If These Heels Could Talk

Hiring family and friends. The place most small businesses start and, if done well, can be an absolute boon to a business early on. Once a business has non-related employees, hiring family gets extra tricky. The owner isn’t just navigating the familial relationships and dynamics, but internal business dynamics among staff. 

Clear communication, expectations, and standards are the key to successfully hiring family, as both Michelle and JoyGenea can attest. JoyGenea has navigated the family in business many, many times and had learned many of the same lessons that Michelle, fresh from her own experience, just discovered.

Ever see a headshot on a business card? How many times does it look like the person who handed you the card? What about images for your website? When was the last time you updated those?

Some businesses recognize the need for professional images, but don’t update them frequently. This happens for coaches, consultants, real estate agents, insurance agents, and others who build their personal brand professionally. Some businesses don’t understand the importance of professional, quality images, spending the bulk of their resources on a powerfully designed brochure or website and then putting in whatever image they can find from a free stock photo site. 

Either way, updated professional photos are essential to your marketing efforts. Creating a library of professional photos requires some time, effort, and the right photographer. Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss finding the right professional partner in this episode.

Sorry, we don’t take that card. Sorry, the computer won’t let me do that. Sorry, we’re not allowed to process refunds without a manager. 

How many times have you heard something like this at a national chain or a government office or some other organization where decision-making is removed from the person who is standing in front of the customer. 

There are solid business reasons to make decisions centrally in large organizations - consistency, employee training, fewer hiring requirements and larger labor pool. But the challenge is that when you are creating universal ‘policies’ that are made to be implemented without any real-time information or decision-making, your policies will only cover the situations that you’ve foreseen. 

And so the customer standing in front of your employee, waiting to return something broken, is going to have a bad experience. Because you’ve made a decision for that situation that makes your life easier, not theirs. 

Large organizations like chain retailers and restaurants can accommodate these bad experiences and exceptions due to the sheer volume of customers and transactions. Government offices can accommodate these bad experiences because there are no other options for most of us. Small businesses cannot survive this kind of decision-making. 

Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss business decisions made for the running of the business without the customer or client in mind. And the slippery slope some business owners find themselves on when they prioritize their convenience over their customers.

Every week, there’s another headline about millennials and what they’re doing wrong - not enough of this, too much of that. Millennials have, evidently, killed the diamond and dairy industries, refused home ownership on a massive scale, and slowed the birth rate to its lowest point ever. Wow. That’s a ton of responsibility.

Employers just shake their heads and ponder how to engage with a millennial work force. Now that millennials are in their 30’s and *gasp* 40’s, employers need to face up to a different type of leadership emerging in their companies. It’s a leadership style that has less foundation in accountability and more in compassion. Less focus on competition and more on collaboration. But also mired in self-doubt and a lack of sustained follow through.

As a millennial and Gen Z’er respectively, Michelle and JoyGenea share a unique perspective. Employers have an obligation to train and develop leaders from the millennial generation. Because without those future leaders, where will your company go?

There’s nothing that can replace practice. Think about gymnasts. Years - decades really - of practice to perform a routine that’s about a minute long. Talk about pressure. And talk about dedication to practicing. 

In business, practicing can mean many things. Those arguments that you have with yourself in the shower or the car are practicing for real conversations. Practicing a pitch or presentation helps calm the nerves and clarify intentions. Practicing with a coach is even more powerful, as a great coach can show you a mirror of your own thinking, restating and helping you determine the best path forward.

Regardless of the task at hand, practicing helps focus the mind and frame your goals. Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk about all the 

Imagine 3 adult siblings with respectful relationships who primarily see each other during holidays. Imagine now that these 3 siblings are faced with planning a parent’s funeral and dissolving a household, estate, and life. The amount of time and work this creates is like another job. And it requires all siblings to step into the challenge in different ways.

