Jay and Bunny business bond began with fur babies

And, of course, there's always the volatility of the Internet. Jay, first off, I just have to show you the situation that I'm in. So Blue had surgery Monday, and Guinness is behind me. And so this is like the Dane sandwich that I'm experiencing. Yeah, he's recovering. He just had his gastropexy and his other surgery to get him fixed. And then there's this wild animal that comes in in the back. So you had asked me, like, you know, what level of not. You didn't ask me what level of professionalism these recordings are gonna be, but this is. This is par for the course right now. So. Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

What is the craziest thing that's happened? I want to know what the craziest thing that's happened on a Zoom conference call for you has been.

Yeah, I was gonna say I can be somewhat isolated up in our home office with closing the door and keeping the dogs out, but my wife's training, doing training class now, so she didn't know I was on Skype. She came in with her pajamas. She was helping me, giving me breakfast. And then the dogs came in, and it was all within the same time where the mail happened to come. So it was just chaos. I mean, pretty almost like stereotypical, you know, could have shot a commercial around how poorly it was done on my part, on our part as a family. But. But again, it's that personal interaction that the person on the other line was like, that's hilarious. Like, yeah, sorry, you know.

Yeah, no, that's 100% my existence right now. And the aspect that I was doing some work with a team, and my Internet failed completely, like, because, you know, I have country Internet, so I probably have a delay even now. And so, like, I'm the speaker and the host. My Internet fails. And so I can only imagine, like, what happens in the chat room. Like, what do we do now?

Absolutely.

So was that recently?

That was last week, yeah. I think people have adapted to the acceptance of that. Right. Not to that level, and luckily, it was a friendly interaction. But I think people have adapted to the likelihood that something could and often will happen.

Do you think that's something that will keep?

I kind of hope so. I mean, I wrote something in March, which seems like a decade ago, about the personal side. And I think at that point, people were trying to, you know, be overly protective of their home environment, and they had the virtual backgrounds, and it was very. You know, people were trying to keep it nice and professional and tight, but then things are just bound to happen, especially with the schools, you know, with the children.

Yeah.

I don't. You know, I think there's. If you can avoid some of it, great. But at the end of the day, I think people understand it and are completely open to it and accepting of it way more than before. So I think that'll probably stay.

I have switched all of my calls to sitting on the ground with Guinness on the chair behind me, because inevitably, the first question from every client is, well, where's Guinness? And it's like, I can't zoom call sitting at, like, a desk or a chair and, like, have him in the shot. So I've got to make sure I'm sitting on the ground so that King Guinness can have the chair behind me. He has, like, this giant nest chair so that people feel like they've still got. I think people are zooming me just to see him.

I think it's perfect. It's perfect. And you see him. He's there. It's like he's part of the scene. Almost everyone's comfortable. It's great.

Yeah, well, not everyone is comfortable, but some of us are. I told somebody that he was just a virtual background.

Well, at least I can't hear him. If you had. We had my dogs here. They'd both be snoring, and we'd have to have a different way to communicate. I don't have a microphone or something because they're so loud. He heard him. He heard his name.

Is he coming?

No, I was talking about Guinness.

Oh, yo. No, he definitely. He definitely is just. Yeah, he knows. He just knows that I was. But we had that happy hour thing that you and I did together. What was it? Last week? And when we went out in the breakout sessions, the first group I was in, they were just like, you know, where's Guinness? Like, how am I supposed to feel about that? I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel about that. So. But yeah, now you got both of them.

Oh, yeah. Jealous.

There you go. There we go. There we go. This is, like, the epitome of professionalism. But one thing I was.

Guinness been loving on blue since the surgery.

Yeah, I mean, he's been. He's actually been a little rowdy, like, trying to get him riled up. And so we've had to kind of manage that. But he's not necessarily. What are you doing? He's not necessarily, like, being a nursemaid, but, you know, he's. He's checking in with him, and he's just like, why aren't you playing, like, why aren't you rowdy? And it's because I've got, you know, I've got to keep Blue tranquilized the other day. So my window is right here the other day, and there's a bench. And Blue decided he wanted to stand out the window. So I'm seated exactly like this. And he crawls over me, ripped out my earphones and was like, paws up on the windowsill, looking out the window and just great Dane butt right here. I was like, this is great. So one of the things I wanted to kind of look at a timeline of. No. No respect for the human space. But I wanted to look for. I wanted to look at this timeline. So you and I had lunch together at a group function. What? Let's call that January. Was that January?

It seems like such a long time ago. Yeah. Okay, January.

