TRANSCRIPT

 

Michael Palumbos (00:59.585)

Welcome everybody to The Family Biz Show. I'm your host, Michael Palumbos with Family Wealth and Legacy in Rochester, New York. Very excited to have Lisa Smoot on the show today from San Francisco Bay Coffee. 

 

Michael Palumbos (01:13.088)

Very cool story that we're gonna be talking about. I've dug in a little bit, Lisa doesn't know it yet, but I went through the website and there's some really rich information that we're gonna be talking about today in regards to family businesses. We're gonna be talking about successes, we're gonna talk about some things that didn't go so well, and you're gonna get a ton of value. Lisa, thank you for joining us. 

 

Lisa Smoot (01:34.914)

Thank you so much, Michael, for having me. I'm very excited to be here. 

 

Michael Palumbos (01:38.198)

And Lisa shared with me before that she's been listening to the show. So she's already prepped and knows where, you know, lot of the conversations and things that we do. cannot believe you have a, you have a two and a half hour commute. 

 

Lisa Smoot (01:51.338)

Each way, each way. Five hours. It's five hours. 

 

Michael Palumbos (01:55.118)

I love you and respect you for doing that. I could barely do a 90 minute commute. 

 

Lisa Smoot (02:00.77)

You know, I'll tell you, I am a I don't like the hot weather and our roasting plant is out just north of Sacramento and it could be 115 degrees when I leave here at night at four or five. And when I get on the San Mateo Bridge, it's 52 degrees. The fog has come in my I don't need air conditioning. It's nice and cool. So for me, the climate is way more important than the commute. And I get to listen to your podcast. So it's a win win. 

 

Michael Palumbos (02:27.416)

love it. let's you might know this then I have a history of asking people to share their story of what entry into the family business looked like for you. 

 

Lisa Smoot (02:41.102)

So my dad started the coffee business 43 years ago. We actually grew up in Connecticut, born and raised in the East coast. He out to California for the offer he couldn't refuse, hated that business. after a couple of years looking around and consulting, the options were a toothbrush company, a dog food company, or this bankrupt flavored coffee and tea company in San Francisco. We're like, hey, let's buy the company. 

 

Lisa Smoot (03:07.566)

And this blows my mind to this day at 42 years old with a senior in high school, a junior in high school, a ninth grader and eighth grader. My dad liquidated everything he had, took all of our college money and bought this bankrupt company. And my mom said, OK, let's go. We can do this. And I remember standing in my kitchen at 42 thinking I would never have done that. Never. But my dad knew that he could succeed. He, you know, he grew up in New York with consumer products. And before we left, he was running a 

 

Lisa Smoot (03:37.326)

division of Revlon called Mitcham Thayer. So he's very experienced and well versed in everything company wise. So we moved out here, we bought this company and we were cheap labor as everyone in the family business will tell you. You know, we were stamping discontinued on all of the catalogs and doing all the stuff that we could do for my mom and dad and going to school and high school and college. And then after college, I was actually going to go to work for PepsiCo in Arizona. And my dad said, hey, I need to hire some people. 

 

Lisa Smoot (04:07.126)

I'd love you to come and work for me, but if you don't want to, no problem. So I thought, all right, I'll give it a shot. You know, I can always sleep. So I started right out of college and here I am all these years later. And, know, as everyone will tell you, I answered phones. I did accounts payable. I did accounts receivable. I did, you know, swept the floors. did e-commerce and shipping. you know, the only thing I did not do was roast. I had no interest, no desire to learn how to roast. 

 

Lisa Smoot (04:32.238)

So that's the one thing that I didn't do, but you know, I've been in this business now 40 years and I've done pretty much everything that you can imagine. And now Generation 2, myself and my two brothers are here and we're running the company. Yeah. 

 

Michael Palumbos (04:44.366)

my gosh, that's 

 

Michael Palumbos (04:46.087)

a fabulous story. it's, again, I just love the disparity in stories where somebody said, no, you can't work here for five years, go and get your stuff. And then the other one is like, trial by fire, get in here, I need your help. And then the other ones of, know, I have a cabbage farmer client who followed his grandfather around while he was splicing. 

 

Michael Palumbos (05:12.75)

genetic, you know, branches and stuff to make, know, whatever he was growing. He did it with oranges and he also did it with cabbage. And today, you know, he's retired, you my client's now retired, but it was that time with grandpa, not so much his father, was his time with grandpa that it was just meant so much to him that he's like, this is really cool. 

 

Lisa Smoot (05:32.438)

Yeah, yeah. My dad was really, really big on family and he literally forced us and I'm not kidding. Once we all started getting dating and married and all that kind of stuff, he forced us to go to Hawaii every year, darn it. And you couldn't bring guests, you couldn't bring friends, you had to bring your kids, you had to come for a week. The cousins played together and the parents, you know, did strategic planning for the next year. And I really think that that was the catalyst that made, you know, there are there 

 

Lisa Smoot (06:02.254)

15 grandchildren and they range in age from 31 to 17. And sometimes it's all the boys and all the girls. And sometimes it's the oldest and the youngest sometimes. And it was really my dad just saying, this is what you have to do. No, no ifs, or buts. And as you, as I hear on your show all the time, it's my way or the highway. You don't like it, get out. 

 

Michael Palumbos (06:23.47)

That's interesting. But, you know, all right, so we have my way or the highway, which is not a way that, you know, that really resonates well with us as human beings, because we all have our own thoughts and processes. At the same time, what he was doing of fostering the next generation of working together and playing together and being able to communicate, and that was beautiful. 

 

Lisa Smoot (06:50.638)

Awesome. 

 

Michael Palumbos (06:51.266)

That was a family meeting before family meetings. 

 

Lisa Smoot (06:53.578)

Right. I didn't realize, at the time I didn't realize what he was doing and we're going to Hawaii and we're having treasure hunts and stuff like that. But it is, it is working together and communicating. But that was on the island, right? When we get back, it's a completely different ball of wax. as my family likes to say, we're a lot of chiefs and no Indians. So we were all doing our own separate things so that no one, we'd interact, but we wouldn't tell each other what to do and we wouldn't cause. 

 

Lisa Smoot (07:22.136)

World War III because I'm telling my brother how to do his job. So we, we did, you we worked together, we had fun, we played together, we lived together. Ironically, I lived with my youngest brother's wife. My two brothers lived in an apartment above me in San Francisco. I mean, it was really, really a very, you know, we were all working hard on the business. We were all having fun and it was, you know, everything we did was to build this business to what it was. And it is amazing. 

 

Michael Palumbos (07:47.278)

That's amazing. 

 

Michael Palumbos (07:50.542)

Let's talk about your parents are John and Barbara. Yes. And they have those three of you. For you. Sorry. Thank you. 

