The Business of Business Podcast

Don't Leave Your Career To Chance, Develop A Road Map For Success with Randi Roberts

We can't start too early on our own career development. Don't leave it up to your company or your manager or you will more than likely fall behind. Take the lead and seek development on your own for where you want to go as a professional. Be the best you can be for yourself.

About Randi

Randi Roberts, MBA, PCC, is the President of Corlin Roberts Coaching, LLC and founder of the Fulfilling Career, Happy Life community.  Randi is an Executive and Career-Life Coach, helping people love their work as they achieve their career goals.  

She has seen too many people develop solid career plans, put in tremendous effort over many years at significant sacrifice, then achieve their goal only to find that it may not be as satisfying as they hoped.  The work her clients do with Randi allows them to explore new possibilities, assess their framework against who they are and want to be, and find what truly fits. 

Before becoming a certified coach, Randi had a very successful 30+ year career as a Pharmaceutical Executive, working for both large companies and a small start-up.  She has also founded two of her own businesses.  She skillfully combines significant business leadership experience with exceptional coaching skills to help her clients love their work as they achieve their goals.

www.corlinrobertscoaching.com

www.fulfillingcareerhappylife.com

www.randiroberts.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

 

Full Transcript Below

Don't Leave Your Career To Chance, Develop A Road Map For Success with Randi Roberts

Thu, 9/9 9:53PM • 53:54

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, career, clients, sales, important, thought, company, randi, marketing, life, job, feel, assessment, business, big, absolutely, moving, little bit, day, talk

SPEAKERS

Randi, Roy Barker

Roy Barker  00:00

We are the podcast that brings a wide variety of guests to talk about a bunch of diverse topics I want to help make you as a small business solopreneur entrepreneur, help make you successful, maybe bring some things to your attention you haven't thought about and then also provide some, some guidance and some professionals that can help you with things that may be you know that you need to work on a little bit.

So, today, we've got an awesome guest with us. Randi Roberts, she is an MBA PCC is the president of Corlin Roberts Coaching, LLC, and founder of Fulfilling Career, comma Happy Life. I didn't want to run all that together. But Fulfillilng Career Happy Life, Randi as an executive and career life coach, helping people love their work as they achieve their goals. Randi, thanks so much for taking time out of your day to be with us. pleasure to be with you

Thanks for Yeah. So kind of how did you know how have you found yourself in this? I know that you had an executive career in pharmaceuticals, and you've kind of made that transition to coaching. Tell us a little bit about your background and how this came about?

Randi  01:14

Sure, happy to. Yeah, you're right. My first career as I refer to it now was in the pharmaceutical industry, I had pretty much every job in on the commercial side. So sales and marketing, starting as a sales rep working my way up the sales, training, marketing, and then got into beating business units in the US market. And the biggest jobs I had were at the VP level at a big pharma company, always focused on the US market.

But I really loved that the opportunity to bring together sales and marketing, because I think there's a lot of misses between those two functions. So that was my goal. And I got there and loved it. But the interesting thing, it was actually difficult thing for me, but looking back on it pretty meaningful was I have always known that I need to do some good. While I'm doing well, I need to be attached to a mission, and know that my work makes a difference. And that's one of the things that I really loved about pharmaceuticals was that the true the deep knowledge that my work led to positive outcomes for patients, it made a difference in patients lives. And so unfortunately, I was able to do well while I was doing that.

And so it really motivated me in the way that I need. But then after, you know, was 28 years or so, yeah, it felt like I woke up one day, and it just wasn't doing it for me anymore. I had gotten so high up in a big bureaucratic organization that I was very internally focused. A lot of my time most of my time was spent setting the course for my team getting resources within the organization, making sure that we were we were allocating our time appropriately. But it was so much of getting internal alignment between different stakeholders in the company, that I just didn't feel close enough to the patient anymore.

And, and it just didn't feel like home. Yeah. So I thought about, you know, I've worked for all these years to build my skills to build my knowledge and business, I got my MBA all these things. I didn't want to walk away from that. But I knew I needed to do it to use it in a different way. And I had always thought that being an executive coach was going to be my my next career. And I really feel like this is the rate that I'm doing the work I'm meant to be doing at this point in my life.

I'm able to use everything that I've learned in business and in leadership, and sort of pivot on that it's not walking away from it, it's taking a different twist on it, and using it now to helping other people achieve their goals. So again, I feel like I'm doing too good. I have amazing clients. It just, I'm home again. So I know I'm in the right place. Yeah, and that's an important feeling. Because,

Roy Barker  04:15

you know, and I think it's something I learned I went to work, you know, when I was younger at a at a company that everybody stayed for 30 years till they retired. And, you know, I was one of the first that I knew that kind of broke out of that and went and did something different glad I did. But you know, you kind of have to look for that as we go through the cycles and we get put into positions and like you said, if we don't feel like we're doing good as we are, you know, working it makes it difficult.

And so I think kudos to you for being in touch with yourself and being able to make that but you know, I just challenge a lot of other people. It's executive, all the way down to the frontline workers is if you're not in a place where you really feel like you're making a difference, find it because having that passion, you know, it tends to make you get out of bed a lot easier.

Randi  05:08

Oh my gosh, that is so true. And I have that conversation so often my clients. And it's interesting because when I, when I first started, went out to do executive coaching, I thought my focus was going to be helping people get to the C suite or helping people get to the VP level. Because I've been with Big Pharma, I've also been the chief Commercial Officer for small startup, I've had to have my own businesses. So I really thought that's what I was going to help people do get to the next level. And I love that work. And I do, I will always do that work. But what I've learned from my clients over the last couple of years is there is this huge need for people to love their work while they achieve their goals.

And so I had this conversation with people all the time when I developed a career satisfaction assessment that's available on my website. And it really digs into a better or has the people taking the assessment, dig in a little bit to what I identified is eight pillars important for career satisfaction, and one of them is making a difference. Yeah. And one of the things that I found right is, once you sort of experienced that, you know, you might be in a position where everything's going great, and you're working as hard as you could work, but you're energized by it.

And then all of a sudden, it feels like you wake up and you're exhausted by it, and it's no longer filling your tank, right. And once you start digging into what is missing that used to be there, it's it's tough, because once you know something, you can't unknow something. And when you realize that something's missing, you got to go after it. Yeah. And that's the that's the work that I just love to do.

Roy Barker  06:54

Yeah, we had a guy here in town locally that he was a, he was a commodities trader doing very well. I think he had a little health event. And now what he's doing, he's a mirror, your Muriel painter, mural painter, so anyway, but he was they interviewed him and did a nice story on him. And he was just saying that, you know, the money is not anywhere near what I was making, but I'm happy.

And so I think that, you know, it's been a good shift over, I don't know, the last 10 2030 years, we're kind of moving toward people realizing that in order to have real happiness, you have to be fulfilled and have a passion no matter what it is, whether you're working, you know, at a not for profit, or whether you're you know, a chief executive officer, somewhere, everybody gets it different. But you've got to, you got to really do some self evaluation to see where that is for you. If not obtain obtaining the next promotion or the next pay raise or the next stock options.

It's a hollow victory after some point, you just have to, I don't know, it's, but I feel like we see this more and more, I don't know, if you you know, if you're experiencing with the people that you work with that it just seems to be kind of a growing trend.

Randi  08:11

I absolutely see it in the people that I work with. And you know that that's the whole point of my fulfilling career happy life initiative is it is possible. And once you start looking for it, you know, you can't like I said, once you know something, you can't unknow it, once you start that search, you got to keep going with it.

And it's it one of the things that's really interesting is some of my clients will come to me because they're feeling like maybe they want to make a career change, or they might be blocked, you know, between here and the level that they're trying to get to thinking about making a change. And on the surface, it might seem like what we're going to focus on is, hmm, would you know this marketing director job be better for me? Or would I be happier in a sales position, whatever that looks like, but it's amazing how we really spend a lot of time doing some of that inner work to figure out what it is that's going to to satisfy you on those different dimensions of career satisfaction and fulfillment.

Yeah. And it it's amazing to me I'm so in awe of my clients because it doesn't take them that long sometimes to figure out you know, where that sweet spot is for them and for some people that means making some shifts in their in their focus or their balance or whatever right where they are not all of my clients have to make a big change. But some do some leave where they are and make a make a major change but it is so fulfilling to watch them dig into that and find a place it's like that's the fulfillment for me. Yeah, is watching them find it and being a small part of that. It's it's just amazing.

Roy Barker  09:57

Yeah, and I think it's Something that hit me. Okay. Well, when I first started my career, you know, I was with a big a major utility. So my the first day I walked in, I mean, I'm, what 1920 years old, and I bounce into this office and the guy introduces himself tells me his name. And he's got he says, This is no lie. He says, Hi, I'm so and so I've got seven years, four months and 12 days left, till I can retire. And I was like, Oh, my God, like, okay, so I didn't really get it at the time, I was so young, and I didn't get it.

But you know, as I was, I kind of worked through this. It's the golden handcuff rule. And, you know, it's like, trying to stay get that retirement. And so I was at, we had a new EAP person, Employee Assistance Committee, or a C, program, EAP, employee assistance program, we had a new lady that come in for our division. So she had all the managers come in one day, and she's given a talk about this is the only cut, she was new to the company, of course, all of us were lifers, we'd have been there.

You know, that was our a lot of times our first job and we'd been there, you know, anywhere from 15 to 30 years. But she said, this is the only place I've ever worked that when people introduce themselves, they tell you how long they have to retirement. And I'm like, Oh, my God. Amazing mark on the culture. Yeah, and it was like an aha moment for me. But you know, I think that was, the biggest thing for me was that I just allowed myself the permission to change my mind. And it's like, you know, we don't want you start down a path. And it's hard for me, because my parents worked at the same places for 3540 years.

My grandparents, it was very ingrained, but I think that it's okay to give yourself permission to say, you know, what, life changes, you change, companies change everything, the situation changes, it's okay to say, you know, what, I'm really not liking this anymore, I want to pursue something different. And, you know, there used to be some stats on this, that, you know, my generation, we may change jobs two or three times, and then now, like, coming into the 90s, in the 2000s, they were saying that job, workers will not only change careers, but they will change industries, like seven times across, you know, a wide range.

So I think it's good, you know, you the worker can be refreshed and renewed, you know, sometimes I worry about the, the brain drain with moving, you know, we kind of Bath time, you build up a lot of knowledge of the industry in the company, and then you leave, it hurts, you know, it can hurt both of you. But sometimes fresh ideas are good for for everybody as well.

Randi  12:55

I think that's right, I think people need to recharge their batteries in whatever way works for them. And sometimes that is learning new things. Sometimes it's like, I think about, you know, we talk about different careers and things like that, in my own career, I was with three different major pharmaceutical companies, and I had multiple jobs within each.

So some of that is how do you define it? Yeah. But I really encourage people who are, you know, see, maybe five years or so out of college, you know, get some experience, get to three years experience so that you have that track record, you know, how a company works, if you're going to work for a big company, and you have that, you know, people know that you have some longevity, and you have a bit of a track record, but then, you know, be willing to make a change, go find something that's more exciting to you this, you know, while you're building your career, this is your life, right?

And so you should, it is possible to be energized and excited about your work and know that it has meaning. And that's, you know, you should, you should go after it. So, and I think it's easy for people to take bigger risks at both ends of their career. Like in the beginning, when they just, you know, they may not have their expenses may not be as high they can risk take a risk financially, and they have so much room to grow in front of them.

And then, you know, for those of us who have been smart and done well and invested Well, you can also take risks at the other end of your career. Yeah. So yeah, it's just, you know, have faith in yourself, if you know that you're building your skills, and you're focused on something that really adds value. Have faith in yourself.

Roy Barker  14:40

Yeah. And that's important because you know, what I tell younger, younger people is that do things before you have a family because you know, all of a sudden when you have, you know, a wife and a child that depend on you, and, you know, insurance and all of that. It makes the stakes a lot higher to you know, make a change and sometimes We are more tempted to stay in that position. Sometimes where they say, no the devil, no one

The devil is part of an area, something like that, that you know, even though we it's not what we're you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So you know, we make some decisions out of those places that we normally wouldn't which something else I always found lately is I had a guest that he said he was international sales, and he worked some in Latin America, and he had a chance to take like, six months off, and he went and did some kind of a tour to Africa.

And the advice that he got, and he was probably in his late 20s, early 30s, recounting the story, but he said that, you know, people said, this is the end of your career, you're killing yourself, just so you know, that. And, but he was like, Hey, you know, what I just he had been successful. And he's I just wanted, I just decided I was gonna take a chance. But he said, the interesting thing that when he came back from that, when he started putting in applications, he said that people didn't care about his education, and they didn't care about his former work.

Everybody wanted to talk about his trip. And I think that's an interesting note to make to people is that if you, you have to be strategic and say you can't just doesn't work for everybody all the time. But I think that if you do that strategically, if you can explain that time off, people are a lot more interested in the other stuff that's going on in your life than just your skills. And those are the the other part of that is I think those are good employers, that you probably want to seek out to that they more interested in the whole person.

Randi  16:52

Yeah, I think that's, that's very true. And it's, it's interesting to see, you said a couple of things that were really interesting there, which is this guy, followed his passion to do something that was really enriching to him and his life. And people found that intriguing. Like, if you're going for a job, and you look just on paper, you look just like everybody else, they're gonna go for that thing that's different. They're gonna want to know that about you.

But something else you said, right, you talked about it as the story and I talked to clients about a lot, which is if you have those strategic reasons for why you've made moves, then you don't necessarily have to take the conventional path and go straight from here to there in the way other people do. So it's helpful to think about it upfront, how will you communicate this break in your career or changing from one industry to the other people do find that interesting.

When I was a VP at a pharma company, I would have a lot of people come in to interview with me, and I could see on the resumes, you know, what they had done, I often knew their company, I usually do somebody who knew them, like, you know, there were ways of validating what they were saying. And what I used to ask them to do is talk to me about how they got from place to place, how did they manage their career, because that told me a lot about who they are, and how seriously they took themselves?

You know, were they strategic? How did they apply things about their life? And it just it told me so much more about them than going through what was your accomplishment on this job? And that that's important too. But these other things are what differentiate us?

Roy Barker  18:37

Yeah. And it's so important, you know, I'll step back and say, you know, talk to kids that are still in college about this a lot is you know, for the parent site, you need to make good grades you need to pass need to be able to get out in a decent amount. You know, like a you know, my sister I think she's you got to get off the payroll.

Yeah. Looks like a you know, we always joke about my sister she went to a major university here in the state has like the, you know, the president of the university I think he called my mom and said, She's taking everything in the catalog. We're gonna have to you know, give her a gold retirement ring and she's gonna move on. She is a professional student for a long time.

But anyway, is that while the grades are important, and she's got stories to tell about you Oh my god, yeah, yeah, that's why I don't have her on for a guest I can protect myself. But is that you need to get out and have those other experiences besides just the college and that's what you know, really sets you apart from everybody else is the the volunteer work that you may have done or the clubs and things like that the extracurriculars.

So it's very important to be well rounded. Sometimes we get so focused on Well, we just want this resume that if if it's a really forward thinking employer, they're going to want to look way beyond that and see, you know, how does all this tie together? in how you can, you know, bring some life and help this company out? It's important.

Randi  20:05

Yeah, absolutely. It's important. And it's important on a couple of levels. It's important in terms of making yourself most attractive and most marketable, but it's also this is your life, do things that you love, right? You know, we can't love everything we do. But we should love at least someone. And you know, there, you can choose activities. For example, there are people who are very passionate about sports, maybe competitive sports.

When I was in sales, I used to love to hire competitive athletes, because they had such tenacity, and they knew how to work through difficult times and things like that. There are absolutely ways to take things that you're passionate about, and make them relevant to whatever job whatever company you're pursuing. So endure gonna love what you're doing. Yeah, exactly. Okay.

Roy Barker  20:58

Yeah. One thing I'm gonna talk about for a minute, that's really not coaching related, but something you said in the very beginning that I don't hear enough, but the the marketing and sales working together is such an important aspect, because they've got in order to enrich our sales, we have to have good marketing. And then I think in order to have good marketing, we have to have good feedback from sales.

And, you know, we, I was on an episode The other day, and we were talking that there was a wall, you know, the sales and marketing were operating in silos. And, you know, they were just saying that marketing was doing all these great campaigns. But the people that were talking to the sales people were not their customers. And we it's an out, it's, it's kind of an extreme case, but the one that I use that I said, well, it's kind of like, if you sell an adult beverage, and marketing is doing an awesome job, they just drove 1000 people over to the sales department, but they all happen to be 12 year olds, not that, you know, it's not the traffic that you're looking for.

And so that is where I just feel, you know, when when it gets too big, where they silo them, and there becomes less communication between the two, I think it is so detrimental to both sides of the equation. Now. I do have to say, as in sales, you know, sometimes we we whine and cry that if you sent me 10 good people, I will say you sent me, you know, you sent me nine good people out of 10. I'll be like, well, you sent you know, this one guy, you know, we kind of seize on that outlier, that he might have said it may be a little tougher to close. So I think it needs to be good, honest feedback. We all have to hold up our end of the bargain. But just let's touch on that for a minute. Before we get back on the on the coaching.

Randi  22:51

Yeah, absolutely. Now, it's something that I feel strongly about. Because I've spent during my time in pharmaceuticals, I spent almost the same amount of time over in the sales side is in the marketing side. And I did see huge waste, it's it's almost like the relay race where you're passing the baton from one render to the next. And that's where it gets dropped is between sales and marketing very often. And I tend to think that, from a marketing perspective, my mantra for my teams always was, let's do fewer things and do them better.

Because sometimes it can be we're doing all of these things. And you know, that that actually can work against you, because sales may not be able to implement it all in that way. Marketing has got to do an excellent job of listening to sales, but also showing the way in terms of, you know, what's, what's the research that's been done? What's the rationale behind certain things and giving enough of an explanation, so that what they're recommending and resourcing makes sense to the sales team?

Yeah. So it, I think, in the end, if you can dial the listening way up and align objectives, you know, on the on the part that's on the part of the senior management of the company, if the objectives are aligned, really create that win win. Yeah, it's, it's an awful lot easier.

Roy Barker  24:16

Yeah. Yeah, we all thought, Yeah, I just think we all have to remember, at the end of the day, we're all on the same team, because all of a sudden, you know, I see these rifts between them where it's like, you know, marketing is a competitive entity, not competing for dollars. But, you know, for, I guess for the win, it's like, well, we've done everything and then sales is like Yeah, but I had to have four conversations with that guy before I could close you know, a, we want sales wants you to send them the one close.

For all they do is like, like, you know, they just faxed over the paperwork and it was done. So you know, I do get that but I just feel like it's this is in relationships, it's in work. It's within departments. It's what even people within department It's the communication, we just have to have rational communication, rational and realistic communication between the two groups in order to make them both function at the highest possible level, there's just no way around it. And like I said, it's unfortunate, because you see, you know, when a company's small, you know, they got one guy, they're doing sales and marketing.

