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Introduction:
This week, Shawn Busse, Liz Picarazzi, and Sarah Segal talk about how long to keep trying when a product isn’t selling the way you expected. For Liz, the problem product is her package locker, which is designed to defeat porch pirates but hasn’t really taken off—especially considering how widespread the concern is. Could the glitter-bomb guy be the answer to Liz’s marketing challenge? Or is it time for her to back off? Plus: In the age of Zoom and remote workers, what have the owners figured out about running effective meetings? And if you’re pricing a range of services in a proposal, do you price your offering a la carte? Do you always charge the same prices? And is there a way to ease a client into a monthly retainer?
— Loren Feldman
This content was produced by 21 Hats.
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Key Takeaways:
Meetings have changed since remote work has become more common, and engagement has become increasingly more difficult accomplish. Meeting facilitators have to be mindful of the virtual attendees and how they can engage them in meetings, not just the present participants. Sometimes popcorn style feedback can improve this. Give everyone in the room a chance to speak.
Shawn Busse:
I think that the real challenge that I’ve seen is that it’s easy to be passive. It’s really easy to be passive in a virtual environment. And so to your point: Why do people listen to our meetings? The reason is, I think, two things. One, you’ve got a highly engaged group in the meeting. Everybody’s here voluntarily. We’re excited to share our experiences and learn from each other. So we’re a highly engaged group.
And then I think the other key piece is you’re the facilitator. So Loren, you manage to kind of keep things moving forward, prompting people, asking the right questions. And so the experience I’ve had is that running a meeting puts a lot more work on the person who’s facilitating the meeting, because they not only have to present what they want to share. But if you want to make it a great meeting, they have to engage everybody in the room. And so to do that, you’re fortunate you have a bunch of entrepreneurs. We have no shortage of things we want to talk about, and we’re all quickstarts. So that helps a lot. But in an organization, you’re going to have introverts, you’re going to have folks who maybe are nervous about speaking up.
And so one of the things I’ve found that’s really helpful is to help prepare people in advance. So to say to them, “This is one of the topics we’re going to talk about in the meeting. And I want you to think about X, Y, and Z.” And then we’re going to go around the room or have kind of a popcorn style of feedback to get folks participating and to up-level the energy in the meeting. Those have been some of the insights that I’ve had.
Eliminate unnecessary meetings. You shouldn't be having meetings about another meeting. Give employees a teaser of what to think about or bring to the meeting so they know they'll be asked to participate.
Liz Picarazzi:
Well, I should say that my attitude toward meetings is largely informed by what corporate meetings were like when I worked at American Express. As in most corporations, there were way too many meetings. I remember there was sometimes a meeting about a meeting, sometimes a meeting about a meeting about a meeting, and it went from there. Sometimes they called it an “alignment meeting.” But before the alignment meeting, what would happen before you went to a decision maker with a bigger meeting is you might have a pre-alignment meeting.
So that’s what my reference point is. And so I kind of feel since I became an entrepreneur 10 plus years ago, that I’m kind of in heaven with not having a lot of meetings. Having said that, there are some things I’ve learned along the way that seem to have really helped. The first one is kind of similar to what Shawn said. If you let people know what the meeting is, and you also maybe give them a teaser of what to think about or what to bring—nothing big, but so they know that they will be asked to participate. I had a meeting last week that was like that. I gave people two questions about a week ahead of time. And so they came to that meeting prepared to talk about, in our case, best client and worst client of the year for 2022. And it was fun. We do it every year.
Assign a scribe in meetings to take down next action steps and deadlines. Don't overlook or leave anyone out of the meeting who may be necessary. Take the extra time to really think about who should attend.
Liz Picarazzi:
But so back to what my learnings were, the first one is: Engage them ahead of the meeting. The second one is: Have someone who is like a scribe, who’s taking notes on what the action steps are, who’s doing it, what’s the deadline. In our case, it’s usually Frank, actually, and we did not have that role of scribe and follow-up notes before he joined the company. He’s COO, so that’s part of it. He wants to make sure things are moving ahead. But that was a step that we took that was really important.
And then the third thing that I learned is: There’s a very big difference between a meeting of knowledge workers and a meeting of doers. And I prefer the meeting of doers, because then there’s kind of a mix of thoughts, discussion, and action discussion. My installation team, we don’t meet with them that often, but when we do, there are very solid actions that come out of it that are not in the knowledge realm. They’re more in the doing realm.
Oh, but I do have one other thing I should say, and that is, when I was in corporate, sometimes when I wasn’t invited to a meeting, I didn’t like that either. [Laughter] You got left out. I was not considered necessary at the meeting. And in many cases, that was probably true. But in some of them, when I really thought I should be there, that would get to me. So it’s a little bit contradictory, a complicated relationship with meetings. But overall, I really like meetings more as an entrepreneur than I did as a cubicle worker.
Use AI to serve as a meeting scribe. Record your meetings and dump the recording into otter to transcribe it rather than having a person to take notes.