 

Lisa Smoot (07:58.542)

four of us. One girl, 

 

Lisa Smoot (08:02.742)

three boys. 

 

Michael Palumbos (08:04.322)

that 

 

Michael Palumbos (08:04.863)

and they buy this bankrupt business. What any you you remember these things because you were there. So this is really, rich. This talk about how he moved that you all moved from bankrupt business to I don't know what when when dad retired. Mom and dad retired. What was the business doing revenue wise if that's OK to ask? 

 

Lisa Smoot (08:32.813)

over 200 million. 

 

Michael Palumbos (08:34.365)

Yeah, so you went from a bankrupt business to over 200 million in how many years? 

 

Lisa Smoot (08:40.206)

Let's see, I think he retired in 2017. So that would be, I don't know. It was, you know, 35 years. Yeah. like that. 32 years, 

 

Michael Palumbos (08:52.638)

And if do you remember getting where the first million of revenue? 

 

Lisa Smoot (08:58.848)

I remember, I remember when we had no money and we had to get hard money loans because no one would lend us money. They're like, are you crazy? And, you know, we would, we'd go, okay, well, we have to make payroll on Friday. Who are we not pay? Well, we need our coffee beans. We got to pay for our coffee beans. Who can we not pay this week so that we can make payroll? And it was, you know, we, had a bankrupt company that was buying coffee and tea from other sources, flavoring that, packaging it, and then selling it. 

 

Lisa Smoot (09:25.752)

to the, you know, the Manpah gourmet stores of the world, the little coffee, not even the coffee shops, it was the gourmet stores. And my dad said, geez, Louise, we are never gonna make, we're never gonna make it. We don't have any scale. We have no control over our costs. So we started looking for a coffee company to buy. We bought this coffee company. We started roasting our own coffee. And, you know, then we'd take, still take orders from Michael's coffee shop. need five pounds of this and six pounds of that. And then we'd roast it and we'd deliver it. And, know, sometimes I was delivering the coffee. 

 

Lisa Smoot (09:54.946)

And my dad was still saying, man, man, are just never, we're never going to make, you know, it's going to take us years to get to scale. he'd always, you know, consumer products and, you know, drug stores and whatnot. So he said, we need some big customers. And right around the time where we were trying to figure out how we could scale up, what we could do to scale up, Costco came into town and we went to Costco and we walked into Costco and it was all the canned Folgers and know, commercial copies of the world. And there was no. 

 

Lisa Smoot (10:24.664)

Gourmet coffee. And, you know, my dad and my brother started looking around and asking questions. Everyone said, don't go to Costco. Don't go to Costco. We hear they don't pay bills. And we're like, well, we got nothing to lose if they don't pay bills. You know, we got it. We got nothing anyways. Right. We didn't heed their advice. And we went to Costco and said, you don't have a gourmet coffee. And they're like, you're right. We don't. And so we started working on them to develop a, a product to sell in their stores. And then they said, okay, great. You know, 

 

Lisa Smoot (10:54.732)

we'll take 10 truckloads, let's say. I don't remember what the first order was, but we were like, holy smokes. We've got no way to make that much coffee this quickly. So my dad ran over to Italy with one of my brothers and we got a bigger roaster and we got a packaging machine and we put everything in place. And my brother, John, learned how to run the machine and take it apart and put it back together. And there we go. And we were off to the races. And that's how we first started getting our first big customer. 

 

Lisa Smoot (11:22.294)

And how we, I mean, and we've been, you they've been one of our businesses, or, know, they've been one of our customers for 37 years. Wow. So it's, you know, we do well when we have a relationship with the customer and it's not just, you know, what's the cheapest price we, and we really try to be that partner, a good partner with all of the people that we do business with. So that was our first big win. And we were like, wow, okay, we can retire now. So it was awesome. 

 

Michael Palumbos (11:47.438)

That's great. at that point, Costco comes in, they're probably overnight go to 90 % of your business at some level. 

 

Lisa Smoot (12:00.974)

100 % of our business, know, Michael's coffee shop went out of business. We're like, who cares? We got these guys over here. 

 

Michael Palumbos (12:08.046)

But so the risk to that, you know, is having one source and whatnot. How long did it take from having just the one source that got you over the, you know, that million dollar, you know, revenue spot to where you'd started to diversify your risk? 

 

Lisa Smoot (12:26.158)

Well, I think that sort of gave us validation because up to that point, no one knew who the heck is San Francisco Bay Coffee Company. And then all of a we were in Costco stores. So then all the little local grocery stores, the, you know, the Petrines and the Molly stones and whatnot in the Cal in the on the Bay Area and the West Coast, they all started going, well, you know, huh, that's interesting. And so we started getting it opened more doors for us. So it validated us and it took us a while, but, know, it was just, you know, 

 

Lisa Smoot (12:55.562)

a plug and we are very grateful to the opportunity we have with Costco and that is a very special relationship that we don't ever take for granted and we always try to make sure we are doing the right thing by everyone that we do business with, but that really sort of opened doors for us. 

 

Michael Palumbos (13:12.642)

That's awesome. Go back for just a second because I think it's relevant for people to understand that 37 years ago, Costco was not the Costco that you think about today. 

 

Lisa Smoot (13:26.252)

No, 

 

Lisa Smoot (13:28.564)

they were super small. were, you know, it was sort of like the Costco business centers up today. There wasn't a lot of product. There was no fresh food. There was no deli department. There was the, I don't even think the food courts were open in the beginning. And I mean, we made it a point when we started doing business with them of going to every Costco opening there was and passing out, making coffee and passing out the coffee. 

 

Lisa Smoot (13:52.84)

And the night before the Costco stores open, they have a VIP party. And we would go, we were always next to the desserts. Our coffee was right there. We passed the coffee. But in the old, old days of opening a Costco, at the VIP party, they'd always serve beer and wine. So no one wanted to drink coffee. They were all drinking the beer and wine. And then they'd put an end to that. And then people would come and get their cake and their coffee. then, you know, that's when we got, you know, it's 

 

Lisa Smoot (14:20.214)

As my dad used to say, drug dealers. We give it away for free until you're hooked and then we start charging you. 

 

Michael Palumbos (14:27.822)

Healthy drug dealers. I just think that's fantastic. And you have grown along with Costco and along the ways. I'm sure there are other people. What do you do? You call it white labeling or private labeling or what? 

 

Lisa Smoot (14:29.815)

Yes, healthy, how about that? 

 

Lisa Smoot (14:47.51)

No, in Costco, we're not in all Costco's, it's our branded label. It's a San Francisco Bay coffee and it's a two pound bag of French roast or organic. And then we have these home compostable, like one cup pods that, you know, curing compatible that are, that are compostable rather than thrown into landfill. I love that. Yeah. We sell all three of those wherever in various places. 