And then once this grows, all of a sudden, they just, it seems like they drift apart. So I think it's important to really think that process through of how, how you can structure where they're not like at each other, but they are working with each other. Yeah,

Randi  25:39

yeah, absolutely. I think it's really critical, because there's a lot of wasted energy and missed opportunities in that regard. So it's it. If it was easy, it would be it would be a problem that had been solved. And I've been, you know, in pharmaceuticals. And while I'm not in pharmaceuticals anymore, I do have a lot of clients that are in pharma and other sales and or marketing in other industries. And yeah, that problem continues.

Roy Barker  26:06

Yeah. Well, so let's get back to the coach. And for just a minute, what are what are you seeing right now with your, with your client, your current clients, your new clients? Because, you know, I feel like we've had this thing where people, maybe they've had to go in business for themselves, or they've had to increase the side hustle in order just to put groceries on the table, there's been so many layoffs and turmoil out there that some respects, I feel like people are having maybe kind of come up against the point to make a decision. Do I continue on this road as an entrepreneur? Or do I, you know, go ahead and take this job offer? Is any of that manifested itself already?

Randi  26:52

Yeah, it definitely is. And I mean, that's a huge question. You know, for someone who has a career like mine, where I was with big companies for so many years, and now run my own coaching business and entrepreneurial position.

27:07

You

Randi  27:09

You see the, when you're out on your own, the risk is much greater. And it's all on you. So there are times when it's very tempting to go back to do a job. And there are times when that's absolutely the right thing to do. Yeah, I think what it comes down to is really knowing, knowing yourself, knowing your priorities, knowing the realities for you, like you mentioned earlier, there are times when, you know, before you have kids, you can do certain things.

And, you know, right now just take a look at what are the realities of your situation, what is the what are your obligations, right? And, and then you make the decision that's right for you right now. And if your dream is to be an entrepreneur, and you also have to go back, if the right choice for you, is to go back to something that's a little safer. For now, that doesn't mean that has to be forever, right? If you're really clear on what the motivation is for you. At that time, you could sort of plan ahead. Yeah, a lot of my clients will do things like, you know, this is the right thing for me to do for this three to five year period.

But some of the work that I do with my clients, right is about and these, these are folks that, you know, maybe they're in their 30s and 40s. We'll talk about what do they want their ideal retirement to be right? And then sort of work back from there of, you know, what do I need to be doing today? To set me up for what I want that to look like, in 20 years? Right. And so, you know, it's bringing that kind of strategic thinking to your own life and to your own career. Yeah, and

Roy Barker  28:47

it's something that I would talk about, because, you know, early in my career, like I said, I went to work for a big company, I thought that was, you know, I was following my mom's footsteps, she worked at the same company, then it's like, you know, you just kind of go there, and you show up every day. And then you wake up at one point, and it's like, you were so kind of hung up in your job and your life, you really didn't think about the career, the path, where do we need to go? What do we need to do?

So, you know, I just challenge everybody, whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you work for a big company, is to really think about taking control of your future as much as you can, you know, having said that control is an illusion, because nobody would have thought there would have been a thing called COVID. You know, back in 2000, that team so there are things that we don't control. But I don't think we can map out a plan where we at least have a little bit of direction that we're going to be working on.

Randi  29:44

Yeah, yeah, I think you're exactly right. And look, this year has been a huge learning opportunity on every level. You know, there's just, there was so much that was out of our control this last year, but things are starting to come back. I mean, if you look at bay From where we are right now, more than 50% of the US adult population is vaccinated, I'm starting to see the world starting to spin again, a lot of my clients weren't directly impacted because they have the kinds of jobs that they could do remotely.

But now we're in a position where people are beginning to plan for transitioning back to being in an office, at least some of the time. And so the dynamics are really shifting in that regard. And one of the things that I have found so interesting, an impact of the last year is, people really are thinking, thinking about what is best for them thinking about what's most fulfilling in their lives.

And a lot of that is the life and death situations that many of us, you know, saw people close to us, or at least people you know, in our community space. saw a lot of things happen out of our control with jobs going away, or things change, if it makes you think it makes you want to follow that path, it is more fulfilling, as well as setups and contingencies for yourself. Yeah. So I think we all sort of have, you know, if you know what motivates you, and you know, you sort of have that North Star for yourself. Yeah.

And for a lot of people it is knowing that their work makes a difference. That kind of gives you a bit of guidance. But that doesn't mean that it's a direct path between here and there. Sometimes you have to take a few twists and turns along the way.

Roy Barker  31:33

Yeah. And you know, you mentioned that, what have you seen? Oh, no, I was just gonna say you mentioned that the, you know, that life and death thing, and I think it's important, I guess me, you know, I'm older. So you think about these things more. But think about, even though we want to make a plan, and we want to look at the future, we have to really be happy, or try to be happy now.

Or as soon as we can, if we're not weak, because we can't, we got to just be careful about giving our life away, you know, saying I'll trade the next five years, and then this is going to have been and then I'll be in a better place. Because the unfortunate part is sometimes that five years never comes. And it's, you know, it's devastating to talk about, but I just, the older I get, the more I look at every day is just a gift. It's not only a gift to wake up, but it's a gift to be functioning because, you know, you see people hurt in accidents, like we had this, I guess it was back in February, before we had the big ice storm, we had this crazy, this craziest accident on one of our freeways that you can imagine.

I mean, it was like a 60 or 70 car pileup. There were 18 wheelers that were jumping over cars and crushing them, it was devastating. And I think there were about six or eight people that lost their life in that, and a few others that were permanently crippled. So anyway, it's just you just never know, the trip to work, the trip home, things can happen. And so, you know, I just, I feel we have to balance with the planning for the future. But also, you know, let's make sure that we're trying to get some of that happiness in our life fulfilling today as well. So it's hard. It's not, there's not easy, not easy, for sure. But

Randi  33:21

now, it's interesting, because that's exactly the conversation I have with a lot of clients. And if they're with big companies, there might be really well established career paths. They pick where they want to go, and you know what steps to get there. And they may be told, okay, for the next two years, you need to get this kind of experience in order to do that may be great advice. But that's two years of your life that's going on while you're doing what you're told to do. So it's a bigger decision than just trying to get from here to there. Yeah. So but it's, it's what makes it interesting.

Roy Barker  33:58

Yeah, we were. And that's, that was part of the catalyst, not only the the EAP manager, when she was talking about that, she just said, You know what, we're free to go do whatever that and then the next thing was, we, we were doing a lot of mergers and acquisitions at this time. And so what they were asking where they were asking us, well, you, you know, we need you to go to this new acquisition, typically across the country for two years.

And then, you know, we'll bring you back. Well, luckily, I was there at the right time, where I saw some people that they sent away, but they never came back. So, you know, that was, that was a thing for me to be like, you know, it's just not worth taking the chance. I had some other options that came up. And so I was, it was a blessing for me. You know, I think it was great. I worked around a lot of good people learn a lot of good things as a young person, but you know, it was time for me to, to move on.

So anyway, so but one thing you mentioned too, was remote work. So let me ask you this, and get I'll get your opinion, but also, you know, some of the people that you work with is, is there going to be resistance telling people that we need you to show back up at the office? Again?

Randi  35:12

I think it's a mixed bag. Absolutely, there are people that have absolutely thrived on it. And there are people for whom it's been really difficult. I mean, I've run my own business out of my home office. So for me, not a lot changed. But for a lot of folks that were used to doing face to face work that might have been used to a lot of business travel, to all of a sudden spend all of their time on a screen was a really tough transition.

And one of the things that I found really suffered during this time was networking. Yes, because that's the kind of thing like if you're, if you're at a meeting, sometimes it's the time going into the meeting room. And when the meetings breaking up, and you get a little chat with, you know, senior leadership or that kind of thing. All of that went away. And so my clients that are in those senior positions we would work on, what could they do to make sure that people stayed engaged and didn't miss a beat? Yeah. So some of that, I think people, some people have adapted, I think there are a lot of people that are really looking forward to the opportunity to go back to actually being with others.

I don't think that will ever go back to the way it was, in terms of people being in an office five days a week, I think there's going to be a lot more flexibility, which is great. Because there's a lot of jobs that can be done there. I mean, many companies did not lose a beat. And in fact, their bottom lines may have improved because they had so much less travel expenses, for example, right? So there's a lot of companies that have figured out how they can do it without expensive office space, or at least without so much of it.

Because people if they go into the office, maybe it'll be a day or two a week. Yeah. I think there'll be, I don't see, us going back to the kind of business travel that used to happen before. I think you know that people are going to be a lot more open minded. And from a company's perspective, you save money moving people around, you open up your opportunities in terms of your talent base. I mean, similar to the way I work, I have always seen my clients either on the phone or on zoom.

And so I'm not limited geographically, I happen to live in New Jersey, I'm not limited geographically to people who I can drive and meet with, right. And I think there's a lot of companies that are recognizing their talent pool doesn't have to be located in one place. Yeah. So it's, it's gonna be exciting to see how we carve this new normal out, but it is not going to look the way it did before. You know, in in 2019, for example,

Roy Barker  37:48

yeah, I'm like you, I think it opens that talent base up that, you know, we finally learned that we don't all have to be in the same city, which is a good thing. And then the travel. And as much as I love to travel, you know, it does, I think it just gets it's gotten to where it, it was wearing me out. And so I'm loving this, because, you know, I can talk to four or five people in a day that it used to take me a lot longer to get there now that you know, it's an in person, relationship building, and just, you know, the feel you get of being in the same room. That can be a challenge to try to overcome that. But I feel like there's ways to work around that. But

Randi  38:31

yeah, but I think, you know, one, one thing that really works is if you can do the face to face, initially, when you're getting to know each other. And then once you do know each other, the more remote engagement, if it's on the phone, or more likely on a screen is entirely different, because you already know each other. Exactly.

Roy Barker  38:51

Yeah, the well, I lost my thought there. But anyway, well go. I wish you had brought up earlier that there are eight pillars that you look at for is it for career success. Did you say that?

Randi  39:07

Well, it's something that I've essentially learned from my clients, I identified eight pillars of career satisfactory. And that's the assessment that's available on my website that people get.

Roy Barker  39:17

Okay. Okay. Can you just hit the high points for those? Are those eight for Shrek quick?

Randi  39:23

Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, there, there's no real surprises. I mean, we've talked a bit about making a difference is one of them. And that looks different to different people that might be making a difference in the lives of others, making a difference, knowing that they're making a difference for their company.

So in some way, knowing that what they do matters. A lot of times, the connections are really important. People may not think of this one, but the connections that they have with others, it might be with customers it might be with peers, it might be with senior leadership depend On this situation, but those kinds of connections, I mean, for any of us who have left companies, left industries, the people, it's the people you take with you, yes.

And those connections are really important. That's, that's how you, you know, networking is everything these days, right. And so those connections that you take with you the difference that you make to others, and that, you know, the help that you give to others, and what you get back from them, those things are really, really important. And one of the things that a lot of people don't think about in terms of these pillars of satisfaction, one of them is fun. Yeah, and that's a consistent theme among my, among my clients.

And really, kind of the way, the way I think about that, is it? Look, we all work hard. Yeah. Right. Is that work? Is that experience filling your tank are draining your tank? Right? And that's if you're no matter how hard you're working? I mean, there have been weeks when I remember working so hard. It was it. I just didn't think I had any more to give. And I still had energy at the end of the week. Yeah. And, and that's fun. Yeah, that's, that's what that is. That's fun. And that, that makes a big difference between, you know, situations that are really fulfilling and ones that aren't. Yeah, there's a couple of examples for you.

Roy Barker  41:24

Yeah, yeah. And I'm just gonna stop the kind of interrupt you there for a minute. Because I find this interesting, like, if me, and you were coming, coming on to a business zoom meeting, before just me saying, Okay, I need you to go to the tab for spreadsheet. Number four, we're gonna go over these numbers, I like to have that personal, you know, how was your weekend, how's your weekend going?

You know, if I know that you have kids, you know, Java baseball game this week, having that the interaction because what I've noticed in some groups, and I don't know if this is age related, or more, if it's company culture, I haven't really put my finger on it yet. But there's just no personal interaction. And I've, I've always found, especially when I had people working for me, I need to know who they are, you know, you kind of have to get the feel how they do and to stay up with them. But I just find it. You know, trying to interject a little bit of comedy, a little humor in with all these zoom meetings, and I find that some people are just like, it's it's foreign. It's a foreign concept. But I think we've got to do that. We've got to humanize it. Yeah.

Randi  42:38

Yeah, I have seen that as well. And I think, you know, it can be tricky. Because humor can be risky, and asking people about their personal lives. Like, I would accept that in the way we were just talking about it, you know, you care about me, and you want to know about me, and you want to make that connection. There are people that aren't comfortable talking about it, or whatever. So it's a sensitive line.

And you have to, I think, what you do is you create the invitation, and if people want to step in, they can Yeah, but make it okay, that they don't have to, you know, if they're not comfortable with it, but yeah, I think, you know, that kind of thing makes a big difference. And, you know, one of the things that I find people talk about work life balance, right. So, and those lines are blurred more than ever now. Because we're all working where we live, right? I don't think of it as work life balance. Like I like that concept. I don't really like the term.

Yeah. Because it's, it's not working in your life. It's all your life. Right. And so I agree with you, I find it really motivating and most people that I've worked with do as well to be able to bring some of themselves into their work and not have to feel like it's one or the other. No, it's it's your life. Right. Right. So Bravo to you for making that happen.

Roy Barker  43:55

Yeah, it just, you know, like, even emails, instead of just, hey, I need this. It's like, you know, just I try to take the time to say, Hey, I hope your day is going good Hope you're having a good week or trying to bring up something if we talked about something not too long ago. Just bring it up just to kind of, to humanize it, take it take a little bit of an effort to do that. Because I think it builds relationships, when, when people know that you really care about them, they are willing to do more for you. It's just I don't know it just to me, it makes the world go round.

And that was the way I was brought up. Yeah, you know, and I learned this. It's funny how I learned at an early age, I had a good friend of mine, and we had both just gotten married, but we still played golf and fished and did you know, stuff together? And he told me one time we were out doing some things like you know, whenever you call the house, I can't think of her name. But he said, you know, instead of just asking for me, maybe you just asked her how it's going with her. She just felt very excluded from the relationship.

Yeah. Yeah, and so anyway, after that, I was like, You know what, that that's a good policy for really everything is to, you know, just kind of have that conversation and she was good, you know, hey, how's your day going? How are the kids? You know, What are y'all doing with this or that? And so, anyway, I've kind of carried that message with me for a long time. Because, you know, people, we need to make people feel important, not like they're just, you know, just another tool that we're trying to use to get something out of them.

Randi  45:27

Yeah, absolutely. And the beauty of it is, if you genuinely care about them, you're sincerely expressing that. Yeah. You know, one of the things that's interesting now, in thinking about your example of your friend, you, you don't have that opportunity. Now, if you call your friend you're calling on their cell phone, nobody else has never thought about you never. I heard that my daughter's 25. She and her friends were talking, they don't know what it's like to pick up a call that's intended for somebody else.

Roy Barker  45:55

I never thought, you know, I just gave away my age didn't know, I gave away what time frame that happened in?

Randi  46:03

Yeah, no, but I can relate to it just, you know, when you have those moments, and you think about it, it makes it even more important now to make that effort to include others. And like, it was obvious that your friend, his wife, and her involvement in this friendship was really important to him. Yeah. And so you making that effort makes the difference.

It's, you know, what it is, it's knowing for the people that are in our lives, and that are important to us, whether it's our friends, or our co workers, know what's important to them, right? And show interest in that. Yeah. And, you know, it's, it's about being human and bringing your heart to what you do. And there's hopefully that's not a big effort for people.

Roy Barker  46:44

Yeah. And there's something I heard the other day, you know, people used to always say, live by the golden rule, do unto others as you want them to do under you, but somebody brought up and I call it the Platinum rule, it's like, Do unto others the way they want to be done, you know, just because I like something or want this, that doesn't mean everybody that surrounds me. So we need to be in tune enough to try to source that. What is that? You know, what do people want? Around Us? Um, yeah,

Randi  47:13

it's a great point. And the thing, too, is we can't expect others to read our minds. Yeah. So sometimes just like in a, in a personal relationship, in a professional relationship, it's okay to, to make a request or to make a suggestion or that kind of thing, if there's something that you need that you're not getting. Yeah. You know, and you're not going to have that fit with everybody. But there may be some things you can do to try and improve that a little bit.

Roy Barker  47:39

Yeah, I know, we're, we're in way long. I've just got one more question maybe we could just touch on briefly, is the importance of doing more assessment test on ourselves. Who are we? What do we want out of this? Because I'm one of these that I like the analytics, I love spreadsheets and numbers and gathering data. But I also like a little bit of that human interaction, the selling, I like to, you know, try to figure out marketing and things like that.

But there are some that, you know, they either love spreadsheets, and they don't care if they ever had to talk to another human individual that would suit them fine. There's other people that if they never have to see a spreadsheet, again, their life, they would be immensely happy, they want to just talk to people. So kind of tell us a little bit about the importance of figuring out who we are and what we really need.

Randi  48:30

I think it's hugely important. It's, it's really, you know, there was a time when I thought coaching was about helping people develop specific skills, and that's part of it, absolutely. But really, where the need is, is knowing ourselves a little bit better, and understanding where that fit is in creating it. So, for example, you know, some of the assessments that you're talking about, you know, kind of can split you up into introverted or extroverted, those kinds of things.

Some of the tools that I use with my clients Now, something that I do with almost every client at this point is about us assessment. So that you can take, you know, stop and take inventory of what are the things that are most important to you right now. And that changes throughout our lives, like our core values may not change tremendously, but how they show up and what we need at different times in our lives kind of gets dialed up and down.

Yeah. And so I'll even do a values assessment of clients. I had a client recently that I worked with for for four years. Now. We did it again, to see what may have changed in that interim because we change and so it's valuable to to sort of stop and take a look at that. So I'm a big believer in assessments and a lot of different levels. And that's why I have that career satisfaction assessment that I developed, it's less quantitative.

It's really more of a starting point for people to think about what may be missing or what opportunities there may have. And and for anyone who's interested in that they can find it on my website. Which is Randi Roberts R a n d i Roberts comm under the resources section, so right, if you check it out yourself, let me know what you think.

Roy Barker  50:08

Yeah, I definitely will. Randi, thanks so much for giving me so much time. I do appreciate it. Before we get away, what is a tool or a habit? What is something that you use in your daily life that you feel adds a lot of value?

Randi  50:25

Yeah, that's a great question. I think I have a couple of sort of guiding principles, and one that I think of as a tool that really, really does help me is when, when I start to get when my stress level starts to go up about anything, and look running my own business, there's a lot of things, it's all on me. So there's a lot of balls that I need to keep moving, in order to continue to be successful. And so when something starts to get stressful, or I find myself getting wrapped up in, you know, around the axle on something, I really do, stop and ask myself, is this something that I can control?

Or is this something that I can influence? And if so, then figure out what that action is, and taking an action and moving in some way can really break that stress? But if the answer is no, no, it's not in my control, there's nothing I can influence about it, I really do let it go. Because all that's gonna do is create more Nxd for me, and hold me in place where if I could release that, I really can move forward in a way that that's more productive. So it didn't happen overnight. But I've gotten pretty good at it. That's good.

