If These Heels Could Talk

In so many professional situations, small talk abounds. As women, we are inevitably asked about children. For women without children, these conversations can be emotional and social minefields. Do you share intimate details of your infertility history with acquaintances? Suffer the social awkwardness when you deflect the question or appear emotional? Say no and hope the other person just doesn’t ask why not? Say you ‘want to focus on your career’ right now and appear cold or distant?

14% of adult women in the United States do not have living children. By choice or not, answering questions about why are often painful and always personal. It also isn’t an issue often navigated by men in professional situations. Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss their experiences and how they’ve navigated these tumultuous waters.

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AUDIO INTRO------------------------------------

Hi, I’m Michelle owner of BadCat Digital

And I’m JoyGenea and I own Solutions by JoyGenea and welcome to ‘If These Heels Could Talk’ 

Today on our show, we will be talking in detail about white labeling.  What it is and how we work with it and what we think about it.

Well, that’s all for today’s episode of ‘If These Heels Could Talk’ We hope that we have brought you some new ideas, encouraged you in a new direction and inspired you a bit.  

Thanks for listening.

When a relationship is over, it’s over. But how do you tell a professional service provider that helped your business grow that you need someone new? In a small business community, your brand is at stake when you’re firing a professional service provider. Treating others with respect and dignity honors the business relationship you’ve had in the past, but leaves room for you to move on to another provider with grace.

Michelle and JoyGenea teach you that you should never burn a bridge, never respond emotionally, never overreact, and always acknowledge your own role in any relationship. This episode of “If These Heels Could Talk” is all about how to maintain positive relationships with former vendors, if at all possible. Your business reputation could be at stake.

No one wants to think about emergency preparedness. Recorded in late 2019, before COVID-19 shut downs, the topic remains pertinent. 

Michelle broke her arm and what happened to her business?  What should a small business do to prepare for the unexpected? What haven’t you thought of? Where are your blind spots?

Michelle and JoyGenea discuss their business blind spots, their personal blind spots, and how to listen when others (kindly) point them out. Listen in as they discuss finding, sorting out, and developing processes around the blind spots. Become a business prepper!

They say there’s nothing more flattering than being copied. In business, trying to do things just like a competitor may not be the best strategy. Nothing wrong with learning from your competition. But there’s something wrong with copying your closest competitor. 

In any business, there’s competition. When you’re planning your business, whether you’re just starting out or working on your tenth annual strategy, knowing the competitive landscape is incredibly important. Knowing the competition helps you understand where your pricing falls in the market, if your unique selling proposition is truly unique, and ensures your ability to answer questions about your industry.

Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk about their competitive analysis processes, both when they started business and today.

Would a rose, by any other name, smell as sweet? Would a brand, by any other name, be the same?

Naming is a tricky business. You want something unique. Something that describes the business. Something you love. 

But don’t forget the other factors in naming. Spelling. Trademark abilities. Unintended cultural meanings. Domain availability. And the all important Google. 

Naming and branding needs to leave room for the user/viewer so they can create a relationship with the brand. It is that relationship that is important to the long-term success of the brand. Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss naming and branding and the tips and tricks they have learned over the years of helping clients find their brand identity.

Are your assets covered? That is, is your brand accurately trademarked? Is your web content copyright protected? How do you know?

JoyGenea and Michelle cover the wonderful world of Intellectual Property in this episode of “If These Heels Could Talk.” From their own experiences with trademark violations, cease and desist letters, and brand name confusion, Michelle and JoyGenea share in a conversation that every business owner should hear. Whether you’re the newbie on the block or the third generation owner, there’s something to learn about Intellectual Property. Hear from two marketing business owners who have been there and learn from our expensive experiences. 

Cover Your Assets. It’s not hard. It’s not that expensive. And it can save your business.

Marcus Lemonis is famous for saying, over and over during many seasons of The Profit, “If you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know your business.”  But what numbers is he talking about?

He’s talking about profit & loss, cash flow, and debt. He’s talking about your balance sheet - revenue vs. expenses. In reality, he’s talking about 6 or 7 numbers you should be aware of. At all times. 

But we’re so very busy! And numbers are not our thing. Don’t we talk about having an accountant on our short call list for help because of this? Yes, we do. But it doesn’t take an accountant’s background to know if there’s more money flowing in than flowing out. As women, we don’t have the historical background in business ownership. Many of us were actively discouraged, in one way or another, from pursuing business ownership at all, nevermind the kind of financial support that many use to help a business get off the ground. It was only a few decades ago that women gained sole access to consumer credit. All this has caused us to be a little behind when it comes to our knowledge of financial support and the kind of projections and planning that can open another’s vault.

Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss the financial aspects of a business plan and the barriers, both internal and external, that keep women from knowing their numbers and knowing their businesses.

From logins to employees to insurance to password managers, small businesses have very little in place for their own privacy and don’t do much about client and customer security. The thought that small businesses are not targets is patently false. 

This podcast is a reminder to stop doing these things:

Emailing passwords

Using the same password for multiple sites

Sharing passwords among employees

On February 4th, 2021, the head of the Olympic Organizing Committee, Yoshiro Mori, was in the news for making derogatory comments about how women interact in professional meetings. Some of the quotes:

“Women have an annoying tendency to make meetings run unnecessarily long.”

“board of directors meetings with many women take a lot more time.”

“When you increase the number of female executive members, if their speaking time isn’t restricted to a certain extent, they have difficulty finishing, this is annoying.”

“Women are competitive.”

“When one person raises a hand, others think they need to speak up as well, that’s why everyone speaks.”

Dr. Deborah Tannen, professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University, has authored several books on inter-gender communication and found that in women’s personal lives and around other women, they talk more than men.  They do not talk more in meetings or professional settings.

So where does this common assertion come from? And, more importantly, how can women hold their space in professional settings if others consider them over-sharing, annoying, and/or shrill (common complaints). Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss what seems like an ever-present burden on women to constantly temper their thoughts for the comfort of their colleagues. And, more importantly, how it’s changing.

Mean, Sorry, Just, Little, Correct me if I’m wrong, I know I’m no the ultimate expert, It’s just my opinion… These words and phrases keep us from showing up to business meetings and in relationships with our full expertise and brilliance. Qualifying, passive statements are used to soften the edges of our words so we can make others more comfortable with our thoughts. 

Something to ask ourselves - why do we feel the need to do this? How does it impact our professional lives? Dr. Judith Baxter’s book, The Language of Female Leadership, calls this Out of Power language. 

Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss the ways they have heard themselves use out of power language and how they catch themselves. Not to mention how to practice showing up 100% for yourself and your team.