It's a different kind of difficult right now. Pandemic uncertainties aside, and that's a big aside, most of us are still struggling to find people to join the team. And the people we do have are being tempted with shiny new opportunities and higher salaries. Oh, and there's still the matter of trying to get out of a lease since the office isn't gonna play the same role in the future. Or is it? Take a breath... Things are changing and we'll get through this. But make no mistake, you are not alone in this silliness. Read on for some ideas on keeping your wits about you.
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Gene: Rock, paper, scissors.
Carl: Rock, paper, scissors. And then we go, you ready? All right.
Gene: Shit.
Carl: And I like the delay. Scissors.
Gene: I got-
Carl: Hold on. Here you go. Cut me. Ow. I said a bad word right at the end.
Gene: It was a good cut.
Carl: It was awesome. I can't wait to see how it comes out. How are you doing, man? How's it going, Gene?
Gene: It's good man. Had a great long weekend.
Carl: Yeah. The big holiday weekend, the big 4th of July.
Gene: What'd you do?
Carl: We had a party. We had a lot of little people come over, like three, four and five year olds playing in the pool.
Gene: Wait, what?
Carl: Yeah. Playing, hanging out, having fun.
Gene: That sounds fun.
Carl: This is the thing, I was so glad it rained as much as it did because there are a lot of idiots shooting off mortars, and doing all that kind of stuff. And what I found is if you line up four of them at a time, you can really get to that fourth one and light it before the first one...
Gene: Kind of.
Carl: Idiot.
Gene: Oh, I had fun on the 4th.
Carl: Yeah, right.
Gene: That's me messing with... yeah. We have relatively new neighbors. So it turns out they're fireworks people. I think they probably spent-
Carl: What happened to the old neighbors?
Gene: Well, they just moved out. I think these guys spent probably $8,000 worth of fireworks. And they started at dark and they went until 2:00 in the morning, like solid. I'm like how much money did you spend on fireworks?
Carl: Oh my goodness.
Gene: It was legit, like boom, boom, the whole time.
Carl: That's amazing, man. Wow. Do you know in Florida, it's only legal to shoot fireworks on three days. And if you shoot them other than those three days, it's illegal.
Gene: Huh?
Carl: Yeah. So New Years, Memorial Day, and 4th of July.
Gene: Really?
Carl: That's what somebody told me. I didn't check.
Gene: That's a weird one for Florida. It seems like it would be like whatever anybody wants to do.
Carl: Oh no. Fireworks were illegal here for a long time.
Gene: Wow.
Carl: Yeah. I mean, you can just sparklers and snap and pops, pop, and stuff like that. But not any booms or any...
Gene: We live in South Carolina. It's like, man, do whatever you want. Blow off fingers, blow off neighbors' fingers. We do not care.
Carl: Yeah. Well that's why we would drive up there and load up cars and drive back here. So it probably hurts your economy when the state went, we're losing out on a lot of taxes.
Gene: Yeah. Just let them do what they want. Carl, things are getting better, right?
Carl: You know what's great about shooting off fireworks, Gene? It's a catharsis. Because we need something in these times, Gene. These times where I can't speak. These times, these times.
Gene: These times. These times we need to let off a little steam.
Carl: I see what you're doing. You're referencing the newsletter, and you're saying things are getting better, right? Because turnover's high, people can't hire new people. The pipeline's full. We can't get the work done.
Gene: What's up?
Carl: What are you going to do?
Gene: I don't know. Read the-
Carl: What are you going to do when they come for you, bad boys?
Gene: Read the Bureau newsletter.
Carl: There you go. And thanks everybody for tuning in today. It was a pleasure. So I mean, stress is life, right? I mean, this is the thing. We have chosen an industry where it's going to be a roller coaster. That is just a given. And one of the things that I thought we need to focus on is how to relax, how to stop. Because I think we're in those moments right now where everything is big. Everything, we're spinning our heads around, looking at everything, trying to fix everything. And some of those things aren't even things we can fix, right? They aren't even things that we need to be paying attention to. But because our survival brain is in full focus, we're everywhere, everything is a threat.
Gene: I can see that.
Carl: [crosstalk 00:04:41] before, right? Yeah?
Gene: I can see that. Yeah. I think you're right. I think one of the skills you learn over the years, or I hope you learn over the years of running your own business, is how to differentiate between red line items and just things that you maybe should do. Because you're right. I know a lot of business owners that everything's the same priority. Getting to work and getting the coffee going before everyone else, making sure that first person there does that, is just as important as making payroll. And it's like maybe not.
