The Bureau is 10 years old! Of course we've learned a thing or two over the past decade. So here are 2nd half of the 10-ish of those.
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Gene: So you're recording?
Carl: Yes, Gene.
Gene: Do we want to do the show?
Carl: I need a haircut and what I was just telling you is the person who cuts my hair moved a five minute drive away.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: And I'm being a punk about it because I used to be able to walk over there.
Gene: But don't you run ultra marathons?
Carl: Yeah, I like how you say ultra marathons. Yes Gene, I do okay.
Gene: So what's the deal?
Carl: What does that have to do with ... Look at this. Hold on. Is that gray? Just roll the damn thing, Gene.
Gene: What's happening? You're not happy.
Carl: Just kidding, I'm in a great mood. How are you?
Gene: Equally good mood.
Carl: Yeah?
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: What's got you in a good mood?
Gene: It's Tuesday.
Carl: Well, okay.
Gene: And Tuesday I talk to Carl.
Carl: That's why I'm in a good mood everyday because Carl's talking to me all the time, all the time.
Gene: Is it Steven or is it Marc? Marc Spector or Steven Grant? Are their names Moon Knight? You know I'm watching Moon Knight? Okay. [crosstalk 00:01:34]
Carl: I'm watching Severance.
Gene: Severance is weird.
Carl: Yeah, I am too.
Gene: It's very weird.
Carl: So weird. Gene, as professional podcasters I feel it is my duty to tell you there's a little bit of crackle coming through there.
Gene: Through the mic?
Carl: No pop, just crackle. Just crackle.
Gene: Nice.
Carl: I'm not joking.
Gene: I'll try to stand still.
Carl: Okay, let's see how that goes. Gene, what are we talking about today? We have more lessons from 10 years don't we?
Gene: We do.
Carl: Do you know what they are?
Gene: No, I have no idea. You didn't send me the list.
Carl: It's going to be a short freaking issue, episode. I got it right here, Gene.
Gene: Cool, I think we're on seven.
Carl: I think we are. It was supposed to be 10, but let's face facts, I'm not good at counting. It ended up being 11. But the first one we're going to talk about today is we have to believe in ourselves before anybody else is going to believe in us. Now, I'm going to push back on myself, maybe our moms.
Gene: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Carl: Our moms, some of our dads, let's be honest.
Gene: Not all of them.
Carl: They can act like they do, but they've just been told to do that now. But yeah, we have to believe in ourselves before anybody else is going to believe in us.
Gene: Right.
Carl: This is such a huge thing in the creative space. How many people do you know when you started out that undercharged?
Gene: Including me? Everyone.
Carl: Everyone.
Gene: Yes.
Carl: And why? Because we had no faith in ourselves that what we were doing was of value.
Gene: Right.
Carl: How ridiculous is that? And now, and I like to think the Bureau is a big part of this, people raise their rates. People charge more. People are going for value base sometimes because they think this has so much value that somebody should pay for it because of what they're getting. That was never the case, but even now, I still see it with certain groups in the community, certain types of shops, or types of founders, that if they didn't grow up in an environment where people were confident-
Gene: Right.
Carl: Then they cave really quickly. I think this is a challenge. I still have it. I guess now I can call myself an Event Organizer.
Gene: You should by now.
Carl: I've done like 100.
Gene: Right.
Carl: Not joking.
Gene: It's time.
Carl: A hundred. I still don't really feel like that's a thing that's in my wheelhouse because it's difficult. We talked about that last week, the work that we do is really hard, but I think everybody needs to understand that they bring something to each engagement and the people that are paying are the people who need the work. They need to do it. We always seem to forget that. We think the people that are paying are doing us a favor.
Gene: Right.
Carl: No.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: If I'm paying a plumber to come into my house it's because I don't know how to fix a sink. We've established that if you've ever watched me try.
Gene: Right.
Carl: But I will gladly play a plumber. I won't play a plumber.
Gene: You'll plump a plumber?
Carl: Unless there's good money and it's a sitcom on TV, but 80 bucks an hour, 100 bucks an hour. Plumbers charge more than some shops did when they started.
Gene: Depends on what the plumber's coming over to do. They can charge $1,000.
Carl: I don't know. Oh okay. I was going to say I don't know what you're doing in South Carolina. In Florida, well okay, [crosstalk 00:05:17].
Gene: I was going to say, where are you going with that, man?
Carl: Yeah okay. We hire them to fix things that involve plumbing.
