From the moment you come in contact with a prospective client you should be laying the groundwork for a relationship built on trust. Not only does this involve being honest and transparent, but also keeping your commitments. And let them know you expect the same from them for the best outcome.
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Gene: Did I catch you by surprise?
Carl: I'm not sure I'm going to make it through today. All right.
Gene: That's good, man.
Carl: I don't know why, that song makes me laugh every single time.
Gene: It's pretty smooth.
Carl: I like it.
Gene: Like a smooth cup of coffee.
Carl: I want to listen to that while I'm crossing a busy intersection and just see what happens. Might lay down and take a nap.
Gene: You might. You never know.
Carl: Nothing much. What's up with you, Gene?
Gene: Not too much, man. I have a problem. My clients don't trust me.
Carl: Gene, is it just your clients? Does your wife trust you?
Gene: Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.
Carl: Do you have a dog?
Gene: I do.
Carl: Yeah? Does the dog trust you?
Gene: No, not at all. Not at all. Never.
Carl: You ever fake throw the ball?
Gene: Mm-mm (negative).
Carl: No? You always throw it for real?
Gene: Always. Still doesn't trust me.
Carl: That's amazing. Why do you think that is? Why don't your wife or dog trust you?
Gene: I don't know. It hurts. So in last week's email newsletter, if you got that.
Carl: That's right.
Gene: Yeah. We're a week...
Carl: Ahead.
Gene: Yeah. Kind of.
Carl: Call it ahead.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Gene, catching up is an illusion.
Gene: It is.
Carl: You're right where you're supposed to be.
Gene: You were talking about gaining [inaudible 00:01:52] trusted clients. I can't say it.
Carl: I thought you were going to say draining crusty clients, and that sounded horrible.
Gene: That's a different email.
Carl: Glad you didn't say that.
Gene: That's a different subject. Right? All right.
Carl: Has anybody seen my client? I think they expired. Oh, you can drain that. It'll be fine.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Just mix it up like yogurt. Just that stuff on the top is the good stuff. Just mix that in there. That's a good client.
Gene: That's a great client. All right. Okay. So you have, what is this? About six or eight points here, and for the sake of, yeah, it's probably a lot more, but these are pretty good. These are pretty good.
Carl: You know what? I had a few minutes. I thought, "You know what? I'll put these out there. We'll see what happens." Gene, have you ever had a client not trust you?
Gene: Yes.
Carl: I'm going to take over the show now, because you're waffling. I don't know what the hell is going on. Tell me about a time where a client just did not trust you. What was going on?
Gene: Well, I think-
Carl: Think back to yesterday. You got this.
Gene: 20 minutes ago. No, I think a lot of times, a client, in my experience, when they haven't trusted us has been because the person I'm dealing with is under a lot of pressure from their boss. And so they begin to, I think most of the time, they're second guessing themselves, but as an extension, they're second guessing us and the team at the same time.
Carl: So I think everything you're explaining right now, I think happens all the time. Right? You get a new project. If it's a new client, right? If you've got no relationship with this client before, they've probably put a whole lot of faith that you're going to fix all their problems, and that's an unrealistic expectation. So I mean, that's one of the things we used to always say is clients don't want to drive. They just want to know you got your hands on the wheel. And if they don't see anybody doing that, they're going to reach over and they're going to grab, and they're going to try to steer where everything's going, because to your point, for almost every project, this is not their normal job.
Carl: This was something that got added to what they're supposed to be getting done already, right? It came up, it's once every three years, or it's some brand new initiative, and they got tasked with it, and now their world has a whole lot more crap on it. That sounded disgusting, but it's true. And so they found you and your team, and you seemed excited and awesome, and you had all this experience, and you were going to take care of them, and they paid the deposit, and you got started, and what? What happens, right? That's the thing. Suddenly they still have to be involved?
Gene: Right. And they don't know what's going on.
Carl: Yeah. Most of them don't. If you think about it, and we talked about this last episode, most clients don't have a lot of experience with web projects. They don't, and they're looking at you to guide them.
Gene: Well, yeah, if they did, they wouldn't need you.
