In which we discuss Local Ocean, a restaurant on the coast of Oregon that specializes in local fish and sustainable wages. What is a sustainable wage? How does it work when the local economy is under strain? How do we support local fisheries and manage expectations?

Visit Local Ocean: https://www.localocean.net/

Connect with Leela or Lisa:

Leela Sinha, aleixianoconsulting.com

Lisa Robbin Young, lisarobbinyoung.com

Patreon: patreon.com/LeelaS

Okay, so you actually went.

Lisa Robbin Young: Yeah, I did. I did, and I mean, I have a lot

of good things to say, but I think the piece that was a

little confusing for me as a consumer, right? Not as a

business coach who's looking at their business model, but as a

consumer, I'm sitting at the table, looking at the menu. The

prices are higher than what I pay around here in the Portland

area, so I'm thinking, okay, that fee is already baked into

the price, and the way it's worded on the menu makes it

sound like it's already baked into the price. And then when

the bill came,

it wasn't baked into the price.

What wasn't baked into the price? Like the tips,

or

Lisa Robbin Young: well, yeah, because they don't tip, right?

Like it's a 20% service charge,

right?

Lisa Robbin Young: That they add to the bill for all dine in, and

then there's a note that says tipping's not required. It's

appreciated. It will go to your server, and I'm like, well, now

I'm confused.

Right? Like,

Lisa Robbin Young: am I am I am I doing 20% and a tip? Cause I'm

not like help me as a consumer make it easy for me as a

consumer to understand what I'm really paying for, right? You

know, we we ended up

it was almost $100 for our lunch, and I was just like,

"Well, that's a bit more than I thought we were like. And it was

just two of you, right? And it was just the two of us. It's

just my husband and I, and it was like fish and chips and a

soup and sandwich, and so it was like, wait, huh?

So I was a little surprised, but like I said, lots of really nice

things to say about this place too. That was just something

that, as a consumer, kind of caught me by surprise.

Well, I think we've got some good stuff to talk

about in terms of pricing and expectations and food and the

way our country does that. So let's get started for real.

In the world of business, there are a lot of choices. There are

a lot of lies. There are a lot of shortcuts. There are a lot of

people taking those shortcuts and telling those lies. And then

there are the people who choose to do it right at a time when so

often profit is king, those people are increasingly rare.

But when those people are in charge, good things happen.

Fortunately, some of those people are business owners, some

of those people are bosses, and we are here to showcase the best

ones. I'm your host Leela Sinha with co-host Lisa Robin Young.

Let's get started. So, welcome to Power Pivot season three.

This is episode four.

My name is four, right? My name is Leela Sinha, and this is Lisa

Robin Young, and she is my co-host. And we are excited to

have you with us on Power Pivot Best Bosses, where we're talking

about businesses that are doing things right, it does sort of

imply that we're talking about employer-employee relationships,

but really, it's it's you know everything that a company can do

right, especially in this moment, in this place, in this

time when so many companies are not doing things right. So so

today we are talking about Local Ocean, which is a Newport,

Oregon seafood restaurant and fish market, and I was hoping to

get out there, but I am in the middle of some significant life

chaos. So Lisa managed to get out there, and so we're going to

be hearing from her about her experience, and then we're going

to be talking a little bit about the cost of doing business.

Lisa Robbin Young: Yeah. So my husband and I went out over our

weekend to Newport, and right off the bat, the thing-and this

might seem silly-but to me, it was it was a really powerful

expression of community care, right? So we're pulling up along

dock side, and there's several docks, and the fishing boats are

out. Some are some are already leaving. Some are coming in. I

mean, they're they're in all states of of traffic flow, and

we're trying to find a place to park. But all along, like the

prime parking real estate, it all says licensed fisherman

only, and it's like they really actually want these people in

their community to have the resources that are important for

them. Like they don't need to truck 10 blocks from where they

parked their car to get on a boat. Like you can park

practically, yeah, practically right in front of where your

boat is parked, and you know tourists can fend for

themselves. Right. And as a as a municipality, I think that

that's a really great message to send to the hundreds and

hundreds of workers who are on the docks, who are getting on

the boats. Because if you go to Newport, you'll see obviously

the docks and the boats, but then there are two fisheries,

like boom, boom, like right there on the water, and they're

processing fish, and they're bringing them in, and they're

you know you see all of the workers moving around, and

they're right across the street from local ocean, so I mean it

was all right there. You could see the fishing industry

ecosystem basically from from the water to the broken

waterfront.

Lisa Robbin Young: Absolutely, absolutely, and. So you know

you're watching all of that go on, and then you come upon local

ocean once you find a place to park.

Since you are not a fisherman,

Lisa Robbin Young: that's right. I am not not a fisherman. So we

actually got a pretty decent place to park. The the fish

market space is is pretty good size, right? And they've got

lots of options, and they also have an indoor dining area and

an outdoor patio dining area. So we chose to to eat out on the

patio, and I mean they've done they've done some really nice

things to service the customer in this space, right? Like

they've got all their displays set up up front, so even if

you're coming into the to eat in the restaurant, you're coming

past all of the displays of all of the fish markets that they

have, right? Like the fish market part. So like you get the

fish market experience without having to buy a fish and take it

to your table and figure out how to prepare it, right? Oh, have

you been to

Portugal?

Lisa Robbin Young: No, I haven't. It's on my bucket list.