 

Michael Palumbos (15:10.978)

Got it, it, got it, got it. So it's not white label, it's your brand that's out there. If I was a Costco shopper, I'd probably know that, but. 

 

Lisa Smoot (15:18.626)

I 

 

Lisa Smoot (15:18.916)

don't think I don't think we're in the cost goes in the east. So you wouldn't know that unless we do like a nationwide promotion, but we haven't done one of those in a while. 

 

Michael Palumbos (15:21.676)

Okay. 

 

Michael Palumbos (15:28.686)

So you guys, we do a lot of work with CEO plus leadership team development. And we talk about the forming, storming, norming, performing, and you have gone through all of those phases and then back to storming, back to forming several times in the last 40 years. 

 

Michael Palumbos (15:50.316)

The other piece that we line up for people when we're talking to them, and I've never talked about this on the show, so this is really interesting, just because of your situation, there's a book that I love called Navigating the Growth Curve. And what he talks about is it's based on the size and the number of employees. to go from one employee or two employees to 10, to go from 10, 

 

Michael Palumbos (16:17.486)

to 25, to go to 25, to 50, to where you get to 1,000. How many employees are in the company today? 

 

Lisa Smoot (16:25.4)

So in our roasting plant in Lincoln, we have 245, but we don't have enough. Then we have a roasting plant in Mexico. We've got 60 there. We've got a roasting plant in Wales and we've got 12 there. And then we have coffee farms in Mexico, Panama, Rwanda and Kona that have full-time employees. And then of course, during the crop, 

 

Lisa Smoot (16:51.246)

We hire temp, you know, we'll have 1500 employees working in Mexico picking on all the farms that we have down there. So there's a lot there is. And the biggest headaches that we have, as I heard on one of your podcasts the other night is one, the communication and the people it is always, you know, I don't hear what you're saying or I misinterpret what you're saying or the communication is not clear. And every single, I say to everyone every day, 99.9 % of the problems we have. 

 

Lisa Smoot (17:19.64)

that we have to deal with this because of communication. We do a better job. We need to make sure, you know, what do they call it? Parroting. Michael, what I'm hearing you say is blah, blah, blah. We don't do enough of that. But we also, what I realized in my five hour commute is that we promote people here and we don't give them the skills to be managers. 

 

Lisa Smoot (17:43.042)

We say, congratulations, Lisa, you're now a supervisor. Well, what does that mean? We don't really give them the skills. So this year, we're really focusing on developing our employees, whether that means a supervisor, what you have to do at supervisor level, and then lead level, and then manager level, and then how do you talk to people, and how do you write things up? And where does the HR step in? When is it over your head and you need to jump HR in and- 

 

Lisa Smoot (18:11.054)

And what are you, what do you want to do with your life, Michael? Do you want to be in quality control your whole life? Okay, great. But you know, there's all these other things you can do too. So we're, putting together, we just hired a trainer, which I'm really excited about who's going to develop these programs for us. And we're going to just start, you know, we're starting simple with the people who need to be trained. And then it's going to go all the way out, all the way out to even the people who are on the lines packing, you know, and 

 

Lisa Smoot (18:38.35)

Because training skills might be a little different. have a lot of people whose English is not their first language. And they have some challenges as far as, you know, how do I get around in the world? You know, how do I fill out a mortgage form? Or what do I need? What tools do I need to make sure I qualify that? So we're going to start really, really basic, simple stuff and work our way up and give them as much training as they possibly could want and more. 

 

Michael Palumbos (19:02.796)

Lisa, you must have listened to one of my episodes. Have you read the Dream Manager? 

 

Lisa Smoot (19:07.182)

I have not, but I had been thinking about this because I have a guy who every single time he gets his paycheck, he says we're cheating him and we're ripping him off. And as I was on my five hour commute in the morning, I thought I'll bet you he doesn't know how to calculate what his paycheck is. So that's what got me started. Then I talked to my director of HR and said, this is what I want to do. And she's like, well, we need to hire someone. And then I listened to your show and I'm like, okay. 

 

Lisa Smoot (19:36.662)

I'm on the, you validated, you validated what I thought I needed. 

 

Michael Palumbos (19:40.834)

you're creating San Francisco Bay Coffee University. I can't say enough, the companies that go through and create an internal university, I will throw it out there, that knows where they're great and knows when to go external, you just can't be great at everything. so I just, hats off to you for that. That's amazing. 

 

Lisa Smoot (20:06.232)

The aha moment for me, I don't know, last year, my senior leadership, I've been putting them in place. What's our mission statement, Lisa? And I'm like, God, who the heck cares? Just do your job, it's fine, it's fine. And we've had 16 variations of mission statement. And so finally, all of my senior leadership was talking about our mission statement, our mission statement. So I said, okay, we have our senior leadership team, all the people we need to take this to the next level. 

 

Lisa Smoot (20:35.582)

Let's, so we did a workshop and we spent six months sort of looking at who we are and what's important to us in creating a new mission vision core values, which we love. We rolled out in April. And then right after that, had, don't know if you know Bob Anderson, have you heard of Bob Anderson from Stowe? As a group called Leading Challenges. And I met him through my Vistage group and he does a workshop on EQIQ. 

 

Michael Palumbos (20:54.081)

Now. Yeah. 

 

Michael Palumbos (21:01.4)

Yep. 

 

Lisa Smoot (21:01.996)

which we needed and I said supervisor no lead level and up he came for two days. And you know people were in there going my God I can't believe this workshop I said put your phones away and listen that's all you need to do is listen to and Bob is a very dynamic very you know he's he's been a teacher he's been in the army he's been a lieutenant he's done all sorts of amazing things in this world. And I would just. 

 

Lisa Smoot (21:28.086)

peek my head in at the end of every session to see how people were receiving the EQIQ. People were crying and going up and shaking his hand. And I was like, my gosh, we really, we really need this. And that sort of escalated even more because he was here in March. We need to, you know, that's when we started hire the trainer. What's the program and how are we going to do this? And, you know, let's simplify it to the very, very basic level. And if no one signed up for how to balance a checkbook, then we don't need that class. Right. 

 

Michael Palumbos (21:58.124)

Right, right. That doesn't mean that the next time you ask if they you know somebody might. Box. 

 

Lisa Smoot (22:03.66)

Yeah. At one 

 

Lisa Smoot (22:05.864)

point, what I want to do is have these classes on an intranet, San Francisco Bay intranet. So you can just go through the library and click on what you want and learn how to do it. But I'm not there yet. 