Carl: That's it. Right?
Gene: I mean, they'd just do it themselves.
Carl: I had somebody that I used to work with who said, "This would be a great business if it weren't for the clients." Right? Okay. I mean, you could also say it'd be a great business if it weren't for your partners, if it weren't for employees, if it weren't for your family looking at you when you came home late. Yeah. Okay. But to me, the biggest part of this is, and it's the same. And if you want to look at an underlying theme that is responsible for almost all the problems in your life, it's alcohol. No. No, damn it.
Gene: It's you.
Carl: It's communication, right? It's setting good expectations and maintaining them. It's good communication throughout. It's being who you were when you were trying to get the project once you have it, and giving them the opportunity to be the same person too. So I think that's huge. So, you have a situation where, what was the client doing that lets you know that they had lost faith or lost trust?
Gene: It wasn't so much they lost trust. I think it was that we'd never had a chance to establish it.
Carl: Okay.
Gene: Yeah. Just constant second guessing, constant asking for confirmation reviews and shit like that. An inordinate extra amount of time managing the project, because we had to keep going back and back over and over the same stuff. Not because they weren't getting it, but because they wanted sign offs. It was just all this CYA stuff, and again, I think this happened a couple of times with two different government contracts, government based contracts, because I think they just had so much-
Carl: That's a whole different monster.
Gene: Yeah. They had so much middle management above them. They were more interested in protecting themselves than they were getting the project done, I think. But had I been a little more humble in my approach there, now I like to think I would have realized, "Oh, that's what's going on. We should just do these things for them," and would have made it go a lot faster.
Carl: We had a situation, this was early on, where we had a really cool project that was a finance project. It was called Short Flicks. And it was when, at the time, Apple wouldn't show anything that was under an hour, and YouTube, I think, wouldn't do anything that was over three or five minutes.
Gene: I remember that. Yeah.
Carl: Yeah, there was this weird... So they had this idea for Short Flicks, which were 15 to 20 minute films that would fit in between what YouTube had created and what Apple created. And then they both went, "Whatever." Right? But we're working through this with them. It's amazing. Everybody loves everything. We've helped them create this amazing online presence, theoretically. Right? We've got all of the user flows, we've got all the look and feel. We've got all of the architecture, everything ready to go. And then they started asking us about the business model of their company. It was like, "Okay. You're not the investor and we're not the client. What's happening?" And they started second guessing everything, just like you're saying.
Carl: And I will tell you this. And I've suggested this to a lot of people. When you get in that situation, ask for a meeting and send an agenda with one item on it, trust issues. And then when you have that call and they're like, "What is this?" Say, "We don't know. [crosstalk 00:09:04] We were only down the road, and now suddenly, you're asking questions all the time. You're second guessing things. You're asking us about your business model. What happened? What changed? Was it us? Did we do something? Did we change the way we were communicating? Is there something on your end?" And what we found out was, they didn't get their second round of financing and they weren't going to let us know.
Gene: Ouch.
Carl: Because I think part of it was, they wanted to finish, right? They had almost gotten there, but it was obvious that they were wigged out. So I think that's a big thing. What you said is a little bit different because you started out of the gate and you didn't have trust. And I think one of the most important things you can do is establish trust early on, right? Before you even get to a signed proposal, make some simple commitments and keep them. "Let me follow up with you on that in two days." Don't say tomorrow. Tomorrow is a shit show and you just don't know it because you've been in this meeting, right? You get out and you're like, "Oh God." So say, "I'll follow up by the end of the week." They don't expect you to follow up any certain time.
Gene: Exactly. And you want a short trip to hell is to not follow up on what you said you'd do.
Carl: Especially before they're a client.
Gene: You've got to do what you said you would do. Man, that's not just client work. That's...
Carl: Once again, that's life. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gene: It's life. I don't know why we often pretend project management or business is different than who we actually are. You ever noticed that?
Carl: Well, yeah, absolutely.
Gene: Every business I've ever seen takes on the personality of the person running it.