So, you know, we we go around the corner and we we sit out

outside, and even out there, they have set up basically a

food cart truck where they have right. Except, I mean, they're

not they're not actually like serving out of the truck. This

is like their outdoor bar service area, right? Like, so

this is where their their service team goes to enter

orders to you know get plates and dishes and those kind of

things. So it's it's basically like the service

station,

Lisa Robbin Young: right? Yeah, basically. But it's it's nice,

right? Like they don't have to run all the way indoors, so they

they've really thought about the traffic flow and how to keep the

doorway clear because they've got all that stuff outside, but

it's all in shelter, so you don't have to worry about oh the

plates are going to get dirty or any of those kinds of things. It

doesn't feel like it's a temporary space, even though I

mean technically it is. It's a seasonal space, you know,

waitstaff was charming and very kind and and happy to be there,

right? And we've talked before about how, in in food service,

you you can get you can be cranky because you're not being

well cared for, right? Yeah, and the turnover can be high, and

you know our server was very complimentary and Johnny on the

spot, and just really available to us. And there were other

serve, there were other customers in the area. It wasn't

like it was just us. And you know when you open up the menu,

and I, but when you open up the menu, you see the story of this

company and why they do the things that they do, and so

they're educating you, and you're getting this really great

experience where you feel cared for from beginning to end. Right

from the moment that they take you to a seat to the moment that

you're paying the bill and walking out the the door, it's

it's a really thoughtful experience,

which is a really great thing in in in places like

that where a little insider knowledge goes a long way. You

know, if you're coming from Portland, you may never have had

to encounter anything except there's a fish and chips on the

menu, and I checked it off, and that's what I wanted. And and so

understanding a little more about the context and a little

more about the fish, you know. Oh, look, there's more than one

kind of fish. Oh dear, what do we do? There was more than one

kind

Lisa Robbin Young: of fish for the fish and chips. I I opened

up the menu. I'm like, I think I'll have fish and chips because

that's an easy right. Right. Yeah. And I was like, oh,

there's three different kinds of fish, and I'm not fish smart, so

I don't know one fish from another. I mean, I I I know some

fish from another, but in fish and chips, no. And so I'm like,

tell me about my options here. And she was very knowledgeable

about the product, which is always great when you've got

service people who have product knowledge, right? And and I'm

and I'm talking about it in this more generic way because this is

applicable to any business in any industry. When your people

on the floor have good product knowledge, it allows your

customer to feel more trust in not only the recommendations but

in the organization. Right? We're not getting the runaround.

We're not being told. I don't know. This is only my second

day. You know, it's like I can tell you right away. These are

the things that you need to know. So if you like something

that's a little more fishy, you'll probably want this. If

you want something that's a little more firm, you're going

to want this, and and having that kind of knowledge around

your product line gives everybody a better experience

because your server even feels like they are more

knowledgeable, right? Like, oh wow, look at me being smart and

being helpful to our customers. Yeah, I mean, and I'm sure they

don't think about it like that, but it's like that stuff becomes

important to your sense of belonging in the organization.

Right, right, and and taking pride in your work is

a thing. Right, being able to be proud-it's they're sort of your

fish sommelier. Yes,

Lisa Robbin Young: yes. In this instance, absolutely, they were

also wine sommelier because I'm like I don't know anything about

wine either. Like, right? I'm I I want to be a foodie. I am not

a foodie. Oh, don't worry. Portland will make

you into a foodie. Have you really

Lisa Robbin Young: tell me?

Tiny little sidebar. Have you been to

Portland Fish Market in Woodstock yet, no, not yet. You

should go. They have three different kind, four different

kinds of fish available for their fish and chips, which is

gluten free and very tasty. It's like it's it's excellent,

excellent. I have been living like less than a block from

there, so it is my go-to. Oh my God, I can't eat, I can't cook

tonight. Food, so highly recommend.

But and and but that's what you want to see, right? In a in a

working waterfront town, in a an oceanside town, in a fisherman's

town, that's what you want to see is is staff and whether

you're buying at a fish market or whether you're buying at a

restaurant. You want to see people who really understand

fish, because broadly speaking, Americans do not understand

fish.

Lisa Robbin Young: I I don't.

Yeah.

Lisa Robbin Young: I I I remember as a child, my dad

would say, "Put the worm on the hook. Put the hook in the water.

Wait for the fish. Like whatever you caught, you caught. Right.

And if it was something that you didn't want to keep, you threw

it back. Caught a lot of sunfish didn't catch much else, you

know, because I was just a kid. So yeah, no, not a. Again, want

to be a foodie? Not a foodie. I like the idea of being a foodie,

not not a not a foodie. A

growing foodie, an aspiring foodie. There

Lisa Robbin Young: you go. There you go.

So so you're at Local Ocean and you have this

very well cared for, well curated experience. It sounds

like

Lisa Robbin Young: yes, yes, yes, very much so.

And they are a worker; they're employee owned,

right?

Lisa Robbin Young: I believe that is accurate. I think they

have a modified business model where because they they

transitioned into an employee, it's a collective organization,

so it's not. It's not. I'm gonna lie here. It's not truly

employee owned. I think. I think there's like a holding company,

and the employees own that or some something like that.

Okay, so the website says extraordinary

seafood experiences from local Oregon fishermen.

Lisa Robbin Young: But I mean, they're talking. You can see,

you can see on the menu. It's like these are the fish that

that came in today. You know, this is the fish that you know

we we've ordered from the fishery across the street,

right? Like this. So you know it's fresh, and you know it's

local. I don't think there's anything on the menu that I saw

that wasn't locally sourced,

which is which is fantastic because I've had so

much trouble finding places where I can get local seafood,

and I was shocked because I moved to Portland from the Bay

Area and from to the Bay Area from Maine, and the only way you

get fish in Maine is local. Like you can buy, like people will

look at you sideways. You could buy that from somewhere else,

but why would you do that when we have perfectly good fish here

and lots of it and lots of different kinds of? So when I

came to the West Coast and I was like, I where's the local fish?

And they were like, I don't know. I guess that one's kind of

local. It's from Alaska.

Lisa Robbin Young: Yeah, like 80% I think it was might have

been in the menu, but I was reading while I was there that

something like 80% of the fish that is caught in along the

Oregon coast is exported to every place but the Oregon area,

and I was just like, "Wow! So at most 20% of the fish that these

people are catching is going to stay local, and the rest of it's

all going to go somewhere else.

Right.

Lisa Robbin Young: That kind of blew my mind.

Yeah, it's it's wild, and it's a very strange

model for something like fish, because fish does not travel

well. It can be made to travel, but it is so much better when it

has not been made to travel. So, so I was I was really delighted

to see this this restaurant. I was like, oh, yay! There's a

place that has local fish.

