This week, Karen Clark Cole, Paul Downs, and William Vanderbloemen start with a discussion of how 21 Hats might finally take the plunge into monetization. We also discuss Karen’s decision to forgo less-profitable revenue, William’s grand experiment of unplugging for seven weeks, and Paul’s attempt to balance personal and company responsibilities. Plus, we consider the impact of The Great Resignation, and we look for lessons to take from last week’s discussion about mental health.

Because our core group of business owners has been talking to each other pretty much every week since before the pandemic, we’ve gotten to know each other. We’ve come to trust each other. And as a result, our conversations sometimes take unexpected turns. This week, our conversation takes an unexpectedly dark turn. We start out talking about Laura Zander’s efforts to manage personnel conflicts and Dana White’s visits to potential salon sites on military bases and Jay Goltz’s bizarre battle with his phone company, and we think we know what we’re talking about. But we keep talking until we realize that some of the issues we are discussing are more complicated and more painful than we’d understood, as is often the case with matters of mental health. You should know this conversation contains frank discussion of depression and suicide. For listeners, this may be surprising—not because anyone would think that entrepreneurs are immune to the afflictions that plague us all, but because there aren’t many public forums where people confront those afflictions openly and genuinely and in real time. For us, this conversation was a strong reminder that we often don’t really know what others are experiencing, whether they be friends, colleagues, or family.

This week, we have a very special episode. It’s the dog days of August, and the only regular available was Jay Goltz. So we reached out to a bunch of loyal listeners who we happen to know have listened to every episode of this podcast, and we asked them if there was more they wanted to know about Jay—or if they’d heard enough. It turned out, they had some great questions, including: What he thought of Dana’s “Jay” iImpression? What exactly he does all day (turns out, he’s not sure either)? How he learned to delegate? How he knows when it’s time to fire someone? And which of the other 21 Hats Podcast businesses he’d be inclined to invest in?

This week, Paul Downs makes two seemingly contradictory points: One is that his business is on track to have its best year ever. The other is that he expects to claim another huge government subsidy, courtesy of the recently enhanced Employee Retention Tax Credit. As Paul says, if you don’t know about the ERTC or if you don’t know that its requirements have been relaxed, you probably should check it out. Meanwhile, Jay Goltz tells us what happened when three employees found out what the others were being paid, and Dana White feels a little deflated after talking to an investment banker. Plus: Paul shares his new strategy for coping with the labor shortage.

This week, we delve into some specific hiring situations, including Jay Goltz telling Diana Lee and Dana White that he thought he had two terrific candidates to replace his retiring chief financial officer. And then, after conversations with each of them, Jay had no candidates, which led us to some interesting questions: Has there been a more challenging time to hire for cultural fit? How risky is it for a smaller business to hire a candidate accustomed to working at larger businesses? And what does hiring intentionally for diversity mean when your staff is almost entirely African American? Plus: Dana gives us an update on her potential deal with the military and Diana explains how she markets her marketing agency.

This week, Laura Zander, Diana Lee, and Dana White all share big news. Laura tells us that she and her husband/co-founder Doug put in a bid to buy a building for their business in Reno—and she’s not sure how she feels about the fact that their offer was accepted. Diana explains why she’s decided to pay a fortune to take over space vacated by glitzy magazine company Conde Nast in Manhattan’s Freedom Tower, a move that required her to put down a $2 million security deposit. And Dana tells us that she’s had preliminary conversations about opening Paralee Boyd salons on U.S. military bases around the world, which prompted Diana to encourage Dana to start vetting investment banking firms: “I'd be like, ‘Here's the contract with the Army. Give me the money so I can scale this out.’”

This week, we introduce a new regular on the 21 Hats Podcast team. Her name is Diana Lee, and she’s the founder of a digital marketing agency. In a conversation with Jay Goltz and Stephanie Stuckey, Diana explains how she got her business off the ground by helping car dealers target diverse communities within their markets, how she bootstrapped her business by convincing those car dealers to prepay 50-percent upfront, and how her first attempt at building a software platform ended with her spending $1 million on a platform that no one wanted to use.

