There are a lot of polarizing things when it comes to running a webshop. It still blows my mind that retainers are one of them. But it's a great reminder that we're all in this business for different reasons and with different needs. So let's take a look at the good, bad, and sometimes ugly reality of retainers in digital services.
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Gene: ... recording.
Carl: Are we rolling?
Carl: I had a whole thing I was going to do, and you just fucking bulldozed right in. Are we recording? And I'm sitting here going, "Next week... Foiled again. Damn you Crawford."
Gene: We keep trying, man.
Carl: How you doing bro?
Gene: Good. I'm doing great.
Carl: Let's act like we haven't been talking for 30 minutes before you hit record.
Gene: They don't know how long we've been talking. It could have been an hour. It could have been two minutes.
Carl: They don't know about us, and they don't know about love.
Gene: They don't know.
Carl: That's right. Was that a Bangles song?
Gene: I don't know.
Carl: Is that a remake?
Gene: I don't know. Is it The Bangles or The Bengals?
Carl: Is there a difference?
Gene: Who likes The Bengals?
Carl: I... Well...
Gene: Two people?
Carl: When Collinsworth was there, and I was in seventh grade, I liked them. When Krumrie's leg broke.
Gene: Mm-mm (negative).
Carl: Oh, yeah. That was painful, wasn't it?
Gene: It was.
Carl: We got a new angle. Showed that. That was the best thing in the whole Super Bowl that year.
Gene: Nope, Nope, Nope. Nope. As tiger based mascots go, they have the best jerseys and helmets. I'll have to say.
Carl: Okay. And there are a lot of them.
Gene: There a lot. I don't understand why.
Carl: There are a lot of tigers.
Gene: Well, tigers are cool.
Carl: Okay. What I think is cool, is your unbranded coffee cup. Your solid white...
Gene: I know.
Carl: Hard to tell if it's big or small, because you have those dainty little hands.
Gene: Small.
Carl: And it's like... Yeah, there you go. Somebody knows the magic of video. To everybody listening, Gene pulled his cup away...
Gene: Yes?
Carl: ... from the... What do you call those things? Camera.
Gene: Camera. And then close to the camera. And the [crosstalk 00:02:18].
Carl: I know all the terms. I know all the equipment. I've done this before. So just go ahead and let me know what you want me to do, but...
Gene: Cool.
Carl: I got you, man. I'm in.
Gene: So what's that, man?
Carl: Here comes the segue. I thought you were going for it.
Gene: We don't have segues. We have hard segues.
Carl: No. Well, if we want to retain our clients... I meant to say listeners. Damn it, I blew it. Hold on. Let's roll that back. Well, Gene, if we want to retain our listeners.
Gene: We should probably have better segues or retainers.
Carl: Hey, funny, last week's newsletter was all about retainers. What a polarizing thing. You'd think that we're RFPs, the way some people get irritated with retainers.
Gene: What? I don't understand how it could be polarizing.
Carl: Yeah. So somebody wants to give you a certain amount of money per month, or quarter, or year or whatever.
Gene: Take it.
Carl: To do some work, a consistent cashflow, which we all know, that one of the biggest issues with this whole industry is feast or famine.
Gene: I thought that was the holy grail, to get that income coming in every month. I thought that was the whole reason why we all got distracted by trying to make products for all those years, and then realized, "Hey, we're a services company. We can't make products well. I thought that was the whole point.
Carl: Yeah. So I remember we did retainers, probably two years in, we started realizing this was a cool thing. Well, what we did wasn't... I think we did something close to a retainer. Because some people, here's the thing. If at the end of a month there are hours leftover, those don't roll over into the next month.
Gene: You got to make sure-
Carl: That's not a retainer. That's a prepayment. That is not a retainer. A retainer, if they have not committed to the work, if they've not gotten it to you, then you still keep that money. Now, if you have gone over what you committed to, they do pay that. But the difference is, you've committed to some sort of... It could be a lower rate. It could be... For a lot of people, what it really is, it's not even about the rate. It's about availability. So they have guaranteed you a certain amount of money per month. So that they're at the front of the line all the time.
Gene: Yep. Right. And I do want to... I was making silly.
Carl: You are so funny, Gene, when you make the silly.
Gene: We started doing it about a year and a half ago, two years ago. But we don't do straight retainers for work in terms of... We build websites, so we don't do the retainer for the building of the website. That's always... We'll either do it hourly, or we'll do it value-based or whatever.