Gene: Not in Florida.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: I think that you at least need to get the relationship between and the client to be equal.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: You need to get it to that 50/50 point. We're talking about what making what you deserve. Ideally, you'd be making more, but at least needs to be equal. It definitely doesn't need to be 100% in their favor.
Carl: No. This is interesting because you said it needs to be equal and a couple of things first. We each bring different value.
Gene: Right.
Carl: So we each probably should charge a different amount depending on what we're doing. Now that's confusing and complicated so we widdle it down to one rate or whatever.
Gene: Right. Right.
Carl: But I was watching Chris Rock, I don't know what this was from. It was some feed that I was watching, but he was talking about the key to great relationships. What he said was equality is not the key to a great relationship. Everyone in the relationship needs to be serving the other person..
Gene: Right. There you go.
Carl: If you're sitting there wondering is this fair? Is this equal? They should be sitting there going, "What else can I do to make my partner better? What else can I do to take stress and pain away from my partner? How can I best serve my partner?" I think it's the same with any clients or stakeholders if you're in-house. It's like, how can you best serve them? Now yeah, you can end up with some that are just jackasses. That's going to happen, but then you also have to ask yourself, "How am I best serving my company?" Because sometimes you shouldn't be dealing with those individuals.
Carl: I think one of the most important things to realize is you can stand up for yourself everyday without being cocky, without being condescending, without being rude. In fact, when you stand up for yourself with a smile on your face it throws people off.
Gene: Yeah, that's the ultimate [crosstalk 00:07:30].
Carl: If you're trying to get in your hotel room and there was supposed to be check-in at three and it's four and they're not ready, they're ready for you to be mad.
Gene: Right.
Carl: So when you walk up and go, "Hey, I'm just checking in on that room. How are we doing?" They're like, "We need to get this person a room because they seem happy and I'm totally confused."
Gene: They might be a serial killer.
Carl: Well, they prove nothing Gene. That was an HBO four part documentary. I'm clear, bud.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: So anyway yeah, believe in ourselves and then other people will, too. It's the same ... I remember this. I may have shared this with you before, but when I was running Engine I had this busted down car. It was like a 20 year old Honda Accord. It was just a piece of crap. It was hard for my team to want to follow me sometimes. They thought I knew what I was doing, they understood I could get the work, they understood that stuff, but what were they headed towards? I know trivial things are a whole different conversation, but I didn't believe in myself to get myself-
Gene: Right.
Carl: A car that was reliable. Forget nice or forget [crosstalk 00:08:46].
Gene: That's funny. That's a whole different conversation in terms of the car thing. Yeah, because you can get to a certain point, that's a sidebar, but you can get to a certain point with stuff like that. I know a lot of people in multiple industries that they live this frugal life, this Dave Ramsey life, and I'm all for it. It's awesome, but if you drive up in a busted ass pickup from 1995 people are going to see you get out of that thing and they're going to go, "This guy doesn't know what the hell he's talking about." You don't need to drive up in a Ferrari, but something in this decade.
Carl: Or something reliable.
Gene: That doesn't look like a broken down thing, but it's the same way you dress, too. I know I'm sitting here in a tee shirt and stuff, but you can't show up to client meetings in flip flops, cut off jeans, and a tank top.
Carl: Can't you, though?
Gene: In Florida, let's say that. You can get away with it in Florida.
Carl: Get out of my face. Get your finger out of my face.
Gene: They're not going to take you serious. You don't have to show up in a full suit, maybe some clients you do.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: There's a whole thing there. We could get into that.
Carl: No we could, and I'm going to go back to [crosstalk 00:10:11]
Gene: Believing in yourself, though. You've got to believe in yourself enough to sell.
Carl: I think it was Theroux, but beware of any enterprise that requires a change of clothing.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: That has been one of my go-to Litmus tests. Anytime I'm doing something, if I have to change who I am to be a part of what's about to happen and I like who I am-
Gene: I got you. I got you.
Carl: And I don't want that. We're way off here, but I think the most important part is believe in yourself.
Gene: Yeah, man.
Carl: And you don't have to heed praise upon yourself, but don't just keep demeaning yourself and being just this, "Hey, I'm just so glad to be here." It's fine to be courteous. It's fine to be grateful. Gratitude is huge, but you also have to realize you belong there.
Gene: Yeah, and there's some psychology to this, too, because I know people that work in the industry that will ... and we're picking on the dress-down thing, but they will dress down to sort of set the bar low.
Carl: Are we picking on it? I think you're picking on it.
Gene: I'm picking on it.