Lisa Robbin Young: Yeah, yeah. Well, local fish, and one of the

things that I was really interested in was the we pay a

living wage, right? And and we've talked about that when we

talked about Detroit 75 Kitchen, and we're talking about two

different economic regions of the country. So it's like, all

right, well we've seen how they've done it in the Midwest.

How are they doing it here,

right?

Lisa Robbin Young: Because the cost of living is typically

higher on this side of the country,

right?

Lisa Robbin Young: And in lots of places where I live, it's

higher than where I used to live when I lived in Michigan. So, so

it was like, all right, let's let's kind of do an apples to

apples comparison and see what we're dealing with here, and

that's where, as a consumer, I was a little surprised by how

things were priced. But as a business owner, I liked what

they were doing. I just wish they had been a little bit more

clear for from the consumers' side of things. But but the idea

itself is we're we're only surcharging people who dine in,

right?

Lisa Robbin Young: And everybody gets paid a fair wage. But if

you're dining in, there's just more work in serving you, so

we're charging that extra 20% on the price of whatever it is that

you're buying, because we want to continue to pay everyone a

living wage, not just your server who showed up at the

table to take your order and deliver your food. So this is

how we do that,

right?

Lisa Robbin Young: And then if you want to tip on top of that,

you're more than welcome to, which I think is a great

business model because it ensures that costs are covered,

people are being cared for in wages and benefits.

Right,

Lisa Robbin Young: right. They can work a full a full time

shift. Right. It's not well. We're going to work you three

hours today and four hours tomorrow, and then we're going

to be off for the rest of the week, like is very common in

food service, right? They're working full day shifts. Then

you've got an opportunity to really take care of yourself and

stay in your community and not have to worry about oh, I got to

move away because I got to go find a job that pays me. Well, I

can work here,

right? And I can have a career here instead of

just exactly,

Lisa Robbin Young: right, right, exactly, exactly.

Yeah, and I I think that it's really great to think

about like what is the business model that allows people to do

that when we talk about retail or we talk about food service.

So often, as you say, we're talking about people who are

being given these erratic, first of all, an erratic schedule.

Which don't get me started on erratic scheduling because I

mean it's terrible. It's just so hard on the people who are in

it, right? And then in addition to that, we're talking about

three hours here, four hours there. You can work a dinner

shift here. You can work after the game there, and then and

then maybe nothing else the rest of the week. And so you don't

have a full-time job, but you're expected to be available anytime

they want you. And so it's very hard to get another job. It's

very hard to have a social life. It's very hard to build a

network. It's very hard to have the kind of community support

that we talked about last time, right? So, so it's it's such a

challenge. So when I sit down and think, if I were in charge

of the world, what would I do? One of the things I would do is

give retail and food service people regular, predictable

hours and full time for anybody who wanted it. Some people don't

want full time; it's an extra job, or they have kids, or

whatever. But but a lot of people want full time, and so

how do we get that full time support for people who want it?

And how do we get and and I think you know your your price

discrepancy challenge is partially that, right? That that

you know Portland is expensive, but the coast isn't less

expensive. The coast is is tourist and you know wealthy

beach house sort of territory, and then the people who serve

them, and so and so what happens? You know, in in Maine,

we had a similar problem. It was, you know, Acadia National

Park has originally it's it's on an island, and originally there

was like the fancy side, and then the quiet side of the

island, which used to be where all the help lived, and now it's

just as expensive to live on the quiet side. So all the help

lives, you know, three towns over and back on the mainland,

and it's a lot of gas to get down there to work. But but

that's a challenge of coastal living, a challenge of these

kinds of fishing communities. That there are the people who

serve the fancy people, and then there are the fancy people, and

trying to make the economics work for both of them. I think

Detroit 75 Kitchen was an interesting example because it

was in a in a city where you could reasonably expect all the

pieces to fit together, but the further toward the coast you

get, the more isolated you get. In this case, you're on the

other side of mountains. You're on the other side of things. It

gets really, really hard to figure out how we can make an

actual robust economy work there in a way that the people who

serve that economy can afford.

Lisa Robbin Young: Right. Did that make

sense? It

Lisa Robbin Young: does make sense, and and I'm sitting here

imagining myself as the fancy people. Like I need to be the

fancy people for a hot second. Yay! But I mean, this is and

this is something that we see. Any time you have, and I know

Newport's not a big town, but anytime you have urban

expansion, right? Anytime you have a city center that starts

to grow and more people are coming in, demand for housing,

prices go up, like all of that happens, and it doesn't matter

whether you're on the coast or in a little farm town somewhere,

as demand goes up, prices go up, and so to your point, the idea

of how do we then care for the people who are doing the work,

so that they don't have to truck in for. 70 miles away, or an

hour away, or even 30 minutes away, because that's where they

can afford to live. How do we create a business model that

pays them a living wage for where we are, not where we want

to ship them off to? Because everything costs more here, so I

think that that's one of the things that I think they have

done very well is the pricing. Well, I was surprised by it. I'm

there were several people around us who come every week because

the servers knew their names and hello again, you know all of

that. So they're they're used to it. They're aware of it. They

know what's going on, and you're not typically even in a tourist

town. You're not typically trying to build your business

solely on tourist traffic that's only going to be there once or

twice. You want those repeat customers who are there with you

throughout the season, who are the locals. Because number one,

if the locals go there, that means it's probably pretty good,

right?

Lisa Robbin Young: Right. If the locals are coming back,

then

Lisa Robbin Young: that's that's how you know that they've got

something good going on. So there's that piece, and then the

other side of that coin is, as you build those relationships

with your customers through your service team, they are more

inclined to want to come back because they are being well

taken care of while they're there, and we had a wonderful

experience while we were in the space. So I mean, it was a

really nice, nice experience,

which is very similar to what we saw with mr.

Mixer, right? Like people have such a good relationship with

the company and have such good experiences with the service,

that that when mr. Mixer, when anybody's got a mixer and it

comes up, like those people become ambassadors. Essentially,

they become brand ambassadors.