Shawn Busse:
I love the scribe. It’s such a valuable role. I’m kind of wondering if we could replace Frank with AI. [Laughter] I’ve seen all these uses for AI that are really stupid, but I’ve been thinking about summarizing meeting notes. And I think that you could potentially just put a recorder in the room, record the room, and throw it into AI.
Sarah Segal:
I think that Otter.ai does that. We record all of our meetings, and I think there’s a new function on it where it will give you a summary.
Take the time to celebrate what you've accomplished. Things happen so quickly in business and over the course of a year it's easy to forget about the wins. Encourage your team to share all of their wins and reflect on what they've accomplished.
Shawn Busse:
Back to your question, Loren, around what has changed, and what have you given up? When we were really in fast-growth mode—30 percent, 40 percent a year, fastest growing company in Portland five years in a row—what we were doing in that era was, every month, we were reviewing the month past and talking about all of the success and wins that we had had. We would do open-book financials and talk about our growth, and we would go through new sales, new-customer acquisition. It was really a momentum building kind of activity every month.
And then at the end of the year, we would have a review. And basically, what I would do is, I would take all those meetings—which were pretty slide heavy—and I would compile them and kind of do a year-end review. And what was really cool about that process was that it generated a lot of awareness around what we were achieving as a company. And I think that’s a real value to a meeting, in terms of sharing what’s been accomplished. Because it’s really easy to forget what you’ve done, especially over the course of a year. And bringing people into that momentum as a company was very, very powerful.
Knowing when to quit on a product that could be selling better can be tricky. To determine if the product is worthwhile, evaluate all factors surrounding the product's performance, including marketing efforts, the staff needed to ensure the success of the product, the amount of clientele you have to support that product, etc. Coming up with an exact answer on why it's not selling can be difficult. If the product is keeping you from growing an already successful product into being even more of a success, maybe slow down on the low performing item temporarily and come back to it when you have the resources to attack it full force.
[Backstory of product]
Liz Picarazzi:
In 2022, there was a lot of discussion about whether we would even keep our package lockers going. I’m very much in favor of doing that, and I have won that argument. We are going to continue our package lockers. They are profitable, but barely. So the background on this is that, after we had our trash enclosures, there were people who saw the potential in our trash enclosures as package lockers. So as much as I would love to take credit for our package locker, it was actually our own clients who saw that potential and brought it up with us. And so we adapted our trash enclosure to be package lockers, and we’ve been selling them now for four years.
[Discussion and suggestions for product]
Loren Feldman:
Why do you think the bins haven’t sold better?
Liz Picarazzi:
So I think it’s that we haven’t really put much money behind marketing. I think that aspect of having the carrier need to unlock the bin is an inhibitor. The package lockers on the market are just a drop function, so the carrier can drop the package in without having to use a lock.
Sarah Segal:
So Amazon, I want to say, has a feature that we tried briefly, where they can automatically open our garage door and drop packages in and close the door. We stopped it because our dogs were attacking them, literally ended up with a driver on top of a car after our dog got out after them. But could you do something like that so that the accessibility for the driver is easier?
Liz Picarazzi:
I don’t think we would ever go that direction, actually.
Sarah Segal:
Too high-tech?
Liz Picarazzi:
It’s too high-tech, for one. Second, our main market is New York, and people don’t have garages or driveways or alleys. Here, there’s really nowhere but inside an enclosed bin to leave something. And then the other thing is, I don’t think Amazon’s offering has been very popular. I know when it first came out, I felt a little threatened, and that went away.
I mean, the other thing Amazon is doing—and probably a lot more successfully—is they have their lockers in a lot of 7-Elevens, gas stations, Whole Foods. And that, while it’ll protect the package, it’s certainly not convenient. If you buy something online, it’s largely about convenience and to have it delivered to your house. If you need to get in the car and drive to Whole Foods and go to a locker, then that takes away that convenience factor.
Sarah Segal:
Yeah, I love the concept of it. And I think it’s worthwhile, especially in my area. People are constantly getting things taken off of their front porches. I mean, if you look at TikTok, there are thousands and thousands of videos of people sharing their Ring cam of somebody stealing. There are people who sabotage people who steal packages. Maybe it is a marketing thing.
Shawn Busse:
The glitter bomb guy.
Sarah Segal:
Yeah, the glitter bomb guy.
Loren Feldman:
For those of us who haven’t heard of this, I can guess, but tell me, what’s the glitter bomb guy?
Liz Picarazzi:
So there’s this YouTuber named Mark Rober. He actually used to be a NASA scientist. And about four or five years ago, he started doing videos where he baited packages. He had cameras all around with glitter that he had engineered to basically explode when the thief opened the package. In subsequent releases of it, he even put iPhone cameras in all four directions to be able to video the perpetrator, but also to upload the video to the cloud to be able to then give to police. One of the last functions he added was actually a fart spray, where when the person opened up the box, they got sprayed. And so in the videos, you will see these thieves being sprayed with the fart spray. [Laughter]
Sarah Segal:
Okay, you need to partner with him. I’m serious. You need to partner with him. He needs to be your spokesperson. And you need to do a campaign that is like, “This is the solution so that you don’t have to have a PhD to catch people in the act.”