When Dana White chose a name for her business, she decided she wanted a name that had meaning—both for her and for the women she hoped to reach. When Laura Zander picked a name for her business, she thought she was going to be selling coffee. And when Jay Goltz chose a name for his business, he very strategically chose the perfect name to rank well in—wait for it—the Yellow Pages. This week, Dana, Laura, and Jay talk about what they consider the most important decisions they made in building their businesses—including why Dana closed her most profitable location, why it took Laura 15 years to find an operations person, and what Jay figured out about employees who struggle to grow with the business.

This week, we talk about how much of success is making the right decisions. How much is being in the right place at the right time? And how much is just luck? “I think that's the thing nobody wants to talk about,” Paul Downs tells us, “because it implies that there's a lot to success that is out of the control of the entrepreneur, and we're much more attracted as human beings to stories of people who have agency and are like, ‘Oh, there's a problem. I did this, and I won.’ That's what we like to hear.” So yeah, there’s always luck involved. But there are always forks in the road, and someone has to decide which way to go. This week we hear how a few of those key decisions played out.

This week, we take another crack at some questions that don’t have definitive answers: Should business owners outsource their marketing or bring it in house? Either way, how do you know you’re picking the right agency or the right person? Is it possible to get someone great for what smaller businesses can afford to pay? Paul Downs tells us what happened when he hired a firm to audit his website. Dana White tells us why she dumped the agency she’d retained for $50,000. And Jay Goltz sums it up: When it comes to the mechanics of marketing, he says, “We’re all in the dark.” Plus: Dana gives a franchising update and Jay starts his own business group.

Once again this week, our business owners discuss things business owners don’t often talk about in public. Laura Zander says she feels guilty about taking vacations, about making more money than her employees, and about knowing that her husband is closer to their son than she is. Paul Downs says he recently reviewed 29 years of P&Ls and was reminded that he lost money in 18 of those years. He also explains why he routinely tells his employees (and us) precisely how much money he takes out of his business. Jay Goltz, meanwhile, says he’s now embarrassed to be called a CEO and acknowledges that he’s thought maybe he should have worked 20 percent less while building his business, but isn’t sure if that would have resulted in 20 percent less revenue or perhaps 100 percent less revenue.

This week, Stephanie Stuckey tells Jay Goltz and Dana White about moving closer to the candy factory she recently bought to get a better feel for the people, the operation, and the challenges. Right now, those challenges include recruiting enough employees, absorbing increased supplier prices, and figuring out how much she should raise her own prices: “We can only give up so much of our margin, right?” she tells us. To which Jay responds, “Why give up any?” Plus: we talk about competing for labor with Amazon, whether to require employees to get vaccinated, how to manage legal fees, and whether Dana’s feelings of FUD have eased.

This week, Dana White tells Paul Downs and Jay Goltz why she’s experiencing FUD—fear, uncertainty, and doubt—over whether she’s really ready to sell franchises in Paralee Boyd. She’s concerned because her hair salon is having some issues with customer service. On the other hand, her head of operations, Ashley, is telling her, “If you wait to expand your business until every customer is happy and until everything is perfect, you will stay at one location for the next 50 years.” Plus, Paul resolves his cybercrime, and we find out whether Paul, Jay, and Dana have done anything to prepare for a ransomware attack. It turns out one of them has.

This week, Paul Downs, Jay Goltz, and Dana White talk about confronting inflation, raising their prices, what businesses owe their employees, and the venture-backed competitor who’s opening a store in Jay’s backyard. Among the questions we discuss are: Would you take back a rebound employee? Are unemployment payments the main reason owners are struggling to fill jobs? Is there anything wrong with taking business from another business? How many companies are truly disruptive? And do owners take all of the risk? Or are there risks for employees, too?

