The Bureau is 10 years old! Of course we've learned a thing or two over the past decade. So here are 10-ish of those.
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Gene: Good morning.
Carl: Good morning. Good morning. You slept the whole night through. Good morning. Good morning to you and you and you and you.
Gene: That's pretty good.
Carl: Thanks, Gene. I grew up with a television taking care of me.
Gene: Same.
Carl: It works out.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Do you know what happened last week, Gene? The Bureau turned 10 years old.
Gene: 10 years old. You can't even drive yet.
Carl: No, but the Bureau for a 10 year old knows a lot more than you and me.
Gene: He sure gets around.
Carl: Whoa.
Gene: I don't know.
Carl: I don't know what that was. Gets around?
Gene: Don't take it personally.
Carl: Oh my god. Where were you last night, Bureau? Breaking my heart strings.
Gene: Check the text messages, Bureau.
Carl: Bureau, don't text me when you're drunk. We're just not [crosstalk 00:01:41].
Gene: That's the only time that Bureau texts me, when he's drunk.
Carl: Yeah, at 2 AM.
Gene: Oh wait, that's just you.
Carl: Yeah, well okay. Fair enough. All right, I missed you.
Gene: Yeah man, it's been a couple weeks.
Carl: 10 years, Gene.
Gene: Crazy. Last week I tried to distill down some of the top 10 lessons from 10 years.
Carl: That's a lot [crosstalk 00:02:07]. You want to know how I did it? Do you?
Gene: Yeah, I do.
Carl: It's an audio program.
Gene: I do.
Carl: So people are hoping that you'll respond. I sat in the Orlando Airport and I said, "Oh, the newsletter's coming up. What are the 10 things that we tell people who first join the community all the time, because those are the 10 things that probably are the biggest lessons?" It's the things that we all need to hear. I don't really care what your role is, if you're in leadership, if you're dealing with other humans you're in leadership at some level.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: I posted the 11th. I couldn't get it down to 10 lessons from the first decade of the Bureau.
Gene: Well, it's progressive thinking. It's fun for the road. It's the next year.
Carl: I think that segway was ... I don't even know what that was.
Gene: [crosstalk 00:03:05]
Carl: Progressive thinking? Okay. Gene, I want this relationship to work.
Gene: I'm trying really hard.
Carl: I'm not sure if you're aware of that from the way I act.
Gene: I'll just go. You can have an episode with yourself.
Carl: Aw.
Gene: Is that okay?
Carl: Thank you. [inaudible 00:03:34] Oh shit. For those at home, Gene just turned off Carl's camera. You are drunk with power.
Gene: I have all the power.
Carl: You have the whole-
Gene: I have all the buttons [crosstalk 00:03:47].
Carl: Let's get started. I don't know how far we'll get through the list in this episode of [inaudible 00:03:54] briefing, but gosh darn it, we can get started.
Gene: Let's do it.
Carl: What do you think?
Gene: I love it.
Carl: I am going to start with the one that I think we all need to hear. This shit is really hard. People think they're not good at their jobs, the reality is our jobs are really tough.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: What do you think?
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Oh okay, we might get through all of them with the way this is going.
Gene: Yeah no, it's the hardest thing I've ever done, man.
Carl: People join the community and they're looking for an answer. Normally they're trying to solve this thing or got to find this person who will be this great person who comes in and solves all the problems or there's tool that we need or a process or clause for a contract and they always feel like they should be able to do this on their own, that they should be able to find it. That's not true. I don't think any of us really do.
Gene: No.
Carl: Not all of it. There's a lot of stuff. So, dealing with people, figuring out how to be the best leader you can be, and what are the best practices, I think that's the stuff that makes your job a little easier when you start to come to the community and hear from other people who've really screwed up on certain things and other people that are big successes. That's the deal, yo.
Gene: Yeah, and what's hard is that in order to be a good leader you have to work on yourself, too. It's not just about working in your business and working on your business, it's also about working on yourself. That's one of the hardest things to do at all. You got to do it all at the same time with a lot of stakes. If you screw it up, you don't get paid.