Carl: In my experience, if there's not a fresh cup of coffee, versus if somebody didn't get paid, slightly different. But the thing, what I've found is really helpful, and this is coming through a bunch of camps, a couple of things. First of all, one is understanding what gives you energy and what doesn't. And making sure that you're putting energy into something that is going to give you energy back. And when you do that, you don't burn out because you're seeing some success. And I think the biggest challenge for people when they've got all this crap going on in their head, because, well, that project's going to be late, but I can't fill this role. But you know what? We just landed another project. What are we going to do?
Carl: There are a lot of answers here, but the first one is just get a shit ton of post-it notes, and write down everything that's on your brain. Just write, write, write. And put it down and get a big table, put it all down there. Look at it and empty your brain onto some piece of paper. Because that will, first of all, trick your brain into thinking it doesn't have to remember it anymore.
Gene: That's cool.
Carl: It closes that loop for your brain. But then categorize into two piles. Stuff you can do something about and stuff you can't. If Delta variant is circling in your head, well, guess what? You can't do anything about that. If you've already gotten vaccinated, that's all you can do, right? You can keep wearing masks, whatever. But that's not something that's going to move you forward on the other things. Meanwhile, can't get somebody in this new project management role? Well yeah, you can do something with that. And in fact, upcoming episodes, we're going to talk about things we have to let go of so that we can move forward, right? But you do these two piles, and then take that pile you can do something with, and recategorize it into shit that is easy, and stuff that's going to take awhile, right? I think that's the other big part. And do some of those easy things. Knock out some easy stuff. Get some traction, get some momentum.
Gene: That's a lot like, what was that called? Remember the... Oh man, I can't remember the name, but it was like a movement, a book. It was like-
Carl: David Allen?
Gene: Yeah. David Allen.
Carl: Getting Things Done.
Gene: Yeah. Getting Shit Done, I think was the name of it.
Carl: I think it was Getting Things Done.
Gene: Oh, I thought it was Getting Shit Done.
Carl: Because it's GTD.
Gene: It was GTD. Yeah. That was such a long time ago. But I think basically-
Carl: Fine. I ripped off David Allen. Jeez.
Gene: No, you didn't.
Carl: Come on.
Gene: You didn't. It was awesome. But I think most of his stuff was like, here's how to categorize emails, and blah, blah, blah. But I mean, you could take that a step further. You're right. Let me ask you this. I've started using the... Well, not started to. I did it one time and it worked, and that was it. But when you've got a problem with somebody, somebody you work with, a professional, whatever, but it's not really a big thing. They didn't insult you, or fuck up really bad. It's more like a lot of little things that maybe it's kind of not worth it. So I started up an email, and I wrote him an email outlining everything I hate about him. And then I just deleted it. But it closed that loop in my head.
Carl: Gene, you hit send.
Gene: Did you get it?
Carl: I got that. I got it last night. And I filed it away into a folder I have called drunk again.
Gene: But that's one of those things. I like the idea of writing things down, and then categorizing it into things I'm going to do something about and things that I don't. Because after I wrote that email, I realized none of this, now that I've kind of said it, I wrote it down out of my head, it's like it all looks kind of petty, and it's not worth it.
Carl: You're nailing it.
Gene: Just let it go.
Carl: You're right on something though. It's like you have to let things out of your head. Clearing your head space is super important. And sometimes you do need to write an email and delete it. Sometimes you do need to just speed journal, and get shit out of your head so that you can focus on other things. I think the other thing is, let's say this person that you're talking about, right, because that could be something you write down on a sheet of paper. Deal with Tom. Damn it, Tom. But you write that down, you're giving that person control over you. You're giving that person power over you. And that's another thing is sometimes you just have to say not worth it, right? Is the juice worth the squeeze, right? Because if it's not, then you got to let it go.
Carl: And at the same time, some of those more difficult things that are going to have higher reward... We're saying take the easies, get a couple easies going, then hit some of the tougher stuff. But you also have to look and say bang for the buck. And all those cliches are cliches because they're real, right? It's like because you're looking at them. So when you look at those difficult things, can you break that down into a couple of smaller pieces? This is stuff we all know. Everybody listening to this knows this. But when we get wigged out, and we wake up feeling like there's 17 things I haven't done yet, we forget to prioritize. We forget to slow down and do that. And I think that's one of the biggest things. But there can even be times where you get to such a point that you don't know how to slow down. So have you ever had one of those, Gene, where you're just like...
Gene: Yeah. It's just, you just kind of go and go and go and go and go. Then your wife's like, "I'm leaving." And you're like, oh shit. Just kidding. No, I mean what about... It made me-
Carl: I sent that email? I thought I deleted that email.