Liz Picarazzi:
I mean, I would love that. And the thought has often crossed my mind, but his sponsors are all big brands. So I just assumed he wouldn’t be interested.
Sarah Segal:
Well, there’s him, and then there’s plenty of copycats that do similar things. But it’s just the idea of making sure that all of your marketing goes toward those people who are lamenting about packages being stolen. If you go on Nextdoor, Nextdoor is full of this.
Liz Picarazzi:
I know, and I actually used to advertise on Nextdoor, as well, for the package lockers. And that was not worthwhile.
Shawn Busse:
You talk about a portfolio of companies, and you’re killing it with the simplicity of your message right now, which is: Anti-rat, get rid of the trash, the PR. You are of the moment, and if I look at companies, I think the parallel is Solo Stove, which is, Solo came up with a genius idea. It’s actually not made that well. It’s okay. There are better ones. But it came up with a pretty genius idea of a smoke-free outdoor fire pit. They created a category of product that was all their own. They just dominated, from a marketing perspective. So I see you’re doing the same thing, right? You’re dominating from a marketing perspective. You’re creating a category.
And what they did is, they sold to private equity—which makes me sad—but what private equity then did is injected a ton of money into marketing, and scaled it even further. And then they went after adjacencies. Then they started adding the Solo Pizza Oven, and the Solo this, and the Solo that. And basically, what they’re doing is they’re capitalizing on the customer base, which at that point is big enough to really sell new products to.
Your challenge, I think, with the package thing—I mean, I love the package idea, I want one—I think you’re starting to fight a war on two fronts. And if you had a lot of capital, if you were like, “Yeah, I’ve got capital,” then I would assign somebody to be in charge of this product line, who I would hold accountable to certain performance, blah, blah, blah. But you don’t have those kinds of resources, right?
Sarah Segal:
Could you split the brand? Could it be its own extension? Maybe what Shawn is saying is that you’re confusing your core audience. And maybe it’s an offering that’s under a different umbrella.
Liz Picarazzi:
I mean, it has its own brand product name, Parcel Bin.
Shawn Busse:
But I think your idea of, “We’re the California Closets of the outdoors,” that’s cool conceptually, and I get it. But I don’t think it’s a thing that enough people are passionate about except you. Whereas people are passionate about the rats and the trash and like solving that problem, and it’s just so good. And then I think there are probably people who are passionate about parcel theft and, and fixing that problem. Look at the guy who does the glitter bomb, right? So there’s a passionate group over there.
I don’t think there’s a ton of overlap between the two. So having two separate brands, I think, makes sense. But I’m just talking energy and time, and you’re so good at what you’re doing right now. And you’re scaling it, and it’s killing it. This feels like maybe not quite as [much of] a distraction as the bear-proof stuff was, but a thing that maybe you put down for a little while and then come back to, once you have more horsepower.
Loren Feldman:
Along those lines, Liz, I love the idea of the modularity and the fact that these products all work together, but you’re really focused right now on selling your trash enclosures to business districts, municipalities. And their need for a modular package bin that fits along with it is probably non-existent, I’m guessing.
Liz Picarazzi:
Non-existent.
Loren Feldman:
So that gets in the way of you seizing that moment right now, when you’re doing so well in that particular area.
Liz Picarazzi:
Well, that is really what the challenge is. If I had an investor, and they saw the potential in our package lockers and wanted to help me hire someone for it, I actually think it could do really well. But am I really willing to take on an investor for the sake of that? There would have to be a lot of other things.
One thing I should say: It’s not like we’re gonna decommission or discontinue the package lockers. We’re probably just not going to be in a strong inventory position the next time we place an order. We normally order a lot of them, and they just take a lot longer to sell. On the next run, we may not order any, and then we wait for the orders to pile up. And then it’s just the every six months sort of thing, almost more like a Kickstarter model where you buy something knowing that it’s going to take a while to get to you. And then our orders would be based on what the actual sales of it had been.
Shawn Busse:
Yeah, I think you know the answer, right? I think you know the answer, Liz. You’re doing so well in this space. I agree with you: If you had an investor at the ready who said, “Hey, here’s $3 million to build this brand.” Then basically you would split your time as chief marketing officer between the two brands. But there are so many other duties you have around culture and recruiting and operations. I know Frank’s got a lot of the operational stuff, but like your vision and keeping it from being just a boring production-oriented thing—like, that’s your magic.
Sarah Segal:
I would not give up on it. I would just put it to the side, as when you do have more bandwidth or financial wherewithal, that that becomes your next brand that you launch. And it doesn’t get lost in your parent company, but it’s its own next thing where you can do it even better than you did Citibin because you’ve learned so much.
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