 

Michael Palumbos (22:17.952)

Okay, long term goals. 

 

Lisa Smoot (22:20.973)

Yes. 

 

Michael Palumbos (22:22.776)

So let's change, you said this before we started recording and I'm like, man, we could have 17 episodes just running through. 

 

Lisa Smoot (22:32.654)

There's so many things we've done wrong and so many things I want to do, which I'm only on if I start at beginning 15 of your episodes. So I don't even know if I've got the right idea, but we'll figure it out by 87, right? 

 

Michael Palumbos (22:44.76)

That's right. That's right. You'll get there. You'll be fine. Yeah. And you're gonna laugh as you hear some of the episodes later on where we start bringing in. What I didn't do in the beginning is I didn't do a lot of what I would call coaching. And as I started listening to the stories, I'll ask the question, what are you struggling with? And it's fun to coach and you give people a little things back. So you'll get some things as you're going through. Let's talk about 

 

Michael Palumbos (23:13.218)

the family dynamic piece of this. Mom and dad, you've got 30 plus years all working together. What, through that period of time, what for you is great about being part of a family business? What for you was tough about those years? I'm just, want to focus when mom and dad were here first. 

 

Lisa Smoot (23:36.142)

Lisa Smoot (23:36.702)

So I think the thing that was tough was that we were spread very thin. was literally the six of us running this business. know, dad, how do I do this? Just figure it out. You'll be fine. Right. There wasn't a lot of coaching and a lot of this is how do do a marketing plan? There wasn't a lot of that. And in those days, you we had to go buy the book. How do you write a marketing plan or how do you do this? And, you know, we'd say, dad, you know, 

 

Lisa Smoot (24:03.21)

How am I doing in my job? And my dad was not a, you he'd tell us he loved us. He tells me are important, but in our job, do your job and just, you know, just do your job. You're doing so there wasn't a lot of feedback. So that was sort of hard because you don't really know where you stand, but you know, you were still getting a paycheck. So, okay. But there was also. 

 

Michael Palumbos (24:12.931)

Bye. 

 

Lisa Smoot (24:25.646)

I am a person of structure and processes and I like to fix things. And it just, you we were just doing our job, which was focusing on getting more sales, more sales, more sales, more sales. And my mom, my dad passed away in May of 2022. And my mom just in this last January, but you know, 89 years old. And as they both said, they were married 67 years. As my dad said, you know, I've lived a wonderful life and 

 

Lisa Smoot (24:52.844)

When God tells me it's time to go, I'm ready because I have done everything that I want to do. But so my dad passed away. I started running the company in December, 2019, and I had come from sales. So I didn't really know. I mean, I'd seen the financials and stuff like that. I am a finance for non-finance majors person. So I know what everything means, but I don't, you know, I don't get the deep dive and I need my CFO to explain it. But I started looking at the processes and you know, 

 

Lisa Smoot (25:21.902)

what are we doing right and what are we doing wrong? And it felt like I'm not a touchy-feely person, but there's communication that's important to what's going on and no one was communicating. And this person didn't know what this person was doing, but they needed each other to know what they were doing to do the job. So I sort of, not that there, well, there were silos when I came in, but my dad didn't create the silos. He just said, do your job. 

 

Lisa Smoot (25:48.3)

Right. And that's, he expected that you do your job, whatever that means. I don't know. So that was a huge challenge. The thing that was great with my mom and dad is we all did this together. You know, we'd go to lunch every day together. We'd have weekends, we'd have dinners. And that was just, you know, and I always thought my husband told me it was very odd that my family, all we talked about was business. And I thought, you know, that's normal. And I didn't realize it's normal to, listened to one of your podcasts where everyone said, all we talk about is business. And I was like, few. Okay. 

 

Lisa Smoot (26:17.838)

We're normal. So it was hard not getting the constructive criticism and or this is what I want you to do. You know, it's just sort of a figure it out. And some of that is good because, you know, it gives you sort of the creative to whatever. And I think I take that to the next level when we have someone coming in, I don't tell them how to do a job. I say, I need you to do this because their perspective might be completely different from mine. And they might. 

 

Lisa Smoot (26:45.294)

think of something that we would never have thought of a way to do it or a process or this or that, that's going to be way better than what we're doing. Also very right now, we've done things for 40 years. This is the way we do things. And it's only this way. And so I've challenged my team, hey, just because we do it that way isn't the right way. Is there a better way to do this? Is there a more efficient way? 

 

Michael Palumbos (26:53.422)

Yeah. 

 

Lisa Smoot (27:11.82)

We've in the last four years sort of like lifted up every single rock and looked underneath it and said, Hey, maybe there's an opportunity to do something different and do something better. And we've had, you know, we haven't had a lot of egg on our face. We've had a lot of creative stuff that's happened by giving people the power to do things and the permission to try things. And I, and I say to people every day and I'll say, Hey, how about if we do it this way? Well, that's going to cost you a lot of money. And I say, what's a lot of money. 

 

Lisa Smoot (27:40.066)

You know, is it $10 million? Because yes, that's a lot of money. Is it a hundred dollars? Maybe not. You know, what, what a of money. It's different for everybody and it might be worth the investment. And then I also say good enough isn't because I got that a lot in the beginning. Well, it's good enough. No, it's not good enough. It has to be perfect. And well, this is the way we've always done that. So no one ever says that anymore, you know, because what worked 40 years ago is not going to work now. And if we don't. 

 

Michael Palumbos (27:47.552)

It was different for everybody. 

 

Lisa Smoot (28:09.582)

look at things every day and figure out a way to be better, stronger, faster, whatever, we're going to be stuck in the mud spinning our wheels where everyone's going up to the moon. 

 

Michael Palumbos (28:20.27)

Got it. So I, I'm not, I don't want to challenge you. That's not what the show is about, but I, I am a giant, I'm a giant fan as good as good enough. Yeah. So it's kind of interesting. And so just a different perspective. So when I talk about good is good enough, it's if I make an 80 % improvement from where we are, even though I didn't make it a hundred percent and I implemented, I'm going to be better off, but I never stop. it's, you know, if I keep going 1 % more, 1 % more, 

 

Lisa Smoot (28:30.494)

really? 

 

Michael Palumbos (28:50.222)

But I'm adding to it. Like we have a new website that was supposed to be launched in July. They should have been launched in June. It's not there yet. It focuses 100 % on all these CEO interviews that I've done. And we interviewed outside of this another 70, you know, CEOs. They all say, you know, the problems that they're facing are always the same things. They want to grow revenue and profit. They want to grow the value of the business. And it's always the people 

 

Michael Palumbos (29:20.28)

that the things that they get stuck on. That's what I hear again and again. And you just confirm that with communication with people. So we're about to like redefine our website, instead of answering the 25 questions that we have the capability of, and I'm just doing that in quotes, we're focusing on the one thing that's most important to the CEO on our front page and just answer the one thing that's important. And I know it's going to revolutionize how we communicate with the people that we serve. 

