21 Hats Podcast

For many, knitting may still conjure an image of a grandmother in a rocking chair, her cats sleeping and her doilies taking shape. In recent years, however, the quiet industry of tiny neighborhood yarn shops scattered across the U.S. has become an unlikely cultural battleground. It’s been divided by charges of racism and cultural appropriation that have erupted in a series of social media firestorms, prompting some owners to close, sell, or rebrand their businesses. It may seem surprising that such a quiet pursuit could produce so much conflict, but it’s really not all that different from the fissures afflicting the country as a whole. In this bonus episode of the 21 Hats Podcast, we meet three women who were not content to stick to their knitting: Adella Colvin, whose business, LolaBean Yarn Co., is a prominent independent dyer based in Grovetown, Ga.; Gaye (a.k.a. GG) Glasspie, a leading yarn industry influencer whose signature color is orange and who is based in Clifton, New Jersey; and Felicia Eve, who owns String Thing Studio in Brooklyn, N.Y., which is one of the few Black-owned yarn shops in the country.

This week, in episode 92, we introduce another new member of the 21 Hats Podcast team, Liz Picarazzi, who talks Shawn Busse and Paul Downs through a series of challenges she’s faced at her business, Citibin. Among those challenges: why she outsourced her manufacturing to China, why she’s trying to bring it back, why she’s struggling to find an American fabricator that wants her business, why she thinks she wasted all of the money she spent last year on digital marketing, how she managed to double sales anyway, and where she found the right person to handle the aspects of running Citibin that she doesn’t think she’s good at.

This week, Loren Feldman and Gene Marks talk about how Hormel is somehow selling more Spam than ever. Plus: What will small businesses do now that there’s no vax-and-test mandate? Why Buy Now Pay Later is a good deal for small retailers (but potentially risky for their customers). And why you shouldn’t use your customer relations platform for email marketing—even though CRM providers say you can.

This week, in episode 91, we introduce a new member of the 21 Hats Podcast team, Shawn Busse, who tells Jay Goltz and Laura Zander about an intriguing challenge he faces. Twenty-two years ago, Shawn co-founded a marketing firm called Kinesis, but now he’s trying to convince clients that it takes more than just marketing. Sometimes, it’s not enough just to drive more leads. Sometimes, you have to step back and take a deeper look at your business, which not every client is ready to do. In fact, it took Shawn 10 years (and the Great Recession) to do it with his own business.

This week, Gene Marks tells Loren Feldman that he expects blockchain technology to spawn an explosion of digital transactions and a whole new economy. Does this mean business owners need to understand what a non-fungible token is? And would you buy an NFT of this podcast episode? Plus: tips for inflation-proofing your business. And is the Qualified Small Business Stock exemption a ridiculous loophole or a boon to small businesses?

This week, in a special bonus episode, we talk to Steve Krull and Dan Golden, co-founders of Be Found Online, a digital marketing agency based in Chicago. In the second quarter of 2020, as COVID hit and their clients stopped advertising, Krull and Golden watched helplessly as their agency lost 40 percent of its revenue. And then things got much worse: By the end of the year, both of their wives would be diagnosed with cancer. This is a conversation about how Krull and Golden have coped with matters big and small, personal and professional, throughout an experience they compare to being in a knife fight in the middle of a forest fire.

This week, in episode 90, we have a special guest, Fred Warmbier, owner of a metal-finishing business he founded in Cincinnati in 1998. About 10 years ago, Warmbier was ready to walk away from that business. “It just never seemed like I could have the type of business that I wanted,” he says, “where things worked properly and our employees were happy and our customers were happy.”

That changed when he discovered the Deming Management Method through a consultant, Kelly Allan, who helped him tame the chaos. Where does one start with Deming? “You start,” says Allan, who is chairman of the Advisory Council of The W. Edwards Deming Institute, “where the pain is.” As it happens, and as he discusses in this conversation, Fred Warmbier has experienced more than his share of pain.

This week, in episode 89, our last episode of 2021, we take a look back at the conversations we’ve had this year about the rewards and responsibilities of business ownership, including what it’s like to sell your business, to fire an employee, to risk your own home in order to get financing, to have to make a bet-the-company decision, and to deal with mental health issues, even thoughts of suicide. In this bonus episode, we highlight some of our happiest, smartest, funniest, and most difficult exchanges from the past year.

This week, Loren Feldman and Gene Marks talk about the arrival of omicron. With holiday parties getting canceled, sporting events getting canceled, offices either closing or postponing plans to reopen, it’s starting to feel a lot like—well, not Christmas, but more like March of 2020. Are businesses in for another rough patch? Or is that just COVID hysteria? Plus: Gene admits he likes ABBA.

This week, in episode 88, Jay Goltz and William Vanderbloemen talk about what it takes—in the throes of an unprecedented labor shortage—to hold on to your best people, the ones whose departures might send you looking for a trash can. They also discuss whether “hire slow” still works, whether it’s a good idea to rehire a former employee, whether it’s still possible to do a meaningful reference check, how to use 360 reviews and personality tests, and finally, whether Jay and William would be ready to sell their business if someone were to come along and offer them twice what they think it’s worth.