Roy Barker  51:37

Yeah, no, that's definitely something that, you know, we can spend a lot of time and energy fussing over things that we've got no control over. And that just going the way they're gonna go. So good advice. Good advice. All right, Ryan, I know you just said your website. But tell us again, kind of Yeah, who is your client? Who do you like to work with? How can you help them? And then of course, give us your website how to reach you one more time?

52:01

Absolutely, I'm happy to. So I have two pieces of business, I do the executive coaching of folks who feel that they have an area of skill development in order to move forward love doing that work. But I also do a lot of work with people who maybe are mid career, who are feeling less motivated for their work than they did, something's missing that they used to have, or they feel that there's an opportunity for them to be enjoying it more.

And so we really do dig into what's missing. That's where that career satisfaction assessment started. So and I am happy to offer a complimentary session where I can meet with someone who thinks they may be the right client for me, and we can talk about our backgrounds and see if there's a fit and see where we go from there. And there's no obligation beyond that. Okay, so if people want to reach me, it's through my website, Randi Roberts.com there's a section you can contact me, or you can send me an email directly at Randi R A N D I @fulfillingcareerhappylife.com.

Roy Barker  53:02

Okay, yeah. And I'll be sure to put all that in the show notes as well. Randi, thanks again for your time. It's been a pleasure speaking with you a lot of great information, y'all reach out, see how Randi can help you in your career. And, you know, even if you think you're doing good, at least reach out maybe you want to, you know, kind of plan a little bit for the future never hurts to you know, always be thinking a little bit ahead as well. It's an investment in ourselves.

Exactly. Alright, that's gonna do it for another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. You can find us of course at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com. We are on all the major social media platforms as well as all the podcast platforms, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Spotify. If we're not on one that you listen to please reach out I'd be glad to add. Alright, until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.corlinrobertscoaching.com

www.fulfillingcareerhappylife.com

www.randiroberts.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

Great Leaders Are Developed, Not Born. Start Your Journey of Self Development Today with Sherri McManus and Lou Everett

Are you a leader or want to be a leader? This is an awesome episode to give a listen. Great leaders are developed not necessarily born. You have to work at honing your skills. Some of the more important ones are communication, listening to understand, empathy, patience, confidence, creativity, and many more.

About Sherri and Lou

Lou and Sherri of The Lou Everett Group are known for their highly effective coaching, teaching, and speaking on the importance of personal growth and how it impacts our Influence as a Leader. With more than four decades of combined experience in training, coaching, and leadership, they also have received training and mentoring from well-known and successful coaches and teachers from the likes of Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, John Maxwell, Jack Canfield, Paul Martinelli, and are Certified Leadership Coaches and Corporate Trainers. 

The Lou Everett Group

“Our mission is to Transform Today’s Leaders by serving people and businesses through leadership coaching, corporate training, empowerment speaking, and personal development.”

As seasoned leadership coaches and trainers with over four decades of combined experience we love serving people and companies throughout their growth transitions. Regardless if you are a solopreneur or at the C-Suite level, Leadership is Influence. Nothing more, nothing less.

We are your thinking partner offering dedicated and customized continuity plans that are designed to, not only resolve your current struggle, but provide proactive support, training and accountability with the goal of avoiding negative impacts on the growth of your business. Our clients have experienced measurable return, increased productivity, and up to 200% revenue growth.    

Our website is https://loueverettgroup.com/

Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/theloueverettgroup/

LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-lou-everett-group/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/theloueverettgroup

www.loueverettgroup.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

Full Transcript Below

Great Leaders Are Developed, Not Born. Start Your Journey of Self Development Today with Sherri McManus and Lou Everett

Thu, 9/9 9:54PM • 58:39

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, leader, leadership, business, manager, grow, develop, metrics, employees, company, lead, coaches, core values, person, point, influence, team, role, drove, work

SPEAKERS

Sherri, Lou, Lou and Sherri, Roy Barker

 

Roy Barker  00:00

Your host Roy, of course, this is the podcast that brings you a wide variety of guests that can talk about a lot of diverse topics and today is no different. We have some awesome guests available. Lou Everett and Sherry McManus have taken time out of their day. They are with the Lou Everett group and are known for their highly effective coaching, teaching and speaking on the importance of personal growth and how it impacts influence and influences our leaders. With more than four decades of combined experience in training, coaching and leadership.

They have also received training and mentoring from well known successful coaches and teachers from the likes of Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, john Maxwell, john Kant, excuse me, jack Canfield, and Paul Martin le, and our soul certified leadership coaches in corporate trainers. Their mission is to transform today's leaders by serving people and businesses through leadership coaching, corporate training, empowerment speaking and personal development, Lou and Sherry, thanks for taking time out of your day to be with us. certainly appreciate it.

Lou and Sherri  01:08

You bet. Thank you for having us.

Roy Barker  01:11

You bet. Yeah, this is such an important topic to talk about. And, you know, we had a little pre show, and we've talked in the past about this is that, you know, leadership is so important. And there are people who are born leaders, I think, but for most of us, you know, it takes work we and hopefully we even if you're good, you always want to be growing and learning as you go. So, before we get too deep, though, I want y'all to tell us kind of how you how you ended up in the space and where you came, you know, your background?

Lou and Sherri  01:45

Sure, that's a loaded question. Yeah. Yes. Okay, okay.

Lou  01:52

I'll start with me, as with my background, little bit, okay. So we both come from various background varying backgrounds, but always tended to be in the leadership space in some fashion. My leadership journey started when I was 17 years old. And I had got my first assistant manager role and thought that I was the big shot. And so since then, we've I've learned a lot failed a lot and had to relearn how to be a successful leader.

And so over the years, I've had roles as as middle management, upper management, executive leadership levels, go in corporate, and have learned a whole heck of a lot, not just from the experience, but from what I've learned by the mentoring and coaches that that I have engaged with over the years, to help me mold into to who I am today. I will say one thing you mentioned about the born leaders, and we're from the thought that there is no such thing, it's a myth, that we have some characteristics of no young when you're born or as you grow, that you may have successful leadership qualities, perhaps.

But as you said, leadership is learned and successful, you're supposed to learn because it's all about influence. It's nothing else. It's really all about how we influence one another in order to accomplish a certain mission right now. But that's kind of in a nutshell, where my background, it all started with my mother. And I was about 12 years old were in instead of being let me listen to my own music in the car.

And I wasn't I was in my own tunes. My mom had different ideas. So she's dropping some drop me off at school or friends or what have you. Instead, it would be cassette tapes of Tony Robbins and Zig Ziglar. And then those, those powerful individuals. And so right from a young age, she started to kind of infiltrate my mind on the idea of what real successful strong leadership and personal growth.

Roy Barker  03:47

That's awesome.

Lou  03:47

So yeah, I'm very lucky. Yeah, very, very fortunate. So that's a little tidbit of me. And so of course, that led us up into where we are today together. But that's another side of the story. That's where I, that's where we come where I come from. And then I met Sherry in 2005. And four months after we met, we started our own business together. Oh, nine 2005. Our first business, I don't recommend it.

Right after you've been going out for a minute, but yeah, it will certainly make or break and determine whether or not it's going to work. Yeah, we real quickly that we would actually work very well together in business as well. And so we've been there because we are a husband, wife duo and and so we realized quickly that we could use each other's strengths to meet to maximize the potential and success of our business. Right.

Roy Barker  04:33

I think that's awesome.

Sherri  04:35

And then mind just an a nutshell. You know, my, my mom always shares a story when I was little, and we had neighborhood kids growing up, used to play outside, and she would walk outside the picture window and here I was a littlest one out of all of them and telling everyone what to do, and what game we're gonna play. I definitely had some characteristics and then as I go, older, I found myself in, in those type of leadership or influential type of positions, and it just kind of fell into it. People just looked up to me, they gravitate toward that gravitated towards me.

So as I got older, I definitely leaned into that definitely fell into some traps and some myths of what leadership is and positional leadership. Because again, you know, you surround yourself of who you think you should be surrounding yourself with, and you fall into some, some traps. And then, you know, as you get more aware, then you realize, oh, okay, this is actually something better. You know, we, I think as we grow up, you get into certain jobs, and you're, we're quickly to point out of what, what not what we don't want in a in a leader or a boss, right?

And you're just like, this is I'm never gonna do that, you know, this is, you know, we're quickly to do that. And then it's far and few between when you could say, wow, I had a great manager, Boss leader. And I really want to emulate some of those characteristics. Yeah, so. So yeah, so just kind of like led up into into that.

Roy Barker  06:06

A couple things I was gonna comment on is first off the husband and wife, you know, my Terry, she's my boss in cheek, it's nice when you can find something that you enjoy doing. And your partner in does it in likes it, you know, it's just, to me, it's great, because we're always talking about things and she understands what's going on.

So if it's hard, it can be hard. So I will say if it works for you, there's really nothing better than in life than having that all wrapped up together. And then I'm gonna send my kids an apology letter, because instead of listening to Tony Robbins, you know, we were listening to Led Zeppelin, then the who, so maybe, maybe I'll tell him I see now. But let's

Lou  06:53

say I was my mother was in the car. My dad, it was a different story. I started listening to some music, right? Yeah.

Roy Barker  07:01

Let's talk about leadership. You know, we talked a little bit about some leadership deficits. And I think this pandemic may have shined the light and brought out the good qualities in some and the bad. And other one thing I can think about is the control factor, with people being at home, and I'm sure that's an issue. But before we even get into that, I think it's talking about being communicative having good communication. And then also, standards, like we talked a little about, you know, making sure that people know what their role and their importance is in the position. So we can set them up for success and not set them up for failure.

Sherri  07:43

Right, like, Yeah, because expectations Definitely, yeah, yeah.

Lou  07:47

Yeah, I think it's important, right? I mean, if you look at it, it's about trust. It really boils down to that, and leadership, doesn't it? If you're if you're managing and leading people, it's it comes down to another trust and empathy and understanding.

Roy Barker  08:01

Yeah, the trust is a big one, because and this gets back to hiring, you know, I do a lot of work with retention. And so we can have all the ping pong tables and frappuccino machines and all of that. But if we make bad hires, that's not going to cure the bad hire, whether it's attitude, skill, whatever. So, you know, making those good hires, we need to hire people we trust.

And if we have an issue with that, from the very beginning, and sometimes it's not even about the candidate, or the new hire, sometimes it's more about us as the manager, and it's hard, you know, smaller businesses. We're used to doing everything ourselves and touching everything. So sometimes that trust and letting go can be a lot more difficult.

Lou  08:45

Sure. Yeah, sure. It can be and see, it's not even well, even that we need to trust our employees or the Trinity, but at the same time, it needs to go the other way around. Yeah. We need to build a culture where employees trust us. Please don't trust the leadership. Yeah, you're gonna see some serious deficit on that side of it to performance retention, issues, things like that, which then, of course, affects the bottom line when you're spending all this money on rehire and retraining.

Yeah. And just another interesting topic we can get into because a lot of a lot of companies tend to ignore the retention issue sometimes until it's on fire. Yeah. But it's the point where they've lost so much already. Yeah. And they want to figure out what it is and why and most of the time they blame it on the wrong thing. Yeah, unfortunately.

Roy Barker  09:40

Well, and that's, you know, the five deadliest words in businesses. We've always done it this way. And I you know, because I come out, you know, I've done a lot of work in the senior living industry, and it's typically hot, very high turnover. That's what even got me to even understand, you know, my background is I work for a huge huge public utility back in the day. And I was I was at this company for almost 20 years and went to night school and that it sparked me to, you know, take some other direction.

But I was the very first person that I knew at this company of 20 years that ever left, because I didn't even know what turnover was. And as I'm going through some graduate work, I looked through a book, and it was talking about this nursing home had, you know, sometimes that industry has over 300% turnover, and I like fell out of my chair, like how, you know, we got an average 100 people working, how do you hire 300 people in a year to, you know, come through this place. It's unbelievable.

And so I started doing the research and you know, finding out the cost of it, the cost is astronomical, even for low lower wage, at the bottom of the scale. It's crazy. And so, you know, kind of focus me on that, which really kind of goes into this leadership, the deficits that we have as leaders, because, you know, again, we've talked a little bit that employees typically will leave managers, not companies.

Lou and Sherri  11:15

Absolutely, yeah, they will, yeah,

Sherri  11:17

it really boils down to the culture, you know, as, as leaders, managers, bosses, however, you want to put a title on that, which is, you know, we come from mythology, that doesn't matter your title, it's about influence, right. So if you have an influence on your business big or small, and if you don't have a people centric culture, that really turns into a very negative situation. And you know, in partly with this pandemic, that has come to light is the players and the pretenders. And it has really stuck out to what organizations are really taking their people seriously.

And I'm not talking about what you just said, you know, ping pong tables and frappuccinos, you know, that's always a nice perk, but having a safe space for individuals that they can feel, feel that they're heard, that they feel cared for, that they their manager has their back. And that is so critical. People much rather have that. And then in turn, the bottom one, which I know everybody's focused on, which I know everybody has to eat, but will produce more. And that's where the attrition can go, you start seeing the the attrition to go lower, as long as the team feels heard.

And you actually take them seriously, and have that and just have that people centric, you know, and you know, I'm reading a book was the Simon Sinek, you know, the infinite infinite game. And it's phenomenal. And it really touches in on this, and about the finite versus the infinite. And the most these companies are in the as a finite is let's just promote people from that have high performance, and they create that culture. And I fell into that trap, and so has Lou to were like, Hey, we're the rock stars, we're good at what we're really doing. And then you get the management role. And you're like, hey, congratulations.

And then six months later, you get fired, because you didn't meet your metrics. Like, well, you didn't equip me. I, you know, I was I supposed to know, you know, and you know, and there's that, you know, it's, it's that constant, you know, you know, hamster wheel over and over again. And now it's time that really got to pay attention to folks that are in this space, such as ourselves to say, listen, are you in the long game?

Are you in the short game? Yes, you can be a billion dollar company, but at what cost to your people? Right? So I can't stress that enough. And that, you know, having that mindset especially, is is key is so key. It's like what culture Are you trying to? or want for your people that work with you? So it's just it's so dire.

Roy Barker  13:54

Yeah. And so many things. I'm taking notes and I've got like a page. But

Lou  14:01

right, I mean, it, this is the reality of it. Okay. If you're in a position, if you're in a position of a leader, whether it's an executive director, or CEO, or CEO, even the bottom line is that that's what drives the business to be able to provide for your employees and your customers that that's that's that is truly important to a business, or mine. It's important years. However, there's a distinctive difference between how we approach it as leaders approach the bottom line and how we get the job done using our people and leading them to do it. There is what we call the trickle down effect.

Though that culture starts at the top that is, okay, the pressure comes down to the CEO or the president or the director of their teams and says, You've got to get this done. This is the goal. We've got to get done by XYZ date. And then how does that person present it to their team right. Now what we see is that presentation is almost mimic pletely It's literally modeled. And we're seeing that it's modeled in a pull to get up, well, you're not performing, you're not doing this, you gotta do this, get it done. Just get it done.

Get it done, get it done. And now you got workhorses instead of teams. Yeah. And then I get burnout, right? They get burnout, they get sick, they leave, they they like you're saying to become disengaged, they lose trust, all because of the presentation, how those teams are presented with their role and responsibility, and heading and how, and how to get the goals accomplished. And why

Sherri  15:31

and we're focusing on the wrong metrics. I'll be pretty bold and saying that we're focusing on performance metrics, which is great. To a degree, it's necessary necessary to point to a point, but we're so obsessed with the metrics that we neglect, that they're, they're humans. And we do have to engage to some degree and not separate the two.

And yes, I was from old school mentality as well. It's like, well, you don't you bring your you take your emotions and leave them at the door. And here, we just work and you work from nine to five. And that's it, you know, kind of thing. And it's like, dang, I don't like that. I'm sorry. But it's not even generational, but people are not tolerating that anymore. They're not. They're really, really not. Yeah. And

Roy Barker  16:17

I think, again, we get back to some things that I know that you've mentioned, communication, empathy, and then the metrics. I love that because at this, this major utility that worked at, we had some awesome metrics that had we applied them to the business and the process helped tremendously. But what we did is we took them as a stick, and we would be employees with the the metrics to the point of is like, well, instead of me showing this, I'm going to show this because it's gonna make me look good.

And then now, you know, after this happened for about six or eight months, all these data that we gathered, that could have been awesome, was worthless, because none of it was true. It was all fictional. And so you know, that's another message that I have is, you know, when you set metrics, you can't use them as a stick to beat people up. Yeah, we have to use them to measure productivity, performance, whatever. But let's get to another great example I use is like marketing. It's like, if you're pouring all this money into marketing, and you tell the sales team will goodness, we drove, you know, 1000 people to your doorstep, from this marketing campaign. What's wrong with you guys?

But if it was the wrong 1000 people, you know, if, if you're selling, you know, let's go to the extreme if you're selling an adult beverage, and you drove 1012 year olds to my doorstep, yeah, it's totally, it's totally worthless. And so that's, you know, to me, those are what metrics instead of beating up the sales team for we drove 1000 people to your doorstep and y'all perform zero, it's let's dig into what happened through this process to see, are they the right 1000 people or not? And, you know, again, we do lose sight of that.

And, to your point about the message coming downhill, you know, my experience, especially in the bigger corporations is, that message picks up momentum and intensity, and, you know, it may have been let's do this, and then it's like, okay, we're gonna do this tomorrow. And then it's like, oh, my God, we're gonna, you know, everybody down the line just emphasizes the point more and more to become so distorted. When you get to the workers. They're like, Oh, my gosh, another emergency. And that's just what we need. Right?

Lou  18:35

That happens all too frequently doesn't exactly too frequently.

Roy Barker  18:40

But um, you know, a couple things, you brought up the communication. I'm big in that, because I talked to my team, and I listened. I didn't always like what they said. They didn't always like what I said. But we had honest communication. The other thing I knew I did is I knew my people. I knew all level, I knew them, their families, their kids what was going on? Because, you know, if they came in a little bit off this morning, I wanted to know, why is it? Is it a big problem?

You know, did you just, it was a little problem driving into work, you got frustrated with traffic? Was it a family problem that's going to linger, because if it is, I need to know about it, so we can plan because that's the biggest thing is, you know, just planning for these things. And it's the, you know, something else you all said to the human factor is that we can't park our personal lives that that door. I mean, it comes in whether you want it to or not, that's as part of being a human being.

Lou  19:36

or sick does, especially nowadays, right. Yeah, a lot of remote work. I mean, we were working from home so much more now. Yes. It's imperative though, that we as leaders understand the human element to what it is that they do, and what their drive is, and their reasons are for what they do. creating a culture of, hey, here's our core value. Use post it up, read it every day every meeting. But where's the living part of it? Yeah, exactly.