Carl: It does, because anybody who works for that person is going to give up responsibility to that person at some point. Right? I mean, I remember walking into engine one day, and one of our designers said, "Oh shit, he's got that look on his face. He's got that look like he read a book. Uh oh." And it was true. And they got to this point where they would just wait it out. "Just give it a couple of weeks. It's going to be fine. He's going to want to show us some slides. He's going to talk about a new approach, and then we'll just go back to what we were doing." But you're right. That is kind of it. They follow who you are and what you're going to do.
Carl: And if you're different in that initial engagement than you are when you're running the whole thing, I used to tell people right up front, "I will not be part of the day to day. You do not want me as part of the day to day. I am scattered. I am trying to run the business. I've got all these other things pulling at me, but this is the person who's going to be running it day to day, and they will be focused and they will be dedicated, and they will come get me if there's something going on. I'll keep a 5,000 foot level, right? I'll keep looking at everything. Or 35,000 feet." I can't see that well, Gene.
Gene: Look, 5,000 feet and 35,000 feet is pretty high.
Carl: Both of them are pretty okay. So see, I'm already breaking commitments. It's obvious I don't know what I'm doing, but no, but it's one of those things to let them know, if you're going to be involved, say, "Hey, I'm going to be involved. You can get me any time," but then fucking mean it. And don't get annoyed when they try. You told them to. Right? I think that's the biggest thing for me is that we go through this situation where we have to have clients to survive. Right?
Gene: Right.
Carl: It's just going to be there.
Gene: Client services.
Carl: Exactly. Right? Client services, not services.
Gene: Services, services, or services money.
Carl: I will tell you right now, there is no alternative. You can do commercial art and you can do fine art. Cut the clients out. You're still going to have to sell some shit, right? But to your point, client services. So you need to realize when they come in the door that they have never done anything to you before, and everything that you are going to project on them from, the bad things that happened in the past, from the last 20 to 100 clients, how many clients you've had, they didn't do. And then they're going to ask one question and it's going to trigger you. They're going to say, "Hey, could you just explain this part? I know in the proposal, I mean, in the agreement, we said that we get two rounds of looking at this, but I'm wondering, is it possible to get a third?" Well God damn, if you aren't client and we don't like you.
Carl: No. Just say, "Hey, yeah, that's right. If you need more rounds, we can totally talk about that. It'll change the agreement up a little bit, but that's no big deal. We can figure it out. So do you want it to take longer or do you want it to cost more? Oh, neither? Oh, we should probably stick with this then. Yeah. You know what? We'll just make sure that you have the right stuff to choose from. And if you need us to present internally, we can look at that too. If we do it too much, again, we've got to look at time or money. What are we looking at here?" But it doesn't have to be that dog that bit you when you were five, is every dog walking down the street.
Gene: This is like personal relationships. It's the same thing, because they're people. I mean, it's literally a relationship. You in a business is people. It's the same thing. I like that one about not bringing the baggage in because I'm guilty of that. [crosstalk 00:14:55] Same shit, different client.
Carl: Here it goes. And then you start acting different, and then they sense that. And then they're like, "Well, I don't know what's going on, but my ass is on the line, so I better ride this thing a little harder and see what's going on." And then suddenly you're just-
Gene: But in the meantime, what did you do to not have the same shit happen again? Nothing. You did the same shit with a different client. Yep.
Carl: Exactly. And I put this in the newsletter and a few people commented on it, which was great. I said, "Hey, here's a little hint. If the same thing has happened with the last 12 clients, you're the only constant."
Gene: Science, baby.
Carl: The 12 of them didn't get together and have a meeting and say, "Oh, what did they do when you did that?"
Gene: Yeah. Let's do that. Yeah.
Carl: They don't give you a huge pile of cash and then try to screw you up. That's not a thing. They only do it when they get nervous. And I'll say this. And I probably mentioned it in earlier episodes, but we got to a point where we had enough work and we had enough money that we could start being selective. And what we found were the best clients for us were what we called must-win clients. We categorize them in two categories, checklist and must-win. And to your point, the client that you were talking about sounded a checklist client. Their boss told them to get it done, and it had to be done, it had to be done by this date, it had to be done by this budget and they didn't want to go back to their boss. And that's a checklist. Did you get it done? Check.