Carl: You don't do value based.
Gene: Nine times out of ten they're like, "I got this much. Take it or leave it." And we're like-
Carl: That's called fixed bid.
Gene: There you go.
Carl: Go ahead.
Gene: Anyway.
Carl: Nowadays is where you would say $1 million. That was if Dr. Evil happened to be from Venezuela. That's one time, enjoy.
Gene: That was pretty good.
Carl: Thank you.
Gene: We've tried that. It doesn't work.
Carl: No.
Gene: Any who, what we'll do, we call it a services retainer. So what we found was, we'll build the website, and we'll go, "Hey, it's built on this thing called a content management system. And I'm going to spend five hours training you and everybody you work with how to use it, and you can do whatever you want." And then guess what? They go-
Carl: They want you to do it.
Gene: They go, "I need to add this blog post, add it." And then you're like, "This is going to be two hours." And then they go, "That's too much." And then you got to... And it's bullshit. So they're going to call you anyway, is what we found. So we were just like, "Hey, let's just have them prepay for that, that they're going to call us anyway." And that's what we started doing. And it's just grown and grown, and we've gone back to the same clients and gotten more, and more and more. And now we have pretty nice, I'd say services contracts, for X amount of hours a month that we do random crap on their website for them. And I like it.
Carl: Yeah. So if there are hours left over at the end of the month, does that matter?
Gene: We have a couple of clients that we will, just because we really like them, and-
Carl: Oh, yeah.
Gene: ... we know that, let's say they pay for 10 hours a month, they don't always have something to do that month. So we'll say, "Okay. Well, you're not really updating your website every day, like some of these other clients are. So we'll let you save up a quarter, and then we'll do something for you, or some idea that you have." Or we'll go to them with an idea and say, "Hey, you've got these 30 hours. We think you should do this." And 9 times out of ten, they're like, "Do it." And we just do it.
Carl: Right. And then you can also... Maintenance retainers, service retainers. One of the most important things about a retainer is to identify what's not covered. Like we always said, if there's any level of discovery, if there's any level of new code, if there's any level of design rounds, or any kind of creative, then that is not covered, that is not covered in this. This is more about ongoing upkeep, maintenance. There may be some functionality changes, because we find something that's really cool and we want to do it. And we'll get your approval. But the reason why it's polarizing, because I remember Engine had a reputation for being very creative.
Gene: Okay.
Carl: Eric Rossetti-
Gene: Oh, yeah.
Carl: ... Bruce Cook, Travis Schmeiser, Stockton Eller. These were super creative humans, and they were... It was just amazing. So retainers to a lot of people are more like production oriented companies, who have... They're maximizing the relationship to get the longevity out of the... I guess make the most out of the life cycle of that client. So I remember being at South by Southwest, I'd been invited to this lunch. I still don't know why. Jeffrey Zeldin was having some people get together, and we went to some Mexican place. And I still remember they had... It was first time I ever saw the Coronas upside down in a margarita. And I'm going, "Okay, welcome to South By. This is what we're doing. Welcome back to college, 10 years later."
Carl: And I don't want to out the person, I'll just say Andy. Okay. And then you can figure it out. But he literally cornered me against a wall, and another wall, which is called a corner. And he said, "I'm not going to do the [inaudible 00:09:10]". He basically said, "I understand you're doing retainers." And I was like, "Yeah, they're awesome." And he was like, "That's the death of creativity. When you do retainers, it's the death of creativity." And I said, "Actually, it's the beginning of sleeping at night."
Gene: Yeah. It's also the beginning of fuck off.
Carl: The more that we sleep, the more we get to do. While we had been-
Gene: I didn't say that.
Carl: No. But for whatever reason. And part of it was because of that team that I was with. And at this table, I think Jeffrey was collecting people who were making a difference, which means you've got a level of visibility. Which means, I think we were saying it was okay to do retainers. And that was a negative thing, because that meant we were saying it was okay to have a relationship, versus being project-based. Which was also a big deal. And this was also in 2005. So totally different time.
Gene: Different mindset. This is something that... I don't know how... I'm sure everybody thinks about this. Maybe not in this way. So I own a gym. And early on in the process of running this gym, we had members who... the relationship that we had with them was very transactional. It was like, "Hey, you pay for a class. You come in and do a class. That's it." That's cool. But after a while, we began to suffer because we had a lot of turnover, turnover, turnover, turnover. It wasn't until we decided to not really go that transactional route, but go the transformational route. In that we would want someone... We want to work with you for more than a year, more than six months. And that's how we sold them, how we structured the gym contracts and everything like that.