And where does that get lost in translation, because the fact of the matter is ROI. And companies as they grow, when they have these core values, and they, and you as the business owner, and you're in your executives and those that are running up and running your business, as a CEO, CEO, President, etc, you've sent out these core values, and you believe that they're being they're being followed, because they're small. But as you grow

Sherri  20:32

such a disconnect,

Lou  20:33

there's that disconnect. And do you really know if it's being followed? Or not? And then you've got that that huge neck goes back to trust? Yeah. Because if and that's why, as you said, Roy, people leave their managers and their leaders, they don't leave the business, they don't leave the company. It's because of how its presented. Yeah. So you're preaching the core values, but man, you treat me like crap.

Yeah, you know, or you you talk to me as if I'm a slave, or the I'm getting verbally abused, or whatever it might be, it creates toxicity, because now those core values really aren't being followed, right. However, every time it you hear the CEO speak, or the director of the team speak, of the department speak, they are so proud of all of these managers that create this toxicity, because they're following core values. And so the employees like, I don't understand what's going on here. Right? These are the core values, this is how they think this should be ran. I want nothing to do with it.

Sherri  21:34

But why are my my teammates crying in their cubicle almost every day? Or why are they getting sick? constantly? You know, it's just that it's, it's, it takes on a physical component. And it's and it's really sad. We've lived it to curse firsthand that, you know, when you when you have this awareness, and I certainly did after my incident and 2018 being in the hospital in the ICU, but, you know, it was this awareness of like, this is a toxic work environment. But you have to have the awareness.

And the sad part is that people when you're in it, you don't realize it until you take a step back or something. catastrophe happens going. Oh, okay. Like I'm in the hospital. Like, where did this dead from? Yeah. And it's so sad. And they're in denial. I mentioned this, and it was like, Oh, no, what are you talking about? Everything? You know, it wasn't, you know, rainbows and sunshine. But yes, it was stressful yet, y'all. Well, that's just the sales environment. No, it's not. Like, I've been another sales departments, and it was not a beating over the head.

You know, you know, process and, and they scared if you're gonna walk in and get fired every day. I'm like, I don't think I've ever had that in all my years. And you know, it's scary. Yes. Because of maybe certain metrics, of course, and performance. But that that's always that's always there. But not to the fact that I'm afraid to work. Yeah, they're scared to come to work. Yeah, that's an issue. Yeah. And unfortunately, some people don't realize that until you talk about it. And you're like, Oh, well, maybe that feeling when I get sick in the morning, or when I'm actually crying in my car before my shift starts?

Lou  23:12

Yeah, night before you can sleep.

Sherri  23:15

That's a red flag. Yeah, it really, really is. And as leaders, it is our responsibility to get noted for that to find out and that goes back to what you said, Roy, you know, get to know your people. And listen, listen, to listen to them, but then take action. I actually manager told me once I had my team, they're like, Great Get to know your people. But they didn't equip me then it tells me how to like, okay, I can have conversations.

But then what, you know, I was still learning myself. Yeah. So they had the intention, they got that point, but then that's it. And then we're like, Okay, let's go back to beating over the head and cranking out and getting all metrics, you know, it was just kind of a very interesting, yeah, that, you know,

Roy Barker  23:57

that used to be them. Yeah, it used to be our model, you know, and, again, I keep going back to this because it was a huge company, but it was like, you know, the the next manager was the person who had either been there the longest, and volunteered, or it was one of the lower men who they forced it on because there's nobody else that would take it in. So you know, I want to get to one other thing before I asked her you know, I want to see what wonder we want to look at for leaders but before that I was gonna mention the the getting sick is this is when I realized that my time at this company had come to an end.

Because me and was with like, three other managers and we two of us were field people. You know, we had people in the field and couple were engineers that did some work. And so we were rad and going somewhere, and one of them's like, Oh, I need to Can you pull over need to go the bathroom? And I'm like, Oh, my gosh, you're like my grandmother. We can't pass a bathroom without you need to pull over. And so then all these three guys chimed in, like, Well, you know, I was young at the time.

I was in my 30s and he I'm doing well like when you've been here for this long, you know, we take heart medication and blood thinner and this and that and you'll be needing to go. I'm like, This job is never gonna drive me to have to take medication I can guarantee and that's when I started looking around and saying, do I really want to be in a job that is forced me to a point that I need to take medication. Now it was, you know, it was the what we used to call the golden handcuffs, because they had good pension.

And that was another trigger. not to get too deep. But you know, the minute the pension changed where it became it wasn't a you know, defined payout, that's when it kind of freed me of that to be able to move, and it was the best thing that happened. Because I want I've always enjoyed what I've done. And I don't want to be in that position. But let's, let's get back to this. You know, part of this is like, the process that we take to bring these new leaders up.

So what are some eight? Well, he used to be either you've been here the longest, or you're the best at your job. Hopefully, we figured out that just because you're awesome at putting together widgets doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be awesome at managing people that put together widget. So what are some Right, right, what are some qualities that, you know, we want to look at to promote that next person

Lou  26:14

will see it's it's all about when it comes down to people, we've got to develop leaders. Right, as we mentioned, leadership is, is learned it's not automatic. learning, learning to be a successful, positive leader, influential leader takes time and it takes development. So it's not gonna happen overnight now. So in a company, and in a business, the focus needs to be what is your succession plan? All right. What are you how are you building up those that that you you feel would be would be solid leaders? How are those that are willing to want to learn how are you developing those people, that's really what it comes down to right leadership starts and ends with you as the leader, period.

And so for you to is for so qualities that you would look for in everyone has so many different qualities and variances depending on the company, right? what it is that they're looking for. But if somebody is if somebody comes in, and they're just solid, they're coming in, they're working, they're doing what they need to do, they're, they communicate well, we all have deficiencies. It's a matter of identifying people that personally have a goal and understand your values, understand the mission of the business in the company, and are willing to do what it takes to accomplish that mission, within reason.

And within within the ethical means of the core values, then those are people that and if they're willing to want to learn to become a leader, and they can see themselves there, those are people that you want to take under your wing, and find a way to create a development plan to see how they move along and how they're able to grow. Because then when they get to that point, now they've they've got some some solid foundations, then you promoting individuals that have proven themselves that they've been able to leave their peers, as well see, peer leadership is huge.

Because you know, you've influenced people around you, they come to you, and they follow you and what you do not because they have to because you're not paying them you're not their boss, you're their appear, but they do it because of who you are your performance, your communication. So if you an influencer appears to follow you. That's a great example of any leader to build to see that the peers actually looked up to this person a lot as well. Yeah. And to find out from those peers, what is it? What is it?

What are the characters that you like about this individual? When it comes to to the job, you see the one then you can identify those types of people? Would you have to do that get to listen to them to identify that and not play the political game and in promoting people it was person sold $2 million this year, they've got to be the director next. That doesn't mean you can they can sit there and manage and direct and lead a 25 person team of salespeople that do the same thing at all, by any means. You know, I mean, it's pure and simple, right?

Roy Barker  29:01

And they may not even want to is the other thing, sometimes we kind of forced that on people. Like I'm happy here sell and doing what I'm doing. I don't necessarily want to be thrust into that position.

Sherri  29:12

That's a and that's okay, too. And that and see, that's again, that's the responsibility partly of, you know, of seeing that communication to figure out going okay, here's a great rock star, but do they even what is their future? What do they want? You know, did they want a leadership role eventually? Or maybe Hey, they're happy making, you know, that X amount of dollars and they're happy they got a system and that's fine. It's all they want to get all their money.

Yeah. And that's all they want to do. Guaranteed. Like, you know, this is great for your listeners. Here's the challenge. Guaranteed any doesn't matter what position that you are, I bet you if you ask someone who is someone that you can talk to or go to your go to person, that if you had a question about something at work at work, other than you know your your typical boss or your outside of your side Right, guaranteed they're all gonna point to one person. Yep. Right. And then the opposite is true, which is like, who is the biggest jerk and your team? They're all gonna point to,

Roy Barker  30:11

you know, and that's something I talked about in the, in the employee retention process, think is that when you bring new new people on, you know, I'm not gonna get into the whole onboarding thing, because I think we do that wrong, too. But I think we need to provide that mentor, who is good for people to go to. And so, you know, that may be a litmus test is, you know, provide if, if you think you have a good candidate for leadership, you know, make them a mentor to see, you know, ask that question.

But because I had, you know, the situation that I had, one of the guys that they would send people to I don't know what he was a great worker, but he was a little bit twisted in his thinking. And so I was with him and a guy came up and asked a question about this specific situation, he gave me an answer, he walked away, I said, Well, why didn't you tell him that, you know, this has been happening at this location. And that's where he needs to start.

He's like, I had to figure it out on my own, like, he needs to figure it out on his own to I'm like, oh, my goodness, we're missing the whole point, we should be helping each other through. And so anyway, you know, that was, to me, that was not the guy that he needs to be promoted. Because that's not to me wasn't a great leadership skill to say, Hey, you got to figure this stuff out on your own, we should all be helping each other.

Lou  31:32

Exactly. Right. Even if even if that's the case, right? Even if you did promote, what is your plan? When you promote someone to a leadership role, when you've promoted them? What is your plan to develop them in that next level? To assess where they currently are in leading teams? What is their communication? So how do they lead a team? How do they identify what their other team's communication style is? it if you but if you can equip them. I mean, it was a perfect example.

There was a company years ago that I worked for, for the first two weeks, all we did was leadership development training, before I can even step foot and make any decisions in my role was a great experience for me to open up my eyes. I'm like, Well, I can do this. I've been management, why would like nope. This is what we all do to all of our leaders and develop them. I learned so much. And yeah, it was two weeks, you got to pay these people still. But that development makes a huge difference. When it comes down to leading a team.

What are we doing? We're not I mean, I'm not saying hey, listen, unless they're like, Mr. Leadership, Joe, we can't promote them. What I'm saying is, is have a plan in place. Is there a development plan for your employees that are interested? If you mean, it's the nowadays, it's so easy, you know, you connect with a company like ourselves, or anybody else that provides opportunity for them to have like an online platform where they can go in and if they've selected on, I'm going to sit in leadership development, well, at least get something started to find out with an assessment where they already get some background, right, because that's succession planning.

And it keeps people engaged, and gives value to what it is that they do and the values of the company, then when you need somebody, you know, these five people have been developing themselves for the last two years through this program that we have for them. Well, we're going to interview those people for this role. Right? That's, that's the, that is the intentional decision of making a decision on who you move into roles that are going to fully develop their teams.

Roy Barker  33:30

Yeah, and talking about planning and strategy. I think that's good. Because sometimes we especially as newer businesses, or growth mode businesses, it's like, they come in on Monday, and like, Oh, my gosh, we, you know, we need to add somebody here. And so we make these reactive decisions. Instead of like, you know, taking a little bit further approach and saying, what are our triggers for this growth.

And, and then our, you know, for putting on a new manager, a new leader, and so we need to be training them up and developing in this time that we have, we don't want to wait till Monday morning. Like, we got to hire somebody today, you know, and it's like any meenie miney mo, who's not gonna be is taking the approach is that at some point, if you're in a growth mode, or if you want to grow your business, you're gonna have to add these managers. So get out in front of that, and at least develop them.

Lou  34:24

Agree, meet them where they are, and meet them where they are. And if you if you have a plan in place for you to develop them. Great. I want to have a development plan in place for those that are that want to become leaders in the business. Yeah, then because there's going to be emergencies that come up. The director of this department resigns last minute, watch, we've got to get somebody in there ASAP. Right? Well, but if you've developed your people,

Sherri  34:48

but if you've already had that proactiveness and already had that as a culture already had that as a, you know, in that, then it's a National Society, you know, natural to be like, Oh, well go So now we have a pool of people, right? And then you're constantly thinking that forward that forward thinking and being proactive. And what's happening is that, you know, we're stuck in these, this old mentality is that, you know, we have people or organizations, and it doesn't matter, I was a state government worker for seven years. So it's almost the same.

That until we're putting our backs in a corner, until there's this huge fire, that's all of a sudden, it's like, oh, we need to do something, you know, it's just like, really? Like, haven't we learned, you know, that we need to be? Yes, it sounds good in theory, when people Oh, you need to be forward thinking and being proactive? Well, there's a truth to it. No, any of the greats that we have out there that we've mentioned early on, there's truth to that. So why not heed that and actually do something about it, even if it's just a little bit.

Have a transformation table, having bringing certain leaders to a table, that are kind of have those qualities that we pointed out that are like, hey, everybody's going to this person, or they got something, bring him in on something, make a decision, you know, hey, that bring him into that, that world, right, you know, and see how they handle a little bit, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. But again, you know, when they get certain leaders, unfortunately, they get so busy in in, in their jobs and what they have to do and putting out fires.

That they just don't have that that moment, unfortunately, to grow, continue to grow, because they blame it on time management, and they just think they know it all. Yeah, you know, and I hit the top and, you know, the cliche of like, oh, leadership is so lonely at the top, I'm like, Well, you did it wrong. Yeah, you know, you know, you forgot to bring some people behind you, you know, to come up. So you know, and that's why we're just so passionate about it, because we can go on and on about it.

But and you are too raw, you know, it's just like, history, here's its leadership sad, that it's a reminder to these newer leaders, that are now starting their own businesses, thanks to COVID because they got tired of the other and, and fall into that old reality. Yeah. You know, it's like, grow, you know, treat yourself, lead yourself before lead. keep growing and having that growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. And it has to be intentional about it. And by doing that, and I'll give you a tip here is that watch who you are around with.

Jim Rohn says, the best man, if you are the average of the five people that you surround yourself with, and that is through mentors, put yourself with coaches, put yourself even reading a book of the greats that are out there and take a little bit here. But then next step, actually apply it. Is it readable? Great. But then you put it back on the shelf,

Lou  37:57

right? and accountability to Yes, and accountable, gotta be accountable, right, you got to make sure somebody's got to be there to make sure hold your feet to the fire, make sure you accomplish what you've read and studied and learned on

Sherri  38:08

and share that out, you know, read a little bit do a little bit. And that's exactly what our mentors have shared with us. And you know, we're coaches, but we have five coaches. Don't be so proud that you're a coach, and you know, everything. I don't care if you've been in for 27 years, you still have a coach. Yeah, I got five coaches, right? I'm I'm not that much.

Roy Barker  38:28

Well, you know, that's what they they always say. And I think as once people get to the top, sometimes they think that they're the smartest one in the legal saying that, you know, if you're the smartest man in the room, you need to find another room. And I just think that's even when we get to the top we have to surround ourselves with people we can trust that can give us good advice, because we're never going to know it all.

We can't watch it all. And that, you know, we've talked about a lot, but also, you know, something we mentioned earlier about people at the top not knowing what what's going on at the bottom, is you need to get out of your office and get out, you know, to the lower levels, go see what's really happening out there. Pick up the phone and call you know, if you if you have an office call, how's that call handled when it comes in.

I mean, these are things that we can't just forget about, we always have to be thinking about them, you know, even at the very top. So the other thing talk for a minute, you know, we've talked more about the corporate side, but let's talk about personal growth because there are a lot of people that like you said, the pandemic has forced them to be in business, maybe they had a skill or a trade they were a plumber maybe would work or whatever. But now they're they want to grow the business and add people. So let's talk a little bit about some opportunities to do this on our own.

Lou  39:51

Yeah, we'll see. And as I mentioned before, it all start as a leader see, again, leadership is influence right even though even though you may not have a position In a leadership role, I believe we're spot we're all leaders in some fashion, if we use our influence on purpose, right, in a way that brings value and helps in a positive way that that is, that is a def true definition of a leader is that influence? Yeah.

And so it starts and ends with you, Sherry and I have developed a method called the empowerment method, we've we're co writing a book offering a book that is going to be released August September, called empowerment leadership, the 10 principles every leader must follow to lead with influence, okay. And empowerment, doesn't have an E on it, it starts with the M is empowerment, there's 10 letters, and each letter corresponds to a principal, okay, that first principal is me, the me principal, that all starts and ends with you, if you do not develop yourself as a leader.

You can't develop other people. See, the reality of it is, is that you can only you can only give at the limit of your own growth, right? Get only give it a limit of your own growth, you can't expect that you're going to be able to lead a team of people, whether it's your business or not, if you haven't developed yourself as a leader, so that you can lead people, right. So it all starts there. And it all ends there as well, because that's the responsibility and burden of a leader is making sure that we develop other people, and it starts with us.

Roy Barker  41:29

Yep. And even if you're going even if you're young, starting out going into the corporate role. You know, my advice is always seek out coaches like yourself to to grow yourself, you may not maybe you don't have any aspirations. But maybe you do. Or maybe you don't today at 25, but maybe at 35 you do. If you develop these skills, then it will be an easier transformation to step in to that role. Or, actually, you don't really step into it.

I think, like you were saying earlier that you kind of become that mentor, person that people go to before that, but then it's an easier transition, you know, to step into more of a manager or the title of some form of leadership. And I think that's on us. Because, you know, back in the old days, I'm guilty of this, we, you went to a job and you expected them to do everything or tell you this is when you go to this development or do this or do that. But you know, if if you want to do something on your own, or even be successful in a company, the burden is still on us as individuals. Of course,

Lou  42:35

that's our accountant. There's that accountability piece, right? And it's our responsibility if we want to grow or succeed, yeah, we've got to identify what is it that I need to do? And we don't know what we don't know. You don't know what you don't know. So it's time to ask those that might and use those resources. I can't tell you if I had one thing to do over again, we've been asked this question, if there's one thing that you as a leader could do differently, what would it be? And hands down is I would have surrounded myself with the right mentors and coaches a lot sooner than.

Exactly, yeah, does it it makes a significant difference. And they could speed up your growth by easily 75 to 85%. Now, by doing that, so that is absolutely something I recommend. And perhaps perhaps there's someone out there as in one of your listeners that have experienced this where, hey, I was just promoted into this role. I know I want it, because I know I want to move up. But man, my manager, if I'm ready, and my manager didn't give me i'm not i'm not sure if I'm ready for this. How do I lead 25 people?

Heck, I was able to, to, you know, help my peers, but how do I leave 25 people, I'm not sure where to start. And unfortunately, there's no playbook that can be thrown at you yet. If you don't, if you're if you're a leader, if you're a leader that has now moved somebody into a new role as a new manager, a young new manager, right, fairly fresh to leadership, and you are not coaching them, mentoring them, guiding them along to become a successful leader. You're doing it wrong. And unfortunately, you should not be a leader at all.

Because that is the burden and responsibility of us as leaders to provide that type of development to those that the lead, right. However, we can say that all the time. We've preached this all the time, but it's not a miracle. It's never it's not going to happen. 100% all over the place. That's why people need us. Yeah. Okay. And that's okay.

However, that's where that empowerment leadership method and that system comes into place because that we believe that that is that is the rewriting of this old 1970s playbook of how positional style leadership and how you run a business should be played. Instead of capitalism. Its people isms, what I call it, yeah, it's time for us to get back into that. Exactly. And when it comes down to business.

Roy Barker  44:58

Yeah, and, you know, we've talked a lot about business in the profession. But this also transcends that. Because as family people, we need to be leaders in our families, if we have kids, we need them to buy into what we're trying to trying to sell them. Because you know, you know, people are always like, it doesn't matter what position yours like, I'm not in sales.