Gene: Yeah. I think you have to realize that in your work, you've got clients. Like you said, what type of client are they? Is this project for this company you're working for, is it really mission critical? Are they all in on this thing, they're excited about it, whatever? Or like you're saying, is it just a government contract where the employees are like, "I don't give a shit. This is on the same level as filling the printer back up when I'm done with it." You know what I mean? They're just punching numbers. I think you have to realize that, and take care of them appropriately.
Carl: And that's the thing. Jeffrey Zeldman said this way back in the early 2000s probably. But he said something like, "Look at who's signing your check. If they're not in your meetings, you have a problem." Now, it's different if you're working with Disney, right? Because nobody's going to cash those. Walt died, you all. The big W and stuff, not going to happen. But no, but if you're working with a medium sized client, let's say you're working with a client that maybe they have got a few hundred employees, whatever.
Gene: Like most of us. Yeah.
Carl: Yeah. You better have somebody there, and that is an actual authority, because that is an indicative of a must-win. Right? And if not, if it's a must-win, and you don't have that person, then the swoop and poop and all that kind of stuff, that person comes in, their neck is on the line, blah, blah, blah. But to me, that's one of the biggest things. And I also think that when you're first starting out, it's super important to clarify who you are and who your team is and what you're great at and what you're not great at, because let's take it back to dating, right? Let's take it back to personal relationships. If you're dating somebody, and they love hiking, and you hate hiking, but you like this person, and suddenly you're going hiking all the time, and then you talk about how much, "Oh, this is great."
Carl: You know what? If you have to buy new shoes for a date, you're probably in trouble, unless you just love buying shoes, right? But if I, "Oh, I got to buy these hiking boots," right? Or whatever, okay. Well, you know what? As soon as you want to be yourself, you can't do it around that person. Or they're going to be like, "Who are you?" It's the same thing with clients. If you're acting like, "Oh yeah, no, there's a process for that. We have a partner for that. We have this, we have that." And you don't, right? There's going to come a time where it becomes obvious, because clients smell fear. They'll know when you're nervous because you're presenting something, you're not really sure about it. So yeah, you got to make sure that whoever you present yourself as, is who you are.
Carl: And we used to say early on in any engagement, "Hey, we are not big data developers. We are not great at big integrations." This was early on. We got good at it later. But we would say, "If you've got some legacy systems that you need to integrate with," we blew a project. I want to say it was with AMC Theaters or something, because they had these legacy kiosks that they had to integrate in with everything. And I just remember going, "Nope, that's not us."
Gene: Right. But that's a tricky one because, all of us, I mean, if you've been doing this for a while, all of us have come through this time where everything we did was us not knowing what we were doing and having to figure it out on the way. So there's a lot of stuff that, I mean, now, you can get in trouble with that mindset like you're talking about, big data stuff. One of my favorite things, it's not my favorite thing to say, but something I will say a lot, is when we're in a meeting and the client starts talking about stuff and I'm like, "That's way out of my zone of expertise. I have no idea what that is." I used to be afraid to say that. I don't mind it now, because I think trying to remember a time where someone did the opposite, but in almost every case, they're always like, "Cool. Well, do you know someone? Or can you help us still?" They still ask you for help, which is also set the expectation that I don't know what the hell that is, but I will help you find out.
Carl: Yeah. I mean, I think that's huge. And even to be able to say it. You know what? There are so many technologies out there. There are so many things have been out there for a long time. We've got a network of specialists that we work with. "After this call, let me in touch with them, give me a couple of days, I'll get back with you." If we can't find somebody who knows how to do that, then we're probably not a fit. But like I said, we've got some really great partners that we get with. The other thing is, we used to say all the time, if somebody had something special that we hadn't done before, we would say, "Hey, we haven't done that before, but we'd be happy to learn." And we'll make sure in the agreement that it reflects that in the rate that we're actually learning, because that's value. And the whole thing in any agreement is we just need a good exchange of value.