Gene: When you were going over stuff like that, I was thinking about the person that loves to do that. They love to write those things down, and they love to stay in the easy things. And I think that maybe kind of be-
Carl: That can be a [crosstalk 00:11:22].
Gene: ... that same mental space. Yeah, you get in that trap of just doing those things that don't really move the needle forward, but they're they're on your list of things to do. But at that point, you're kind of giving them the same priority as that big thing you need to tackle. But you're not wanting to tackle it so you're doing the other things instead. I think you have to be careful of that.
Carl: I agree. Everybody does things differently, right? I do a list, and I have my today list and my everything list. And I shift every six months to a different format. But if there's something on that everything list, and it doesn't get done over four or five days, I remove it.
Gene: Yeah. Because it's not worth it. It's not going to happen.
Carl: If it's something heavy and you're not doing it, then you're just beating yourself up for something you're not going to do. And that's just as tough, right? That's just as hard to overcome. So if there are things you're just not going to do, even though you think you should, don't do them and just see what happens. Seriously. Because you may think this is something that has to happen, but you know what? I can't get to the marketing because of all the new business coming in. Well, hey-
Gene: Why stressed about marketing?
Carl: Maybe slow down just a little. Don't take your foot off the gas completely. But maybe you need to take a break on that to get the other stuff in.
Gene: I dig that. That's straight up. Yeah, that's kind of what I was talking about in a way. We kind of hide behind certain things sometimes. And they're not always confrontation. It's just a bit like doing your taxes.
Carl: Yeah. You should probably keep that one on the list. Voice of experience. But to your point of confrontation, that's another one, right? And it can be confrontation with yourself. It can be confrontation with your past self, right? But I would say there, when you start getting caught up in that loop, that's where you need to go for a walk. Forget labeling things out and all this kind of stuff. Just go for a walk. I was reading a book the other day, and it said, okay, just focus on things that are red. Okay. So you're looking around the room, and I'm like going, okay, I see our live meter that's up there that says 1334. I see a red shirt and a picture. I see a red light. Oh, this mic's not working. So it's like that sort of thing. And what you do when you force your brain to look for something is it has to stop whatever else it was doing. If you do that in the moment you have to do this now.
Carl: Another trick that I put in the newsletter that I thought was super fun is it's called the mammalian diving reflex. Where basically, if we hold a glass of ice water, or if we slowly drink the ice water, if we put an ice cube on our tongue and let it melt, it makes our brain think that we're going underwater. And it totally shifts things around, right? It makes our nervous system know it's going to have to relax because we're getting ready to go somewhere that's cold. So it's going to have to get ready to deal with that. And that to me was just like, most people know box breathing, in for four, hold it, out for four, hold it. That works really well too. But I really enjoy... You don't always have an ice cube, but if you've got a cold glass of water and you just hold onto it, it changes your body chemistry. It has to shift what it's doing. Maybe not body chemistry. Maybe I'm out of my depth now. See what I did with the diving? Out of my...
Gene: No, I dig it, man. That's absolutely right. You stole my thunder with the box breathing a little bit.
Carl: No, no. I'm giving that to you.
Gene: That's a good one. I coach a lot of people on box breathing. We have classes on how to box breathe and stuff. And I find that's a good one, particularly when you're in a situation where you're maybe panicking a little bit before you go on stage, or make a big presentation, or you have to have that confrontation with somebody. I love this one that you're talking about, changing something like the ice or whatever. Because it's not going to damage you. Neither is box breathing. You have one about taking a walk. That's a good one. It's well known Steve Jobs always walked when he had meetings.
Carl: Yeah. The walk and talk.
Gene: Yeah. It changes your brain chemistry a little bit because you're not-
Carl: You're doing something. You don't want to fall over.
Gene: You're splitting your conscious a little bit. Conscience a little bit. Consciousness. I don't know what word I'm going to go for.
Carl: Mammalian?
Gene: Mammalian.
Carl: Mammalian.
Gene: That's a good one. Yeah. It's about calming down. I think you mentioned Delta variant. I feel like, you've talked about this before, we're not meant to handle stress for this long. And for a good, I mean, for most people I'd say, eight to nine months solid. I mean, we've been dealing with shit for a year and a half now. Or over a year and a half. But eight to nine months solid, you were in stress, you were in emergency get shit done mode probably. Good on you if you weren't. We could learn from you. But how to deal with that shit. And I think it broke a lot of people's brains in terms of being able to deprioritize shit that's real, and then shit that's not really an emergency. If you got stuck and listen to the news and stuff, every single day something was a life altering event. And it's just not. It just isn't.