Is your office open? Is everyone coming back? Or are you going hybrid? Is everyone getting vaccinated? Are you offering them incentives to get vaccinated? When do the masks come off? Are you having a problem filling jobs? Have you had to increase what you pay? Paul Downs tells us, “The people who really seem to want the job and are enthusiastic about it don't have the skill-set. And the people with the skill-set don't seem to actually care about completing the process. So we did hire one guy who started a week ago Monday, and he quit three hours later.” This week, Paul, Stephanie Stuckey, and William Vanderbloemen compare notes on what they’re experiencing as we all search for that new normal.

This week, Jay Goltz, William Vanderbloemen, and Dana White discuss whether Jason Fried, the embattled co-founder and CEO of Basecamp, has displayed courageous leadership or lost his you-know-what. Widely admired for building a tech company that didn’t take venture capital and didn’t pursue growth for growth’s sake, Fried is co-author of a book called It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work. All of which made it somewhat disorienting last week when things did indeed get crazy at Basecamp. It started when Fried published a blog post decreeing there would be no further discussion of political issues at the company, but it soon became clear that this was not just about coworkers arguing Trump vs. Biden. And by Friday, at least a third of the company’s 57 employees had resigned. In this episode, we go searching for lessons.

This week’s conversation with Paul Downs, Jay Goltz, and William Vanderbloemen was supposed to be about how the pandemic has affected sales strategies—and for a while it was. But it seemed Paul, Jay, and William really wanted to talk public relations. They talked about how to get PR and how to assess the results. They compared the merits of public relations to those of advertising. And they discussed whether you need to hire a firm or whether you can do it yourself. One concern all three shared is the cost of hiring a public relations person. As Jay pointed out, “You hire an accountant, you're going to get some accounting. You hire a lawyer, they’ll do some legal work. PR's one of the few things you can pay money for and get absolutely nothing.”

In this week’s conversation with Karen Clark Cole, Jay Goltz, and Stephanie Stuckey, we once again unearth more questions than answers—mostly because there are rarely one-size-fits-all answers to the questions we discuss. This week, those questions include: Can you be friends with your employees? Can you work with your family? How are you coping with price increases in your supply chain? How do you handle shipping—especially given the example set by Amazon? Are refrigerated trucks really called “reefer” trucks? And what happens when employees question whether you should be doing business with a particular person or company? Plus: Jay turns 65 without a succession plan.

This week, Dana White informs Jay Goltz and Stephanie Stuckey that she has begun the process of franchising her hair salons across the country, and perhaps the world. Why did she choose to franchise? As she explains, she does have concerns about controlling the culture in franchised locations, but she believes this is her best opportunity to grow. Interestingly, when Stephanie took over Stuckey’s in 2019, she bought a franchise business that she says had lost control of its franchisees, which is why she’s now moving in the opposite direction. Plus: Stephanie shares a debate that is raging within her company: Should she price her pecan log rolls for the convenience stores she’s selling them to now or for the more upscale outlets she hopes to attract? And Jay gives us an update on that idea for a new business he told us about just two weeks ago. (Spoiler alert: This is Jay Goltz we’re talking about.)

This week with Paul Downs, William Vanderbloemen, and Laura Zander, the talk leaps from one plague to another—floods, power outages, cyber crime, employee churn, supplier price hikes, and vanished shipping containers—not to mention the actual plague. For Laura, whose wholesale yarn business keeps falling further behind on its orders, these events have necessitated a series of difficult conversations with customers: “They can't get mad about the pandemic,” she tells us. “And they're not going to get mad about the fact that we're moving. And they're not going to get mad about the fact that there's a deep freeze. But at some point, they're going to get tired, whether it's consciously or subconsciously. It's exhausting.” To which she adds, “but if the locusts hit, I don't know how much more of this people can take.” Plus, a friendly discussion about whether raising your prices makes you a jerk. (Spoiler alert: It does not.)

This week, Jay Goltz tells Dana White and Laura Zander why he can’t stop starting businesses. In recent years, for example, he’s considered buying other picture -frame shops, he’s bought a firehouse that he thought he might turn into an event space (or a dog kennel), and he’s fantasized about opening an ice cream shop. “I have a whole list of businesses I'm not starting,” says Jay, who has been down this road so many times he’s developed a five-point test for whether he should proceed. And now he’s got a new idea—an online art gallery—that he believes passes the test. “I think I’m going to do it,” he says. Plus: Dana has a new business, too. And Laura assesses the damage done to the yarn industry by two venture-backed rivals.