Carl: Wait, what?
Gene: It ain't easy. No one told you that yet? Wait.
Carl: I don't know. That would explain a lot, though. I've been wondering here. Freaking 30 years into my career, dude. That explains why I didn't get paid-
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: And that's why I live in this little corner.
Gene: Damn.
Carl: It's why you see me here all the time.
Gene: You never leave.
Carl: Haven't been paid yet.
Gene: It's not because I like it. I have nowhere else to go.
Carl: Sure [inaudible 00:06:09]. What you do is really difficult. I think you need to just realize that there are going to be days when you don't know what to do because you're doing something other people haven't done before. This is not a task-based job. This is where you're coming in and you're trying to look at the best strategy to get through. And Gene, your hair looks amazing.
Gene: No, I was looking at yours.
Carl: Mine, not so much. Mine is more like a roller coaster for the tiniest of little people. I didn't want to say bugs. That sounds like I got bugs in my hair. That's not good. We're going to have to do an episode on home renovations because nothing could be more privileged than that bullshit.
Gene: Right, or I thought you were going to talk about bugs on your person. That's a whole episode.
Carl: Oh, well it depends on which ones you want to meet, yeah. We might need another ... no, no, no, no.
Gene: What's number two?
Carl: Number two?
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: There are many paths to success.
Gene: Ooh.
Carl: Yeah. So many people think that there's one way to do stuff and it's the only way and they just try again and again and again. When it works for them, they're convinced other ways won't work, when they find that way that works. I think it's one of the things we talk about at the beginning of most events, is that you have to be accepting that there are going to be different ways to get to a solution.
Gene: Right.
Carl: And every single shop's context is different. Every individual's context is different. Every team's context is different. So, what works for one person's not going to work for another and it's one thing where [inaudible 00:07:50], he ... I'll give you this [crosstalk 00:07:53]. He sticks with it when he says something.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: When the whole, "Your mileage may vary."
Gene: I love that.
Carl: It's great. It's one of the things that YMMV, people actually abbreviate it now and say it, I think it's great because it's the truth and somebody might tell you that something's not going to work and you're like, "It just really feels like it would," and then you try it, and you know what, it worked for you. I think that is definitely one of the things that we share all the time, is that you're going to get to what you need, you're going to get to success a different way than anybody else will.
Gene: That's right, man. I believe that 100%.
Carl: You do?
Gene: Yeah because-
Carl: That sounds pretty good.
Gene: I don't give a shit anymore. Oh, whatever. What's number three?
Carl: I think maybe we should listen to Blair and David and the 2Bobs podcast and figure out how two middle-aged white guys are supposed to do this. I was just thinking, maybe we're not doing it right. I know that they say it's kind of something we have to do just to keep our cards, but I don't know.
Gene: I would tell them there's more than one way to do a podcast.
Carl: There is. Well, there's the right way.
Gene: And then there's this way.
Carl: And then there's the way we do it. And then there's the ways who people who care do it.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: That's a different way. Okay, are we ready for number three?
Gene: I was going to say, I do love how the transcribers will basically just put in the transcription where we're laughing our asses of with each other as crosstalk.
Carl: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:09:31]
Gene: Idiots laughing to each other.
Carl: Whoever is transcribing this right now, we are idiots laughing and we actually would encourage you to do that. We would appreciate it.
Gene: That would be awesome.
Carl: That will increase to two dollars a minute. Going to do it.
Gene: Did we just break the fourth wall of podcasting?
Carl: We did. We just talked to the transcriber.
Gene: Oh, we did.
Carl: Okay. Moving on. Number three, this one I think is, it's one to know when you're doing it, where we shift our mindset from creating to protecting, things start to fall apart.
Gene: Oh, that one hurts a little bit.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: Dude.
Carl: I get it. If you look at investing strategies or methodologies or whatever, when you're young you're supposed to take more risk. As you get older, you're supposed to take less risk because you're going to need that money now. I think it kind of happens with people who start companies, too. I think it happens with people who are at certain points in their career, but when you're not trying to accomplish something that stops something else from happening, it's rough.
