If These Heels Could Talk

As a small business hiring is one of the biggest hurdles you will have to jump.  The first hire can be pivotal to how you feel about growing your business and having more staff.  

Michelle talks about the first hire she added and what that was like for her as a business owner and now being at the place of having seven employees and growing.  JoyGenea gives insight into using subcontractors to grow her business and supporting other solopreneurs. Together they talk about the tools they use and the best steps they have found to attract the best talent to work with.

They touch on a section of an article in the Harvard Business Review Nov/Dec 2019 “For Women In Business” Professor Sheppard about hiring as anonymous as possible. Assigning numbers to applicants and removing ways to google candidates.  JoyGenea talks about recently being on a hiring committee and actually doing these things and what that was like for her.

Don’t be afraid to grow your business because you are not sure how to hire. You can be afraid you will screw it up, we all feel that way at first and then you push through it.  Learn some tips from Michelle and JoyGenea and laugh with them as they explore hiring and expanding your business.

What is a business pivot? Adding services, subtracting product lines, adding employees. Whenever your business’s direction changes, it’s a pivot. The trick is making it intentional.

JoyGenea and Michelle discuss their business pivots. Why they happened, how they happened, and when. Not to mention the anxiety that comes along with the change. Especially when it comes to pricing. No pivot is harder than the pricing pivot. But it is an essential pivot as a business grows.

How do you brand your pivots? How should they be communicated internally and externally for the best effect on your business?

Are you ready for the pivots coming in your business?

“You can should all over me, but…” This amazing statement will release you from the shoulds in life so your All is truly your own. 

Having it all isn’t about what we think it is. It isn’t about stretching and stretching and stretching until you break. But it is about defining your own all and having the ability to say no.

JoyGenea and Michelle discuss defining your all, what they have let go to get through their days, and how to prevent giving all of yourself away in an attempt to Have It All. So go ahead and lean out, people! You get to pick what you lean in to and no one gets to tell you what you should do to be happy.

Do you know how to own your own toxicity?

Can you see when your own toxic self is getting on others? We all have behaviors that are brought out when we’re stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, or even just hungry. And the same is true for our employees. But when does a toxic behavior become something that you address in a staff member? And how do you identify and control your own toxic behaviors before they start?

In this episode, we identify a few toxic behavior patterns that we have seen in a variety of situations to help you identify and address them in your own workplace.

Nothing makes us feel better than giving. But when you’re starting and running your own business, you need to be selective and strategic with your giving. With so many deserving organizations, who do you say no to?

Michelle and JoyGenea get honest about volunteering, giving, and the various ways they have used community involvement to help grow their businesses, including the mistakes they made along the way.

How did JoyGenea go from kindergartner with Dyslexia to successful entrepreneur? Sideways and with lots of professional detours. Seriously, JoyGenea’s life will be the best biography of the century. 

Learn about JoyGenea’s connections to the community and how her past has shaped her present and future as Michelle interviews her co-host in this episode of ‘If These Heels Could Talk.’

How is Michelle working to build BadCat through building community? How does a person start a business in a new town and connect to potential clients? And how did Michelle pick the name BadCat for a digital marketing agency? 

Answers to these questions and more as JoyGenea interviews Michelle so you can get to know her better.

Boundaries are more than lines on a map.  Boundaries are about respecting each other’s limitations. But when it comes to family, boundaries create all kinds of feelings like rejection, fear, shame, and guilt. In reality, boundaries with family are no different than with clients or vendors.  Clear communication about what you are able to provide and what you can handle or not handle is a gift worth giving to yourself and those around you.  

In this episode, JoyGenea and Michelle discuss their varying degrees of success with family boundaries, how to spot a need for boundaries, and how the holidays can remind us why boundaries are so very necessary in relationships.

SNL Video referenced in the podcast.  Michelle was right, it is a 2018 video.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WvwX18oMR4

JoyGenea mentions in the show about watching someone have a nervous breakdown.  This is a very good video about a mental breakdown. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC3uUGCJpqs

Chronic, long-term health needs in your immediate circle will change your business, whether you are a solopreneur or have employees. When you’re running the ship, what happens when you aren’t available to the captain?

JoyGenea and Michelle discuss their plan B’s - how to make a backup plan for unexpected life events, so the anxiety about your business doesn’t make an emotional situation harder to handle.

Michelle and JoyGenea go into detail about their experience as a non-athlete to make taking care of their bodies a priority.  

If you are not an athlete you will totally get this conversation and realize you are not the only one having these thoughts.  If you are an athlete who works out at a gym, maybe it will help you appreciate what it takes for someone who is not to start to create this as a habit.

Michelle shares a quote she was given “Physically Fitness is being fit to do what you want to do physically.”

In the middle of this whole podcast, we entrepreneurs came up with a whole plan to take over the gym world.

We somehow segway into talking about role-playing games.

If you want to laugh and relate to non-gym people trying to figure this whole thing out you need to listen to this and share it with your friends.