This week, Stephanie Stuckey tells Paul Downs and Jay Goltz about seeking the guidance and perspective that a board of directors could bring to Stuckey’s. But does a business have to be a certain size to warrant having a board? How do you recruit board members? How should they be compensated? And is a peer group, like Vistage, a better alternative? Plus: Uncovering a $140,000 cyber crime. Coping with the nightmare of shipping furniture. And Jay tells us why, if you listen to either the artists or the accountants in your business, you’re likely to go broke.

Should Stephanie Stuckey sell pecans on Amazon? Should Laura Zander wholesale yarn to discounters? Should Jay Goltz’s businesses be active on Pinterest? (Assuming Jay knows what Pinterest is.) This week we cover those issues, plus whether the owners are ready for an economic boom and how Laura made the painful decision to fire several employees she inherited when she bought her wholesale yarn business in Texas. “You have to do it,” says Jay. “And it doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you a bad boss if you don't do it.”

This week, we talk about what we were thinking a year ago as the contours of this crisis began to emerge. It was this week that the W.H.O. declared a pandemic, the NBA suspended its season, and toilet paper started to disappear. It has all taken a toll. “This is where it gets tricky,” Jay Goltz tells us. “Just because everybody shows up every day and looks like they're happy-go-lucky, they're not. People have stresses in their life, whether it's their kids, whether it's their aging parents, whether it's their financial situation, whether it's their physical well-being—any of the above. This is just layered on top of whatever was going on in their life before.” Plus: Karen Clark Cole’s company goes to Mars, Dana White gets a smart question about expansion from a retailer in Canada, and Jay discovers that ESOP companies don’t have to pay federal income tax.

A year ago, Dana White was questioning whether her business could survive the pandemic. This week, she says she’s looking seriously at expanding to another city: “I'd like to make a decision by the end of March, and I'd like to be opening or in the process of opening by this fall. I'm waiting to see how the vaccine does.” Dana also talks about her experience with venture capitalists who seem to be telling her, “We’ll be happy to give you money—as soon as you don’t really need it.” Plus: Stephanie Stuckey explains her team’s recent three-hour debate: Should Stuckey’s be selling the road trip or the pecan? And Dana, Stephanie, and Jay Goltz discuss Clubhouse, the new social media platform. Is it just a time suck, or does it offer real value to business owners?

This week, Stephanie Stuckey tells Paul Downs and Jay Goltz, both of whom have manufacturing operations, about her decision to buy a manufacturing plant and bring production of Stuckey’s snacks in-house. We talk about her conflicted concerns about a minimum wage hike, what it takes to build a strong culture in a repetitive-task environment, why she paid above book value for the company she bought, and how she managed to finance the purchase of a business that is four times the size of Stuckey’s. She’s very happy with the SBA loan she got, but it was not an easy process: “I had to take out an additional life insurance policy and list the bank. I was just waiting for them to call me and tell me my firstborn son has to be collateral as well.”

This week, Karen, William, and Laura cover a lot of ground: For one thing, what do you do when the to-do list seems endless, you’re already working 24/7, and you just can’t get ahead? For another, what do you do when employees decide they want to work remotely from random parts of the country? Does that work? Is it a bureaucratic nightmare? Meanwhile, Laura is confronting several big, interrelated issues. Her co-founder and husband, Doug, is ready to step back from the business. That’s a little tricky because the company operates off a 19-year-old platform that Doug built, and only he knows how to make it work. They’ve been trying to hire tech people for Doug to train, but they’ve been through 15 people in 10 years—and they know they’re doing something wrong. Do they need to hire a recruiter? Is it time to junk Doug’s platform and go with Shopify? If they do that, will they forfeit 19 years of SEO value? All of which has left Laura feeling trapped. “That’s this cage that we’re in,” she tells us. “What the hell do you do?”