 

Michael Palumbos (29:49.258)

but it's not ready and it's taking forever. And I'm like, good is good enough. And I know I say that, but there's a point of, you have to know what good is good enough is not bad. So I think you're saying the same thing. 

 

Lisa Smoot (30:05.454)

So my challenge to you is it's probably two different things. You've got a service and I've got a product that people are drinking every morning. Right. And there are a million coffee companies out there. And if good enough that I take a sip of this and I go, Oh, what is this? This stuff is horrible. They will never come back. And another example, I had, um, bags that were standing. 

 

Michael Palumbos (30:27.246)

No. 

 

Lisa Smoot (30:35.394)

That kind of look like this, you know when they're sitting on the shelf they should be straight. like that, and I go what's going on with those bags. well that's good enough, I said no it's not because when it's on the shelf and someone walks by and they see this and everything else is perfectly straight they're going to say there's something wrong with that. Right. Little bit different, you know, in some instances, good enough is good enough and you're right, you could pick the little details on the website. 

 

Lisa Smoot (31:02.862)

all day long and say, my God, that color is the wrong color red. I need a deeper red. But with consumer perceptions, that could make or break you. And in my mind, it has to be perfect every time. And if the sees the seal is going like this instead of straight across where it's not taped properly or the label's crooked or whatever, that's not good enough. 

 

Lisa Smoot (31:30.658)

I have to give visuals and say, here's perfect. This is what I expect from you. And so they have something to compare it to because everyone's perception of perfect is completely different. 

 

Michael Palumbos (31:41.678)

think that's really powerful messaging that I'm going to adopt. are times when perfect is the only thing acceptable. And it goes back to quality control and product design and what you're putting on the shelf. And that is who represents us. That's no different. Like when I'm serving a client, I have to be bringing my best for them. I can't just be good as good enough. I'm talking about those, it's those design, it's those other pieces like, 

 

Michael Palumbos (32:11.222)

Yeah. Poor values. got five out of four of them. Perfect. We're missing that fourth one. Just you're the fifth one. Just go with it anyways. And you'll you'll you'll reiterate that your mission, those kinds of 

 

Lisa Smoot (32:23.096)

And sometimes a good enough. mean, you've got to put good enough out on a website, for example, you have to put good enough out there and then you have to have people, you because you can get so much feedback from people and send to your family. Hey, or everyone, you know, click on this and tell me what you think. Right. And believe me, people are happy to tell you what they think. Don't invite it unless you want to hear it right. Good and ugly. 

 

Michael Palumbos (32:42.921)

Yes, they are. 

 

Michael Palumbos (32:48.482)

So talk about the transition between mom and dad to the group that runs the company. 

 

Lisa Smoot (32:59.608)

So my mom and dad retired in like 2017. My youngest brother took over running the company around 2017, May of 2017, something like that, and decided to leave in December, 2019. So two years later, and it was sort of sudden. We were talking about the direction we were going and saying, hey, we need to get back to basics. And we all disagreed. 

 

Michael Palumbos (33:14.415)

okay. 

 

Lisa Smoot (33:26.252)

five of us disagreed with one of us. And he just finally said, you know what, I'm going to leave. So very suddenly on a Sunday, discovered that we need to figure out who was running the company on Monday. So I called my two brothers, my two brothers still remaining and said, hey, you need to get into work tomorrow. We need to figure this out. And we sat down and they said, we think you should run the company. And, you know, I have four children. 

 

Lisa Smoot (33:54.466)

They're all in college and all out of the house now. So I said, I can do this. No problem. I've had no experience running a company at all, but I'm a mother. I've sat on boards. I've been the team mom for soccer. I've had to corral lots of cats all over the world. And so I said, okay, I can do this. And I just started talking to every one of the company. What do you do? What are your frustrations? What's going on? And there was a lot of, I saw that there were a lot of silos. 

 

Lisa Smoot (34:24.342)

Like our quality control did not talk to our green purchasing team. Well, why not? Well, we've never been allowed to. And I go, well, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. You guys better figure out how you can communicate and make sure we, so we stripped down the silos. I think in the first year of me running the company, I changed 57 things that we were doing in the company. And you have your mute on, you hit your mute by accident, I think. Nope. Okay. So we've. 

 

Michael Palumbos (34:51.406)

could hear my dog barking. so I was like, I'll just save that. 

 

Lisa Smoot (34:58.254)

Lisa Smoot (34:59.015)

You know what the good thing about COVID is people taking a sip of coffee or dogs barking or kids coming in and going like that. It's all acceptable now because that's life, right? well. That's right. So we, remember sitting with my CFO, we called it the war room and we just put white Post-it notes down and wrote, you know, imminent dangers. What do we need to worry about now? Next week, next month, three months, six months, blah, blah, blah. And we just started assembling a leadership team. 

 

Lisa Smoot (35:27.438)

and figuring out what we had to do and just started, I started changing everything we were doing. Everything we did, more collaboration. You the first thing we did is I changed the way that we pay our employees. We used to pay our employees with a very small salary and then a very large bonus check. But there was really no rhyme or reason why you and I doing the same job, you got $5,000 and I got $150,000. So I hired a consultant. 

 

Lisa Smoot (35:56.014)

And he helped us with pay scales. and, and, you know, for example, we, we also had people who've been with us. We have some people who've been with us 30, 40 years. And every year their, their pace, their pay would go up and up and up. And, you know, we develop pay scales for different jobs in our company. So let's say quality control, the most you could make now is $35 an hour. And if you wanted to make more money, 

 

Lisa Smoot (36:23.896)

then you've got to do a different job. Here's all the different jobs you can do that will make you more money, but you've got to stretch and grow. So we had some pushback in the beginning, but now, you know, people, you know, I had a guy say to me, Lisa, I've been here for 25 years. And this guy that just came and started working quality controls, making the same amount as me. I said, you can make more Hugo. You need to, here's all the different jobs that we need that make more money and can help you grow. What do you want to do? Let's help you get there. So we created upward mobility. created. 

 

Lisa Smoot (36:53.326)

So there's no getting people out of their comfort zone, 25 years in the same job. That's great. But that also can, that can also be a detriment because you're comfortable in what you're doing and you might not give it 100 % attention every single day. But so we did a lot, a lot of stuff. We've never in our lives ever had a marketing department, ironically, until this year I hired someone maybe in March. 

 

Michael Palumbos (37:19.128)

Thank you. 