Carl: So if we're learning on the job, you shouldn't have to pay for that, right? Again, establish trust, because you're being honest, you're explaining it. And at the end of the day, people don't hire a company, and they don't hire your portfolio. They hire people. And you know what? If they like you and they can trust you, and they know that when you don't know, you're going to tell them, you're okay.
Gene: That's why they're paying you. You've got one there. I think it's one of the last ones or whatever, pretty close, but delivering bad news the same way you deliver good news. That's important.
Carl: I think it's huge. Nancy Lyons was the first person from Clockwork that I ever heard say that. I'm sure she heard it from somewhere, or maybe she came up with it. She's super bright.
Gene: Let's give her credit.
Carl: We'll give Nancy credit. Let's do that. Her last name is Lyons. That's kind of awesome in itself. But she basically said, "Deliver bad news with the same speed you deliver good news," right? And I would even take it further and she would probably do this as well, and say, "With the same attitude."
Gene: That's the way I took it when I read that. Not so much speed, whatever, but you just give it. Just put it out there. I mean, it's a problem to solve. Yeah.
Carl: Yeah. "Hey, great news. We got done a little bit early here. We're going to take that time and invest in polishing up this area, which could use some love. Hey, bad news. We just found out this is going to take a little bit longer, so we're going to figure out how we can do it minimal impact to the budget and timeline." Right? And that's the thing. If you tell them when things are bad, nobody trusts good news all the time.
Gene: I know. You're not perfect.
Carl: Right? If you're three months in, and that's another thing about establishing trust, is in that initial kickoff meeting saying, "Look, there's going to come a time in this project where things get a little shaky." And before that happens, I want to make sure that we have a good rapport, that we're able to communicate with each other in a very open, very honest, and very clear manner, so that when I tell you we just hit a bump that could delay us for a week, here's what we're going to do to try to rectify the situation, I can point back to this conversation and say, "Hey, remember when I said we need to stay cool?" Because that's the thing. And I did this a few times. It got a little bit of notoriety, but there were times where during that conversation, I would put on a red Patch Adams clown nose.
Carl: I would be like, "What the hell are you doing?" I was like, "This way, when I say, 'Remember when I put on the red clown nose?' You'll say yes." And I'll say, "What I said then was there's going to come a time where things are going to go off the rails a little bit." And again, maybe other people don't go through that. But if you're working with us, that's kind of part of the process, because we're going to get to a point where things come into focus. Right now, things are fuzzy. We're moving in a general direction. We can kind of see the light. But once we get to a point where things pop into focus, that's when we're going to realize some of the mistakes we made earlier, before we knew. It's nobody's fault. You didn't do anything wrong. We didn't do anything wrong. It's the nature of this work.
Gene: Yep. But if you're not having those conversations, then those things can be contentious, because they can feel uncomfortable about it. And then also, just like in personal relationships, if you're not communicating, what do you do? You tend to create your own stories in your head. In the two days where I haven't heard from you, they're sitting there creating a whole story while you're not talking to them in their head. And then they're like, "I'm just going to sit here and wait until you tell me what's wrong." And you're like, "Whoa, that's a bad call to jump on."
Carl: They start projecting on you the bad thing that happened to them that might not even be related to a web project. It was the last time they partnered with an outside company, right? And they're like, "Yeah, they went dark on us and they kept the money and they did this and they did that." And then they're like, "Maybe they're all like this." And so then you've got that going on. I'll say this. I think over communicating is important. Now you over communicate.
Gene: Explain that though. What do you mean by over communicating?
Carl: Okay. So for us, one thing we did, we call it the first strike email. We'd send it out on a Monday, and we would say, "These are the things that happened last week." Now we would say, "A phone call with client changed this directive," right? Could say, "Okay, so now there's an extra video that has to be created." Right? But we just put it in this, what we call, first strike email. They knew on Mondays before noon, they were going to get this email from us that basically said everything that had changed on the project, everything that had gotten done on the project, and then we would do a green, yellow, red for if we felt like we were on target with our original expectations, right?