Lisa Robbin Young: I can't tell you how many mixers I've seen on

Facebook Marketplace while I'm looking for other things. I'm

like, I should buy that and I should send it to mr. Mixer, and

then I should like, I'm gonna do an arbitrage thing. Like, my

brain was going.

Yeah, so, so I think there's an interesting

this business of like commuting and and the service

staff versus the customers, because we look at something

like the Bay Area, and we have a similar problem, but a very like

it's not the same problem. But it's it's that if if you want

your employees close to your company and your company is in

the Bay Area because that's the nexus of whatever, you've got to

pay. You've got to pay well because people in the Bay Area.

I was shocked when I lived there. People commuted three

hours to work in the morning, and three hours home. That's a

whole extra work day. Yeah,

yeah,

the whole extra work day.

Lisa Robbin Young: And and the horror stories that I've I've

I've had clients who lived in the Bay Area as they were

growing their business, and it was like, yeah, I'm renting this

basement space. So not even like an apartment, just a space in

someone's basement. And the heat doesn't work right. And this

problem's going on. And oh, I'm paying almost $2,000 a month for

this hovel, right? And it's just like,

right,

Lisa Robbin Young: housing is out of control. Right, and

there's still a need. It's still got to be filled, and people

still need jobs. And and and right. So how do we how do we

find how do we strike the balance? Because we're still

inside capitalism. Right, that hasn't changed. What do we do,

and how do we do things differently so that people

actually have an opportunity for being closer and not having to

do another day's worth of work just to drive to and from work,

right? And you know, like Google, at least for

a while, was solving the problem with very fancy tour busses that

drove in from various places, and they had Wi-Fi. So some

people would get on the bus and start their workday on the bus,

and then like arrive at the office, be at the office for the

core hours, and then get back on the bus and finish their work

day on the bus, which is at least a little bit more fair in

terms of the the personal cost and the opportunity cost of

being in a commute that long, but it doesn't actually solve

the problem. And then you know there are some companies that

have talked about building company housing, and I'm like,

we do not need company towns and company stores. We tried that;

it was terrible. Let's not do that. Well,

Lisa Robbin Young: I will say, since we're talking about

company housing, 100 years ago, and I do mean like 100 years

ago, because I grew up in Flint, General Motors founded a

completely different division of the company called Modern

Housing, and they actually built. Homes in neighborhood,

like whole neighborhoods of homes, and you can you can find

these plans online of all these modern housing addition homes,

and they're scattered across wherever there was a GM town.

They built these homes, and the exec the executives would buy

them, or the middle managers would buy them and move their

families in, and and they owned those homes. So I think there is

an opportunity there, so long as we're looking at it as how do we

facilitate giving our people proximity and not how do we

generate another profit center, right? Like that's the

distinction that I think we need to make as you know potential

business owners who are trying to solve a proximity problem via

housing for our people, right? Right. If you take it as if this

is another profit center, you're not you're you're not going on

our best boss's list. It's not happening.

Well, and and it's interesting that you mentioned

that they could buy them, right? Because you know home ownership

is is considered one of the major paths to achieving middle

classhood, and it's one of the biggest challenges right now, as

we can see from all kinds of different political and social

situations. And so, if you're a company that's like, how do we

make it so everybody can own a home? You know, gravity payments

is so complicated, but the original. So, do you know about

the gravity payments thing, Dan Price? No,

Lisa Robbin Young: I'm I'm familiar with the company, but

I'm not familiar with what's going on. So,

so Dan Price. A number of years ago, Dan Price

read an article that said that happiness does in fact go up

with income until you hit about $70,000, and now that number is

more like 90. But at the time, it was 70, and and then it sort

of tops out because $70,000 is where everybody's basic needs

are met. You know, you got housing security and recreation

and savings and all the things that you know a 1950s middle

class ideal would have had, and so he actually went to the mat

for that idea that everybody at Gravity Payment should make at

least $70,000 a year.

Lisa Robbin Young: Okay. Yes, I remember this story. I did not

realize it was that company, but yes, I'm familiar.

Yeah. So, and and it's complicated because it

turns out Dan Price is maybe not the best person in the world,

but this particular move was a really great move. Actually, he

changed so many lives by doing it because he didn't sit down

and say, "How can I bring my employees closer? He didn't sit

down and say, "The cost of living is too high. I should

control their housing. He sat down and said, "How do we bring

these people into a middle class existence? And the answer was,

"Everybody should make at least $70,000 a year. And what he did

was, he took his salary and distributed it down. And so,

when we think about this problem of like pricing and housing and

local community, you know, I think there are a lot of

different ways to solve it, but one of them definitely is build

housing and make it affordable for your employees to buy it,

and make them just they just own it. You don't have a control.

You don't have control over it. You can't kick them out of their

house if they then quit their job. Like none of that. You

can't raise their rent because your profit isn't profiting

enough. You just make them a house they can buy.

Lisa Robbin Young: Yeah. Yeah. the The number I don't remember

where I was reading it, but I was reading something to the

effect of one of the reasons why we're seeing a population

decline and people not having children at at as young an age

is because they're like, well, what are we gonna do? Have it at

mom's house because we don't have we don't have our we don't

even have our own homes yet, right? Right. Like first time

home buyers are like now in their 40s. Like as we see that

happen, there is a natural consequence on the backside of

that. That's like we don't have the safe safety and stability to

have kids or have more kids, so we're not going to, and then

there are consequences. Right. So yeah, I think I think it's an

important thing for us to consider that when we can, as

business owners, when we can not only do business in a way that

allows us to serve our customers and serve them well, so that

we're paid well, right? As an organization, but then to

translate that back to the people who are doing that work,

so that they are taken care of and they can live well, right?

They can do well. Like it, there has to be reciprocity. We've

watched, we've watched C-suite salaries just skyrocket while

other other payroll is on the decline, and and the decline is

getting worse because we're seeing what's happening with AI.