Gene: Yeah. That's a good one. I was just thinking of ways that I've screwed that up.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: It's also like protecting a client relationship when the relationship has been over.
Carl: Right.
Gene: Like you're not making money with them, not that money's the only reason to work with someone. Maybe that is the only reason, but anyway. When the relationship ... you're not making the money you should or what you deserve and you're just servicing that client because, "Well, we've always had them around."
Carl: Or that they're a certain percentage of your revenue.
Gene: Yeah, and that's dangerous, too. Yeah, you have a client that's 60% of your revenue and you're like, "Well, we kind of have to take care of them because what else are we going to do?" Well, you need to go find more clients.
Carl: I think that's absolutely right.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: But the other thing I'll say is that when you look at that client who's a certain percentage of your revenue and you're like, "Well, we've got to protect that relationship." Then you start to make bad decisions. You start to sugar coat things. You start to not share, necessarily, maybe things are off the track, but you don't tell them. Trust me, they know.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: They can sense it.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Whereas, if you're more in that we're building something and you're building something together with the client, then you can be more open and you're going to share it and you're going to say, "I hear what you're saying, but I don't think that's going to get us to the goal that we agreed to." As opposed to, "Thank you so much. I hope you have a great weekend."
Gene: Yes ma'am. Yeah.
Carl: "We'll get those changes done. Don't you worry."
Gene: Yup. Yup.
Carl: I'm going to sneeze, Gene.
Gene: Video landing pages are awesome. Let's put more in front of your websites. Whoa. Bless you. That was good.
Carl: Wow, somewhere a camel just flicked its tail and went, "What was that disturbance in the world?"
Gene: Disturbance in the world.
Carl: That was me sneezing. That was a good one. I feel better. Okay. So, let's get on number four. We talked about this one. That's how important it is. Soft skills matter. Nobody gets fired for hard skills. That's not true. That's an overstatement.
Gene: Lack of hard skills. It's probably more the case, right?
Carl: True. When you talk to people who have to fire someone, when you talk to people who they have to discipline someone-
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: It can be that they missed a deadline. It can be that they're over budget. It can be things like that, but a majority of the time what I hear is they're hard to work with.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Or they're doing something that's inappropriate that's frustrating the team. Definitely not keeping your commitments, not being able to manage your time. I don't know if you'd call those soft skills, but-
Gene: Well, those are almost [crosstalk 00:13:49]. Yeah. It's easier to deal with someone who can't get it done, like they lack the skills [crosstalk 00:13:56]. You're like, "Hey, you can't do this thing and we don't have a need for a person that can't do these things." Yeah, that's easier to deal with versus, "Rob won't stop talking about Trump." Where do you take that?
Carl: Yeah. That's a whole nother episode.
Gene: Yeah, or he won't ... Yeah, whatever it is.
Carl: Yeah. No, it's fine. The one percent of the non-liberal people who make up the web services industry.
Gene: Hey, it was a good example. I know our industry.
Carl: No, for sure. You just got lifted to a higher echelon. Well done, sir. [crosstalk 00:14:38] Soft skills matter. It is writing. It is communication. It is empathy. It is your emotional IQ. All of these things matter so much, and again, it's because what we do is really difficult and we have to be able to do it together. We have to work together to get these things done. And if somebody's hard to work with, it impacts everything.
Gene: Yup. Would you say that those things that you just listed off are what makes the difference between a professional and someone who isn't a pro?
Carl: You mean in terms of soft skills or?
Gene: Yeah, soft skills, part of the formula.
Carl: I would say it could be one of two things. Either they're not really seasoned, maybe they haven't had to work with enough people. They haven't had the bad experience of something that they did causing the problem. They just haven't had the bad job or the bad project that kind of kicked them in the gut and got them to realize, "I'm part of this. I need to be better." Or they're so good at the work they do that everybody's nervous to upset them.