But you know, really, we're all in sales. We're all trying, you know, we have a spouse, we're trying to sell them on, you know, something, if it's kids, we're trying to sell them on how to be, you know, what we think are good citizens, and this so that leadership, those leadership qualities can transcend our work very easily.

Lou  45:36

Absolutely. Yep. And that's why that leadership is influence piece, right? It's not about position at all. Yeah, it's about how you're influencing those around you, right? Because if you do it in a way that's impactful and done on purpose, not only is it going to influence and impact your family in a positive way, it's going to impact those around you, your community, your neighborhood, your city, your state, your country, the world, but you have to develop other people in the process, right?

Hey, I've mentored this person, I've influenced this person, do me a favor to pay me back, go do that for somebody else. Right. And then next thing, you know, you're you're you're changing things. You're transforming the whole idea there.

Roy Barker  46:12

Yeah. And we can't be scared to give that away. I mean, I know Charles business, y'all make money off this. But I'm just saying, in general in life, if sometimes people are very protective, like, Oh, I don't want to tell them how I did this. And we need to be open and free to give that information to co workers or, you know, even people that may be work at other companies. It's not. I don't know, I guess it also kind of, we get what we put out there, the old karma thing. And so, you know, we want to put as much good stuff out there as we possibly can, means helping people and I like that people, people ism, is that what?

Yeah, I mean, I love that, because I think that we've become so focused that like, you know, in that in my prior you utility experience, we became so focused on the quarterly results, that we were making poor decisions that impacted people poorly, if we get back to making these decisions that really empower our people, and support them and do what we need to do for them. That I am a firm believer that the profits will follow, we're not going it doesn't have to be detrimental to our bottom line to care about our people and do the right thing.

Lou  47:25

Agreed. It's a side effect, right? You treat you you develop your people, well, you treat your people well, we can't be a leader without people. I'm not meant to be a leader that I know of. And in history that is a leader without people, that's just we need people to be to lead, right? We need them to lead. And but the side effect of leading them effectively, and successfully is the profit, right? You know, so don't getting wrapped up in that and people before profits is our motto.

And I've we believe that 100% I've seen it even with other coaches and leaders in those similar leadership space that we are, right, we invite people, that's let's have we do one on ones and talk with those that most people consider a competitor? Yeah, we don't we don't consider that. We can't handle how many millions of people in the world. Yeah. But we need more people to do that. And it's it's not about again, it's not about like, I'm not giving you my secrets. It's about how can I help you help them exist, it's not about us. It's about them.

And every leader, whether you're a coach, a leadership consultant, whether you are in a leadership position, that needs to be your mentality, it's not about us, it's about them. When that focus is pivoted your decisions that you make, how you develop people, you start looking at it entirely different. Because I promise you, you follow those types of models. profit will happen because people will love to work with you. Yeah, they'll want to follow you and they'll listen to you.

Sherri  48:59

And also how you make a person feel last longer than anything else. Yeah.

Roy Barker  49:05

And you also remember the most I remember Brett Yeah, and I think it's also helps with talent attraction, is that when the word gets out that it's awesome to work here that they support their people, they you know, we treat you right, people are lining up at your door announce instead of you know, because always say we want to be an employer of choice, not an employer of last resort.

And so now instead of having to pick through the leftovers of the applicants that just couldn't get hired anywhere. Now we've got to the pick of the cream of the crop because everybody wants to come work here so it's and that's exactly what business

Sherri  49:41

that speaks volumes to that is Chick Fil A if you've done any research or any type of history regarding the the owner of that business that started it, and it comes up every time especially in this leadership space, and I you know leaned in a little bit more on why is this so like fantastic. What the heck It's chicken right? Yeah. It's because he had the people first mentality. And there's people constantly for employees that want to work there.

And they're always adding new people all the time, they don't just sit there and have an open, like, Oh, we need people, and then they close the door, oh, we need people again. And they're not doing that it's a constant revolve, revolving as far as getting new talent in, and then the ones that don't want to stick around and kind of weed themselves out anyway. And that's okay, because here's another Rockstar that's gonna come right behind. Yeah, with that.

Lou  50:31

So perfect example of how the quality of their product is a representation of the quality of people, right, and the quality of the people or the representation of the quality of leadership, and all interconnects

Roy Barker  50:47

and it's the quality of service to because they train their people to go above and beyond because I think it's that, you know, the the management cares so much about their people, but they also instilled that we have to care this much about our customers too. And so, definitely one of the better, you know, quick dining experiences that's out there, for sure.

And then, you know, they always get a lot of press about how they develop owners think that's a location that's not too far from us. It was a young lady that started as a team member in high school worked away up. Now she's got her own franchise. So you know, it's it's a great success story.

Lou  51:29

Yeah, that's a perfect example of developing people. Yeah, yeah.

Roy Barker  51:33

Well, guys, I know we're running way late. We could talk about this for two or three more days, I'm sure. I mean, we're, I feel like we're all passionate. So do me a favor, though. You know, when when y'all get ready to release the book, late summer, I wish you would give me a call. And let's get back together. I'd like to have y'all back on again, like I said, so much.

This goes in so many different directions. I don't think we could ever cover it all. But it's been a pleasure speaking with y'all. So before we get away, what is a tool that y'all use? And if it's collectively good if you got separate ones, but what is a tool or a habit, something that you use every day that really adds value? personally, professionally?

Sherri  52:15

Yeah, I'll start with that. What I actually what I do every day, and thanks to my mentors, and I have implemented it ever since is that I do a reflection at the end of the day, I actually put it on my calendar and actually do a daily reflection. And on the top of that word document, as simple as it is, is really well review, mark the winds and the defeats, but also who did I add value to today?

And it really makes me sit and think because we get so caught up in our day to day and you know, activities that we really have to take that moment to be like, okay, maybe who did I introduce somebody to who did I help? What did I give advice to, you know, and then to really pin that out, and you can just jot it down. And that has, it's sometimes it's a pain in the butt cuz you're like, Oh, I don't want to do it. But then I'm like, no, it's worth it keeps your focus,

Lou  53:07

that's good. For me, it's like that, that there I do that, I do a reflection as well. But Sherry has a very specific system she uses which works out great. But for me, with just two things that I do every day, every single day, daily, there's really six things a leader should do every single day, but we won't get into those. But there's two things that I would recommend everybody do. Okay? Number one, I read something every day that relates to to helps me grow as a coach, as a leader and also as a leader, as a corporate trainer.

And as an executive leadership developer, I always read something every day that I try to look at and how I can implement that. And the second thing that I do every day when I'm, you know, we're done work and we're downstairs after dinner, or you know, chilling out in the living room or whatever, I'll take a moment. And I'll go through in my mind, Rolodex in my mind or in our CRM and see if there's people, our clients that we've worked with in the past that we work with now that I haven't spoken to for a while.

I haven't reached out to in a little while. And I'll try to find a way to reach out to them, send them something specific in an email or record, give them a phone call. They haven't heard from you in a little while How you doing and keep keep those relationships strong. So people understand that we are here for them and it doesn't cost them anything or me anything but time just to just to reach out. Because relationships is what builds successful leadership. So those are two things that I do everyday

Roy Barker  54:37

Yeah, and I like that. Sherry about writing down the people that we've helped. That's something I've never thought Yeah, and that's why I asked this question because I love to collect good habits and I feel like you know this is introducing these good habits to others out there but really taking stock of that and one more thing about our you know, what we got done is I tried to tell people celebrate what you did get done, because you know, we can be the hardest on ourselves.

And, again, I'm the example that I had 10 things on my list to do today, I got seven done, and I'll kick myself, you know, for the rest of the day about these three. If I could hit 700, I would be making gazillions of dollars, you know, playing baseball. So we have to look at that, you know, if you can get, let's celebrate what we're doing right, and we can work on those things that we need to fix. Right?

Lou  55:00

celebrate your wins. I like it.

Roy Barker  55:18

Yeah. All right, guys. Well, thanks so much. Tell everybody, of course, you know, who you work with? How you can help them? And then of course, how can they reach out and get a hold of you? Sure.

55:40

We work with small businesses, but have a team generally, you know, any anywhere from our the sweet spot is anywhere from 50 to 300. employees, in that I have teams and that are finding that they're growing, and that there is some gaps there they're trying to fill, because it's starting to get big now or as a business owner, hey, you know, how do we how do we keep the communication going? How do we keep the lines open? Who do maybe who I put in what places here as far as positions? Or who do I lead?

How do I assess those are those are, that's a great example of companies that that are, have grown to the point where now they're starting to get some negative feedback from employees, there's like this negative culture, but they don't know where it came from. We have assessments that we can provide to, for the entire company to find out where those opportunities are, to put in place a process and a program to help reduce that gap and bring that success better.

We also work with new managers who have just been promoted or even been in manager and maybe they're their boss has now been replaced and as a different type of person. And here we are, I don't know how to deal with this person. No one I love dealing with leukemia, I don't know how to deal with this person. As a matter of fact, they've given me 10 things I got to fix the next six months or I'm out, yeah, like those are the types of things that we help we help with, we have seen a significant increase in improvement in businesses.

We also have a sweet spot for solo entrepreneurs just because we are entrepreneurs. So we do have a sweet spot there too. And we have we've we absolutely will help as they're growing and bringing people in and how to develop those those individuals to become strong employees and take on roles as they move along and grow. We have seen up to a 550% increase in revenue, and in growth, business growth with those types of individuals as long as they follow the process of accountability that we provide them.

Because we give them homework and they've got to get it done to make sure they're successful. So that those are the desk. Those are who we work with and where we love to work with. But we're open in conversation with anybody just to see if what is that we can do to help because if we can't help you, we can point you in the right direction.

Roy Barker  57:53

That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. And yeah,

Sherri  57:57

they can reach us anywhere on our website, Lou Everett Group loueverettgroup.com We're on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, feel free to reach out even Google Lou Everett Group, and I guarantee will be up there. So

Roy Barker  58:09

we're all over it. All right. Awesome, guys. Well, thanks so much. that's gonna do it for another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. Of course, I'm your host Roy. You can find us at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com. We're on all the major social media platforms as well as the major podcast platforms iTunes, Stitcher, Google Spotify, for not a one that you listen to please reach out I'd be glad to add added on. So until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.loueverettgroup.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

An Awesome Benefit For Those Employees Providing Care To Loved Ones with Amanda Varga

As the population ages and lives longer employees can be put in stressful situations with the demains of the job, young children, and aging parents. Better known as the sandwich generation. If retaining good employees is on your agenda, providing meaningful services to the sandwich generation is a great idea. Now is the time to help.

About Amanda

Amanda Varga is the Owner of CareTreks, LLC, which is focused on supporting Family Caregivers of aging loved ones by providing the skills, knowledge and resources they need to be more confident and competent Caregivers.

Amanda’s caregiving experience started at age 11 when she was the neighborhood babysitter.  Her first work with the elderly was in middle school, as a volunteer Candystriper at a local nursing home – yes, the red and white striped uniform and the cap!

While earning her Bachelor of Social Work degree, she also provided specialized respite services for children with special needs.  Immediately after graduation, she worked in brain injury supported living, quickly moving from direct care to management.  After some years in the corporate world (primarily in HR and Executive Team roles) and having three amazing children, she found herself back in the professional Caregiving realm as both an overnight-awake hospice sitter and Director of Client Care for a home care agency.

Caregiving became far more personal when she and her husband moved his parents in with them in July, 2014.  Both required 24/7 care and supervision with hands-on assistance.  Amanda’s personal Caregiving Journey had begun…and the following month her three kids started 4th, 5th and 12th grades. 

Life was complicated, to say the least.  It has been this personal experience with caregiving that inspired the idea behind CareTreks – to find a way to support others who find themselves in a family caregiving role.

CareTreks Website

Listen to more great episodes of AGEUcational podcast

 

Full Transcript Below

An Awesome Benefit For Those Employees Providing Care To Loved One with Amanda Varga

Sun, 9/5 9:52PM • 55:40

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

caregiving, care, employers, people, employees, caregiver, home, costs, day, conversation, parents, workforce, stress, providing, resources, support, living, life, talk, family caregivers

SPEAKERS

Amanda, Roy Barker

 

Roy Barker  00:08

Hello again and welcome to another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. I'm your host Roy of course I am the We Are the podcast that brings you. A wide variety of guests talk about a bunch of diverse topics to help you in business. We want to see everybody be successful. Today is no different. Happy to have Amanda Varga with us. This is going to be an interesting call we've been looking forward to for a couple of weeks. She is the owner of Care Treks which is focused on supporting family caregivers of aging loved ones by providing the skills, knowledge and resources that they need to be more confident and competent caregivers. Amanda's caregiving experience started at age 11 when she was the neighborhood babysitter. Her first work with the elderly was in middle school as a volunteer candy stripper at a local nursing home. Yes, the red and white strap uniformed with the gap. Those are not too many of us remember those anymore. But while learning her Bachelor degree in social work, she also provided a specialized respite services for children with special needs. Immediately after graduation she worked in a brain injury support supported living quickly moving from direct care to management. After some years in the corporate world, primarily an HR executive team roles and having three amazing children. She found herself back in the professional caregiving realm as both an overnight awake hospice sitter and director of client care for a homecare agency, caregiving became more personal when she and her husband moved his parents in with him in July 2014. Both requiring 24 seven care and supervision with hands on assistance. Amanda's personal caregiving journey has begun. And the following month, her three kids started fourth, fifth and 12th grades Wow, what a challenge. Life was complicated to say the least it has been this personal experience with caregiving that has inspired the idea behind characteristics to find a way to support others who find themselves in family caregiving role. So Amanda, thank you for being with us.

 

Amanda  02:14

Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

 

Roy Barker  02:15

Yeah, I mean, we've got a lot to unpack. And I think we had a, we had a full episode length pre chat, and we've chatted, you know, multiple times before, never, never lack of a conversation for us to have because this is something that I think we, you know, both feel very passionate about most of my adult life working has been split in the senior living, you know, more on the business side with the analytics of sales and marketing and financials. But still, you know, it's still dealing with this with this aspect of aging. And so I think, you know, first off, I'm gonna get you talk, let me just say this, tell us a little bit about your journey getting here first, before we get too deep, because, you know, it's interesting, you've been on both sides of this equation, and then you are the tip or girl typical sandwich generation is, you know, it's one point you were in caregiving for parents, and you also had young children that still needed a lot of care when you have a fourth and fifth grade. I mean, that's, you know, the, the 12th graders, they get where they can operate on their own. And, you know, they're, they're probably more happy to be distanced from mom and dad anyway. But you know, when you have young kids and, and, and if they were in your home, as you know, all of this is going on in your home. Oh, my gosh, you know, it's like, when do you ever get any rest?

 

Amanda  03:37

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, for at one point, I think we had a span of preteen to late 80s in our house between between seven of us. So, you know, the idea, I think that a lot of family caregivers have have, oh, well, we'll bring this care recipient into our home and want to be great. We'll be that multi generational family. And you know, it'll be good to have grandma or grandpa go to the sporting events and go to the concerts and that sort of thing. And you know that that's a fantastic dream. And for some people, it works for us, it did not, you know, it actually turned out that we really had to balance the needs of our kids and the needs of our care recipients, work at home and all that kind of stuff, you know, and had to find a way to make everyone feel and be as loved as an important as they should. Yes. Balancing that again, with a 12th grader. Yeah, there's a lot of independence there. But he ran track and cross country and I had been to every meet all through high school. And that's not a place to take someone who has significant mobility issues and doesn't want to go right. Then one parent is now going to a sporting event while the other is taking care of elders and you know, it's a tough split is a tough, the tough balance to manage there and make sure you know your kids need a lot from you, as any parent knows. That's the job. Yes. Yes. Balancing that conflicting. Just the conflicting pull on your time. Yes. is stressful for any parent.

 

Roy Barker  05:01

Yeah. And it's important to distinguish having your parents live with you. And then having them live with you and needing significant care and attention. Because I was fortunate, you know, I'd lived away for a little bit when I moved back, my grandmother was still in very good health, she was probably in her late 70s, early, this has been years ago, you know, and she would come out and stay with us, you know, two, three days a week. Now, the thing is, she still had her home to go back to so when she got tired of us, she could be like, red flag, I'm ready to go home. But she was fully functional, we weren't providing care to her. So it's a totally different dynamic, because she was actually a huge asset, not only helping with the kids, but then also, you know, that intergenerational, you know, we were kind of living the dream. But the reality is, like you said, is that typically when you have parents or grandparents that have to move in with you, they have significant needs, is what has triggered that. And so it just adds much more stress. And then I never even thought about that the maybe them not wanting to go to a track meet. And then now you've got to make a decision either be the heavy and forced them to go when it's tough anyway, or, you know, be miss out on your children's events. Right,

 

Amanda  06:21

right. Exactly. You know, and the thing is, is even when there's a, like you talked about with your grandmother, and it's a great situation, there really is that involvement and that independence, and yet that that working together, yeah, it can change so quickly. Yes. Yeah. That's what a lot of people are stunned by. Yeah. Well, we went from being able to drive herself home and back and forth and be involved in things too. We're doing hands on care, or we need to find appropriate care. And and that shift is often sudden, yeah. And extremely stressful. involved. Yeah, yeah. You

 

Roy Barker  06:53

know, we talked a little bit about to, you know, where we are in this thing. COVID has shined a light on it, because there were people that were approaching the need to go into some kind of a senior living, assisted nursing, maybe Alzheimers unit. And then with COVID, it was hard to get them in families didn't want to, you know, take the chance. But, you know, kind of setting that aside for a minute, I feel like we're kind of back in the 60s to 70s place when it was the, you know, kind of the topic was when women entered the workforce very heavily about having childcare and the difficulties of childcare. And it always felt to the mom to juggle, you know, the sitter, the events, the work and all of that, but now we're kind of seeing that push become with with our parents and taking care of elders in our families is that it's become it's begun to be a strain on our workforce. I mean, people have had to leave the workforce, which is a personal burden with the lost income, but also companies are losing a lot of good people.

 

Amanda  08:03

Right? Definitely. I mean, it's the norm now is that women are in the workforce, even when their parents, right, you know, they're there's ways to help pay for childcare, there's, there's medical leave, there's family leave, there's all of these different options. But what isn't being recognized as much now is the need for that same type of caregiving, but for a different generation. Now they're caring for parents, or grandparents and aunts and uncles and that sort of thing. Yeah. And that's what we're looking forward to have employers start to recognize that because, you know, statistically, if an organization is actually doing exit interviews, about a third of people who are leaving, left because of care for an elder, Oh, wow. And that's a big hit. So we need to find a way to help help them play or support those employees and keep or keep them in the door, you know, work around what they have going on.

 

Roy Barker  08:52

Yeah, and that's you've got a two fold mission number one, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you, you will help caregivers and help structure things that they need to do to be that caregiver and self care and do what they need. But you also really are focusing now on working with businesses to help give them plans to be a resource for them. So tell us a little bit about that.