I have a a good friend who said you know her sister's a nurse

and their hospital just decided they're going to cut the entire

education department and most of customer service and let AI do

it and it's like well some. Those people are going to get

called back, right? But we're watching we're watching that

continual drive costs down mode of capitalism, and there is a

consequence on the back side that people aren't going to be

available to buy the things that you want to offer.

Right, right, and that's the thing. So if we look

at what the prices are, the necessary pricing in order to

maintain a business so that everybody gets fair wages and

everybody gets good benefits and everybody, you know, like the

kind of business, if we look at that and we say, okay, this is

what it costs for fish and chips if we're paying everybody like

that, then we have to bring everybody's wages up, so they

can buy those fish and chips.

Lisa Robbin Young: That's right. That's right.

And you know, I think more and more cartoons are

starting to go around about like, did you not consider the

fact that if you put people out of work, that they then can't

buy the product that you're trying to sell them?

Lisa Robbin Young: That's right.

And there's more and more kind of whining from

the from the corporate overlords that are that's like oh people

aren't buying our stuff as much people don't want to buy our

stuff as much the whole wine industry has been having a fit

because nobody wants to buy their wine anymore and it's like

well one thing is people are drinking less alcohol but

another thing is alcohol is an expensive nice to have and not a

requirement.

Lisa Robbin Young: Yeah, and you know what goes

off your shopping list when you're feeling pinched

at the grocery store? The expensive nice to have.

Lisa Robbin Young: That's right. That's right. And I was reading

that there was a company recently who was, and I mean I'm

not trying to go down an AI tangent here, but there there

there was they were basically complaining that they had told

their organization we need to use AI get into it use it as

much as

possible

Lisa Robbin Young: use it as much as possible and they had

blown through their annual budget for tokens in four months

yeah I saw that same article I think,

Lisa Robbin Young: and then it was like, "Whoa, we got to back

up the truck! And it's like, you guys should have been making

those decisions long before you told everybody to start using

it, right? Like those those decisions are important to make

ahead of time as you're looking at your business model. Hey,

this new opportunity has fallen into our laps, AI, a new kind of

fish, a new place to fish. Right? It doesn't matter what

the opportunity is. This opportunity has come in front of

us. What are we going to do with it? How does it fit what we're

currently about? And do we even does it even fit with what we're

currently about? And if it if it doesn't, we can let that go, and

yeah, there will be consequences if we don't take take it up

right now, and maybe we'll take it up later, and maybe we won't.

Or yeah, this is like exactly what we need to really do great

work for our people, for us, for the people that we serve. Then

now, how are we going to use it in ways that are effective. How

are we going to put this opportunity to its best possible

use, with the understanding of who we are and what really

matters to us as an organization, right? Not just

oh, hey, here's here's this new thing. Everybody go play with it

and figure it out. Like somebody's going to get hurt. A

lot of somebodies are going to get hurt,

right? And and the sort of the rapid adoption,

right? I've never seen in my, and I've been paying attention

to tech my whole life. Basically, I've never seen a

tech get adopted this fast, this wholesale. Like there's some

kind of urgency. Like, like I don't know, we have to pee. Like

it's just it it doesn't feel safe. It doesn't feel

responsible. It doesn't feel like it makes any sense, and you

know, as a tech company, because I I know which company it was.

As a tech company, surely they should have realized that the

unlimited access was going to go away, and that the model was

going to become token based. The fees were going to be taken.

Like they had to have been able to predict. You

Lisa Robbin Young: can see that in so many other industries,

right? Like you can see it with, right? Exactly. But I mean, you

can see it with, you know, social media, right? Social

media was free, and now you pay if you want the perks. Uber was

lower priced, and then I'm like, you're going to see. You have to

anytime you have a lost leader product to get user base, that

money's got to come from somewhere sometime, and

invariably it's a price hike or it's ads or it's a price hike

and ads in the case of Netflix, right? Like, so you really need

to think about if you're the person creating this, what's

that? What's that end game going to be? But if you're a person

who's utilizing it? What are you doing as a business owner to

insulate yourself from the risk of these things are going to

happen in the future? Right. One of the things that I hear a lot

of people in the business social justice world talk about is

having a business that. You know, can sustain itself and

take care of its people and and all of that. And I think that's

very important. And I also think there needs to be a line item

for saving for the future, just like human beings have us saving

for the future, right? Like if if we're running just above

break even forever and ever, when something happens, we don't

have the cushion to provide for making sure that we can still

pay our people if the income doesn't come in for a little

while, right? And then we have to lay everybody off, right?

Like, so I think we need to remember to have a little bit of

cushion, not a trillion dollars worth of cushion, right? Like we

don't need that much cushion.

Nobody needs a trillion dollars. Well, and the

and the thing is that so often when people start out as a

solopreneur, right? They're like, okay, I have very low

overhead because I have a virtual business, for example,

and so you know, as soon as they start to make a little money

that they can put in their pocket, they're like, "Aha,

we're profitable. Well, no, your salary is a business expense,

and that's really, really hard for people to wrap their heads

around. Like extremely hard. Even people who've been working

in their businesses and on their businesses for 10 years, 15

years, I say to them, "Your salary is a business expense,

and they go, "No, no, I'm I'm profitable because I have a

salary. I'm like, "No, no, you break even because you have a

salary if your salary is adequate. But no, that that's

that's an expense of your business. If your business had a

profit, it would be over and above your salary and expenses.

Lisa Robbin Young: Right, right. If you had to hire somebody else

to do your job, it would be a business expense. So it's a

business expense for you too,

right?

Lisa Robbin Young: Right. It's just a different employee's name

on that line item,

right? Yeah. And of course, there's this whole thing

about you're a CEO. Think like a CEO. Don't think like an

employee. But the fact is, we're both,

Lisa Robbin Young: right? Right.

I have to do all the things in my business, and

then I have to also, or all the things I don't hire someone else

to do? And then I also have to do on my business. I have to

think strategically. Okay, what am I doing? Am I making a

podcast? What is that podcast for? Why strategically have I

decided to do this and have these conversations? Is my goal

to get the word out? Is my goal to to get someone's attention?