Gene: Right, I've been on both sides of that one. Not personally, but definitely had someone on the team that was just so awesome that everybody's like, "Just let them do their thing."
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: You're like, "Yeah, but their thing's costing a lot of money."
Carl: Are you talking about people doing expensive drugs at work and charging it back to the company?
Gene: I'm talking about you, Carl.
Carl: Well, okay. Why am I expensive?
Gene: You get expensive drugs.
Carl: Well, I don't know, what they do is amazing, but so expensive.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: I'm thinking you're on drugs today. Are you okay?
Gene: I am on drugs today.
Carl: Okay, I am, but it's medical. It's totally fine.
Gene: Oh man.
Carl: Just no heavy machinery today.
Gene: Definitely not.
Carl: I think it built on itself pretty well here when I put this together. I'm just going to say that. I was in the Orlando Airport. I wanted a coffee, but the lines were too long, so I wrote these down. When bad people stay, good people leave.
Gene: Yes.
Carl: That is one of the things I hear all the time and it's something that I learned early on in my career from my boss. I say my boss because I only had the one, but when you don't take care of a problem, when you let somebody who has those bad soft skills continue to operate, eventually the message you're sending is either we're out of touch or we don't care, and we're going to let this person make all of our lives a little more difficult because they have this one skillset or they do present well or they're brilliant at this thing. Well you know what, you're going to lose some people. Just realize-
Gene: Or it's back to the other one you mentioned is that it's comfortable to have that person in that position because they've always been there, and well, "Steve's always been there. You guys are new, so we're just going to listen to Steve, although Steve's a giant jerk."
Carl: He is. I'm glad you said jerk. I thought you were going to say turd and that just felt bad. I don't think we should use words like that on the podcast.
Gene: Definitely should not use the word turd.
Carl: And to the person transcribing, please. You know how to spell it. Come on. Don't say crosstalk, giggle, giggle. That's not what we want.
Gene: No.
Carl: T-U-R-D. Throw it in there, folks. Yeah, I don't think the Bob's would use that word.
Gene: Definitely not.
Carl: Gene, I'm just looking at the list here. You want to keep going? Should we keep going? Clients are not the enemy.
Gene: I don't know. I kind of see them as the enemy.
Carl: Well, I've seen your clients and I don't disagree. A plan for the enemy-
Gene: My clients are North Korea and Russia.
Carl: Okay.
Gene: No, I'm just kidding.
Carl: Wow. Your clients are definitely the enemy.
Gene: They don't pay well.
Carl: Okay. Are you tuned into MSNBC and NPR and all of the things? Is that's what's in those headphones?
Gene: It's in this one.
Carl: Yeah, let me know if I need to duck because I know, being a tier two and a half city, that does have nuclear submarines, we're probably going to be a target. Where were we? Clients are not the enemy, okay. Gene, do you think anybody's still listening or can I go find coffee?
Gene: Yeah, clearly not listening.
Carl: Okay. Okay. Clients are not the enemy. They don't give you a whole lot of money and then try to disrupt you. If you get a $50,000 deposit from a client and you're working on a big project, they're not suddenly like, "Ha ha ha, how can I screw this up and lose my money and reputation?"
Gene: I know.
Carl: No.
Gene: Yeah man, that's a mindset thing that you have to get out of. It's not an adversarial role. I don't know where that comes from. I used to be in sort of that mindset, for sure, where we're kind of working against these people to get the best thing for them. Is it an arrogance thing? Is it an ego thing?
Carl: I don't think it's arrogant. I think it's fear-based because if they're not at fault then that mean I'm at fault.
Gene: Right.
Carl: And that's ... It's one of those things where it's easier to blame someone than to take responsibility. If you have clients that always do the same thing, guess what? You're the constant. So, how do you change that? How do you change onboarding? How do you change communication? How do you change presentation styles? What do you do? How do you collaborate better? These are the questions you should be asking. If you're always blaming your client, you also give up your power. You're saying, "I can't control my world. I can't control my job. I can't control my team. I can't control the company because any client can come in here and disrupt us." But without the clients you really don't have much of a company.