Carl: And at first, clients reply to that. They reply to that. And then they just get numb to it. But it's always there. And to me, it felt a little bit like over communicating. I mean, if we have a call on Friday and we say what we're going to do, and then on Monday morning, we're listing that with all the other things, right? But you could never say we didn't let you know this was going to happen. And it was just this repetitive, ongoing kind of sense.
Carl: But we also always had, we did have times where somebody would come back and ask for clarification. We would put in there, for example, unnecessary internal meeting to clarify technology usage, no charge, right? And then you get that call. "What is this?" "Oh, we were confused internally, and four people spend an hour figuring it out, and I'm not going to charge you for those four hours, but I still need to track it so that I know next time, this was something that happened," because that's the thing. If they know you're being a good steward of their time, then they're going to trust you. And the other thing, there's going to come a time where you do screw up, where the team screws up, or you made a mistake, the handoff was bad. You just own it. There's no better opportunity to get trust from a client or any relationship, than just own it. "I shouldn't have had that fifth beer. I'm sorry."
Gene: I like this concept of creating little moments where you have these points where you communicate subtly to your client that you're doing things like that, right? I don't know how many people would think about reporting something like that to their client, it just wouldn't be in there, but to say, "Hey, we spent time on this. I'm not going to charge you for it, because it was an internal issue that we solved on your behalf, but it should have been something we caught, but just letting you know it's there. We're not going to charge you for it." I kind of like that because yeah, it's point two that's sort of baked in, to then communicate that to them. That can be useful. How far does that become parlor tricks though? You ever had anybody call it? "What? You're just trying to fucking show me some stuff."
Carl: No, I've never had anybody do that. I will tell you that-
Gene: That's probably way too cynical of me to say.
Carl: No, I don't think so, because-
Gene: I work with some cynical ass clients.
Carl: But I mean, I remember sending out an invoice that we had gone above and beyond on some stuff and I wanted to get credit for it." And it was, "Okay, well, if I put it in the invoice, I'm going to have to put it as written off," right? And that was a big moment for me, because I realized we write off hours all the time. If you're in creative services and you say you don't...
Gene: Oh, you do. Oh, yeah.
Carl: You do. Come on. Even if your time and materials, you do. There are things where you're just like, "Okay, I'm 30% over budget this month, and they didn't do anything wrong. We just we were able to front load some stuff," or whatever, but we would go into invoices and actually put in things that we had done and put "no charge" next to them. And I did get a client call once and say, "Why are all of these no charges there?" And I said, "Well, it's things we should have anticipated. We should have known this, and we didn't, and so it's not fair for us to charge you."
Gene: Right. But it's on us.
Carl: But it's on us. But I will say to your point of the cynical thing, I have heard in my own head, when I'm getting ready to put some of those things out there, "Am I manipulating this relationship? Am I now setting up a story so that I can look good?" Because that's bull shit.
Gene: As long as you're honest about it. I think as long as you're doing it earnestly, it'll probably work in your favor.
Carl: Right? So, I mean, if it doesn't originate, and again, I know some people don't track time, but if it doesn't originate from a knowledge point, for me, it would be a time sheet. I would see something and I'll be like, "What is this?" And they would explain it. And I would say, "Oh, okay." So then I would go to the client, say, "Hey, you're going to see this come in, but we're not charging you for it. Again, we had an internal communication issue," but if you don't have some point in basis, if you're just saying, "Hey, I'm just going to put this in there to look great," right? Yeah, don't do that. That's not good stuff.
Gene: Not a good idea. You get in trouble with that shit.
Carl: What about us, Gene? Do you trust me?
Gene: I trust you.
Carl: Sure?
Gene: Yeah. Not really.
Carl: Am I wearing pants?
Gene: I don't trust that at all.
Carl: Okay. All right.
Gene: I know for certain you're not wearing shoes.
Carl: Yeah, no. I told you I'm not wearing shoes. Yeah. And you called me a hippie.
Gene: You damn hippie.
Carl: Hippie.
Gene: It's all right. You could be a hippie. All right, man. What's your favorite cool stuff from the week.
Carl: Favorite cool stuff from the week?