Is my goal you know? And then, if it's not working out as a

business case, change it or drop it because it's a business

decision,

Lisa Robbin Young: right? Right, and and I think this is

something that we can see in a lot of micro business owners who

get married to the mode, right? Well, I'm gonna continue to

offer this product because that's what I've become known

for. Yeah, but is it profitable? Is it doing what you wanted to

do? Does it bring you joy? Is it filling your bucket anymore? No.

Why are you hanging on to it? Well, I need the money. Okay,

cool. I hear that, and maybe we need to start experimenting with

some other things so that you can find something that you can

transition to so that you can let that thing go if it's not

your joy zone anymore, right? And as as a micro business

owner, we have the luxury of being able to to do those kinds

of things. It would be really hard for it would be really hard

for a big company like Apple to be like you know we're just not

feeling cell phones anymore, so we're just not going to do that.

Like that's not catch on. I mean, they could, but it would

be it would be huge, right? Plus, the ROI is still there,

right? And they're not they're not doing a whole lot from a

place of what brings me joy and what lights me up. And even if

they were going to say we're not going to do cell phones anymore,

there's this whole ramp down period that they have to go

through. They're not agile enough to just be able to like,

yeah, tomorrow we're not selling those phones anymore because

they got a backlog of inventory. They've got to clear. I mean,

to be fair, Google has tried that on a number of

different products, and it's not. It never goes over well,

but but they sure have. They sure have done it.

Sure. So

so going back to this idea of creating a

sustainable business model with pricing and with economics, like

what are the things that you think people can do to bridge

that gap when they're like, okay, it's going to be 100 bucks

for lunch, and it's not a fancy four course lunch.

Lisa Robbin Young: Sure, yeah, I think there's a couple of

things, right? I think as as a business owner, you need to keep

listening, right? As someone who was going in for my first

experience and not knowing what to expect, there were some

things that weren't clear, and so I I made that known to

people. I'm like, I'm not not as a complaint, but just like, oh,

hey, you know, it would have been a little more helpful if

this had been a little more clear. So if they're listening

to that kind of feedback and taking it and taking it in and

and really using it, I think that's the first thing. And and

it's not just from your customers; it's also from your

team. It's also from you know the community. If you've got a

very community involved offer, like you have to be listening to

the stakeholders, right, and assimilating that. I think

that's the first piece, and then the second piece is is clear

education, right? Make sure that you're communicating. This is

how that 20% plus tip or not works, right? This is how the

and this is why, right? Let us buy into the story of what we're

becoming a part of. You know, our employees take ownership

because then they have a voice and they get to see how it works

and they experience the consequences of business

ownership and it allows them to really be a part of the entire

ecosystem, right? Like those kinds of things matter because

when we care as consumers, when we care about what we're using

or what we're buying, we're more invested.

Right.

Lisa Robbin Young: Right. We want to know that we're working

with great organizations. We want to know that the people

that we're spending our money with are doing good things in

the world. We at least want to know that they're not creating

all kinds of harm. Right, I can't tell you the number of

people that shop at various big box and outlets online and who

are like, "Well, unfortunately, I have to shop at the Evil

Empire. Right, like they they predicate what they're saying on

that, and so like because they

know they don't want to be part of that, but but

they feel like they don't have a choice. So the minute you run a

flag up the flagpole and say, "Hey, you have a choice. We're

the choice. We're better, right? And the flag is flapping along

in the breeze, right? As soon as we have that kind of of market,

like you can't you can't pay for that marketing except with your

employees' salaries,

Lisa Robbin Young: right? Right, exactly, exactly. And we've seen

through what we saw with Detroit 75 Kitchen, when you are taking

care of your stakeholders, they will take care of you. They will

stay longer. They will serve with smiles on their face. They

will sing your praises. They will talk about what's great

about being a part of your world. They become your

evangelists. Whether they're sitting at the table next to you

ordering for the third time that week, or they're the one handing

you the menu, you you see the energy of those people and how

excited they are to be a part of it.

Yeah, yeah, and that's so. I'm I'm working on a

software project right now, and as we're building the beta beta

group, it's the same thing. You know, we have a Discord for the

beta users, and and it's the same kind of thing where people

are coming in and they're like, oh, what are you doing? And when

they realize that the that the founder developer, which is not

me, that the founder developer is is listening to them and is

like, hey, what do you think about this? And oh, that's

really good feedback. And oh, thank you for catching that bug,

right? They get more engaged. They get more excited. And as

their engagement grows, part of my job is to kind of spot what's

happening in the community and and make suggestions about it.

So as it grows, you know, I saw that a bunch of people were

going to an event, and I was like, we should have a channel

for people who are going to the event, so they can talk about

the event and get excited about meeting in person, right? And

and and creating that kind of joy and excitement and buy-in,

because it feels like a good thing to be part of, is

something you can do with your customers. It's something you

can do with your employees. It's something you can do with your

leadership staff. It's something you can do with everybody. And

then people are like, "I can't wait to talk about this.

Lisa Robbin Young: And it doesn't have to be a huge line

item in the budget, right? And I think that's the other thing

that we as business owners are constantly aware of is like,

well, what's this going to quote unquote cost me,

right?

Lisa Robbin Young: And you know, there's the old online, well,

what's it going to cost you to not do it, right? Kind of a

thing. But the reality is, when you can find these easy ways,

these low cost, no cost ways to engage community, create

support, show people that you give a damn,

right,

Lisa Robbin Young: right, right, it makes a huge difference in

your bottom line. Huge,

and your unique selling proposition is that you

give a damn these days.

Lisa Robbin Young: Yeah, yeah,

like that. That's what's real, is you know people

talk about a USP or a unique selling proposition, which is

the thing that makes your business different from other

businesses doing the same thing or in the same space. And and

the fact is that your USP is that you give a damn. Your USP

is that you care about your staff and you set up structures

for that. Your USP is that you care about your your customers

and you and you set up structures for that, like Leela

Ocean did. Your USP is that you have tried to design a kind of

full life cycle experience that feels like something people can

be proud to be part of. That when they say I'm shopping here,

they don't. They're not like I'm sorry, I'm shopping. Right, like

Don't take my picture walking into the Amazon store, right?