So let's go.

Jane.

I don't know. Let's go with January just for my story so we can keep going with my story. So we exchanged business cards. I don't correct me if any of this is inaccurate because we said we were going to go to lunch because we had a year ago May seen each other at the retreat. I think I went in the little cottage thing that you were, you were at. At the retreat. So I don't know. This, this storyline is kind of irrelevant in the aspect that we exchanged business cards and made a commitment to get together in January and then March. You and I happened to be on the, like a summit. I don't know what to call that, like a panel, whatever conversation together. And you were messaging. I said, you know, I've got Guinness here if anybody else has dog co workers. And so you messaged me that you did. And so afterwards I was like, oh my gosh, like, here's, here's a conversation we never would have had. And like we probably wouldn't be sitting here today, this morning recording this if we hadn't made that kind of connection. So that was a really long winded story for the listeners to know. Kind of the seeds out of which this, I'm gonna call it a friendship. A six foot apart friendship has grown. And, you know, I don't know how else we could have established that, like without this level of vulnerability in humanity and current situation, you know, like we would have discussed that. We have dogs, obviously, you know, because Guinness is my service animal. So he's with us. He was with us at lunch. But, you know, it's different. You pulling up a picture of your dogs on their phone and the picture that you send me of like your wife trying to concentrate, like at the computer and the dogs just like passed out all around her. So, like, as friends and as strategic partners, as referral partners, and for me, personally and professionally, I care more about your success and your company's success because of all of these experiences. And so that's just something I wanted to tell you as far as a silver lining and just an observation that I had about our relationship.

Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. It is funny. Everyone's in, like we just talked about, everyone's in their personal zones and my wife teaching her class and she's got her background and then the two boys who always want to be near her, you know, during their lounge time, during the day. And so it is funny to look around and then, you know, you know, relate to that and connect with people because of that. Ours are, they give. They're a little more spacious than Guinness and blue. But yeah, they're usually there working with us throughout the day. I think they're going to be really sad that, you know, there's a bunch of memes about that, but they're going to be. And I obviously sincerely appreciate you saying that and right back at you, I think. But they're gonna be really, really sad when we have to leave or I have to leave, go back to normal. So we'll see how that goes.

I don't know. I'll write you a letter of recommendation that Fahrenheit should be a dog free. I know we're not dropping names, but Fahrenheit should be a dog friendly environment.

I think it should.

I know we're not dropping names, but if you notice Jay's logo here on the camera, he's, he's got his, he's got his name brand, so.

That's right.

Everybody would be very proud of you. Do you think we can make that happen? I mean, you guys have a what, a foosball table? Like we can make it a dog free or dog friendly environment?

I think so. Well, one of them would be great. One of the dogs would be great and would just sit there and no one would ever notice he was under my feet at the desk. The other one needs too much attention and would seek too much attention from everyone who walked by. So I don't know if I could sneak him in. But the other one I think I could do easily.

Are you gonna try it? I want you to try it. Just let me know.

I'll give it a go and then I'll I'll FaceTime you from the office with. With Huey at my feet and try to get away with it.

Yeah, just record it.

We've gone in on the weekends before.

When no one else, like, on the social media.

It's been good.

Jennifer, I think, would be a huge fan of that. And, like, her office. She has the office with, like, the two other people, and there's, like, no windows. And so whenever I walk around there with Guinness, like, all three of them are like. I feel like the door is kind of like the window at the zoo where all the animals are just bored until a human walks by, and I'm like, hi. But I feel like I'm totally interrupting all productivity.

Yeah, that's our. We have a lot of people in the office, and it's a good thing for that, for interaction. But there are some times where the big groups meeting. Big group meetings get a. They become pretty social. But that, for me, it's a great thing. So.

Yeah. All right, so let's end with one thing like that you found, like, a delivery service or something funny or like, out of the past two months. So let me see. I will. My gosh. I'll give you an example. So I had to. Because I don't have a scanner. Like, I had to take a picture of this scanner, this piece of paper, to send to a client. And behind the piece of paper, my daughter had drew a dog bone, like, on another piece of paper. So you can imagine, like, here's the thing I'm taking a picture of, and here's my daughter's, like, drawing. Well, it was only half a dog bone. So I send this picture over to the client, and the client responds and goes, what is the drawing underneath that? And I was like, it's a dog bone. It's a dog bone. Definitely a dog bone. So, like, I ended up having, like, to show them, like, it was a dog bone. So I, like that blue made sure this prop was sitting right here for me so that we can make this happen. But. So that's the funniest thing that's happened to me this week as of yet, is having to explain away, like, we were talking about backgrounds but having to be really conscious about, like, what's in the background of the photo that I'm taking and sending over to clients or the bank or, you know, all of this kind of stuff.