This week, Paul, Jay, and Dana give quick PPP updates—and then dive into a discussion of what a $15 federal minimum wage would mean for smaller businesses. Will it lift people out of poverty? Will it put businesses out of business? Will it hurt entry-level employees? “I'm listening to you, Jay,” Dana tells us, “and I'm thinking about the coffee shop owners I know who have to close.” To which Jay responds, “They say they have to close, but did they try raising their prices 5 percent first?” We also tackle a listener-submitted question about the best way to avoid unemployment claims, which can require forceful management. “There's no way around it,” Paul tells us. “You gotta be hard at some moments, as a boss. You just have to be.”

This week, William tells Karen and Dana that he’s cautiously optimistic about 2021 because his clients are cautiously optimistic and because he’s expecting lots of turnover as the pandemic recedes. William explains how he uses a “Frankenstein” customer relations system to track what his clients read on his website and to sense when those clients are getting ready to make a hire. The system then prompts the Vanderbloemen team to give the client a call. We also talk about why Karen is tired of being a best-kept secret and how Dana handles customers who have to be fired. Plus: there’s a new tax credit you should know about that William calls “pretty incredible” but that seems to be getting lost in the PPP shuffle.

This week, we introduce Stephanie Stuckey, a new regular on the podcast who tells Dana White and Laura Zander about the iconic road stop business her grandfather founded: when it peaked, what went wrong, why she bought it back, and how she plans to rejuvenate it. Along the way, we discuss whether small businesses should outsource their marketing, how hard it is to find an agency that really listens, and what it should cost to hire a marketing firm. Plus: Stephanie offers a tutorial on how to engage followers—and get free consulting—on LinkedIn.

This week, Paul Downs and Jay Goltz talk about their New Year’s resolutions. Here’s Paul’s: “My New Year's resolution is that we will be open on December 31st, 2021. And I don't know whether I'll have the same number of employees, but we will be open. I will be here.” And here’s Jay’s: “My New Year's resolution is: I'm not gonna do anything stupid this year. So far, so good.” Paul and Jay also talk about Paul’s disappearing backlog, each of their plans for PPP Round II, Jay’s efforts to lure one of his sons into his business, and—responding to a listener question—how they handle business and personal expenses. “I think we have to stop recording right here,” says Paul.

This week, responding to a question from a listener, Jay, Dana, and Laura talk about managing people. Jay offers a four-step plan that starts with making sure you’ve hired the right manager: “Anytime you ever hear anyone complaining about their employees, it's a bad manager.” Laura talks about coming to the realization that her staff is not where she thought it was—and how that’s playing into her recent anxiety attacks: “So now, I’ve got anxiety about my anxiety.” Plus: Dana’s getting married! And Loren wants to know how you know if you have a real business.

This week, in our final podcast taping of the year, Paul Downs, Jay Goltz, and William Vanderbloemen discussed the impact this year has had on their businesses and on themselves. William talked about the positive side of having to get back to a startup mentality: “It's definitely been a silver lining in the middle of a very dark cloud.” Paul talked about hoping he can offer his employees a good place to work for as long as possible: “I can give them probably another 10 years. And then beyond that, I don't know what will happen.” And Jay talked about the cash management mistake he made that could have been fatal: “If I wouldn't have gotten the PPP money, I don't know…”

This week, Paul Downs, William Vanderbloemen, and Laura Zander talk about William’s prediction that 2021 will be a year of employee turnover. His theory, which he says he’s already seeing evidence for, is that pent-up forces that were blocked by the pandemic this year will be unleashed in 2021—especially as vaccines arrive and the economy improves. His advice: Make sure your best people feel appreciated. Or, as he puts it: “Better to keep a good employee—even if it costs you more than you think it should—than to have to call me.” Plus: we establish that no one knows how to manage their PPP loan tax liability, and we discuss whether, when the time comes, businesses should require employees to get vaccinated.