It’s a stressful challenge for any sibling group. When one of the siblings owns a business, there is more to consider. For example, the person who owns a business will, out of necessity, have legal and financial partnerships that can help. Siblings, parents, and other close family who are not attuned to the day to day realities of owning a business are unlikely to understand to the time constraints placed on owners. They may assume that owning a business means a vacation whenever you want or need one. 

Often, as adults, our family communication patterns haven’t evolved with us. So when we get together in larger family groups (like holidays), we fall back into familiar communication patterns. In times of stress, these communication patterns can be incredibly destructive or incredibly useful. Business owners have unique tools to handle conflict in communication.

Listen in as JoyGenea talks about her recent experience planning a parent’s funeral while keeping her business running. Learn about her successes, like setting clear goals and objectives with her siblings, as well as her challenges, like managing time, relationships, and bureaucracy in a completely different way. 

It’s not about how much your product or service costs. It’s about the value of that product or service in your client’s mind. 

It’s not about who sees your ad. It’s about what your ad says (or doesn’t say) that creates desire. 

Marketing isn’t advertising. But strong marketing and strong advertising emanate from the same place - understanding your brand’s unique selling proposition and then communicating that, over and over, in different ways. 

Often, both Michelle and JoyGenea hear from clients who want to place advertisements. And when asked what we’re advertising, it’s a throwaway answer, like ‘whatever, we just need to get our name out there.’ And then a month later, the same client comes to us with a ‘how do I know if it worked?’ question. 

It’s not about having all the answers in advance. It’s about being thoughtful with the questions, knowing your business’s unique contribution to your clients, knowing the value you bring to their lives, the pain point you help them resolve. And then telling people about that.

There are obvious differences, like holidays that are religion-based. And there are subtle and individual differences, like Memorial Day feeling different for a family that has lost a loved one in military service. But relatively recently, more mainstream media attention has been focused on what might be termed political or historical holidays, like Independence Day or the Fourth of July, and those for who mourn the day. 

In other words, our cultural sensibilities are shifting to encompass a more complete version of our shared history and how it impacts ourselves and our families today. Businesses are listening and starting to act differently on social media and with their messaging. Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss the many questions that surround small business owners who may be struggling to find the path that will best serve their goals.

In marketing, we work to create value in the audience’s mind. But when the entire value is driven by marketing and not the laws of supply and demand, does that leave us vulnerable to the ‘next big thing’ that undermines our value?

The diamond industry is a great example. Now that man-made alternatives are readily available, much more accessible, and visually indistinguishable to the vast majority of people, how can diamonds hold their value? As the industry’s advertising moves toward the more strident messaging of real diamonds equaling real love, the notes of shame and judgment couldn’t be more prevalent. It’s not kind and, as more and more individuals embrace the design possibilities of man-made diamonds, not sustainable. What happens when celebrities start talking about their  fantastic jewels on the red carpet as man-made? What happens when the general public doesn’t care if it came from the ground or from the lab?

We’re watching this industry try to pivot right now. Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss what makes value real. And how you could see something similar coming in your industry.

Read any professional job description and it will describe a linear path toward the open position: this degree, this many years of experience, and this background. And in the next sentence, the job description will talk about initiative (self-starter!) and drive to succeed. It will describe a company that values resilience and being open to change.

In short, the job description will ask for a background based on skills and experience as well as characteristics that are largely learned by those who never seem to have the right background for their goals. People with the audacity to dream of something bigger for themselves and others. These are scrappers. People who didn’t come from the ‘right’ background but succeeded in their goals anyway. 

Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss how to find scrappers in your resume stack. How to look beyond the GPA and course list and see character instead of qualifications. How to see commonly held hiring ‘red flags’ as opportunities and interview people anyway. A few gaps in employment or many companies in a short time frame could be a problem. Or it could be a single parent who had jobs that couldn’t accommodate flexibility in schedules. No extracurricular activities in school? Could be disengaged. Or could be working full-time to keep up with family medical bills. You’ll never know if your HR software automatically discards those resumes.