Gene: And that has really stuck. And we applied a lot of that thinking to the web business, right around the same time. And it's worked there too. I was stuck for so long, since I started my business, until, man, two or three years ago, of just having this transactional business, of like, "Hey. We got a website, let's get it done." Give it to them. Onto the next client. And that's... You can pay your bills with that. But after a while, it's like, "Shit. We know everyone in town. We got to go to another town. How do we go to another town?" It's just you never have enough. Right. And a couple of years ago, we went, "Look, let's stop looking at these things as transactional, and try to build..." Like you're saying, we're trying to build relationships, and get more work from the same client over, and over and over. And really work with them as a partner. Help them grow.
Gene: Because these are businesses, and government entities and nonprofits, that they have long-term goals. Let's try to find out what their long-term goals are, and how we can fit into that. And that's made all the difference in terms of, like you said, being able to sleep at night.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: Not sitting there scared shitless where September's payroll is going to come from. We know, "Hey, we got to find a couple of bigger projects." But we know, basically we're getting income from these clients that we're taking care of. Let's take care of them. And that that feels good.
Carl: Yeah. And that was the big shift. If you look at the origin of a lot of shops, and I've mentioned this before on the show, but you either came out of an advertising agency, or a software development firm. Those were the two origin stories for most web shops in the late '90s, on in. That was definitely true with us. And we had seen that advertising agencies valued the relationship over the quality of the work. Also, early on, there was a lot of confusion around how a website was built. Because people were doing it a lot of different ways. Some people were using PageMaker. Some people were building things from scratch. You had all of these different ideas around how it was done. And a lot of people were just taking money and going dark.
Carl: So it was like... But the idea that the work was more important than the relationship, was almost... And also there was so much work. When you get into the early 2000s, after the bubble burst, and people were like, "Well, we still need a website." It was like every company on the planet suddenly realized yellow pages might not be a thing. And we might need to do a website." Kids, Google it. I'm telling you the truth.
Gene: Yeah. And they had no idea what that stuff cost.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: Back then.
Carl: And that was it.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: I remember working on projects, that now would be five grand. Back then, it was 50. It was awesome.
Carl: Yeah. And you would have... We were working with a lot of real estate people, real estate companies, because MLS integration and all these types of things. That you look at Zillow now, there was no crap like that. Right?
Gene: No.
Carl: Everybody was trying to do their own thing. But I remember going to meet with the owner of this really big Southeast real estate company. And he said, "Hey, we just did the coolest thing." I'm like, "Yeah?" He goes, "Yeah. We just signed up for this thing, it's 300 bucks a month. And it's going to show us exactly how well the website works, so that we can start having metrics, and we can figure things out.
Gene: Mm-mm (negative).
Carl: So somebody had sold them Google Analytics for 300 bucks a month, which even then was free. And I looked at him, I said, "It's probably not worth a lawsuit, but watch this." And I brought up, on his computer, Google Analytics. And I showed him that we had already connected it. And I said, "You know what we're charging you for that? Nothing, because it's free. And we want to see as well." And that was the thing. There was lots of charlatans in the day, Gene. And they were out there doing all this. So relationships were tougher back then too, because there was a lot of mistrust. Because what we did felt like magic, which you could charge a lot for magic.
Carl: So retainers, when you were able to get them, the other challenge that happened, we ended up landing Epic Games. And I remember this was a amazing thing for us. I had always wanted a video game company. I liked Epic Games, I really wanted Naughty Dog. But what ended up happening, was we were going against a great shop, Viget. Brian Williams, running that out of DC. And they were going for Epic Games, and we were going for Epic Games. They were going in as a creative powerhouse. We were going in as a, please anything, just say yes to us. We don't care. We did not stand up and go toe to toe with them, which we probably should have. And Brian is a good friend, and he's part of the Bureau community.
Carl: But we went in with a retainer, and we ended up getting all the corporate work. And all that kind of stuff. Because that was ongoing. So we didn't have any of the fun... We did get to do some fun, creative stuff later. But what I remember is, that retainer lasted almost two years. It was a monthly retainer. There was a tremendous amount of work that needed to be done.