 

Amanda  09:17

Sure, it's, it's actually it's a blend of my background, I have a human resources background, I was a PHR, which is professional human resources. I was a certified HR generalist, and I loved my favorite part was benefits management. I loved putting together the package making sure my employees were using everything we were offering, right being that expert for them. And then blending that with my experience as a personal caregiver, a family caregiver for the last seven years now. We were still family caregivers, and the work I've done in the senior services industry on the business side of it, bringing all that together because there's a huge discrepancy between how employers view the impact of caregiving on their bottom line. How employees realize that impact. You know, there's between being, you know, late to work, leave, means leave early. There's absenteeism, you know, when someone's not there. But there's presenteeism, there's when someone is sitting there at work, they're physically there, but they're distracted or they're sick or they're tired, they're anxious. And all of those things are leading to loss of productivity and increase in turnover. And if we can find a way to support those working family caregivers, through their employer, so it's an easy resource to find and have to go googling for they know it's available through their workforce, or their workplace, to get them those resources to educate them on the things they may need, and how their situation may change and what resources are available for their loved one.

 

Roy Barker  10:47

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, we've talked prior to that, you know, retention is a hot button for me. And that was why, you know, extremely sad, excited to have you come on, because I think the biggest thing for me is that conversation, it's the one that never happens, because I wait, typically, employers wait until the exit interview till the decisions already made, and we're already on this path, or the person just, it was a no call no show, and we're looking for them. And this is why, you know, I encourage employers, managers, whoever will, to know who your employees are, you have to know about their life, and you can't get any more personal than they want you to. But if I know that my employee has an elderly person that they're dealing with that may be you know, I see a change in their attitude, a change in work, we can talk and say, Hey, you know, what's going on and have this conversation, before we lose the talent, because you know, it's the last year has been a little different. with being able to find employees, there's been a plethora of people that are looking for work. But, you know, prior to this pandemic, the workforce was tight. I mean, it was hard businesses were struggling to find people, good people to fill slots. And so it's going to get that way. Again, I feel certain. But that's why this is so important. It's not only to provide that for the the individual just because we're good humans, but it's also good a good business decision, because we don't want to lose the talent.

 

Amanda  12:28

Right, recruiting and retaining, right, those are huge costs to an employer that not everyone is aware of, right? No, I think even not, not, some of the business owners themselves don't have the real realization of what the cost is. Put together a job description to get it posted to screen through applicants to interview applicants. And once you have someone to onboard them, train them, get them all the way up to speed, that takes a lot of time and a lot of money. And if we can instead focus on the amazing employees that organizations have, those employees may be struggling with other obligations, let's find a way to support them. Right. Yeah, work on that retention piece. But then also, it's something that can be used as a recruiting tool. Yeah. You know, a lot of companies are very focused on their company culture these days. And here's our culture. And here's what we offer, we offer extra benefits to our employees. And having a component in there that encourages family caregivers of aging, loved ones to apply to know this is a good place for me to go. They understand better than others. What may be going on in my life, I think that's incredibly important. Because those employees, they're afraid to talk to management. Yeah, no, because if I tell you that, well, my mom has moved in with us. And it's kind of challenging, then when that promotion comes up, or that transfer comes up, you have in the back of your mind as an employer, maybe this is more than they can handle. This time, I'm doing them a favor, when that employee really wants to make this work. So you know, it's about that open conversation, like you said, Yeah, and I think

 

Roy Barker  14:01

when we talk about company culture, the first thing a lot of people think about is the ping pong table, or the female frappuccino machine that, you know, maybe we could get that at a later date. But to add a benefit like this, and, you know, I've got the numbers on that when we talk about retention. You know, I put the figure in I don't, it's research that I've gathered over the years, but it costs you about four to 4000 to 70 $500, to turn over a $10, our employing and there are some estimates that put that up over $10,000. And then once we start working up the ladder, you know managers about 100 225% of their salary till we get you know, tech workers can be 400% of their salary. And then once we get to the C suite, you know, we're talking about two to two to 250% of their salary. So, these costs are significant. I mean, that is cash outlay that's a significant cost. Not to mention, just The fact of not having enough people to fulfill your product or service. So there are all kinds of ramifications on the back end. And I do like that, you know, to use this as a recruiting tool, because I think it softens the company, it makes us It makes, hopefully you are no don't want to put up a facade, but hopefully it makes it, it lets people know that you are a human friendly company, and that we care about our employees, you know,

 

Amanda  15:27

that it's genuine and not just, you know, lip service. Exactly. And, you know, your point to the C suite, those higher level folks, statistically speaking, they are the ones who are more likely to just flat out walk away and leave the workforce completely. If the conflict between work and and caregiving right now, those are the folks they've, they've made their money, they probably have a great retirement plan, they've made their mark in the world, they're there now because they enjoy it. They've reached that Pinnacle. And when it comes to do I stay here, or no, mom's had a stroke, and she really needs me right now. They're going to leave right and get that two week notice if that from your CFO, that's more than just someone's walking out the door. That's industry knowledge, that's experience. That's customer relationships. So if like you said, we can start having that conversation before the conflict reaches the breaking points, right? And how can we job share? How can we provide support that this person is comfortable with? How can we maybe scale back their hours and do something else? So either either there's not an immediate transition, or it's a longer transition, and it's smoother for the company, and they can be a part of bringing in their replacement? So yeah, there's a lot of unseen costs to having somebody walk out the door.

 

Roy Barker  16:40

Yeah, and I think that with, you know, what we've seen over this last year, is that you can accomplish a lot through teams. And so you know, if I can find a quiet spot, you know, even if I am having to provide a little bit more care, is it you know, am I valuable enough employee? Do I add enough to the, you know, value to the whole organization that, do you really need me sitting in the same room with you to have this conversation? Can we be doing it virtually, also, the flex hours that, you know, if I'm researching or doing a spreadsheet, does it matter if I'm doing that at three in the afternoon, or at eight or nine at night? You know, those are the kind of things that we have to wait to see. And it's a little bit it wasn't for the caregiving reason, but it's a great example, on the somebody that was a nursing home administrator, and she lost one of her best people, no call, no show just disappeared in the wind. And so after a couple days, you know, she, the administrator actually cared about her as a person. But she cared about her to her workforce, because she was so good for their residents that so she actually went out and tracked this lady down. And unfortunately, there had been a change in the family situation. So once she's talked to her, she said, Look, I didn't want to call in to my boss, and get hassled. Because of this situation. She said, it's easier for me just to quit deal with this, and then go get another job. Because you know, at that point, the job, were interchangeable, she could go do something. But anyway, after having a conversation, they were able to work out a different schedule for a short period of time to allow this lady to come back. And it was like, a conversation. That was all it is. So anyway, I think, you know, it's both sides. It's not just employers, but its employees as well. But you have to have this bond of trust somewhere in the middle that both parties feel comfortable talking about things like this.

 

Amanda  18:46

Right. And you know, it's funny, because I actually lived a piece of that, because when we moved my in laws, and with us, I was planning on still working, we thought that having them here under our roof and us kind of overseeing was going to be enough. And you know, it turns out it wasn't I left the workforce completely became their 24 seven caregiver. And after probably the first two years or so my previous employer had stayed in touch right, you know, he had known as well knew he knew what was going on, and started calling every now and then and emailings. And how's it going? I know you wouldn't you like to get out of your house for a little bit. You know, I know you need to think you know, you need the other faculties that you have besides just the physical caregiving. And we went back and forth because I didn't know if I could really be a benefit to him. And he was sure I could and, you know, but managing that time. Finally we came to an agreement. Let's try it. Let's see you come in, give me what you can. And you know, I'll pay you. nine hours a week is where it started back, you know, three hours a day, three days a week, and that's about as unconventional as you're going to get a lot of organizations but it gave them what they needed. They needed certain things for me that I had done for them in the past that worked really well. And it did it got me out of the house. Family Caregiver who was feeling so overwhelmed with the physicality of what I was doing was really great to think you know, and there were there was a time or two, when I called and said, we were in the ER, we just had a really rough night, I can't come in today. No, you figure out another time to come in. And by the same token, they knew if they really needed something, I would find a way to rearrange things at home, right? players are open to, again, having that conversation and saying you're valued enough for us to figure something out know your situation. And we want to work with you in spite of it. And with it. Yeah, I think more of that needs to be happening, and to realize that that really can benefit business itself. Yeah, to bring those people back.

 

Roy Barker  20:42

Yeah. And I think as a, you know, as an older, as an older white guy, I don't understand. Because, well, I understand because I've read the statistics, but a lot of people don't understand because typical caregiving duties fall to the daughter in law. And that's just, I mean, you're living proof of that. But that's the way it is. It's like, you know, the the daughter in law, the, you know, the, the husband's wife takes care of her family, and his family. And that's not a you know, that's not just me looking around, there's empirical data that actually spells that out that that's how that goes. And so I think it's not, you know, it's stopping for a minute to realize the position that this person is put into, and if you've never been a caregiver, it's probably one of the most difficult jobs that there is. And that's why there's such high turnover in you know, the higher in acuity nursing homes and memory care units. That's why you have such high turnover is because the work is hard, the pay is not that good. And then seeing motional toe, and again, even if it's your family, it still takes an emotional toll, you don't want to see, they're getting worse the digression in their health and circumstances the more care that you provide. So anyway, a lot, a lot of things go into that, that we if you've never been in that position, you just don't get it. And so kind of gets back to the relation between the chill, you know, women and children. At one point it was the same thing is like, Hey, you know, I want to be good, I can be productive, but I'm the one that has to deal with this, you know, the child's situation full time.

 

Amanda  22:28

Right. Right. And, you know, like, like you said, there's, there's the physical toll you're working, you know, its physicality, whether you're sitting behind a desk, or you're providing hands on care for your work. There's the emotional toll and the mental toll, and there's a lot of guilt, you know, for family caregivers, like I talked about, if I'm spending time with my kids, am I not spending enough time with my care recipient, right, if I'm time to go to work, because I enjoy it, and I need that release? Am I not doing enough at home? Or if I'm at home? Am I not doing enough to try and stretch myself to bring in, you know, money to help financially support this family, no matter what a caregiver does not always think else they could be doing? It's just as good. Yeah. But always wondering which in my Did I make the right choice today or in general. And so that mental toll is, it's huge, and really follows you everywhere. And

 

Roy Barker  23:16

that's the interaction with the individuals. I mean, even if we cut that off the plate, they're still the, you know, 12 loads of laundry that are piled up in the house needs dusted again, and you know, all those day to day chores that just seem to pile up as well. So, yeah, it's a true thing. And I think you had, did you have a study that you were a couple studies that you wanted to reference?

 

Amanda  23:40

So the the history behind why I referenced this is I had put together the idea of bringing caregiving to senior services into the workplace as an employer benefits. And I was putting together more than marketing, how do I promote this, and finally really started digging, maybe there's some statistics with employees and workforce, I know it, and I've seen it, but I don't know if anyone's actually studied it, and found a study done by Harvard Business School of all places. They put this out in 2017. So it's pre COVID. But it's still very applicable. They were really looking at the discrepancy between how employees feel and know caregiving is impacting your productivity at work, and how employers view it and that that gap is really significant. Players are ignoring it, they either don't see it, or they're not going to acknowledge it. They don't think it's a big deal. And for employees, it's a huge impact on their work and home life. And that's why there's so much turnover on there. And I was reading rereading this morning. They have an executive summary. It's a proper study. And, oh, just a backup. I when I found this study, first of all, I was thrilled it was if I paid someone to fabricate the study to support what it's doing, they couldn't have done it better. It's hard. And I had emailed I had nothing to lose. So I emailed the authors of the study and explained what I was doing and how thrilled I was to find their study and ask permission May I use your statistics? If I properly reference it and that sort of thing, and they gave me free rein, they said, Yes, please promote this as much as you can. So I am reading with permission. Okay. Okay. This study by Harvard Business School called the carrying company, and the authors are Joseph fuller and Manjari romane. And this is just the opening to the executive summary that talks to employers. So brief read here, American companies are facing a caregiving crisis, they just refuse to acknowledge it. rising health care and professional caregiving costs and changing demographics over the past few decades, have put great pressure on American employees as they try to balance work and care responsibilities. Yet many employers remain largely oblivious to the growing costs of this hidden care economy, costs that hurt employers and employees alike. While companies spend time money aside money, time and effort on providing benefits, often those benefits are of little use to employees by not offering benefits that employees actually want. And by not encouraging employees to use the benefits they do offer. Companies incur millions of dollars in hidden costs due to employee turnover, loss of institutional knowledge and temporary hiring. In addition to substantial productivity costs such as absenteeism, and presenteeism. The spectrum of care from childcare to elder care ranges across every demographic in the organization, workers of all ages and levels of seniority are affected. Given the lack of support at work, many employees hide the growing burden of caregiving responsibilities, they struggle to balance the responsibilities of working caregiving, often dealing with the unexpected and recurring care obligations that require mental physical and financial resources to address them. Individual productivity suffers accordingly inflicting a cost on the employer, then when the emotional and physical stress becomes too much their capacity for work becomes impaired. Some respond by reining in their ambitions, others reduce their working hours, still others drop out of the workforce altogether. Eventually, employers often pay another major cost, they lose talented trained employees. So exactly what we've been talking about in this study is, you know, like 6070 pages long, I think and goes into how they researched with so many employees and took their their impressions of how caregiving is impacting them, you know, in 75% of the workforce at that point, was impacted by caregiving. And that again, that spanned the ages, you know, new births and adoption, special needs kids into eldercare. But of that 75% 80% of them said it's having a significant impact. And, you know, about a third of people leaving, like I mentioned before, leave because of caring for an older family member or an older loved one. And that's a huge hit, you know, we've already covered the turnover costs, and what that what that does to the bottom line of an organization. So if we can find a way, you know, and that's what care trucks is all about is to bring these resources in, not as your traditional EAP, right, where you call an 800 number, and they gave you a couple other 800 numbers to call it your area that is meant to be personal and local. So that if you have an employee who is taking on caregiving, for us, you know, in the Denver area, and you know, here's what they need, and here's what my care recipient is experiencing, it's, it's dementia, or it's, you know, loss of mobility. Alright, let's talk about the varieties of care that are available. Let's talk about what placement agents do. Let's talk about what homecare does versus home health and palliative and hospice, let's see what you need in your family situation, to help you better balance what's going on in your life.

 

Roy Barker  28:34

Right. Yeah. And the other part is, this isn't just it's not just theory, you've lived it. And so I think that that just adds that much more credibility, you know, to the advice that you can give to these individuals, because sometimes that's just what we need. It's a starting point. I mean, this just happened and the sometimes events with seniors happen in a gradual manner. And even a lot of times, even if it does happen in a gradual manner, it builds up to one point where it's an emergency or crisis. And so, typically, we need answers yesterday, not I got another week to call, you know, like you said, multiple 800 numbers, talk to 12 other people, I need answers, and I need it now. And then the also it's anxiety, it's like, well, you know, what, I can't let the situation go on for a couple more days, because there's somebody maybe their life is at stake, or at least their quality of living. And so, you know, having that resource to reach out to and talk about, but I think, you know, to me, that's a beneficial tool, for sure. But I really think that your value is going to be educating management, that this number one, this exists number two, it's a huge toll on your business. And number three, there is a solution. It's a simple solution. You know,

 

Amanda  29:59

like you said, During those conversations, if an employer knows our employee knows that their workplace is, you know, it's all about safe spaces these days, but if this is a safe place to talk about and say, hey, my, my mother in law is starting to decline, we're not sure what we're going to do, right? Wow, if that person can be connected to education resources at that point, to say, Well, here are your options, here's here's what's available, where your mom lives versus where you live, if you want to move her in. Here's some things we can start working on far ahead of time. So that a month or two down the road when that crisis point has happened, and a decision has to be made. No one's making it in a panic. We've already laid out some plans, and it can be a smoother transition. And there's not that, that that panic crisis mode of Okay, now we have to do something yesterday. Yeah. Right. This is where it looks like we're heading. And if an employee knows there's someone they can easily access to have that conversation ahead of time to plan ahead. And the employer is proactive, was saying we want you to access this as soon as you think you might need it. Right. Or we can head off a lot of that stress.

 

Roy Barker  31:05

Yeah. Yeah. And I just lost my thought it was a good one. Yeah, I guess it will. But yeah. So anyway, let's well, goodness, I have just totally drawn a blank. It was such a good question, too. Anyway. So the other part of this too, is like the, the dealing with kids. I mean, it's like, okay for you. And that's what I think another thing that we have to take into consideration is nowadays, Oh, I know, sorry. I just had my my thought came back. I just read a study this morning. That said, it was basically saying since 1950, to 1977, we extended the our lifespan, in general due to medicine and medication and things like that. But it was just trying to promote the fact that we it's become too costly to continue that. So there's this cost benefit that we're losing. But it was just saying that if we're going to extend it another 10 years in the future, that this is all going to come back to lifestyle. And so it's not only lifestyle of the the seniors that were caring for, I think we have to look at the lifestyle of the individual providing the care, because of the high stress. I mean, and there's again, this isn't my thinking this there's empirical evidence that says, and I've seen a couple studies, but when you have a very high need care individual, let's say somebody with dementia, and you're providing all the care at home, the caregiver will typically die 60 to 70%. Before the individual who's got the dementia diagnosis.

 

Amanda  32:58

Yeah, it's it's there's so much stress and pressure put on the care recipient or the caregiver, you know, and yes, it's hard to promote self care for others, when I'm still working on it myself, you know, I make sure that my kids get to all their doctor's appointments, and that my care recipients got to their doctor's appointments, and if appropriate care, and you know, the meals are as appropriate as possible for what they may need. And I haven't been to the doctor for anything other than an urgent need at least six years. You know, I know that's wrong. I know, I need to prioritize that. But it is it just it feels almost self indulgent. And that's something for caregivers, you know, myself included, that we need to get over that taking care of ourselves and taking time to step back, making sure our physical needs are met, is not indulgent, it's necessary. Because what happens when we fall apart, and we've had that I have been laid out just sick as a dog because my body finally said you're done. And you know, then everything else kind of falls apart. And that it is it's the constant. Yeah. When you're working in the caregiving industry as a profession, it's stressful as well. But you're able to go home and decompress to a certain extent, you have you have this safe place to go to to to relax and put your feet up. When you are a caregiver in your home or in a loved one's home. Or even if you're overseeing their care locally, you know, you stopped by mom's place after work every day or you check on dad every morning before you go in. There is it's so many layers of responsibility. And you know that does it kind of drag someone down. Even when they don't notice it. They're just they're plowing through because, oh, this can't maybe they think this can't last that long. I can do this for a little while. Right. As you said we're living longer and that little while. It can be a whole lot longer than we anticipate. And yeah, the stress in the caregiver is is significant.