Carl: I've had conversations where people are so caught up still in the news. And I get it. I mean, it's like there's a lot going on in the world, and we do need to pay attention. But you know what? There's also things going on in your world where you can make a difference right now. And I think that is, without a doubt, one of the most important things is how can you fix your world? How can you improve your world and the people that are around you? Because if we all do that, then we fix the big world, right?
Gene: Absolutely. It's a very stoic... I don't know if you read any of the Stoics, Marcus Aurelius, any of those guys. You go to dailystoic.com. You can sign up for that shit. It's free. It's a pretty little meditation thing you can do every day.
Carl: I'm going right now, Gene.
Gene: But anyway, that thinking is the only thing you can control in life is how you respond to things. And I think if you ground yourself in that, no matter what happens, it's not the thing happening, it's how you actually respond to it, which is what affects the world and it affects you. Then that gives you a sense of control over things you don't have control over. Because I think it's hard for a lot of people that deal with the world is just chaos, man. Everybody wants a conspiracy theory. The world's not out-
Carl: They want an answer.
Gene: Yeah. The world's not out to shut your business down. You know what I mean? Like you said it before, no one gets a client, and then have the client, like, "Great. I signed up for these guys. Now I'm going to try to fuck them up."
Carl: "I just gave them 50 grand. Let's see how I can derail it."
Gene: Yeah. There's no conspiracy. If you approach it that way and approach everything that the client brings to you as, well, I could react poorly, or I could react professionally and get some shit done, and not take it personally, you can make some progress. And I think you'll also get out of that rut of just fucking worrying so much.
Carl: Well, yeah. No, that's definitely it, right? You have to get out of worry. And it's so funny. I have this stupid mantra that I'll use sometimes that just says worry and work start the same. Worry and work start the same. Just thinking about it. And it's like, okay. One of these has a real impact and one of them doesn't. And so when I feel myself getting there, I'll just be like, don't worry, work. Just do something that makes something better. And again, that's breaking that log jam.
Gene: It is. Well, it's a habit, right? You can easily fall into the habit of worrying and spinning over stuff. You've got to use whatever you can to get you out of that habit, right? If it's going for a walk when you start feeling... First of all, it's about having self-awareness to realize I'm having these feelings. And then you got to break that. Because in my opinion, it's like looking at Facebook, it's like looking at TikTok. Because there's a reason why TikTok is popular because that shit scrolls forever. And it's feeding you that little dopamine or whatever it is. And you just hit it, hit it, hit it.
Carl: Just that little hit. Just that little hit.
Gene: And next thing you're like, whoa, I've been here for 45 minutes looking at dumb shit.
Carl: Those are the good days. Those are the good days when you catch yourself at 45 minutes.
Gene: But I think worry is the same way.
Carl: Yeah. Oh it does. And it feeds itself, and you get caught up in doing little mindless things that don't matter. Again, back to what we were saying. But if you find the ones that do matter, get some traction, move on to the bigger stuff, and also have real conversations with people.
Gene: I like that.
Carl: I think one of the other things is we have let go of what we've done before and how we've been before because things have changed. And like I said, this will be coming up, but I want to shift over to what the hot link was in the newsletter this week.
Gene: So Carl-
Carl: Because I think it's really important.
Gene: ... what's the hot link of the week?
Carl: Well, Gene, it comes to us from Promethean Research. One of our good friends. And Nick over there, basically they did an article called Raise Your Rates and Invest Wisely. And interestingly, I was having conversations with other people about this before I saw Nick's stuff. And he's a researcher, so he's got credibility.
Gene: Well, I like this little sub-line, Average Billing Rates Haven't Changed in Two Years.
Carl: Two years.
Gene: It's harder than ever to hire, and pipelines are full.
Carl: Yeah. And that was the thing. He did this little equation that basically said if you're having higher turnover, and you're having difficulty hiring, and you've got a full pipeline, it's time to raise your rates. And guess what? The majority of the industry does right now. He also puts out there, if you're charging less than 150 bucks an hour, you got to raise your rates. And I think this is one of those things that we all have to realize. Yes, we're going to lose some work, but the pipelines are bursting. We can't get to it. We're going to have to do a lot of other things. And this is what the invest wisely is about. And you know what? I'm going to shift this straight into the hot take, Gene.
Gene: Well, look at this chart he's got here. Digital agency hourly pricing. 70%, 100 to $149 an hour.