Carl: We were ExpressionEngine people. And they were all about ExpressionEngine, and we had to do all kinds of sandboxes for them to play in and things like that. But what I remember was, we had to rotate out the team. Because the thing about a retainer, is if you're working the same team with the same client. So Period Three is a little smaller, but we were at that time, about probably 30 people. And if you have five people working nonstop on the same stuff all the time, and the projects aren't even changing, you have to start rotating through. And for the client, who's going to pattern on somebody in that group as their person, you have to say, "Look, we're going to start having more issues with QA. We're going to have things go live that are a little bit buggy if we don't rotate out the team. So every month we're going to rotate one of these five people out. The other four will know what's going on. They can bring the new person along."
Carl: If it was a smaller retainer, like maybe there were just two people on it. We would bring a third on to ride shotgun for a month to replace... Then let that one person out. And the team could say, "No, I want to stay on." That was fine. If there wasn't issues that were starting to happen. If the work wasn't starting to get a little bit shaky, or if they weren't starting to get a little cranky.
Gene: Might happen.
Carl: That was fine. But that's another thing with retainers, especially long-term ones. You have to set that expectation. That you're not buying... You're buying a team, but you're not necessarily buying this team.
Gene: These people. Yeah.
Carl: That's not how it works in the field.
Gene: So who made that call? Who would be the one making that call that, like, "Hey, we got got to... Some stuff's not right, or whatever. How does this... We got to change it out."
Carl: Oh. For us, it was scheduled.
Gene: Oh. You just scheduled them.
Carl: Yeah. So we would say, "Okay, we're coming up on April. Fred, this is your final month on this project. We're going to rotate you out. And we'll bring Jeff on." So that was the thing, it was planned in advance by whoever was managing the projects. So whoever's doing the staffing on that stuff would manage that. And the other thing was sometimes... It wasn't like a perfect, "Okay, this is May 1st." Because you have people who are, who are on the tail end of finishing something. So sometimes it might've been, "Okay. Well, we're about to launch this new single sign on for blah, blah, blah. We'll get to the end of that. Get to the end of the QA on that. And then we'll transition off. So somebody can go on something else." Because the other thing is, people are going to want to take vacations. [crosstalk 00:18:59] all that then.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: So rude.
Gene: Stay at your desk and you work.
Carl: Exactly. Fun is for the weekends.
Gene: Yeah. I'll bring you food. Just don't get up. All right. So what about when these things start to go south? You got some nice stuff [crosstalk 00:19:14].
Carl: Being further south than you. I really hate that expression, Gene. And you're in South Carolina. So technically you're further south than Florida, but why do we say going south? That's like... It's not cool.
Gene: I live here. I know why.
Carl: Going... Yeah. Shit, so do I. Nevermind.
Gene: I've been to Florida too.
Carl: Let me pull that one back.
Gene: So you mentioned, specifically calling out what is and what is not [crosstalk 00:19:44].
Carl: I just went like this. I don't know what that is.
Gene: I like making faces in the camera. I can see myself.
Carl: There you go. For those of you listening at home, Carl... I don't know what you call that. I jutted out my lower jaw.
Gene: Carl is, what we call in the business, losing his mind.
Carl: Oh man. That's so long ago.
Gene: And not slowly.
Carl: No. So what do you do when a retainer starts to fall apart?
Gene: Yeah. So make sure you list what is and what is not included, first off. That's something to do. We're talking about trying to prevent shit from going south.
Carl: Yeah. So you you're going to have to realize that any long-term relationship like that is going to hit bumps. And especially on the client side, they're going to have turnover. On your side, you're going to have turnover. So the people who've been rolling with that relationship for so long, there's going to be transitions. Somebody new may come in and want to do something different. Somebody on the client side may come in and bring in their own people.
Gene: That's where we've had a lot of problems with us, is that we'll have a retainer, a relationship for a year, and then there'll be a new member on their side.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: And then we're like, "Oh. A new person." We're like, "Work with them." But we only ever talk to the other people.
Carl: See, I think that's the thing. So for us, what worked really well with Epic, I want to say... It was really weird, bit it was every six weeks, because that was their release cycle for things, I think. But we would have a call with our team at Epic once every six weeks. And that call would last for hours. Because we were just going through stuff. And if there was somebody new that was coming in, they would get introduced on that call, on our side or on their side. And we would share a little bit about their specialties, their background, ideas they may have that we're going to look at in the future. This was a thing, that we had the creative director camp last week. And there's this idea I've been playing around with, with a couple of people called a time capsule, which is for onboarding.