 

Lisa Smoot (37:19.438)

Lisa Smoot (37:20.439)

She's got an MBA in marketing. She's a super smart person, went to University of Michigan, really great lady. She is now our market. We did focus groups. So now we understand all the things that we thought were important on the bag of coffee. No one cares. No one cares. So we're like, wow, we're wasting a lot of real estate on stuff that we think is important that's not. And we have a brand manager and we have a digital manager and we're really sort of understanding who our consumers are. 

 

Lisa Smoot (37:49.176)

so that we can get out there and start selling people like you who care about San Francisco Bay what you want, which is eye-opening. It was eye-opening. 

 

Michael Palumbos (37:59.886)

That's fabulous. A lot of what you just said doesn't always happen, but when it does, 98 % of the time it's magical. My takeaway is run the company the way you want to run the company when you're the next generation, when you're in there, do not try to be the person before you. You honor them by being you. 

 

Lisa Smoot (38:01.698)

really great. 

 

Lisa Smoot (38:27.758)

Right. 

 

Lisa Smoot (38:28.041)

Michael Palumbos (38:28.95)

That's off to you for making a lot of 

 

Lisa Smoot (38:30.92)

The one thing that I will, the one thing that I do the same as my dad, my dad used to walk around the warehouse at one o'clock every day. He talked to everyone and my dad said, you treat everyone like family. And I remember during COVID, I mean, when we moved from the Bay Area to here, my dad rented buses and brought the people that he thought we were gonna, that were gonna come with us. 

 

Lisa Smoot (38:53.88)

to look at schools and look at homes and look at apartments and to look at all of these things so that they would be comfortable in what they were moving to. So they're going from East Oakland, which is, you got to duck and cover just going out to your car to go to school every day because of the, you know, the drugs and the shootings and all the horrible, you know, smashing grabs and whatnot to these areas where they could afford to rent and buy homes. And so during COVID, I went to get my mom and dad a shot and 

 

Lisa Smoot (39:22.232)

For some reason they said, you have to come back in an hour. I'm like, my gosh, I can't come back in an hour. So said, let's go to work. So I took my mom and dad on a field trip and my dad at this time was a little bit on steady. So I had him in a wheelchair and we walked into the warehouse and I swear to God, it was like Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift had gotten there. All these people are just swarming my mom and dad and hello Mrs. Rogers. Hello, Mr. Rogers. It's so nice to see you. 

 

Lisa Smoot (39:50.286)

My mom and dad, know, they're looking at me. I'm like, that's Martin. You know, they're like, God, that's, you know, Juan. And they're like, oh, it's nice to see you. But it was really like they're celebrities because a lot of people, we had a guy that just retired 27 years and he came in to say thank you. But it wasn't for my dad. He wouldn't have a house. His family wouldn't have stability and he would not have been able to buy a house for his parents in Mexico. 

 

Michael Palumbos (40:14.638)

Michael Palumbos (40:15.4)

The impact, you're just making you, I'm getting goosebumps listening to you. 

 

Lisa Smoot (40:21.792)

His impact was amazing. 

 

Michael Palumbos (40:23.562)

It's fabulous. at the end of the day, you know, yes, when we started the business, when you started when dad and mom started the business and you were all working together, it was survival. It was I don't what I'm doing. But he didn't keep that mentality. It was survival for everybody. And he shared that. 

 

Lisa Smoot (40:44.558)

I just heard from one of your things, 4.2 people are affected by the decisions. I did the math when I got home and I could pick up my phone and just in Lincoln alone, that's over a thousand people. So he, and my dad did, and my dad did truly care for everyone. Every day he walked. So every day now, at least once a day, I try and do it twice a day, morning and afternoon. And I stopped and I talked to him, how are you doing? know, do you, you know. 

 

Michael Palumbos (40:49.484)

Yes! 

 

Lisa Smoot (41:14.282)

What do you like about your job? What don't you like about your job? What tools do need to be able to do your job better? And, you know, I just asked those questions and it's amazing the stuff that you get. I'll tell you a really silly sort of aha moment that how simple these needs are that, you know, don't even occur to us. I had a woman who's in my shipping department say, you know, well, you know, what we need in the ladies room is a machine for, you know, sanitary products. And I'm like, 

 

Lisa Smoot (41:43.938)

What? She goes, well, you now we have to take a break. We got to go to our get our purse in the break room and then we have to walk in to the bathroom and then we have to go back. And it's very embarrassing. And sometimes you have to have that stuff in your hand. And I thought, my gosh, I can't even believe as simple a solution as that. And then they said, well, you know, we can't do that because how are we going to charge them? You know, they can't have money in their pockets because they're on a line. So I said, make it for free. 

 

Lisa Smoot (42:11.904)

and put up a warning sign up there saying, hey, if you take advantage of this, you're going to have to start paying or it goes away. Please be respectful and make sure that you take just what you need. so far, knock on wood, so far so good. just those conversations, it's just so eye opening to the simple things that people ask for. It's not, need a raise. I want this. We used to have an ice machine in our office that was this ginormous ice machine that you could have for a convention center. And I always thought, 

 

Lisa Smoot (42:40.792)

Why the heck do we have such a big ice machine? And one woman said, we don't have ice and the guys have to go from the warehouse into the office, get ice and go back and keep it in coolers. Can we have that ice machine? I'm like, sure, take it. So now they've got an ice machine and we've got a small one that was what we need here. So it's all simple, simple, easy stuff that you don't find out about unless you talk to people and listen to what they're saying. 

 

Michael Palumbos (43:04.51)

and care that really does matter. It really does matter. a lot of times, I think, you I want to see if I can say this properly. When your dad said, just do your job. Yeah, that comes across potentially as not caring because they're not listening and just go out and figure it out. But I think in your dad's circumstances, what he was saying is I trust you to figure this out. I believe in you, even though was 

 

Michael Palumbos (43:32.706)

spoken and I care about you and he showed his care just differently. Other things that he did and just real testament here if your mom and dad. 

 

Lisa Smoot (43:43.854)

They were amazing people and know, just the, know I can do this. I know I can do this. And it's so interesting because they, know, born in the thirties, they're classic, classic, you know, that era. And when my mom passed away, I was going through all of their stuff. I had to go through all their stuff because my mom had stashed money and I couldn't just take paper and throw it away. My dad went to a boarding school called the Wayland Academy. And I think it's in Beaverton, Wisconsin. 

 

Lisa Smoot (44:14.078)

And I see this little gold thing and I'm like, what the heck is this? And so it's hand inscribed on the back and as a senior in high school, my dad got the highest award that you could get graduating from that university. You never knew it. Never had any idea. And I was like, wow. So they were just head down, do your job, right? Head down. 