Carl: I think you were traumatized as a child and this is all coming out now. Is this when they made you wear that Barney outfit for like two weeks? I remember reading about that.
Gene: I love talking to you. What's number eight?
Carl: Let's see. Almost all problems start with poor communication. It's true.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: I think one of the key ones here is when you look at clients and there's such a confrontational relationship that can happen.
Gene: Right.
Carl: Between a shop and a client and you just want the conversation to be done. So many people get into these conversations with a prospect or a client and they just want, "Hey, if I can just get them to feel good and get the hell out, because I got all this other stuff to do or I'm uncomfortable in this conversation." What happens is we aren't clear. We go for comfort instead over clarity. When we do have that clarity, I'll say a great example is having a glossary of terms. A lot of shops do this now, I know we did it probably about 2006 or seven when we started realizing that we were using words and the clients had a different meaning for them. And so I think the key words that come up again and again that are confusing and if we just say, "This is what we mean by this. Do you mean this?" And then they go, "No. God no, that means something totally different to us." I have no good examples right now, but we'll do a whole damn episode on nothing but confusing terminology because when we try to look smart we do so by excluding being clear. We try to use bigger words. We try to use buzz terms, all that, and that stuff always made me ill.
Gene: Yeah, it does. But yeah, you can't lack detail in a lot of things just by trying to be cool. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. I think there's a flip side to that, too. You can over communicate. You can provide too much. If there's somebody on the team that's always sending five page emails, it's like, perhaps that should have been a discussion.
Carl: But no, I think that's right.
Gene: I'm kind of confusing-
Carl: That was a hard stop right there. I'm kind of confusing.
Gene: The mode of communication with the content, but I think that's important, too.
Carl: Yeah, there's times where you pick up the phone and call somebody.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: There's times where you do a Zoom call. There's times where an email is fine, but to your point, if you understand humans then as soon as you get to that third paragraph, they've skipped half of the second one. They just start scanning because everybody's either got something else they'd rather do or something they need to get done, or our brains just can't process. This is kind of amazing. I'm going to go back and find this study, but when there's a list of nine things, I think nine is the maximum. We can actually see the things under the list and recall well over half of them. But once we get to 10 or 11, the things in the middle get missed.
Gene: Yeah, I would say nine is too many, but I'll take your word on it.
Carl: I went with nine, but I have to go back and look. I want to say that was right. I know I've lived by the rule of nine.
Gene: Yeah, rule of nine.
Carl: For a long time.
Gene: Yeah, but you can go both ways. Let me ask you this. How about returning communication in the same mode that they communicated with you? That's a good way to get communication confusing. If somebody sends you an email and you text them back.
Carl: Oh yeah.
Gene: To me that always confuses the shit out of me because I'm like, "Where did I put that thing? I can't recall it because it's not connected in the chain."
Carl: Yeah, I think also we each use the pharma communication probably based on multiple things, but one of them is definitely the sense of urgency to us.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: So if somebody texts you with something and they want you to reply right away and you send back an email, in a way you're kind of saying, "Slow your role."
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Or to your point, there's going to be a need for us to go back and look at this later. I know when I'll sometimes send a text to Gabe about a legal thing and he'll be like, "Hey, let's move this to email."
Gene: Yep.
Carl: He needs that thread, but I think that's something all of us can do.
Gene: I like that move.
Carl: Request to move it.
Gene: That's a good move. Yeah.
Carl: And say, "Hey, this is important to me."
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: "I don't want to lose it here."
Gene: That's a solid move.
Carl: I think also, just coming back and confirming that what you heard is what they said because a lot of times that's not happening.
Gene: That's solid, too.
Carl: You don't have to do it all the time [inaudible 00:16:21]. You don't have to do it all the time, but when you do it it should be for those really important matters that if you get it wrong, it's going to screw up a lot of things including your relationship.
Gene: I like it. Good stuff.
Carl: All right. This is a big one and it's really hard. I'm going to move on. When you're company grows, key people are going to leave and that's okay. We as founders, people managing teams, humans, when somebody leaves our tribe, when somebody leaves our team we internalize it. We think we did something wrong. "I screwed up that relationship." We project it on others, when the reality is, we're all going to have a vision of where we're going. It could be your vision is, "I have no vision. I'm just going to move forward and whatever happens, happens," but that's still kind of how you see things happening. The odds of two people having the same vision that's going to last their entire lifetimes is really, really small. All you can hope for is that at some point in the distant future you're going to diverge, but to start, when you get to a certain point of growth those original people who came in, the original, let's say, eight, because nine is too many according to Gene.