Gene: No.
Carl: You can get together once a year for the Christmas party. People would still do that as long as you're picking up the tab, but I don't think is something that people really pay attention to. We used to have a rule, I know other people do this, too, that if you're in retrospective you can't use the client's name or blame them if they aren't at the table because anytime you hit an external circumstance for why you did something, once again, you're saying, "I can't change it. I can't correct it." But if you say, "Maybe if we had communicated this at the kickoff and then communicated it again once we had finished that discovery and reinforced that this is going to be a problem, if we back up at this point it's like those spikes at the rental car place. It is not going to be pretty."
Gene: You don't go that way, yeah.
Carl: You don't. I know it's not your car, but don't do it.
Gene: Yeah, I like that. There are definitely times when the client is definitely putting constraints on things, but I think it's important, like you're saying, I think it's important to look at those things as just constraints on the project. It could be budget. It could be time. It could be simple things like that, but you can't make it their fault.
Carl: Right.
Gene: Yeah, I'm with you. That's not a healthy way to look at that project because that's not going to end well.
Carl: It could be circumstances beyond the client's control, but then you just need to acknowledge that. It's more about if you blame the client. I think that becomes the big challenge. Sometimes clients are wrong.
Gene: Well yeah, but it's also a little bit about ownership, too. You've got to take ownership of your work and I know that that's ... when something starts going wrong, the first place you want to look is blaming somebody else.
Carl: Absolutely.
Gene: We all want to keep faith. We all want that.
Carl: I keep you on speed dial.
Gene: You have to own those things. Yeah, like you said, perhaps if we would have explained this earlier on. You have to own that and you have to tackle that. If you've got to tackle that later in the project you've got to own it, you've got to tackle it then or let it go and quit blaming them for it.
Carl: Yeah, without a doubt.
Gene: That's not just client relationships. That's friendships, everyday relationships.
Carl: So sorry. I don't know why you do that. Every time you laugh and shift to the right you just show me Meownor and I'm like, "Is he threatening me?"
Gene: Meownor.
Carl: Threatening me with Thor's hammer?
Gene: Meownor. We're at 25 minutes. We have six more to go.
Carl: What?
Gene: You want to do a part two?
Carl: Let's do one more.
Gene: Okay.
Carl: Okay, let's do one more.
Gene: One more.
Carl: I'm only saying that because I know that you are in extreme demand and I don't want to monopolize all of your time.
Gene: Extreme.
Carl: This one, core values matter. A lot of times somebody's new in the community and they have core values. They may have put something together. We have posters with kittens hanging. Not hanging. We weren't hanging kittens. They were hanging on a branch.
Gene: We know what you meant.
Carl: That's a different core values. I don't know what that company's all about. You walk in and-
Gene: It's like the "Never give up" or "Keep hanging on."
Carl: Yeah, exactly.
Gene: You didn't mean like kitten lynching.
Carl: Clarity. Whatever your core values may be, the fact that you have them is great, but you have to use them.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: And that's the thing. What I've seen a lot of shops in the bureau do is they use them when they're coming up on decision points. If something is hard to make that, "Ah, we could go this way and it might work. We could go that way and it might work," which does decision A? How many points does it take off of our core values? Okay, decision B. How many? Okay so, this one definitely hits home on helping the world, but it kind of takes away from being great stewards of our client's money. That's not a core value. I obviously don't know what I'm doing. I obviously don't know, but when you get those core values together, you first of all, depending on how you share it, you send out a signal to potential clients that say, "This is who we are. This is what we believe in," and to potential talent, to people who might join the team, you're saying the exact same thing. "This is what we believe in. We believe in honesty. We believe in respect. We believe that ideas have the ability to change things."
Gene: It's like contracts, man. We've talked about contracts before. I've stolen every single thing you've ever done in a contract, but a contract is only as valuable as you are willing to enforce it. If you're never going to enforce the contract, then why the hell did you sign one in the first place?
