren Feldman:
I would think so.

Liz Picarazzi:
I would think so—especially if you show them a sample.

Shawn Busse:
Yeah.

Loren Feldman:
Because so few people, I think, would feel like they could do that on their own.

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, we have all these tools and resources and things that we subscribe to and access to whatever that we are able to pull data that will tell you what Citibin’s competitors are doing. And it would be a productized delivery where we’re saying, “Okay, Citibin, this is what your competitor is doing. We’re not suggesting that you do that too, but just for visibility into what they’re doing so you’re aware of it. These are the places that they’re being covered. This is why they’re being covered by these reporters. This is why they’re getting so many followers on their LinkedIn channel because of X, Y, and Z.” Like, in doing that, I can definitely see that being a way to start with clients that I’m unsure of, in terms of their budget.

Loren Feldman:
How are you charging for that now?

Sarah Segal:
Oh, it’s just part of what we do when we work with a client. We will kick off with a client, and we’ll ask them what their top competitors are. And then we’ll go back and we’ll do a deep dive and see everything that their competitors are doing.

Loren Feldman:
So it falls under the heading of a monthly retainer that the client is paying you.

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, and then sometimes we’ll do a revised look at that, at the end of the year, like, “Well, how do we stack up?” And it’s funny, though, when we do that, we always have to say, “We have to look at your real competitors.” We’re not going to be comparing your local coffee shop to Starbucks. It’s just like, “We need to be realistic, in terms of what your competitors are.”

Loren Feldman:
So how would that change things for you, Sarah? How would you blend charging for that one service with charging a monthly retainer?

Sarah Segal:
I think it would also help us identify where they actually really need support. If we were to do that upfront, and then say, “All right, they’re not doing too badly in terms of social media compared to the competitors.” So not really something that we need to offer, so probably figure out a line item for that. I don’t know, I just—

Loren Feldman:
It sounds from what you just said that maybe charging them to do that upfront specifically for that analysis would then help you set an appropriate monthly retainer going forward, that both of you would be happy with.

Shawn Busse:
Yeah, because the client is going to be scared of the word retainer. I find that, “Whoa, wait. That sounds like a big commitment.” And so what an early-stage process enables you to do is to build trust and insight. So you learn: Is this a good client? Do we like working with them? Do they like working with us? So there is your chance to learn about each other. And then, you’re asking them for commitment, but it’s a small commitment.

And the other thing I found that’s just a super killer way to do things is you give them some kind of a guarantee with it. So you say, “Hey, we’re gonna work together for four months. It’s $5,000 a month for these four months. During that period, we’re going to do X, Y, and Z as a productized service. At any point, you can stop. And if you’re really unhappy, we’ll refund that month’s engagement.” And nobody ever does that, because you’re giving them good work. It’s a good, valuable relationship. So it’s one of those things that can add a degree of certainty to take the risk. But then, at the end of the day, if you’re good at what you do, it’s never going to be taken advantage of. And so I’ve found that to be really effective.

Sarah Segal:
Well, I’m gonna do it. You guys are gonna have to help me figure out how to do it, but yeah, I’m gonna do it. So I’m going to do a little comparison. I want to figure out a way to make it easy for us to update and go along, but also make it customized to every client. So all right, I’m gonna do it.

Loren Feldman:
Cool. We solved the problem!

Shawn Busse:
Or we created some new ones that she doesn’t know about yet.

Loren Feldman:
Let’s hope. That’s why it’s a weekly podcast. My thanks to Shawn Busse, Liz Picarazzi, and Sarah Segal—and of course to our sponsor, the Great Game of Business, which helps businesses implement open-book management and employee ownership. You can learn more at greatgame.com. Thanks, everyone.