 

Roy Barker  34:51

Yeah. Because the you know, even though dementia diagnosis is are terrible. People can link for 810 12 years in that state, and it just gets worse and worse and worse, and so it's not like you said sometimes that it's that time arise, or we start care at home, and then it makes it even harder to try to get them, you know, outside help, let's just say, you know, move into a dementia unit or something like that. But, you know, another cost center that you just brought up to is the, you know, the, the health of the worker, you know, now, you know, they're, they're burning the candle at both ends, they get sicker more often. And I think that is, it's really guidance that you can also give them to Azzam that self care, and, you know, it's like, Do as I say, not as I do, we're all that way we don't, we don't follow our own advice. We don't follow our own advice. But you know, there are things that you have to do, you know, there. And the other thing a lot of people don't understand, I think is that there are respite providers. And this is a general message for anybody who is a caregiver, or there are places that you can take your loved one for a day or a week, to be able to have a night out to be able to take a vacation with the family. But there are short term solutions that a lot of people just are unaware of, which totally benefice and even day programs, I mean, it's kind of like the you know, they call it Adult Day, adult daycare, there's a lot of things but there's a there in the one I want to talk about for a minute it was a because I'm old enough to remember the old nursing home models where it was just old people sitting around, really in bad shape. And it was not pretty. But there's a place out of Houston, and there's these I know, there are places all over that do this. But this was just a model that their their participants, as they put it would, they had art projects, they went to art museums, they were out doing stuff, and it was so stimulating for the people that partake in it. But also, it was a good peace of mind for that caregiver, that you were dropping them off at a place that they love to go. And that was very good for them, you know, not someplace, you drop them off, and you just cross your fingers that everything's gonna be okay for a couple hours.

 

Amanda  37:26

Right care care can be so much more specialized. Now again, when you talk about the, the idea many people have in their head of a nursing home, and that's all they see where everyone is kind of lumped together, right? There's, there's a wing or an area for the worst off, folks. But then everyone is still in the same same arena. And now care communities are often so specialized, you know, there's memory care, there's assisted living as independent living, there's transitional living. And even within those day programs, you said there are some that specifically cater to a dementia diagnosis to do what they can both mentally and physically for this person to stave off the progression as long as possible. And other programs, you know, through like an innovative PACE program where the participants can receive care on site, they can see their doctor on site, they can even have CNAs, providing showers on site. So the family doesn't need to take care of that level of personal care, they can go to work. And then they can come home and have dinner and be a part of that evening routine. And there are a lot of solutions available. There's even funding available that a lot of folks don't realize there are some great grant programs that help fund respite for families, even for a short period of time. And I can tell you, we didn't take a family vacation with our kids for four years after we became family caregivers. And the, you know, the guilt, of course of leaving our care recipients in the community for two weeks was there but the joy of being with just our children and focusing on our core family? We should have done it much earlier. Yeah, you know, it makes us better caregivers to focus on ourselves every now and then we came back ready to take it on again. You know, we had gotten away and that was really important to families need to realize, again, that's not an indulgence, it's a necessity. Yeah. You know, we have we have slowly started making sure we're doing those things as well.

 

Roy Barker  39:20

Yeah, and I think that's important, you know, again, it's, I look at as being a care coach, you know, you're there, you could be there for those individuals to say, you know, what's going on in life right now. Have you been on that vacation? Have you had that respite? Sometimes all we need is that little reminder like hey, you know what, we haven't really had a day off, you know, why don't we do that? It will help us in so many aspects of our life but also our health because you know, the stress that we feel dealing with all this it we do pay a price for that and it will take a toll on us in some manner. We don't. We can't escape that. Yeah, the other big word that I I've heard you mentioned a couple times is guilt. And so that is a huge component of this. One part I want to talk about a little bit is that decision to move an individual from a house to more of a facility. And it's not easy. It's not for everybody, I don't recommend, you know, my, even though I spent a lot of time in the industry, my personal views are that people need to be where they're comfortable, where they can get the care that they need. And that if that's in home, in a loved one's home, or at a community, whatever works best, and but at some point, typically, at some point in this process, you do have to make that move. So just for a few minutes, I know we could talk another show about that. But let's just, you know, we need to get over the guilt of that. And we need to realize that if we are doing the right thing for our loved one, we should feel guilt free, even though we said we'd never put you in a place like that, or we think that they're more comfortable at home, and especially with people that start to wander or become threats to themself in some manner. So anyway, I'll let you expand on that just a little bit.

 

Amanda  41:17

Well, and I think, you know, the first thing is that, with that older generation, when they think of don't put me in a home, it is what we were just talking about that that older version of a nursing home where it should be weren't overly pleasant places to be having made their their children that make that promise many, many, many years ago, don't ever do that, to me. A lot has changed in over many, many decades. And I think it's important for family caregivers to know that sometimes fulfilling that promise of I will take care of you means finding appropriate placements, because not every adult human being is cut out to be a caregiver, right. Not everyone is cut out to be an engineer, not everyone is cut out to be a scientist, not everyone is cut out to be a caregiver. And sometimes the best way you can most effectively care for your loved one is to help find for them the best possible place for them to live given their geography, given your financial circumstances, given their physical and mental and emotional needs, but then to still be involved. Because if you're not someone who's comfortable with giving mom a shower, taking mom to the bathroom, beating up with her three or four times a night, but you do know she enjoys your company. So have someone else take on the physical part of the caregiving. And you make sure you're sharing the meal with her a couple times a week, you're taking her out to her favorite restaurant or to a movie, you're picking her up and taking her to church with your family, you're still involved, you're still overseeing the care, you're one of those families who the community knows you're going to show up on a regular basis. And you know, no matter what, in the end, you know, the industry, if caregivers on a professional and I know that that family shows up often and unexpectedly, it's just that little extra bit of care. Because what if Mrs. Jones son shows up today, let's make sure you look pretty Oh my gosh, let's put extra effort. And you know, it's a thing that the more involved, the family is probably better care that the Macquarie students going to get so be involved, but don't necessarily force yourself into the personal care that you're not comfortable with or you're not skilled at, you're still taking care of your loved one. And that is a tough hurdle to overcome that taking care of meaning they're not in your home,

 

Roy Barker  43:38

right? Yeah. And it's funny, you mentioned that because even you know, my mom's still in good health, but even when I go to church with her, and it's she still introduces me to everybody in the you know, the people get tired. They're like, Oh my god, we've met this guy 25 times already, you know, and but she's all you know, even she's in I don't think we we don't stop and think about the joy that we bring, you know, to our parents or our loved ones just doing one little thing like that just showing up at her church. You know, it means the world to her that because her church is her life. And so, you know, having our kids be involved in something that we enjoy, there's nothing better than that. So one other things that Oh, boy, I'm sorry. I wrote my ideal down. I'm not gonna forget it.

 

Amanda  44:26

So many of our care recipients honestly never expected when they had that conversation with their kids don't you know, make sure you're taking care of me? Didn't expect to live as long as they did. Right? As long as they know because like you said life expectancy has been stretched. And would Mom What dad really have wanted you to completely Have you have such upheaval in your life in order to take care of them when they ended up being around 20 years longer than they thought they weren't right you know, it's not just Will you take care of me But, you know, as a parent, we don't want our children to have to put their lives on hold or take a completely different direction for our sake. Right? I can say is that current sandwich generation, I am making different decisions in my mid life than my my care recipients did, simply because I don't want my children to be in the same position I'm in. Right. Right. Very clear with them, we have had a lot of this conversation, like, this is not what I want for you, you can find alternative options for me, because this is not the life that I want for you. And and I think those are important conversations to have as well. If we really think about it, do our parents want us to have done what we're doing? Yeah, you know, or should we be integrating them into our lives, but not allowing their care to overtake it? You know, that's fine line sometimes. Yeah. And

 

Roy Barker  45:52

having that starting that conversation now and, you know, absolving your kids of that responsibility, I think it's huge. It's like, you know, I just, I want what's best for you, for me, just, you know, I'm happy combined. See me every now and then, you know, that'll be fun. So one other part that we brought up, you know, we talked about stress, kind of, with the work and everything that's going on. But something else that was typical, is that when we get stressed, and when we get stressed to this breaking point, that's typically when we lash out. And there were studies through the Department of Health here that caregiver abuses usually came, especially in institutions, they usually came when employees had doubled over are were working crazy long shifts, and they were just stressed to the max and so that that applies to us. Even in our personal caregiving journey, the more stress we get, because work has got these responsibilities on trying to handle we got kids that have activities, we're getting to the laundry, the dinner, you know, the third, the, you know, the extra child, the husband's like, hey, when's dinner? When's dinner, gonna be ready, you know, all this stuff it and then we can lash out at the person that we're caring for more are the potential is there not everybody, but the potential is there. And so this is another great reason for this respite, self care if we're in a good place, then of course, we handle things better. But we just don't want to say or do something that we will regret? Because we've let ourselves get to that point.

 

Amanda  47:39

Yeah. And I think often in those circumstances, that the more stressed we're getting, the more likely we are to think mom's doing this on purpose. Yeah, you know, if there's mentioned diagnosis, then we knew how she was for all of those many, many years, and she cared for everyone. And maybe there were those personality conflicts there are between kids and parents, it suddenly becomes that bitterness of she's doing this on purpose. She's repeating that question on purpose. I told her that 20 times and we start blaming the person, as opposed to the disease process that they are going through, and level of frustration. And I think that's where education and support certainly come into play. And the ability to step back, you know, when when you're a new parent, right, you're educated that if you've reached that point, you put your child in the crib or the playpen, or wherever it is, put them in a safe place, let them cry, walk away for a little bit, right? When you're working with a care recipient, who is mobile, you know, they're ambulatory, they can do whatever, it's a little harder to say, I'm gonna leave you right here and walk away, because you might fall you know, now we're both upset and they're feeding off of your anxiety. And it's just that that cycle, but have someone else go sit in that room for a little bit, you know, and talk about who knows what changed channel on the TV, handle cookie of glass of milk, anything to distract them, so you can step back and break that cycle. But it's hard, you know, human beings kind of thrive on that make it to be above it enough to know when to say, You're right. I'm sorry. Let's Let's have a bowl of ice cream. And it's hard to do.

 

Roy Barker  49:16

Yeah, yes. Well, before we wrap it up, did you have another study that you wanted to reference before we go?

 

Amanda  49:24

Oh, you know, I just come across one. I haven't had time to go through it all. It's about 107 pages, okay. Okay. For any employers who are wondering and wanting to do a little research on their own as well, so we have the carrying company from Harvard, but AARP had a research report just called caregiving in the US 2020. And also, really just supporting everything that we've been talking about and giving a little bit more recent statistics and especially talking about, I focused on that impact between employee and employer, the working caregivers, that sort of And the help that caregivers need one. One thing that jumped out at me Was it 62% of caregivers need help with at least one caregiving topic. You know, there's at least one thing that they aren't sure of. And the top two, they actually tied at 26%. were keeping their care recipient Safe at Home, and managing their own emotional and physical stress those things that caregivers are wanting information on. I mean, there's, you know, and end of life discussions and paperwork and eligibility and things to do with the care recipient. But the top two things are how do I keep this person safe at home? And how do I deal with what I'm dealing with? And I think it's important to know that if we can, again, bring a resource to these folks easy, rather than having them need to search and find out what happens to be out there and make a single phone call to say, What do I do, right and get connected to resources, it's just really important that there's a lot of need out there. And there are so many resources, but they're not finding each other. And that's really what care tracks is meant to do is to bridge that gap. Okay. Get the right people for the right resources.

 

Roy Barker  51:06

Yeah, awesome. And that's kind of where I was gonna go next. But before we get to that, even so what is a tool is, is there a tool or a habit, something that you do every day that helps add value to your life maybe even helps with this caregiving component that you're providing?

 

Amanda  51:26

And it depends on the day. But you know, I think it's really the realization of how stressed I was, especially in those first couple years, you know, I've done this professionally, you know, I, you would think that that would translate easily into, you know, home life. And it doesn't always it's a different circumstance when it's your own family members, and it's your own home. But the lessons I learned in those first couple years about taking care of myself, have been incredibly important. And I'm definitely a woman of faith. And so having that daily devotion that time to step back, and kind of focus my day, I'm a list maker. I love checking things off the list, but you know, calendars and feeling like I'm organized really helps that also knowing when to call, you know, a Hey, this has changed, what do I do and making it a reach out? I've we've had things go wrong in our house early in morning. And I've cancelled my professional day, like I'm so sorry, you guys know, I'm a caregiver. And that has to take priority now and being okay with me on call, figuring it out later. So there's not one thing I don't think but other than knowing yourself and your situation and understanding those resources. Okay.

 

Roy Barker  52:35

All right. Well, again, I know you just touched on it, but a repeat again, if you don't mind. Just you know, who are who can you help? course how can you help them and how can they reach out and get ahold of you?

 

Amanda  52:49

Sure. So we'll start with reaching out getting a hold so Care Treks, C A R E, T R E K S, they get a lot of care tracks and care tracks. The websites easy, it's caretreks.com. I'm on LinkedIn, Amanda Varga BSW have a social work degree, I've got an Instagram, it's under care treks as well. Those are all great ways to reach out and get to me, on the employer side. The focus right now really is bringing these resources into the workplace. And that the cost of bringing in a benefit like this is minimal compared to even a single employee turning over and needing to recruit a new one. And if you're going to talk the talk of having this great culture and we support our employees, this is a component that needs to be added to it to help support those employees as they become caregivers. And even if right now workforce. They don't see a whole lot of that. Oh, well only 10% of my employees say their caregivers right now. While those 10% are saying it, there's probably quite a few who aren't. And doesn't mean they won't be tomorrow. Because mom or dad having a stroke or having a fall or experiencing an illness happens suddenly you don't you don't get two weeks notice on that. And people find themselves in situations that are going to require their their efforts in their time being put elsewhere. So let's make resources accessible. Let's make access to information easy. Yeah.

 

Roy Barker  54:17

Yeah, and just for goodness sake, have the conversation like you said, Maybe 10% of verbalized it, but there's probably another 10 or 20% that have been scared to say anything. And again, another great point is things change on a dime. You know, you're as you're going through life, it's all good, but all it takes is one fall one incident and all of a sudden you're put in that position and so you know how to deal with it. So, anyway, y'all reach out if you're a business, reach out, talk to Amanda see how she can help you provide this benefit for your employees. But also if you're struggling with that, you know, being a caregiver with self care with some of those things reach out should be able to help you in that respect. as well So, thanks so much for taking time out of your day to be here. Certainly do appreciate it. that's gonna do it for another episode of The Business of Business Podcast of course I am your host Roy and we are on all the major podcast platforms, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Spotify, if we're not a one that you listen to please reach out. We're on all the major social media platforms as well as at www.the businessofbusinesspodcast.com So, till next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

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What is Intellectual Property and How To Protect It with Devin Miller

I would say really intellectual property approach applies to almost all businesses across the board in the sense that what backing up what intellectual property in its very core is, in its essence is protecting things that maybe aren't physical or tangible but that you put a lot of blood sweat and tears into developing.

About Devin

I just love startups! I established my own first startup while earning my Law & MBA degrees. Since then, I have set up several more startups and enjoyed every minute of it. I have a real passion for a new business model--the prospect of a business startup always makes my heart race!

’m an entrepreneur who is also a patent and trademark attorney. I've obtained several degrees including a Law degree (JD) and a Masters in Business Administration. I even have degrees in Electrical Engineering and Mandarin Chinese.

While working for a large law firm helping Fortune 100 clients like Amazon.com, Intel, Redhat, and Ford with their intellectual property, I quickly realized that there weren’t many good intellectual property legal resources out there for start-ups and small businesses. As an entrepreneur myself, I wanted to help other small business owners learn about patents, trademarks, and copyrights so they can build value into their businesses and protect their assets.

In addition to founding and running my own patent and trademark law firm, Miller IP Law, I am the co-founder of several startups including a multi-million dollar startup for wearable glucose monitoring. I also run a product development company that helps startups and small businesses with developing their ideas and products. 

I've been married to my college sweetheart for ten years and we live in Utah with our four children. I focus on being home each evening with my family to help find a balance between an exciting career and a well-rounded family life.

www.milleripl.com

www.strategymeeting.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

 

Full Transcript Below

What is Intellectual Property and How To Protect It with Devin Miller

Sun, 9/5 9:53PM • 39:16

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

trademark, business, file, patents, goods, protect, people, copyright, rights, brand, intellectual property, work, sell, geographic location, developing, detroit, nike, create, dave ramsey, miller

SPEAKERS

Devin, Roy Barker

 

Roy Barker  00:09

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. I'm your host, Roy, of course, we are the show we bring a lot of different guests from a wide variety of disciplines to talk to us about things that we may not have even thought about. But also, you know, help us solve some problems that we may be having in our business today. no different. We have Devin Miller, he has co founded several several, several, seven and eight figure businesses. He is also a tray patent and trademark attorney at his own firm Miller IP law. So, Devin, welcome to the show. Appreciate you being here.

 

Devin  00:50

Well, thank you for having me on. definitely excited to be here and chat with you for a bit.

 

Roy Barker  00:53

Yeah, yeah, no, you know, I think I understand a little bit probably enough to be dangerous. So I think the best place to do is let's just start with, first off, let's start at the beginning about you know, kind of how you found yourself here in this space. And then we'll get into, you know, exactly what is IP law, what a lot of things that that encompasses that, you know, maybe it don't have to be a big corporation, or you don't have to make a some kind of a secret Gizmo gadget that you need to protect it. I mean, this can apply to a lot of, you know, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, just in normal lines of business. So anyway, how do you find yourself in this space? First off?

 

Devin  01:38

Yeah, and that's kind of I would say, kind of a bit of a two part question in the sense that on the the firsthand, you know, as far as how I got into intellectual property, and then how I started my own firm, so really, when I, when I got a nail, I show property, it was kind of out of the Crossroads that I started at, as I was wrapping up it in my undergraduate with electrical engineering. And as I was wrapping up electrical engineering, I was looking kind of saying, well, I like being an engineer. I don't know, I don't know if I want to be I like engineering, but I don't know if I want to be an engineer for the rest of my life. Right? And so I kind of looked at and said, Well, you know, what do I want to do. And so I was kind of, you know, I had an entrepreneurial side love business, and startups and those type of things. And then I also had a desire to enjoy the lawn. So and especially intellectual property, and so kind of looked and said, You know, I can want on the one hand, I will continue to pursue startups and small businesses on the legal side, I said, you know, if I go and do intellectual property search, or and do that I can work with a lot of different businesses See, work on a lot of projects, a lot of cool technology, and utilize engineering background, without having to be stuck on the same project for months or years at a time, and being a smaller cog in a much bigger wheel. So started out went and got the MBA as well as the law degree. And then once I graduated, when I was looking to get some experience, I went and worked with some larger law firms, some of the top 100 law firms in the nation, worked with clients like Amazon, and Intel, and Red Hat, and Ford and others. And kind of while I was working, I've got some great experience with them. But I was looking more for as I was working with them, I always found that I loved and enjoyed working with the startups in the small businesses more now that they had as much name recognition or people do who were working for, but they always had, there are a lot more excited, you got to play a lot bigger part in what they were doing and how they're doing it, kind of what it was all involved strategizes from work with them and everything else. And so kind of with that, I got to the point that I was saying, hey, it would be, you know, great to start or focus on this full time and start. And so with that kind of moved my way along to starting my own firm, which is Miller IP law started about three years ago, really with a focus of doing startups and small businesses.