So service or just an experience like the. With the videos, interaction.

Whatever you want to do. Like, you know, I know another. Another one for me is River City Roll. The bowling alley turned into like a homemade pizza kit, curbside pickup and like grocery store pickup and I think that's super cool. It's not something I can get delivered out here, but a friend of mine lost her dad unfortunately during this time and I gave them a call and they went and delivered like dinner for her entire family. And it's a bowling alley, so with like gourmet food, you know, you've been there. So it's really good food. But I just thought that that was really creative and really cool. And I mean there's also some apps like Marco Polo. I found Marco Polo during this time and I think that's something I probably should not have found because it's highly addicting. So those are some things that I found and my funny story.

Yeah, well, for us and I think for Richmond and beyond in central Virginia or however, I'm not super familiar with the legal side of it but. And not to sound completely like a degenerate, but the alcohol delivery, not legalization, but acceptance has been awesome. Just friends in that industry, both on the spirit side and the brewery side and the cidery side, we've taken full advantage of that, both as consumers but also wanting to support the local ecosystem. And that seems like game changer currently. And I think from what I understand into the future, that's going to be something that's going to be really different. And as we talk about the animals, we've also used mobile vet service, which I didn't know of, I'm sure it existed before, but they came to our back porch. We just said hey to them through the screen and porch and they did shots and clippings and everything else. So that's a new kind of product or service that seems to be one that will be here for a long time. As easy as it was, everything's going mobile. You know, I've had multiple interactions with, with you know, our two fur babies on Skype and zoom calls. And again that's almost become commonplace at this point. For better than better, for worse, Blink list. I've started doing that which are basically like mini Cliff Notes for books. That's been something that part of the free offerings a bunch of companies have done. So I feel like I'm at least doing some self educating, self growth as we go through every few minutes. Just listen to one of those for 15 minutes. I don't know.

I have to send me that one.

What's that?

You're gonna have to send me that one. The last one.

Yeah, it's great. It's just they Just do little. You can either read or listen to books and you know, synopsis of books that give you the gist. I mean, you know, obviously you're not getting the whole thing, but a lot of the strategy or business books, I don't think you need to go into every detail and every example. Just kind of get the punchline of them. It wouldn't work, you know, stories, but.

So it would be interesting.

Yeah, I mean, it would really cut down on the whole plot and character building. But I don't know.

Yeah, just imagine. Imagine watching or listening to it in the 15 minute version. Like kid goes in storm drain. All the kids try to get the clown. Kill the clown or.

Exactly.

Red balloon. Oh, I forgot. Red balloon. Red balloon.

Yeah, that would, that wouldn't fly. But it's. It's been good. I mean, I think a lot of those services that offer the. Who are offering either limited subscriptions or free subscriptions for now, have been trying to take advantage of some of those.

Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome to be able to have the time and space to be able to kind of explore those. And I, like you, hope that there's a lot of this that we can carry over and continue in the spaces of humanity, in the spaces of creative commerce and just, you know, the way we treat each other and the way that we think about our businesses. I've always thought of my business as an opportunity to have and nurture relationships, but even more so now. And that's why I shared with the listeners about kind of the roots of our relationship, because I think it accelerated our friendship going through this together with the fur babies. And so I definitely look forward to seeing how the fur babies visit goes to the office. And then I still owe you a visit down to the office. And I just want to know why I haven't had any alcohol delivered to my house from you.

I don't know. You said you live out in the country. I don't know what their radius is, but.

You don't think they delivered a bump ass.

Maybe it will set up multiple orders so it'll be efficient for them. I can make that happen.

Like, we'll have to have a relay system. Like we'll have to get it to go so that we can get it out here. But. Well, Jay, I appreciate you taking the time to do this and you know, our listeners probably recognize you from the trailer as well because you did the little teaser for us for difference makers discussion. And it's awesome. It's just been awesome because I'm recording this after we launched, but the response has been awesome. So I just appreciate your participation and also the support and sharing it and giving other opportunities, people opportunities to have this little window into our worlds and to feel for a second like they have a free subscription to friendship.

Absolutely. No, this is. I love what you're doing, and I'm honored to be a part of it. Thank you for thinking of me.

Absolutely. All right, I will talk to you soon.

Okay, take care. Bye, boys.