Gene: I thought we were going with the rule of nine.
Carl: No, let's say you get to eight people. Those people all believe in the same stuff. They think that it's them against the world. They're going to build this company. "We're different. We're doing things our way." And then you get to 20 and there's original later, "What do you mean we're just taking one for the money? I don't even know who this person is and they're on my project. What's happening?" And so, in a matter of time they're going to be disillusioned and they're going to move on. If as a founder or somebody that's leading a company, you want to get to a certain size. Acknowledge up front some people are going to leave, and even talk to them about it and just say, "Hey, I know when you first joined we were a small team. Everybody was doing everything. There's tremendous opportunity to add value. That's still going to be there, but we are going to grow the team. We are going to get bigger because we want to do projects like this or we want to be able to offer the team this or the individual something they're not going to be able to get if we stay small."
Carl: But if you don't have a rationale for it, if you can't sit down with them and talk to them about it and say, "If this isn't a fit, let's see how far we can roll. Let's see what we can do to get you in a better place." But I'll tell you, the big one right now is some of those top people, as soon as they see that the turnover is starting to settle a little, it's the top people who are starting to leave now. I've seen the last six months where somebody who was really part of the leadership team, didn't want to leave the company in a lull.
Gene: I got you.
Carl: They wanted to make sure everybody was okay because they did care about the team.
Gene: Right, because they were there from the beginning.
Carl: But then they got to a point where they said, "Wait, if I'm constantly battling somebody leaving because they're getting a 40% increase in their salary-"
Gene: "What am I doing?"
Carl: "Why am I working so hard and not getting that bump in mine." Gene, it's a 50, it's 100, it's 150,000 dollar increase on what they were getting. That's life changing money.
Gene: Yeah, you got to go.
Carl: For people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gene: Yeah. Wow. I'm not sure I'm qualified to speak to that level of change at that level of a business, but it makes sense.
Carl: Well, you've definitely had some really, really great people that didn't want to work with you. I've got a list if you want me to read through it.
Gene: I didn't know that.
Carl: I'm one of them. No. All right, let's move on before Gene cries and before I make more weird phrasing that could be caught by sensors. Roll that one back, kids. I don't know what I was doing there.
Gene: Be careful.
Carl: We're at the final one, Gene, and you know what that is?
Gene: Number 10?
Carl: It's actually number 11-
Gene: Okay.
Carl: Have I ever mentioned before I'm not great at counting? Together we can accomplish more. This goes all the way back to the Jellyfish days for me. It's if you bring people together who want to accomplish something, who want to do something, and it can be different companies. This is the foundation of the Bureau. People who you can see as competition want to help.
Gene: Okay. I could see that.
Carl: No, you better. It's my livelihood.
Gene: There's the other side of that which is I've experienced more than once, but you're basically an owner/operator. Maybe you have two or three team members or employee or whatever, but to get that company to the point where you are not required to sit at your desk and do pixel work everyday, you've got [crosstalk 00:22:00]. You got to get what other people do and the responsibilities they have outside of your head so to learn how to work together, how to learn, how to work with other people, how to learn how to let it go so other people can do it and make it theirs. I think there's a certain level of owner that that hits to, that they have to learn how to do that because it's hard to let shit go.
Carl: Oh, it absolutely is.
Gene: What would you call it, like the only I can do it well in this scenario mindset?
Carl: I would call that fear.
Gene: Yeah, there you go.
Carl: Or egomania. Honestly, feeling like you have to be the one to do it is because there's some fear that if somebody else comes in they're going to see other things that need to happen. A lot of us, when we started companies, we did kind of have a closet that we just put all the things we never wanted anybody to know about. For example, most of my estimating tactics are trying to figure out how much it's going to cost and then multiplying by two and a half because I know I'm so far off. I don't want somebody else coming in to do operations and explain to them that I generally don't know what I'm doing, so I just throw it up as high as I can.
Gene: Right.
Carl: But there are other people who it's like, "I don't want people to know I spent two hours working on this message because I'm just so worried about what it's going to be." You bring somebody else in and if you have to show them around the house.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: And how things work, and then you have to show them your quirks.
Gene: Right.
Carl: We feel exposed.
Gene: Yeah. Yeah, you don't have to explain why you do something the way you do it if it's just your preference or your emotion or whatever, it's just this is how it's done. If you can improve it, improve it, but this is how it's done.
Carl: For looking inside the team, it's like right now I'm trying to find a [inaudible 00:24:04] person, somebody to come in and manage partnerships, really. The challenge I have for about three weeks was I wanted to clean up the house before I had somebody come in to clean up the house.