And cameras,

Lisa Robbin Young: please, no cameras,

right? And and none of us want to feel like that

ever, right? But we especially don't want to feel like that

every time we, you know, go to restaurant or go grab a quart of

milk or whatever. And so anything that a company can do

to make you feel like. Oh yeah, I shop here, is better.

Lisa Robbin Young: Yeah,

and you know, ironically, no company should

know that better than Apple. Apple had such a following, and

it wasn't because they had good labor practices, but they had

created such a robust identity.

Lisa Robbin Young: Yeah,

and now it's it's kind of gone. Yeah, it's kind of

gone, and and you know I could talk about intensives and

expansives and Tim Cook versus Steve Jobs, but but the way that

a company kind of built does it make sense to say that it builds

on its charisma?

Lisa Robbin Young: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Because

charisma is the thing that we are drawn to with any

organization, right? Or repelled by,

right?

Lisa Robbin Young: Right. There's a reason why Apple can

hold a trillion dollars in offshore stored profit and not

get the same kind of backlash that this new trillionaire to

the market is getting for being a trillionaire, right? Like

because they've created something with some charisma

that people want to be a part of or have wanted to be a part of,

right? Like they've they've created that equity of goodwill

that you know they're slowly draining, but because they had

it, you want to see you want to see your team win, right? And so

if you have if you have latched onto a personality of a brand

and made that part of your identity, like I'm an Apple

user, you know I'm a Mac, I'm a PC, right? Like when you when

you do that, and and you can see it in politics too. When you

when you latch onto an identity that you tie to a brand, it's

very hard because it's very sticky. It's very hard to

extricate yourself from that identity relationship.

Right.

Lisa Robbin Young: And so when you have a brand that is

charismatic in the ways that are attractive to a buyer, they're

naturally going to want to latch on and stay latched because

there's just so much effort to get unlatched and go find

something else. I mean, really, it's it's it's stressful and

frustrating, and decision fatigue is real. And it's like I

I don't know if I've told this story on your podcast yet or

not, but when I was a kid and we would drive from town to town,

my mom would only stop at McDonald's because McDonald's

had clean bathrooms. Until they didn't.

Right.

Lisa Robbin Young: Anytime we needed to go to the bathroom, we

would always stop at a McDonald. We didn't even buy anything. We

just go in the side door, go the bathroom, and and get up back on

the road, until the day that we stopped at one that did not have

clean bathrooms, and then she was like, "That's it, I'm never

going to go to McDonald's again" because it was terrible, right?

And then it was like road trips got interesting, but the point

being, it was such a hassle to figure out where to go to a rest

area, like to get in on the look. I could just go find a

McDonald's, and I know I'll be fine, until they lost all their

charming equity and charisma equity in one bad bathroom,

right? One bad bathroom spoils it, like ruined it, and so like

that-that's the same thing that can happen in any business. You

create this equity through through your charisma, through

your personality, through your brand, through the ways that you

continue to show up in a public-facing way, and a certain

group of people really latch onto that, and if you're doing

it well and you're doing good, more people come. And if you're

not, you start to drain that equity until there's nothing

left, and then nobody wants to be around you, and they're only

choosing you if you are the only game in town, and they really

feel like they don't have a choice.

Right, right, and and like you, you're using the

language equity, and I, I feel like the thing that's really

under that, especially in a small business or a micro

business, is trust.

Lisa Robbin Young: Yeah, absolutely.

Right, we're talking about trust. You build

trust, and when you build trust, sometimes people will give you a

second chance, but sometimes, like your mom, they'll be like,

"Nope, that was disgusting. I'm never doing that again, and and

when that happens, it it frays. It doesn't sound like fracture,

but it frays the relationship, and so now we're cautious, and

now we're not sure. Now we're looking for other options. Now

we're always looking around, and you know that trust relationship

with with Apple and Apple's products started to fray when

Apple stopped trying to be the cutting edge. People had always

relied on them to help them always know for sure if you've

got an Apple, if you've got the latest Apple product, you are

out front, and that's just not true anymore. If you've got

Lisa Robbin Young: that's right,

you you've got some things, but now just like all

the PC people, you got to be digging through all the stats

and like what does this mean and what does that mean and do I

really have a fancier computer? Did you just put a new case on

my old computer and charge me $3,000? For it, and that

relationship creates fatigue. It creates exhaustion. It creates

it creates instability. And people right now, especially,

desperately want stability. If you can give your customer right

now, if you can give your customer, your client, the

experience of stable, consistent presence with a quality product

and a quality experience, they will collapse in your arms in

relief.

Lisa Robbin Young: Absolutely, and and it doesn't it doesn't

have to be a high end luxury brand to create that kind of an

experience for your people, especially right now because the

floor is so low, right? It it really amounts to do the things

you said you're going to do and don't change your values

midstream, right? Right. You said you believe in this. Act

like it. Go believe in it. Follow through on it. Yeah,

and don't suddenly change your policies because the

way the political wind blew.

Lisa Robbin Young: Right.

And and when you provide that you can charge more

money, like those people who were in at local seafood, local

ocean, and and everybody knew their name, and like you can

charge those prices because those people know with

confidence that this organization is not suddenly

going to become a different sort of place from the place that

they trust it

Lisa Robbin Young: to be, right? And they're happy to keep coming

back and supporting them with their dollars and telling other

people about them and bringing their dogs to come sit on the

patio with them and like the whole experience, right? Like

you you get to identify with this great group of people doing

this great thing, and now I'm gonna come a couple times a

week, and when my friends come to town, I'm going to bring them

too because I want them to experience it. Right, like that

infectious contagion of trust, supply and demand. Right, like

we were talking about housing, but we're still talk. We're

talking about supply and demand here. Like as you supply

something great, more people want to come, and that allows

you to naturally increase pricing or availability and or

both in different ways that allow you to continue to do good

and it it becomes this self replicating situation right and

I think that's really valuable

it is and it and improves other things too you

know I'm always on about if you can't pay top financial dollar

but you can pay okay, and then you provide stability and

benefits and flexibility, and you're going to become one of

the most sought after employers in your space. Not because you

have the highest highest numbers numbers every everywhere where

right like not because you've won that war because the only

way, really, to to be able to consistently win that war is to

exploit somebody,

Lisa Robbin Young: right?