 

Michael Palumbos (44:37.358)

I want to pick up on that point too. I think it's one of the diseases, I'll say, of American CEOs is this rugged individualism, this feeling that I have to do it all on my own to be able to make this thing happen. And sometimes what happens is you can't see the forest through the trees. 

 

Michael Palumbos (45:05.004)

you get stuck in always doing it a certain way. by opening up those doors, it really helps, especially when the CEO starts to see things differently, other people's perspectives. 

 

Lisa Smoot (45:20.79)

And also, I would say, giving your team the permission to challenge you or to say, hey, Lisa, do we really want to do it this way? Because I think, you know, and I'll give you a perfect example. We need to buy a bigger roaster. Two years ago, I said, buy a bigger roaster. It's going to take us two years to get it. So by the time we get it, we'll need it. Oh, well, the return on the investment isn't really good. Blah, blah, blah. We don't want to do that. I'm like, just buy it. 

 

Lisa Smoot (45:46.99)

No, I don't think we want to spend that money. mean, and a roaster starts at a million dollars. So it's a big investment. So I said, OK, all right, you you win. I, you know, I trust you. You know the production better than I do. I trust you. Now we wish we had that roaster, but it's a, you know, giving them permission. It's not going to be that big a deal that we don't have it right now, but giving, you know, OK, so if we don't get the roaster, then what's Plan B and how are you know, I almost am a Plan B person. 

 

Lisa Smoot (46:15.31)

If we don't do it this way, what's plan B? And I want to hear what your plan B is. And I want to sure. Is that nothing's going to fall through the cracks. So I, you know, they challenged me every day and it's, and it's comfortable. I mean, we don't ever have contentious discussions. only contentious discussions are between Jim John and Lisa because we're siblings and you know how that goes. But we've all, and, and we've also never had the discussion. How do we speak to each other? It just sort of pops right back in, but people. 

 

Lisa Smoot (46:45.326)

Lisa Smoot (46:45.666)

have permission to challenge and disagree and I don't agree with you, I think we should do it this way. And, you know, as I've said before, I'm willing to not do it my way because I don't want to be that person that's hammering them saying, no, this is the way we're going to do it because I'm not always right. And I'm always, you're right, looking at it this way where they have fresh perspective and they might, they might give me a better perspective than what I'm thinking. 

 

Michael Palumbos (47:11.278)

Yeah. That brings up another point. and I were introduced through a message board through Vistage. Yes. How long ago did you join Vistage? 

 

Lisa Smoot (47:23.876)

boy, I joined, I think I'm coming up on two years. And when I first joined, I was the only female in my group. 

 

Michael Palumbos (47:31.694)

That's unfortunately, that's not dissimilar. 

 

Lisa Smoot (47:35.374)

And you know what, I'm totally comfortable with that because I had three brothers growing up. I've always been the only woman in the room. And sometimes I use that to my advantage. I don't care. really, you know, our motto in the Rogers family is when you down take them harder. So nothing affects me. But when I first joined, it was during COVID, it was virtual meetings. And I'm like, geez, I, you know, I'm going to give this one year. This is not what I think I signed up for. And then we started having in 

 

Lisa Smoot (48:05.162)

in-person meetings. And it's so weird. It's almost like there was like a microphone on my phone because I'd be thinking about something, a problem that I had to figure out or deal with. And we'd have a speaker that spoke about it. And I'd be like, my gosh. So, you know, as I've gotten more comfortable, it really is for me, it's really, really valuable. We have probably 

 

Lisa Smoot (48:28.014)

80 % of the time we have a guest speaker and the other 20 % it's just an executive session where we issue process and whatnot. And it's really helpful to get other perspectives or to listen to other problems which might not be the same as mine but all of the feedback from everyone gives me, maybe I should look at it this way. Oh, well, that's a good point. it's really, really what I thought. 

 

Lisa Smoot (48:53.134)

I didn't think it was going to be as great as it is, and I really, really look forward to my meeting. 

 

Michael Palumbos (48:59.814)

And that goes back to being a learner. You're listening to our podcast. It's getting the same kind of feeling where it's like, here's somebody else's perspective, or I learned something new. so what can I do to take this? My father, I'm second generation as a wealth advisor. And most wealth advisors are not also business coaches. That's one of those weird things that I just, if I can add more things to my job, let's do it. 

 

Michael Palumbos (49:28.92)

But what he taught me was, don't care every conference you go to, every meeting that you're in, where there's a speaker, every book that you read, I want you to look for one thing. If you just find one thing and then implement it into your business and implement it into your life, over and over again, you're gonna be way further ahead than other people. And that makes that time worth your while because even though might be one small thing, if you use that for the next... 

 

Lisa Smoot (49:39.713)

Interesting. 

 

Michael Palumbos (49:58.414)

15 years, 30 years, it makes a big impact. like, that was really good advice. That was probably of all, not all, many pieces of great advice from Dad. But that was one the ones that I really took, was a big one I took away. 

 

Lisa Smoot (50:11.724)

Yeah, no, I, you know, I have a list of books that I've gotten off of your podcast. I have a list of, we have a book club in our, in our Vistage group and every month there's a book that's pushed out. And then when I read them, you're over on the side of my, anyone who wants to listen or borrow them or whatever have at it. 

 

Michael Palumbos (50:29.678)

Great. Yeah, that's I just heard that from one of my Vistage members that was he had come to one of our boot camps brought his leadership team in and heard me talking about how leaders are learners. So he created what he called the you know, the library and they somebody created a box and a shelf and they he just filled it with books. Somewhat, you know, if there was if they had you know, if there was a book that's super popular, we put five or six of them in there and just 

 

Lisa Smoot (50:55.758)

That's a good idea. 

 

Michael Palumbos (50:56.842)

Yeah, and that way everybody on the leadership team or in the business could learn from it. you know, my all right, Lisa, we could just keep going and going and going here. Talk to me about right now, if you look at your priorities over the next 12 months, what would you say your top three priorities are? 

 

Lisa Smoot (51:04.888)

Yeah. 

 

Lisa Smoot (51:20.945)

Expansion, I don't know if that means a new plant, more roasting capacity here. I'm sort of an OCD type of person and I'm a process person. And the one thing that bothers me since I've learned about all this is that my dad did a great job of running the company until he retired. And there's no... 