Carl: And I think this originated from some of the stuff we did with retainers, with Engine. Was when you first come onto a project, write down all the things that you think could make it better, and then keep that shit in an envelope and keep it to yourself. And once you've been on the project for four weeks, open that up. And see if maybe now you understand why back then you thought that, but now you've been indoctrinated in. And I think it works if you come onto a new team at any point in time. You're going to be like, "Why do we do that? It doesn't make sense. What if we... This would." And the thing is, everybody probably knows that. There's just some reason. But then again, there may be some nugget of joy, that four weeks later, you look at it and go, "Actually, maybe we should back everything up every night."
Gene: There is nothing I want more in life than more nuggets of joy.
Carl: Well, sir, I am not going to go there. Because I had some stuff to say.
Gene: So you've got, in the email, get agreement on terms, document the process, agree on frequency, schedule meetings.
Carl: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Gene: Those are all cool. At the end of the day, I'm reading this, and I'm thinking back to where we've made errors. It really comes down to making sure you have whatever in place on your team to have discipline throughout that retainer. Because I think a lot of these... Shit falls apart when you're not disciplined, because it's really easy. Because I think back to one particular client we had, where we had some issues recently, and it's because we were supposed to have a monthly meeting. And for three months in a row, we were like, "We're busy. Man, we'll just meet next month." The next month came. We're like, "Oh, well they're busy. We'll just meet next month." And then before you know it, it's been four months. You haven't talked to them in over a quarter, and then they go, "Why are we paying these guys?"
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: And you're like, "Shit. We got to meet with them." And you're like... You try to make... And if you would have just been disciplined, and saying, "Oh, you're busy today. Well, we'll meet tomorrow, or we'll meet next..." Making sure that those things happen, making sure you're talking, making sure you're taking the time to send those email updates. I think that's really the key, because it's so easy to not be disciplined.
Carl: Yeah. Again, we shared this earlier in the show when we were talking about communication, but those first strike emails we'd send out on Mondays. Those were proof of what got done the week before. I see that's what people want. They want that activity stream. If you're looking through Twitter, and you're just seeing stuff come through, you know that there's energy, you know there's something going on there. It's the same thing when you're working together, they just want to see that stuff's happening. And if they decide that they want to drill in and look closer, they're going to see what it is and why it was.
Carl: But if you don't have that scheduled communication, then they're going to fill in the gaps with stuff that's not real. And then they are going to be like, "Is this really where we should be putting our money?" And then from the shop side, I think you should use those quarterly, twice a year or whatever, to say, "Is this really the value, or are we getting compensated fairly.
Gene: Yeah both sides. Yeah.
Carl: Or are we not doing enough? Because I know we've backed out of retainers because we felt like there wasn't enough to do. We were like, "We don't want to have to set this aside and then something awesome and new comes in, and we can't do it, because we've committed this time to you while we're sitting here playing video games."
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative). We just did that in both instances, we have one client where we raised it. Because we were doing a little bit more. And then at one it was like, "Man, we haven't done anything for you in six months." So we cut it in half, and it's just how it is. Because it's like you said, you're going to get another client. You're going to need room for them. But the other thing I like is, that since we've been doing that, it really makes us look at new clients. And when you're in that transactional cycle, you're just like, "Sure, I'll build whatever. I just need a project. We need to fill this time." So you're just taking projects. We actually had one client, and we were like, "Man, we could use the work, but they seem like douche bags." So were like, "Nah, we just wait for the next one. Because we have that question-
Carl: There's always going to be another douche bag.
Gene: Well, yeah.
Carl: So let's just wait on the next one.
Gene: And we were right. It turns out that they were just jerking us around in terms of talking to us in the first place. And we were like, "Well, we were right. All the red flags were firing, and we finally listened. And we're better because we don't have to deal with that shit."
Carl: Well, you have to look up. We say that all the time. It's like, if you're just looking at the bottom line number of what you're going to be able to put in the bank, you're not looking where you're going. It's like you tell kids all the time, "Look, where you're going. Watch where you're going?" That's because we are going to bump into shit."
Gene: And we know-
Carl: And the same thing, if you're just looking down at the invoice all the time. Oh, my absolute favorite thing. I remember we were meeting with somebody, and this was definitely a red flag. This person said, "You charge that much?" And I said, "And you won't believe it, but people pay it."