Gene: That's literally I hear at the gym where they're like, "Well, I'm going to go get in better shape and then I'll come back and join."
Carl: I wouldn't be in the gym if I'm not in good shape because other people are in good shape.
Gene: I'm like, "Tell me what gym and what program that is. I'll join it with you and then we'll both get in shape."
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: "Because that program sounds awesome."
Carl: It does. I'm going to open a gym and it's called Pre Gym.
Gene: Yep, Pre Gym.
Carl: Pre Gym. Come here to get in great shape so you can then go to Gene's gym and-
Gene: They're all the same. I don't understand. Yeah.
Carl: The other part of this ... So, we're talking a lot about letting go. We're talking about owners letting go and learning to work with others, but I think the thing about the Bureau, from that very first time we got together to today, is that there are people out there who accomplish something and they want to share it with everybody. They're like, "We cracked the code on keeping our talent pipeline full. Here's what we did." Or it could be somebody else being vulnerable and saying, "I can't figure out how to fix this. Does anybody have anything they've done?" And somebody else getting to give back and say, "We've actually fixed that. We changed our contract to say this now."
Carl: It becomes this big marketplace of giving and receiving. That's what life should be, really. If we all just keep working together, but it gets back to Chris Rock and that whole conversation around relationships. Almost everybody in the Bureau is there to serve before they receive. That's why so many people when they first come in they're really quiet because they're absorbing and they're getting a lot, but I've talked to some members who have been there for a couple of months and then jump in and do some stuff. When I ask them, they're like, "I just wanted it to be a value. I didn't want it to be something that had been done before." Again, learning to work with others takes time and it can be challenging because we don't have faith in ourselves.
Gene: Believe in yourself, Carl.
Carl: Gene, it's never been a problem except for when it's been a problem. Oh dude.
Gene: Right.
Carl: We all get there, right? But that's the other part about having other people around you. If it's at the Bureau or it's somewhere else, or whatever, people who see that you're down and want to lift you up. I got a text from somebody yesterday and they just said, "Hey, it seems like you've been a little quiet lately. Is everything cool?" I was like, "Yeah, things are actually really great," but knowing that somebody was paying attention and because I had just gotten in a zone of getting stuff done, it was nice to know somebody had my back. They were looking out and they wanted to make sure I was okay, and they were ready to have that conversation if I wasn't. That to me is just a huge part of what we're doing. You've been that person for me before.
Gene: Aw, thank you. Yeah.
Carl: You're welcome. Remember that time and then you said, "Hey, step away from the ledge," and I was like, "All right, but it sure is pretty outside." I'm really fortunate to have so many great friends. I think that's part of what becoming part of a community is. It's not like everybody's suddenly your best friend.
Gene: Right.
Carl: But you're going to find them there and they're going to know who you are, they're going to understand the context of what you've been through.
Gene: As a testament to you, too, you have to build that environment to where they feel safe and where they feel like can trust each other. That takes a lot because not every community's like that.
Carl: No. We have challenges. When I was looking at it a couple of weeks ago and I started doing a SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and the biggest threat the Bureau has right now is the level of ongoing success in terms of growing because it means that it's harder to know who all is there. It's harder to know everything that's happening. We're actually working on some foundational changes right now for the community.
Gene: That's great.
Carl: If I can find this [inaudible 00:28:34] person.
Gene: Yeah, growing too fast can definitely be a problem.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: Which is a weird thing to call a problem, but it definitely can be. You can grow so fast it destroys your business.
Carl: Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's a big part of what happened to Engine. Growing too fast with one giant fire hose of a client.
Gene: Yeah, that is not good.
Carl: Yeah. Okay, so we've come back around to I don't value myself because I let that happen, but I do value myself because I rebounded.
Gene: You did rebound well.
Carl: Gene.
Gene: Good list.
Carl: It was a good list. Thanks everybody for listening and I think we're going to start bringing some more guests in. What do you think, Gene?
Gene: I like guests.
Carl: Yeah. People really liked the episode with Warren, got some good feedback on that. And you know what else? I think we're going to start talking about ... I'm springing this on you right now, so get mad if you need to. I think we're going to start talking about our sponsors and partners during the show.
Gene: Okay.
Carl: Instead of just doing stuff at the beginning because I think that's a better way and we can make it more topical and all that kind of stuff. Like a great ointment, we'll make it more topical. [crosstalk 00:29:51] It's not going to get better in the show.
Gene: Definitely not subdermal. All right.