But because maybe you don't do that, but you make

sure that your employees have really top flight health

benefits and they get all the time off they need when they're

sick, and when their kids are sick, they can use their sick

time for that, and like you start to build this very human

relationship with the human beings that work for you, and

suddenly everybody's like, "Hey, you want to be treated like a

human being? You should go work for them. Yeah, and and you know

that's what Costco does. They don't pay. They pay well, but

they don't pay you know $100 an hour for their floor staff. What

they do is everybody's

Lisa Robbin Young: not making 70 grand a year at Costco, or 90 or

whatever. I haven't done the math. Yeah, I

haven't done the math. There, I think their their

starting wage is 20 something, so it's not terrible, but it's

not 70 grand a year. But people get treated well, and they have

good benefits, and it's a good place to work, and if you ask

your average Costco employee, "Do you like working here?

they'll be like, "Yeah. And if you try to get a job at Costco,

good luck because they don't have openings very often, and

that really is the is the truth, right? Like you, anybody can say

anything on their sales floor, but but when you look at the job

listings and they're like, "Yeah, maybe we'll have a couple

of job listings next year. That speaks really well for it. Yeah.

Lisa Robbin Young: Yeah. And I just want to reiterate

something. As we're going through this series of these

different businesses, there is no one perfect. Like I'm always

going to be able to find something in somebody's business

model or the way that they're doing something. I'm like, yeah,

I wish this was different, right? Like, there's always

going to be that, right? But that's not the goal here. The

goal here is to highlight the things that are being done well,

so that you can then look at that and go, how can I do

something like that, or does it make sense to do something like

that in my organization, and if so, how? Like, what could we do

to turn the volume up on doing more of the right things and

turn the volume down on some of the things that maybe that's how

we got started and we didn't know any better or we didn't

have another way and now we do. Now we've got options, so let's

let's do something different.

Or you know maybe that entire model was a was the

thing we did to get started and now now let's explore like maybe

that we don't know if there's another way but but part of the

goal of this series is to give people ideas to give people

inspiration to to show people okay this organization is

running they're they still exist, and they've done this

thing that everybody says you can't do because if you do that,

business is business, and business won't grow if you do

that, right? To paraphrase the Lorax, and so and so this is an

opportunity to be like, how can you be more Loraxy and less

Oncelery? You know what what do what opportunities are there,

and so yeah, like we're never ever here to to rag on a company

that's operational,

Lisa Robbin Young: right?

At least not a small company. Sometimes we will

bring up large companies, but but but but what we see here,

and the reason that we're bringing any company on this

show is because we want we want to talk about what we saw that

we loved, and what we see that we love at Local Ocean is this

robust, cooperative, employee-oriented model that

makes sure that people get a living wage, that makes sure

that the cost of doing business isn't passed on to the

employees,

Lisa Robbin Young: right?

But is instead passed on to their very happy

customers.

Lisa Robbin Young: Yes.

Any final words?

Lisa Robbin Young: I think the thing that is probably the most

impactful thing. Like if if you don't remember anything from

this episode, and there's lots to remember, right? It's like

it's important to listen, right? Like to to really pay attention,

especially if you're a smaller micro business owner. It's

really easy to get parochial in your viewpoint of what's going

on in your business and forget that there's this whole world

beyond you. And if you're paying attention, and I know there's

lots to pay attention too, and if you've decided what your

listening outposts are going to be. You know which team members

I'm going to listen to, which customers I'm going to listen

to, which community leaders am I going to listen. When you've got

those listening stations, you have an opportunity to then

assimilate that information and make better decisions for the

organization about how you want to continue to be showing up and

how you can really provide value in ways that are beyond product

for dollar value, right? And and I think that that's that's

something that more businesses can do, and and frankly should

do.

Yeah, and and to build on that, you know, one of

the ways that you can make sure that you do that because running

a business is complicated. There's a lot going on, but one

of the ways that you can make sure you do that is building

into your calendar semiannual or or every quarter, you know,

quarterly audits where you sit down and you just kind of think

Are we listening to our people? Who's at the table?

Who's not at the table? How do we decide if there should be a

table, or if we should just throw out the table and start

over with some other model, right? Or prop the? Do we need

to prop the door open because not enough people are getting

in? You know, asking some of the more progressive questions about

the conversations that you're having at a leadership level

about who's getting served by your organization and who's

serving in your organization, and whether everybody's needs

are getting met all the time, which is my my favorite soapbox.

So, thank you so much. This has been a pleasure. Where can

people find you if they want to find you? You

Lisa Robbin Young: can always find me at lisa robin young.com.

Robins get two Bs, and then I'm on various social platforms at

lisa robin young,

and I'm at Alessiano Consulting. I'm told

that I need to change what my business is called. Happened

just this week. I'm at Alejiano Consulting. I do coaching and

consulting for small businesses and other organizations, and for

leaders of those small businesses and other

organizations. So you can definitely have a conversation

with me. There's a big book a call button. Just don't worry

about anything else on the page if you don't want to. Just hit

book a call, and and we'll get on the phone and we'll have a

conversation. And we will see you in two weeks. Thank you so

much for joining us. Thank you so much for listening. This has

been Power Pivot Season Three, a podcast about using the power in

your business for good with host Leela Sinha of the Intensives

Institute and Alejiano Consulting. With Zim, you heard

co-host Lisa Robin Young. The podcast is produced by Leela

Sinha with support by William Jameson. To support our podcast

and other related work, please consider joining our Patreon at

Patreon. Slash Leela S.