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: And they said, "Well, I refuse to pay this estimate." Then I was like, "Don't worry. Nobody's ever paid an estimate. We send invoices." And oddly enough, Gene, that was the end of that relationship. I don't know what happened, but...
Gene: I think you're better off.
Carl: Oh man, for sure. But I would just say this with retainers, you know what, I think they're part of a healthy diet. Maybe you shouldn't be full on retainers. Maybe there's an aspect of it that's value-based. Things that you've done again and again, and you understand. And you bring so much knowledge that you can make somebody better. I think when it comes to identity development, I think that should not be anything on a retainer. That needs to be its own thing, that needs to... Because there's so much emotion and passion, especially if a founder is going through that process. At the same time, if it's maintenance oriented, I think retainers are amazing. Or if it's ongoing updates and upgrades, or you're going through a six month testing cycle of trying to improve conversions at checkout. Yeah. That's retainership.
Gene: Yeah. You don't have to scope that. You know what I'm saying.
Carl: No, Gene. I don't. I know you're looking at the clock, and you're going, "It's time to... We're going to wrap it up Carl. I say, God damn. I think, you know what I'm saying." I don't know what you're saying, Gene.
Gene: How many hours do you work in a week?
Carl: Me personally?
Gene: In a day.
Carl: Me personally? I don't know, dude. It's the newsletter, dude. Because that's going to take longer.
Gene: Two?
Carl: Honestly. I'm probably about somewhere around four and a half. That doesn't mean I'm not staring at things. I'm just not actively working. But I'd say probably about four and a half hours a day. And I know what you're looking at. You're looking at the...
Gene: The hot link.
Carl: Hot link of the week. And it was...
Gene: The perfect number of hours.
Carl: It was admirable.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Yeah. From, believe it or not, WIRED Magazine. Which, first of all, that was a great name in its day.
Gene: It was an awesome magazine back in its day.
Carl: But WIRED, I don't think that's what we're going for anymore.
Gene: They should call it Wiredless, [crosstalk 00:29:10].
Carl: Wired Lizard.
Gene: Wireless.
Carl: Wild Lizard Magazine.
Gene: I'm going to start a magazine online called Wireless. I think you should. Are you on board?
Carl: I am. I'm 100% on board.
Gene: It's just going to be an RSS feed of wired.
Carl: But it's wireless. I see what you're doing.
Gene: Genius.
Carl: Madness. Okay. So their article though, was around what is the perfect amount of time per day to work, and what can really do? And I think this is really critical right now because everything's in motion. People can't find people to come on their teams. A lot of startups are starting to get funding, because money's coming off the sidelines, and loans are cheaper. So people are getting funded, and they are increasing the cost of talent by offering people 30% over what they're currently getting paid. So you have to start thinking, "Okay, we have to work a little differently. What do we have to ask people to commit to?"
Carl: There's so much stuff, it feels like we're on the edge of a major shift in the way that services are done, digital services, creative services. And I think part of that is going to be, we need to rethink the work day. We need to say, "You know what? This eight hour thing, this 32 hours a week billable and eight hours back to the damn Google, 20% rule bullshit. It's like all of that kind of stuff, I think is about to shift. And this article makes a case for a five-hour day.
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl: But there's risks. Did you read the article, Gene?
Gene: There's inherent risks in everything.
Carl: Oh, that's a good answer.
Gene: I like the part where they're like, "The eight hour workday is fairly new. The Ford motor company rolled this out a hundred years ago." I was like, "That's not new."
Carl: Well...
Gene: In the relative timeline of the Earth, yeah.
Carl: The life of humans... Yeah. And it's interesting, because they mentioned that. And I thought about it. I was like, "Yeah, three shifts of eight hours. It's 24 hours." Because Ford wanted that 24 hours on the damned assembly line, always cranking it out, always fresh. So you weren't going to have a bunch of buggy stuff start to come off. But the thing about five hours that I think is interesting, and if you read that, and also if you study any level of, just work research, focus research. You know that if you are a creative person, you need blocks of uninterrupted time, right?
Gene: Yes.
Carl: Two hours, four hours. Every time you're interrupted, evidently you lose 15 minutes, before you can get back into flow. That research is from a decade or so ago. But to me, the thing that's the most critical, is if you only have five hours, yes, your utilization is going to go up. But your stress level might too. And you're concerned that, I've got to get this done now. A lot of people are going to four day weeks now. And summer hours. Summer hours, we take Fridays off. We're out Fridays after lunch. That sort of thing. It's a similar take on it, really, to a five-hour day. I think the four-hour week... Four hour week. All right, Tim Ferriss. I think the four day-
Gene: That was also bullshit. It was just the title, whatever.