This episode is dedicated to Ivy Garfield. Back in 1996, Jay Goltz had no real hiring process and the results to prove it. “My hiring success rate,” Jay tells us, “was probably, I don't know, 30 or 40 percent, which isn't much better than whoever walks in you hire.” And then he asked Ivy Garfield to take over his hiring. As Jay explains, Ivy brought an instinct, an understanding of how to assess people. “She profoundly changed my business,” he tells us. “She was here six years. Most of my key people she hired. They’re with me 25 years later.” Jay talks about the secret to Ivy’s success and why entrepreneurs like him tend to be terrible at hiring. Plus: Dana White talks about being disappointed by a mentor. And Jay and Loren offer an apology.

This week, starting with a conversation about crucial hires Dana White and Laura Zander have made recently—an operations manager for Dana, a salesperson for Laura—we found ourselves exploring some of the great unresolved debates of entrepreneurship. Which comes first when hiring: filling specific needs or finding places for good people? With sales people, do you motivate by paying commission or build a team by paying salary? And in finance, do you bootstrap to maintain control or raise capital to grow faster? Obviously, there’s no right answer for these questions, but Dana and Laura tell us what’s been working for them.

This week, Paul Downs, Jay Goltz, and William Vanderbloemen assess the damage of a stressful year. We started with the impact the year has had on the value of their businesses. Then we discussed whether they would be ready to sell their businesses if a generous offer were to come along. That prospect, Jay tells us, would likely cause him to do some soul-searching, but he would consider it skeptically. It seems to be a well accepted fact, he says, that most people who sell their business end up regretting it. Plus: as we head into budget season, we find out whether the three owners are planning to give raises. And in this week’s Morning Report News Quiz, we learn what happened to Inspiration, Imagination, and Fantasy.

For Jay Goltz, William Vanderbloemen, and Laura Zander, concerns about the pandemic loomed large this week as one of them had to self-isolate in his basement after being exposed to the virus. That fact helped surface a number of interesting questions: Are the three owners being careful enough? What should they tell employees who choose to travel over the holidays? Should employees who travel get paid if local rules require them to quarantine after they return? And if traveling employees do have to quarantine, will these businesses have enough staffers available in December and January to function? And then there was the question Laura demanded of Jay after Jay explained how exactly he was exposed to the virus: “Wait, no,” she said, “You didn't answer my question. Were you wearing a mask?”

And so, yes, Dana White was in fact the big winner at last week’s Detroit Demo Day, taking home the top prize of $200,000 for her hair salon business, Paralee Boyd, which specializes in serving women with thick and curly hair and which has an unusual walk-in-only business model. Of course, Dana now has some decisions to make: Does she want to take the money in the form of a zero-interest loan? Or does she want to take it in the form of a convertible note, which can convert to an equity stake in her company? And perhaps, more importantly, how exactly is she going to spend the money? As she tells Paul Downs and Jay Goltz in this conversation, she’s thinking about spending it on marketing, on opening another location, or on creating retail products for sale online or in her salons. What do you think Dana should do? Please email your thoughts to [email protected], and we’ll share them on the podcast and in the Morning Report.

This has not been an easy year for Dana White, who has had to close one of her two hair salons and who has struggled, amid the pandemic, to keep the other one staffed. But this week she reveals to Karen Clark Cole and Paul Downs that she’s a finalist for a potentially game-changing pitch competition. “A $200,000 investment from Quicken Loans is a huge validator when you're looking to grow,” says Dana. “When you have first money in from Dan Gilbert, it bodes well for your company.” Dana also tells Karen and Paul that she’s just made her most important hire ever, an operations manager who had a compelling reason for wanting to join Dana. Plus: the Morning Report News Quiz.

This, to say the least, has been a challenging year. So this week, we’ve decided to bring you two inspirational success stories by revisiting one of our earliest podcast episodes. Way back in November of 2019, Karen Clark Cole and Loren Feldman attended EY’s Strategic Growth Forum in Palm Springs where we conducted a series of interviews with participants in EY’s Winning Women program. Two of those interviews were with women who started companies from scratch and sold them successfully—learning all sorts of lessons along the way.