Carl: Yeah, yeah. We all fell into that comfort zone. Now he's doing this based on what's being published, what people are sharing. Not necessarily what they're actual bill rate is.
Gene: I bet the ones that aren't sharing are under that, personally.
Carl: Yeah. And I bet even some of the ones that are at 200 to 300 are probably at 150 to 175. When you start to look at all of the actual billing-
Gene: Yeah. The discounts you give for being a repeat customer, and all kinds of bullshit.
Carl: Yeah. Which is another thing that Nick's saying, which I think is really strong, is cut out the discounts. We don't have to do that right now. Everything is in such demand. There's no reason. Now if it's a big part of your culture or something, do you. Do what you have to do, but realize the game has changed. And that was the other thing for me when he says invest wisely, and this is what a lot of the upcoming newsletter, and I think the podcast content will be, is where do you put that money? Because you're not going to win just on money. You're not going to win just on raising salaries. Now you have to level set salaries, right? People have to know that they're being treated fairly. This is the Daniel Pink Drive stuff. This is making sure that people feel extrinsically and intrinsically that they are taken care of, right?
Carl: But then it's standing for something. It's your culture, it's your core values. It's making sure that you stand for something. And if other people want to stand for something, they can come stand with you, right? Because if it's just about the work and the pay, then they're going to find something outside of that that they believe in, and that they're going to be part of. Also, and I think this is a huge one, we have to make sure that we are giving people who were there a reason to stay longer, right? Retention is key because that turnover's starting to happen. And that's not just going to be money either. But if you start paying people just coming in more than the people who've been there, who've carried you forward, yeah, that is a recipe for even faster turnover and higher issues. But to me, I think one of the biggest things we're going to be facing is learning how to change the work that we do and learning to let go of the idea that people are going to be here forever.
Gene: They will not.
Carl: And that, to me, I think the hottest of hot takes is celebrate when somebody leaves. Lean into the turnover and make that a positive. Be okay with hiring junior talent and rising them up, or raising them, or raising their ride. No, don't do that.
Gene: That's a great way to foster a growth mindset too. We can definitely, as business owners, get so focused on competitive mindset and being fixed. I mean, what a great story to have an employee leave and to go to a better place and kick some major ass.
Carl: That's it.
Gene: You can say they cut their teeth with me. They're awesome. We helped them. And it's legit.
Carl: Yep. You know what college football teams like Ohio State and Alabama, and hopefully one day soon again Florida, are able to get these great talent? Because they say, hey, 60% of the people who play here went on to play in the NFL. And I know this is going to hurt for some shop owners. They're going to be like, nah, that's not it. We're the final destination. I don't know if you've seen the movie. It's not good to be Final Destination. But instead, if you can say, hey, come here and we are going to give you what you need, and then you're going to be able to move on and you're going to be able to do great things. And we're going to celebrate when you leave for a good reason.
Carl: Disney, let's look at this. If you want to talk about a company that embraces who they are and what it means for you to join them, even for a short time period, it is notorious that Disney does not pay well. But what we'll tell you is when you have the Disney name on your resume, you'll be able to go anywhere.
Gene: Well, hell yeah.
Carl: So that to me, you got to put in two to four years so that you have a little stability, and then you can go anywhere. And I think that's one of the things we have to start embracing is that we are not a final destination. Even if we were an Apple or whatever, yet we keep comparing ourselves to that shit. We got to stop it. We've got to embrace the role and the space that we fill.
Gene: And if anybody is coaching somebody, mentoring someone, or talking to their kids or whatever, the one thing we always tell them is don't compare yourself to others. Run your own race. Yet when we get into our business, that's all the hell we do is we go, we're not as good as Apple. One day I want to be Apple or whatever. Why the hell do we do that? We forget all of our own advice.
Carl: Yeah. We sit there and we take Fridays off because Google let people work on personal projects on Friday. Google makes a shit ton from advertising. You do not.
Gene: What are you worried about? Yeah.
Carl: Come on. It's like that, the 20% rule thing, blazed through the industry. And all it did was cause all of us to have to work an extra five years before we can retire.
Gene: Right, right. Focus on the marathon y'all, not the sprint.
Carl: Yeah. There you go. Gene, I'm spent.
Gene: That was 30 minutes of effervescent conversation.
Carl: Raw power.
Gene: All right, man.
Carl: Gene, we're going to call it there.
Gene: Sounds good.
Carl: We're going to send these people on their way. And just remember, you can get through this. You are going to be fine. Document the stuff you have to get done. Take care of the stuff you can. And stop comparing yourself to everybody else. You got this.
Gene: What he said.