Carl: Dude. He sold drugs on late night TV. That's a whole episode we'll get to. But this whole four day work week, I think works better, because people aren't feeling the stress of, "If I stay over five hours, I'm not going to get out." And also it's harder to schedule stuff. In our world, we read these things that say... And that was a popular link. That was the number one link in the newsletter. And we read that, and we're like, "Let's do that." But then we don't realize that the rest of the world didn't give a shit, because we're doing client services. And if they want to have a call at four o'clock, but we only work until three. What?
Gene: Yeah. What you going to do?
Carl: Well, great shops will do it. And the shops that are struggling will be like, "Okay. We'll get on the call." Gene, you have that look on your face, like you're supposed to be somewhere else. I don't mean right now. I mean in your life.
Gene: Oh, I'm out. See ya. No, I'm just thinking about how I work, and I don't know how I've gotten there. I have no memory of how I've gotten to where I am.
Carl: I would put in a big dose of luck, I think, for you. I know you, I've seen your work, and I think you've just gotten really lucky that-
Gene: I agree.
Carl: ... you landed where you did.
Gene: Because I don't know shit.
Carl: Look at who you're doing a podcast with, dude. Come on. Totally out of it.
Gene: But, I think I work, probably four, four and a half hours a day, in terms of work. And I have to get in early. I have to be at my desk by 8:00 AM, cranking through stuff. And then I'll use the afternoons for trying to talk to people, or just random email-ish or follow up stuff. But in terms of work, it's got to be in the morning. And-
Carl: What's the definition of work. Because a lot of people would say you talking to other people is part of work.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: So in that case, depending on the definition, I never stop, or I barely start.
Gene: Right. I think, and that's the thing about the article, is that different jobs require different types of access. Right?
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: If you're an assembly line person or a fireman.
Carl: There is no doubt.
Gene: Or if you're a fireman.
Carl: Or a mechanic.
Gene: You're just there for 72 hours. The whole four-hour workday, it's a privileged thing.
Carl: Yeah. Well, I'm trying to think about it. It's definitely more...
Gene: It's a office worker.
Carl: White Collar.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: It's definitely more white collar.
Gene: Digital. I think we need a new term... There probably is, and I just haven't read the article. The new term, not white collar, but there's the digital producer, [crosstalk 00:35:21].
Carl: Yeah there is something. Yeah.
Gene: There is something, I'm sure. Let's say you manage 12 people who are all digital producers. Your ass ain't working four hours a day. You're there the whole time they're there.
Carl: Right. Again-
Gene: Or at least you're on call.
Carl: It's all based on the definition of work.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Yeah. How many hours did you put in. If you're a plumber you know.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: Yeah. Well, just my 2 cents.
Carl: I like it, but I only offered you a penny for your thoughts.
Gene: Oh man.
Carl: Because I'm keeping this extra copper.
Gene: That'll get you there.
Carl: God. It's not even worth the copper it's printed on.
Gene: Mm-mm (negative).
Carl: Minted on.
Gene: Well, any lasting... Or sorry, not lasting any hot takes you can leave me with?
Carl: Lasting heat. You want some lasting heat? I got a hot take for you. This shit is hard. So many people think that they're not good at their jobs when they're doing digital services. When they're building stuff for clients. It's hard. It's not that you're not good at it. It's that it's really difficult. And especially now, if you're running a shop, you're struggling to keep your team. The great resignation is real, and it's happening in digital services. People are coming back from vacation, and leaving the company, because that vacation was actually meeting with somebody else.
Carl: I know five different shops right now that are going through that. I know one shop that lost two engineers on the same day. And they didn't even know each other. So you've got that going on. You're trying to figure out what you're going to do with the lease that you can't get out of. But nobody's going back to work. You're trying to get the right staff in place to be able to do the work that you have landed. It's tough. So my hot take for this week, cut yourself a damn break, because you're doing fine. This is just a really difficult time that you're doing a really difficult job.
Gene: Thanks man.
Carl: Not you.
Gene: Oh. Shit. Truth. I like that. I think that's how we should leave it.
Carl: Oh, okay. Cool. I thought we were leaving it. All Right, everybody. Hey, be good out there. Don't do anything I wouldn't watch.