In this week’s episode, the tables are turned. This week, it’s host Loren Feldman who fields questions and takes advice after he explains why the BusinessAdvantage TV Podcast will once again be The 21 Hats Podcast. “The bottom line is: I am now the proud owner of a pre-revenue startup that has a daily email newsletter that we've been giving away for free, plus this weekly podcast that we've been giving away for free, and the designs for an unbuilt website that we had hoped to one day charge subscription fees for. Any thoughts?”

In this week’s episode, Dana White, Laura Zander, and Jay Goltz talk about their real estate challenges. Dana decided to close one of her locations rather than keep dealing with an overly aggressive landlord. Laura, fearing her landlord was going to throw her out, decided to buy a building. But she hasn’t been able to close on the deal because, while she’s been to six banks, she has yet to find one that will fund the loan—even though she already has SBA approval for a loan. And Jay wants to take out a mortgage on a building he owns outright just to have some extra cash on hand, but he’s on his 10th bank. “You can’t get discouraged,” Jay tells Laura. To which Laura responds: “Come on, what do you mean, ‘You can't get discouraged?’ You see my face? It’s called discouragement.” Plus: the Morning Report News Quiz returns.

This week, six months into the crisis, Paul Downs, Jay Goltz, and William Vanderbloemen take inventory. What does the crisis mean for the future of their businesses? Has it changed them as leaders? Has it affected their relationships with their employees? And they come to some counter-intuitive conclusions. For one, William tells us that he suspects he will one day look back on the crisis and conclude it was the best thing that could have happened to his business. It’s been painful, he says, but, “in some ways, we needed a jolt, and this gave it to us.” Jay understands: “When things get really bad like this, we start paying attention to stuff that we should have been paying attention to before.” Plus: do the three owners have a plan for how their businesses would continue to operate if they were incapacitated by COVID?

This week, Karen Clark Cole, Paul Downs, and Jay Goltz talk about whether their businesses need another round of government support, whether in the age of COVID they monitor their employees’ behavior away from the office, and whether there are aspects of running a business they would like to be better at. One thing they say they are all good at is taking action when an employee has to be shown the door. As Jay tells us, “If we didn't figure out how to fire, we're not on this show, because we're out of business at this point.” Plus: Did Paul keep his promise to see if he could connect with someone at Google to discuss his AdWords campaign?

In this week’s conversation, Karen Clark Cole, Paul Downs, and Laura Zander talk about their approaches to digital marketing. After years of relying on Google AdWords as his only form of marketing, Paul tells us, he stopped his $12,000-a-month spend a few years ago—relying instead on organic traffic. What happened when he stopped? His sales actually went up. But now, with fewer people looking to buy high-end boardroom tables because of the crisis, he’s considering shifting tactics again: “I'm wondering whether I should sort of go on the offensive,” he says, “and try to increase my marketing in the face of these declines in sales, or whether nothing I do would make any difference at this point.” Plus: Is it better to manage your own digital marketing or to hire a specialist? Our panelists disagree.

In this week’s conversation with Paul Downs, William Vanderbloemen, and Laura Zander, Paul explains why he’s not planning to pivot his business—even as his sales collapse. Normally, Paul says, his most reliable customers are other business owners. When they call to ask about a custom boardroom table, he and his sales staff know they are likely to buy. Right now, though, in the midst of a pandemic that has changed the way people look at commercial space, they aren’t even calling. A lot of people have suggested that Paul pivot to manufacturing desks for home offices. So far, he’s resisted the idea. “To walk away from what we know,” he says, “and do something that we don't know and that others know very well, I just feel like it would be a huge mistake.” Paul, William, and Laura also talk about how the crisis has affected their own compensation.

For years, business owners complained about how tight the job market was and how hard it was to find good employees. Well, so much for that. Funny thing, though. In this week’s episode, William and Jay talk about how, in many ways, hiring has gotten even harder during the crisis. Part of it is having to rely more heavily on Zoom. And part of it is having to sift through the many people who are suddenly available to find the right person. “The most expensive hire you will ever make,” William tells us, “is hiring the wrong person. I mean, you can spend all the money you want on a search firm, and it’s still not as expensive as hiring the wrong person.”