 

Lisa Smoot (51:46.894)

Since 2017, there's nothing out here to what's next. I admire Queen Elizabeth so much that when she passed away, London Bridge has fallen and everyone knew what they had to do. Everyone knew. And we need a succession plan, not only for the family, but also for the employees. said, we need to know. My brothers both said, oh, I'm gonna retire at my desk. And I thought, 

 

Lisa Smoot (52:17.038)

people in our office don't want to hear that. We need to start thinking about those things. as much as I talk about it, my brother's, one brother is now on board and says, I see what you're talking about. The other one's like, no, I don't, why are we planning? We don't need to plan, but we need a succession plan, both internally in the company and then externally for the family. What's going to happen? Cause our G3 is nowhere near, I have four children, it's probably going be 15 years before they come in. 

 

Lisa Smoot (52:46.07)

I'm not even sure if any of other cousins want to come in. So, you know, who will run it next and what is the plan to get them up to speed if they want to stay in the, in the business and go from there. So that's, that's the one. know, from one of your podcasts, hate to be, you know, there are 30 people in this family that are, you know, that my decisions affect. And I never thought I'd. 

 

Michael Palumbos (53:06.146)

I well. 

 

Lisa Smoot (53:13.528)

I always thought about it as I'm running the company. you know, I, is what I'm doing. And these are the goals I've set for myself. And these are our sales goals and our EBITDA goals and this and that. And I never really considered that, you know, what we decide to do affects the three people who, and most of them aren't in the business. There's only three of us in the business. So I need to make sure that I am being a good steward of what everyone wants. And I don't know what everyone wants. So we need to have those conversations. 

 

Michael Palumbos (53:31.02)

Thank you. 

 

Michael Palumbos (53:41.902)

I love that. It's my favorite. I learned it from one of my mentors, which you'll hear him on the podcast several times, Jay Hughes. Jay, none of this would have happened at any level. I would not have had the podcast. I wouldn't have had the guests if it wasn't for Jay. But Jay talked about, goes, Michael, you're in the Iroquois country. You should know what seventh generation thinking is. 

 

Michael Palumbos (54:11.47)

I'm like, all right, I don't know that I never learned it. What is it Jay? And he's like, well, we need to be good stewards of the seven generations that came before us. Yep. And we need to think about as we're making decisions, the impact that will have seven generations from today. Like, so when I think about that, it was really interesting, we set our d hag for 10 years out our big hairy audacious goal as we as we're going through this. 

 

Lisa Smoot (54:29.516)

Interesting. 

 

Michael Palumbos (54:41.07)

Renaissance, this change of who we are, we will still do wealth management. We still do a great job with investments in estate planning taxes. That's great. But our clients wanted to know, how do I build my business? How do I transition it? How do I do this session? So that's where we became experts in, you know, next. But I had a 10 year BHAG. I'm 55 years old. 

 

Michael Palumbos (55:05.326)

And the world says at 65, I retire. So I had one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. And it was stopping me from making really healthy, good decisions for what's the future of our business. So we set our goal out 30 years. Oh my God. Not be out here. it's, what that's doing for me is creating a vision. Right. When we're making three year goals in one year and 90 day goals that they connect to what we're trying to be when we grow up 35 years from now, when I'm not long. 

 

Michael Palumbos (55:35.436)

running the shop. 

 

Lisa Smoot (55:36.91)

Interesting. So just out curiosity, in 30 years, do you see any I know you have kids, but do you see them in the business or or or 

 

Michael Palumbos (55:45.794)

Yeah, so it's hard to say. Right now, the likelihood is I've got about a 0.01 chance of somebody saying I'm in, but there are one, two, I think there's four. One of them is training to take over my job right now. But when she looks at the wealth advising side of the business, 

 

Michael Palumbos (56:15.436)

was so different than what we're doing with the business coaching side of the business. And so I'm slowly dripping the business coaching side. She is a business consultant. She's a senior consultant for, you know, somebody that competes with EY and PWC, you know, whatnot. And she's loving it. So she's, you know, she's got her CPA or MBA. Yes, she would be great with our clients. I have another daughter that's really high on 

 

Michael Palumbos (56:44.61)

marketing and design and whatnot. And we do, like you talked about creating your university and making that as an intranet. I see her coming in just from that side of the business to help run communications and how we deliver content and- And websites. Right, internally. I wanna have a university that trains my clients. like all of it, when we talk about creating BHAGS, 

 

Michael Palumbos (57:13.622)

I want to have this talk recorded and put out there so that both, you know, so that somebody can sit there and say, I heard you talking about it. I watched that video again and I heard it differently this time. I get it now. And so as we build out our university for business coaching and wealth management, that's, I think that would be different. 

 

Lisa Smoot (57:34.722)

So. 

 

Michael Palumbos (57:36.174)

I could keep going on and on. Let's do this. And there's so much that we didn't cover. So I think that this may, somewhere along the lines, we're gonna have to get back together again and do some more of this. But if you're sitting in front of an audience of multi-generation family businesses with the experience that you've had, what would you say, here's my best advice to you folks? 

 

Lisa Smoot (58:05.784)

Talk about everything. There's nothing that should be off the table. Everything from who's making how much money, how much the company is making, what dad's plans are for the company, what everyone thinks should happen for the company, and then simple things like how we treat each other and just the rules of the game so that everyone's on the same. We've made every mistake, every mistake, and at some point, 

 

Lisa Smoot (58:33.942)

I could tell you some crazy stories that you'd go, what is this a movie? What the heck? No one really does that. But we lived it and we did it. And it was really eye opening. it's, you know, communication is so important at every level involving, you know, involving everyone. I have three brothers, but they are all married and they have children and wives and everyone at some point needs to be 

 

Lisa Smoot (59:00.896)

in the discussions about what's going to happen and what are we going to do. 

 

Michael Palumbos (59:06.328)

Thank you. Yeah, no, I think we will have Christina get in touch with you and we're going to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly mistakes. I think if we do an episode just talking about that, that would be fun. 

 

Lisa Smoot (59:18.232)

You'll go, what? you 

 

Lisa Smoot (59:25.609)

No names though. 

 

Michael Palumbos (59:26.922)

Of course, that's right. We'll change the names to protect the guilty or 

 

Lisa Smoot (59:31.092)

Yeah, there we go. Okay. Thank you for your time. 

 

Michael Palumbos (59:33.358)

Michael Palumbos (59:34.499)

Lisa Smoot, San Francisco Baked Coffee, sfbakeoffee.com. Check them out. And just even reading the story, there's a great picture of John and Barbara Rogers on their wedding day. And I love the fact that you, I forgot to mention this, but that you are a family business and the family business stands behind it and you put it right out there. You've heard me talk about it on the show before. 

 

Michael Palumbos (01:00:01.262)

family businesses, get a trust bump from their customers and their employees. Don't hide that you're a family business. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thanks everybody for joining us. This has been Michael Palumbos with the Family Biz Show. I'm with Family Wealth and Legacy in Rochester, New York. Can't wait to have you on our next episode. Have a great day, everybody.