Gene: It's not cool, but I do have one I want to ask you about.
Carl: Yeah, go ahead.
Gene: Don't let your employees pick their work from home days.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: Only because this morning on the news was a big, on whatever the big NBC news, whatever. There was a big story about how at the beginning of the pandemic, nobody wanted to go work from home. And now that we're all going back to the office, nobody wants to go back to the office.
Carl: Yeah, no, it's so true.
Gene: Everyone's struggling with how to do this.
Carl: Yeah. That article was really interesting. It was an HBR article. And I think the biggest thing was they said that if you allow people to choose their work from home days, it's going to screw up the diversity in your organization. This was interesting. And to them, when they were talking about it, right? It was younger people are going to want to work from home more. [crosstalk 00:32:04] Older people are going to want to work in the office. [crosstalk 00:32:04]
Gene: They keep using the word millennials, but I think we have to remember, millennials are now 30 and 35 years old.
Carl: Yeah. Yeah. They totally are. But it's one of those things where, and then if you look at certain roles, maybe younger people carry those roles more than older people. Then you're going to have certain roles that aren't in the offices. And I mean, it was just an interesting article that got everybody kind of thinking about it. But for me, that whole thing is, I mean, most people don't want to come back. I think in the research I saw, it was 62 or 63% just don't want to come back full time into the office. The commercial real estate thing is going to implode.
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Hey, look, I'm in the co-work business. [crosstalk 00:32:55] I'm fully interested in this. Yeah. So actually, we're anticipating some uptick in our business because of actual offices closing. And I'll tell you, one of the things that's exploded here at SoCo is the meeting room rentals. We put up a form to where non-members can just rent the room. Companies will just want to rent the room for a day, once a month, so we're like, "Shit, I don't care. You don't have to get desks. Could just be meeting room central, who cares?" But it is fascinating. Everybody either being forced or trying to figure out how to get back into the office.
Carl: And the other side on the diversity thing is gender diversity, because women want to work from home more than men. And so yeah, you get into this, and then most people want off Monday and Friday. So now you've got this Tuesday through Thursday thing. The whole thing is just kind of that. But honestly, I think the hybrid is, everybody says that's the solution. I think that's a nightmare waiting to happen, boy.
Gene: Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see how it goes. Glad I don't have a bunch of employees anymore.
Carl: There you go.
Gene: And if you do, I'm sorry I just said that. [crosstalk 00:34:27] All right, man. What last hot take do you have?
Carl: Last hot take. I'm just going to say, I'm excited about 2022. I went and toured the Hard Rock Live venue where we're having owner summit, and we've got these ideas about doing rock and roll make-overs during the show, for a limited number of people to get tattoos and a hairstylist and a wardrobe make-over and stuff. So I think as much as it's a hot take, it's just an excitement that 2022 is looking really good. And I know a variant could show up and knock us on our butts, but maybe we won't even care at that point. I don't know. But I'm just excited about it. I think we're going to announce it today. So today being Tuesday, but I did wear a Friday shirt. Friday launch. It's terrifying. So yeah. What about you brother?
Gene: Hot take. That was my hot take, was trying to figure out how to get back to the office. I just saw that this morning on the news, and me and my wife had a conversation about it. I'm sort of stuck on it, because now, my wife works for state government, and they forced her. They just said, it was a Monday and they were like, "By Wednesday, everyone must be back in the office." It was like, "What?" And people got to find childcare. They were just like, "We don't care. Just do it." So in the story, it was about businesses who are basically forcing their employees back sooner than the employees were ready. But there's a lot of things you don't think about. Anyway, sorry to be stuck on that one, but I think it's interesting.
Carl: Hey, be stuck on it. And she just wanted to make sure you were not going to be at home? Did you see this requirement for her to go back? Just saying.
Gene: That's funny, that's funny. Screw you, Smith.
Carl: Okay. I'll take it.
Gene: All right.
Carl: Brother, from one hippie to a non hippie, love and respect.
Gene: Love and respect.
Carl: All right.
Gene: Later.
Carl: You didn't see it.