Carl: And really-
Gene: But I think it's the same thing with the core values. They're important when you need them.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: I know you just mentioned one off the cuff and it wasn't what you were thinking, but be a good steward to the client's money. That's not important until you've just waited a bunch of fucking time. You know what I mean? And then what do you do with it? Or let's say you've got this whatever client ... Let's take the gym, for example. You've got a customer that is paying you and they don't ever come in. They signed a year contract. It's been 12 months. They're on like month 14. They're still paying you, but they just don't come in. Do you call them and tell them, "Hey, I'm canceling your contract for you?"
Carl: That's an excellent point. It's like if [crosstalk 00:27:23]
Gene: I'm not saying it's right or wrong.
Carl: No. But let's say that a core value is, "We look out for our clients." That means when you hear about something that could impact their business you're going to tell them when you see that they're spending on something that they don't need, you should tell them. And to your point, if that member at the gym isn't coming in and it's been awhile, reach out and say, "Hey, we just noticed you're still paying this. Do you want us to put it on pause? Are you coming back? We can cancel. We just want to make sure that we're doing the right thing by you."
Gene: Yeah. It's right. In that scenario, too, I don't think it's wrong to just ... Clearly they're adult human beings. If they want to cancel, they're going to call you.
Carl: They're grown ass human beings here.
Gene: Grown ass adult human beings. But also, if your core value, if you have it spray painted on your wall that, "We take care of our people," and then you're doing something like that, that's not an alignment.
Carl: Here's the other thing, if you've got multiple people, depending on the size of your company, if you've got multiple people making decisions it helps them make similar decisions. For example, at the gym, if you had somebody you had no core values around it and you had somebody who say, "Oh, this person keeps paying, but they're not coming in, or actually this is really boosting the bottom line." What are those people going to think about? How it makes them feel if it happened to them and that person is going to probably call or they're thinking, "You know what, if we get the revenue to a certain point, I might get a bonus." So they're going to do their internal core values to make that decision instead what the company-
Gene: That's right. That's a good point. That's a good point, and that's culture.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: So those things can help develop your culture. You've got to think through all that stuff.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: Which is why, number one, it's so fucking hard.
Carl: Yeah, there's a lot of things to think about and most people that are running shops really want their teams to be happy. I don't know, we had that whole Happy episode, but they want them to feel engaged. They want them to feel like they're a part of it. They want them to feel included. They want them to feel like they have a voice.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: But almost everybody has and core values help you say up front, "Something you're going to be willing to do or not," and it helps the right people find you because they have similar values.
Gene: But again, I would come back to if you're listening to this, and not that anyone is, but if you're listening to this-
Carl: I'm listening.
Gene: And you're thinking about this or maybe you're in the process of that, think about how you'll use them when the shit hits the fan. I think that's where it's most important.
Carl: Absolutely.
Gene: A lot of time you read them and it's like, "We like to make the world nice and we want to do great things." It's like, well, no shit. But how does that help you when things are messed up?
Carl: Yeah, to say that you're a people first company-
Gene: What does that mean?
Carl: That's wonderful until you suddenly have to have a layoff.
Gene: Yup.
Carl: When we said people first, we meant-
Gene: We meant me.
Carl: You people will be first to go, is what we were saying.
Gene: I meant I'm first and you are not.
Carl: There are companies out there that have made grand statements and then they try to live by them, but they can't. That's where I think core values really have to be something that they're retainable. We'll do a whole episode on core values because that way I'll be able to read up on it and make sure I'm not saying the wrong things.
Gene: I think that's a good episode.
Carl: Gene, we're going to come back. We're going to do a second episode on these 10 lessons from 10 years.
Gene: Let's do it.
Carl: I think we should.
Gene: Yup.
Carl: Because I'm ready to go get that coffee now.
Gene: All right. [crosstalk 00:31:06]
Carl: That is one of the big lessons, is you're going to need a lot of caffeine.
Gene: I'm pretty caffeinated.