 

Roy Barker  03:53

Oh, cool. Cool. Yeah. So now, you know, explain what IP law because a lot of times, you know, people, especially smaller businesses think that's just for the big people or, you know, protecting some of their rights. But actually, I mean, this can apply across the board to a lot of different businesses, sizes, different industries.

 

Devin  04:15

Yeah, I would say really intellectual property approach applies to, you know, almost all businesses across the board in the sense that what backing up what intellectual property in its very core is, in its essence is protecting things that maybe aren't physical or tangible but that you put a lot of blood sweat and tears into developing. And so that can be you know, if you're looking at developing the next best, you know, widget or iPhone or device or whatever, it might be something that has functional, that would be a patent. And so you're saying, Hey, I'm gonna put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears, a lot of development investment dollars or time to develop this next great product. But now, you know, it's kind of like the magic trick. Once you see how it's done, once it's developed, you know how the magic should done is easy to replicate, and so you're Same kind of cotton, this where I can take a lot of time and effort and money to develop. But then once I do it, I'm kind of stuck. And similarly kind of with the trademark, which is more on the branding side, and you're gonna say, okay, you know, I'm going to take all this time, money and effort to do marketing and sales and branding us and building reputation doing good customer service, and then somebody can come along and just copy what I did, they could copy my brand, and then I'm stuck because now I put in all this time, money and effort to invest, and they're just writing on our coattails. And then same thing with copyrights, copyrights, you're more on the creative side, you know, those can be kind of books or movies or television shows, or paintings or sculptures or a lot of different things along that lines. And again, you're gonna put in all this time to read write the next best Harry Potter, Tom Clancy, or Lord of the Rings, whatever your choice, and then somebody can come along, say, okay, and I'm going to copy this, and I'm going to print it myself. So really, a lot of times, whether you're a big business or small business, if you're developing, whether it's a brand or an invention, or you know, something creative, you're saying, How do I capture this? How do I protect it? And then also, how do I monetize it? How do I make it an asset that's investable that I can actually license and sell and otherwise utilize? And so that's where intellectual property comes in. Okay.

 

Roy Barker  06:09

Yeah. Speaking of the licensing, I guess, you know, a lot of times we, in this my frame this as a question, but you see these, like a big sports team, and then the local donut shop will say, the, you know, the donut shop of the sports team. And so I guess that's, you know, some kind of initial sponsor, or whatever. Yeah. So that's, I guess that's an example of, if I've built my brand, and I can license that to others to use to monetize that. Is that correct?

 

Devin  06:45

Yeah, absolutely. That would be a great example of, Okay, you go and build in this in the case of a sports team, you're saying, Okay, everybody knows whether it's, you know, I could burn played for the bulls or, you know, Utah would be the jazz with Karl Malone and john Stockton, but the, you know, the jazz or the bulls are that build this brand? Yeah, they put out in marketing, they build up the, you know, the team and gals, and they don't want everybody to simply ride their coattails say, and we're affiliated with the jazz, or we're affiliated with the bulls or whoever it is, right. And yet, you know, now they put all this time to build a brand, and they can monetize on it. So that's where trademarks come in. So that now those teams can say, hey, if you want to use our brand, if you want to leverage, what would the reputation we bill? Yeah, pay your take license from us?

 

Roy Barker  07:27

Yeah. So when do you make that decision in business? I mean, I'm the kind of hang my shingle out and, you know, start a business? And is, you know, as you're working on your branding, your website, your name and all that, is that the best time to start? Or is it? Do you need to get down the road? And actually, you know, have some income and make sure it's going to be a viable business? Or how does that work? Or what is the best path to take there?

 

Devin  07:55

Yeah, and that one's that one's so hard, because it's specific, and it has a lot of variables. But I'll give you a couple ideas or kind of thoughts on that. Okay. You know, within, you know, the problem that most startups and small businesses have, they always have more money to spend, or more things to spend money on than money to spend in the sense of, there's never enough room in the budget to pay for everything that they want to do. And so they're always caught saying, okay, there's a lot of things that we should do now, using blushing, which, you know, where should we invest our money? Or what's going to be the greatest return? So when you look at that, really is going to be on the side of where do you see your core value of your business? So you know, what is going to be the thing that you're going to build your business around? And how quickly do you want to protect it? So as an example, if you're doing r&d and patents, let's we'll kind of walk through each of the three areas. If you say patents, how quickly do I need to get going? And you know, when should I think about that? Well, certainly, if you have the budget, and you're able to get going earlier is with all of it is earlier as a better, you know, getting started on it more quickly is going to be better now. But if you were to say, Okay, now, when is the drop dead time? Or when should I be considering if I don't have the budget, or if I'm waiting, a couple things to think about one is patents are going to be a person file system, meaning whoever files on the invention first is going to be the presumptive and vendor and they get the date of invention, they get the rights to it. And so as you're looking at that, really you're gonna say, okay, am I in a competitive landscape? Is there a lot of people creating a lot of things in this area? is there other people that are trying to create the same thing I am? And if so, you're going to want to move that timeline up such that you you're going to file before they do and so if you're looking at your budget saying okay, if it's less competitive, or you know, it's not as one that you're worried about someone else gradient are coming along with it, you can hold off on it a bit. The other thing you're going to look at with patents is you're going to say there's a rule this, you know, this public disclosures are offers for sale and that means, basically, anytime you put at the front of the first time you put it out in the public, you have a year from which you can file on a patent if beyond that year deadline, you lose the right to be able to do it and so With that, you know, you're going to think about, okay, if I'm, if I'm putting something out in the public eye better, or one, see how competitive it is, see if I'm worried about somebody piling on and ripping it off during that two year time frame, and if not, you at least want to file on a year or within that year. Trademarks, if you jump over to trademarks, and you're gonna look and say, okay, that's on the branding side, there isn't necessarily a one year time clock. But what happens is sitting to file, a trademark first is going to be the present of right donor to it, meaning they're going to be the ones that get to have that brand and have that are locked in. And so a lot of times, what you'll get is, you'll still want to do that earlier, as early as possible. From the sense if you're going to be investing a lot of time, money and effort, what you don't want to have happen is one of two things. One is you don't want to come out or have somebody come along, say Oh, they built a great brand, they file on a first and now you've severe severely limited your rights, because now you're the first to file and you have issues as to whether or not you can use your brand and how much you can use your brand. The other thing is if you don't do your homework, and you choose a brand that somebody else is going to be already using already on the marketplace. Now you're looking at saying, Okay, I have to I'm now infringing on someone else's trademark, and I'm going to have to rebrand or I'm going to have to go get a license from them or acquire them. And it creates a lot of those issues to where now you're going to if you've done it earlier, you done your homework, you checked into it, you could have chosen a different brand, before you put all that time, money and effort into developing it. So yeah, that's kind of trademarks. copyrights are the ones that are the least are the least urgent in the sense that once you create a copyright, once you make, you know, once you actually create the write the book, you take the video, you make the culture, you have some inherent rights to it. So if you're going to hold off, one of them, you could hold off a bit on would be on the copyrights. But if you're ever going to enforce it, you're ever going to go do anything with it, you're going to want to be able to show the air show that you have the copyright in order to be able to get some of the damages. The other thing that you'll think about is if you don't copyrights are nice in the sense that they define when you created that, when you wrote that book, at least by this date, I wrote my book, or I did my video or did the painting. If you don't, then you have to make sure you provide evidence or you have good support as to when you created it. So kind of all of them in the round. And I know that was a longer answer. No, no, no, no, that's in his earlier the better, because they all have different reasons why.

 

Roy Barker  12:21

Yeah, and not just jot some notes. So the one I kind of wanted to carry on for a moment is a trademark that something interesting thought that came up was that, you know, since the advent of the Internet, and of course, I'm old enough to remember before the internet, you know, the world has gotten to be a much smaller place. And so, you know, every town, they may have had their, you know, joe the plumber, or you know, Pete's restaurant, it really wasn't a big deal. But now with the Internet has closed this down. Are there like geographical considerations? Or if you rush out and you know, trademark Joe's pizza place? Do you have that nationwide? Or how does that work?

 

Devin  13:08

Yeah, so there's a couple things in there. So if you if you didn't, let's say nobody filed a federal Registered Trademark, or let's say, let me back up. Let's say I was starting Joe's pizza place and you know, probably naming Joe's pizza place had some issues with that, and we could get into that later. But that's remarkable. Whether or not it actually is using your name and market creates a different set of problems. But we'll say Joe's pizza place and I've been doing it for five years and I never filed on a trademark on it. You know, I just really just been serving the local community. I just been you know, serving you know, the area that people around here, and I never followed on a trademark. But now let's say five years down the road as I'm catching on, people are wanting to franchise or wanting to open up Joe's pizza place and other locations. Well if during that time, I was the first user and I let's say it was in Detroit and all this makeup, you know location but let's say I started Joe's pizza place in Detroit for five years. I was the first one to start using it I was using in Detroit. You know during that five years I started using it someone else went filed a trademark on it in federally, so they filed it with the government. And now they have a trademark for everything outside of Detroit basically meaning, although I started using it first. So I do have some inherent rights. Soon as somebody else files for a federal trademark outside of my geographic location outside of Detroit or where I'm selling my goods or services. I lost all my rights so I can continue to do it in Detroit, but it presents a problem now if I want to go franchise or expand or do anything else because I don't have the rights to anything outside of that. Okay, now two people started using Joe's pizza place at two different locations and they were both doing it that they would both have their rights, so their geographic location, okay, so if I was doing it you were doing in San Francisco, I was doing it in Detroit. We both served our local audience. We're probably we both have the rights to continue to do that. Now your point is is with the end It's making everything so much smaller. And so now it's hard to define where have you been serving your customers? What is your geographic location? You know, who if do I own it? Do you own it? And who and it gets a lot more messy? Yeah. And that's why the best course of action is to register a federally such that you avoid having to define what is your geographic location? Where can you do when can you expand when you cannot expand? Because it introduces a lot more complication?

 

Roy Barker  15:25

Yeah, and with the, you know, with the world of franchising, it's like, you never know, some, you know, the, even though it's a little corner restaurant today, some of these places have just blown up, and, you know, your subways and your quiznos and turn out to be nationwide. So definitely something to consider, especially if you're thinking, you know, if you might have a growth strategy in mind. Then the other thing that came up, I know, I agree. And I said, that's why. Okay, no, no, no, no, you're fine. I'm sorry, a little bit of delay there. Go ahead.

 

Devin  15:59

No, that thing, as you say is the other time, a lot of times, you'll get people that, hey, they just really want to be a local community, you know, local store local business, and they just want to serve that. But as they're looking to retire, or they're looking to sell it, and somebody else wants to expand on it, or they want to take it over, or it passes to the next generation, those things can change. And so why you're saying no, I never intend to be anything beyond where our current location, when you start to have other people get involved or franchising, or it catches on law more popular than anticipated. If you don't get that trademark, then it handicaps what your options are going forward. And now you may be stuck in that location, even though you have a lot more opportunity, and then you're losing out on the value because now you can franchise now you can sell your business are not going to pay for it as much. And it creates a different set of issues.

 

Roy Barker  16:46

Yeah. So the other part of a name, I think, is maybe a tagline. Like, you know, we we can put Joe's pizza plates aside, but maybe he's got the best. I don't know what they say but you know, the best Italian meatball in town or something. And so they want to make sure nobody else is using that it is what is that technically called service mark.

 

Devin  17:14

So I mean, they're really going to be at both enter trademarks mean, if you wanted to get you know, if you were to tell someone a trademark, whether it's for certain goods or services, they're going to recognize it Now technically, yeah, trademark would be more for goods and service mark is for the services that you're providing. So how services are gonna, you know, if you're a plumber, you're an attorney or a doctor providing a service versus a trademark is for goods, but really, they're largely used interchangeably and they're going to have about the same definition. Okay.

 

Roy Barker  17:41

And maybe I miss misstated that not as good of a surgeon but I guess the tagline isn't there a way to to I will take night do it you know, if I was to go out and start saying you know, advertising say just do it or something? I'm sure they would, you know, they'd be all over me. But what is that type of protection?

 

Devin  18:06

Yeah, so you're right, I wouldn't recommend going on using the tagline Just do it. But if you're that as an example, a couple a couple things on that you know, when you're looking at a trademark when you file a trademark, your doing it, you have to define the goods and services you're going to want to use with it. In other words, you know, Nike is going to use Nike for sportswear goods or sportswear you know, athletic wear apparel, those type of things. And that's where they have their trademark for they don't have a trademark for Nike automotive In fact, just to prove a point, you know, I want one point I went actually filed for Nike automotive just to show that you could actually get a trademark on it because Nike automotive is for automobiles. Nikes not doing anything automotive or automotive. So I actually own the trademark for Nike automotive and if you ever want to take a look, if you ever look go and Google Nike automotive go Nike automotive comm goes to our website and I have my car I restored in high school offered for sale. So you can actually go if you want to go spend $100,000, which is an iPod is Nike auto. So if you want an Easter egg, go to Nike autos calm, but it goes right to there and tells you a little bit about that. But really, when you're looking at coverage is going to be typically for the class of goods or services what you're using the mark. So if you look at it, a lot of different trademarks, they can coexist, you have different marks that are you know, different trademarks are the same or similar, because they're using it for different goods and services. So you're typically limited to the same or similar goods and services. And really the standard they use is what's called confusingly similar meaning Hey, if I were to go out and use this mark, and you were to go use that mark, are customers going to be able to dis differentiate us because Nike automotive and Nike, you know, athletic wear are so different. They're gonna think it's the same people selling it, or they're going to be close enough. They're saying, I don't know if you're selling it or they're selling it or who's selling it because they look the same. They sound the same and they're about the same product. So yeah, that's kind of where you look at the scope. Of how much coverage you get, you get it, you can do it for a word, you can do it for a logo, you can do it for a catchphrase, you can do it for design, but then it's how broad it is, is based on whether it's confusingly similar to other people and what categories you file it for.

 

Roy Barker  20:14

Interesting. Okay, well, thanks for that explanation. So let's talk about copyright for a moment. Because, you know, with all the stuff on the internet, everybody's putting videos up, we think, coming through COVID, we've had a lot of internet learning. And so everybody's developing classes packages, yeah, you know, who knows a myriad of goods? So, you know, kind of what is the litmus test for? For that? When do I want not necessarily timeframe, but what do I want to protect? Or what can I protect?

 

Devin  20:50

Yeah, and those are kind of two different questions, what can you protect versus what you may want to protect, I mean, anything that's on the copyrights, anything, that's a creative work you can protect. And so again, that can be every photo that you take, you can protect, you can protect every song that you write every book that you write every video that you take, everywhere, every sculpture, everything, you can protect all of that. And so as much as you want to protect as much as you see that it has value, it allows really, if you think anything creative, and what they basically have the definition of is you have to be able to put it in a tangible medium, you have to write it down, it has to be fixed somewhere. So it can be a painting, it can be on the you know, it can be on a canvas a sculpture, you have to actually sculpt it, you can't just keep it in your head and say, Well, I thought about that sculpture five years ago, or I thought about writing that book. So I get a copyright now you have to actually put it somehow so that it's actually tangible, or that you've done it. But beyond that you can really just about anything that's on the creative side, you can is a pretty broad spectrum as far as what you can protect. Now, the question is also, you know, and you, as you mentioned, should what should you protect? And or, you know, what should you go out and enforce or Sue people, you know, for, right? And that's always a balance of, you know, What is there? Is there enough value in what it is, you know, you can have 20 pictures on your website and say, Yeah, they're all original to us. And if somebody goes and copies, it, really is not going to harm our business, there's not a lot of value. And so do I want to go and be focused my business go and sue them during credo, you know, do all of that to go through a lawsuit when it's really worth $20 type of a thing, versus a, hey, if you go take, you know, the world's best picture and everybody's using it is valuable, and that everybody's putting it on their websites, and everybody's printing it out putting it in books, and whatever, then it has a much greater amount of value in you're gonna want to protect that because it has that inherent value, that you're actually going to be able to get an income from it. So what can you protect a whole bunch? What should you protect probably what has value to you, and what you can either drive value by licensing and they're selling to other people, or if it's valuable to your business, I said, if you're somebody else were to copy it, it decreases yourself decreases the amount of traffic and everything else, then you're gonna want to protect it for prolific creators, do you have to submit forms or documentation for you know, let's

 

Roy Barker  23:01

just say it's an instructional video? Would you have to submit something for each and every video or is there some kind of a blanket coverage that you can get for material that you create.

 

Devin  23:15

Um, like I said, there's some inherent rights when you create it. Now, when you go to file so you can know you know, within everything you create, you do have some inherent rights that are going to attach whether whether or not you file on it. But now, once you say, Okay, this is valuable enough, I'd like to go file on it, you can either if you had a whole bunch of material, let's say you had, you know, 20 different pictures and you know, I had them all ready to file you can typically and I'll say typically, because there's always some exceptions, you can file them as a single copywriters, a single filing, within reason, and you can't put 2000 pictures are gonna make there is a limit on our cap on it. But within reason, you can file multiple ones within a single copyright, the only thing you have to do is whatever you file you have to file at the same time. So if I'm taking if I'm prolific, prolific, and I'm, you know, I take you know, I write 20, great bestsellers, and I write them all at the same time, I could go copyright and probably all at the same time, but if I were to write them over a period of time, and I wanted to protect each of them, as I release them, then you would file on a copyright separately, so depends on if you you know, when you're releasing, um, if you're, if you're trying to go protect a whole bunch all at the same time, you can generally bundle more, if you're doing it incrementally and you want to file or protect them as you go, then you have to file them separately.

 

Roy Barker  24:27

Okay. You know, we touched on this when we were talking about, you know, Joe's pizza place, but then our names, you know, because you see a lot of people with, you know, similar same names across but, and I know this probably has a lot more to do with contract law than then enter actual property. But one of the smartest moves was Prince, you know, as soon when he severed his ties with his production company or whoever had him under contract. They said, Hey, you can't use that. Name anymore. So it to me it was a genius move to do the symbol and then the artist formerly known as because he got his point across. So I guess it's interesting though that they kept the rights to his name is that because it wasn't his his actual really birth name or I guess how could we actually lose the rights to that?

 

Devin  25:25

Yeah, and that one gets more in copyright or sorry, in dude contract, okay, in the sense of generally he would have the rights to his name and you can for most people 99% of people, you can't trade, you can't even get a trademark on your name, you don't have rights to it. Because the problem is, is you can't have people from using their name. So we both named Joe, we both want to open up a pizza place. You know, I can't stop you from using your name and naming your business part of your name, right? So for most people, you can't read the issue becomes when you try and use your name and their business. And you can't you're not able to now, when you reach a level of famous you know how famous you are, where everybody when you hear Michael Jackson, they think of the singer when everybody hears Michael Jordan, they think of the basketball player, or maybe the actor now or you hear Tom Cruise or you hear Donald Trump, you know, whatever side of the spectrum you are, but there's a lot of names that you hear. And you say, okay, when you hear that name, you don't think of the 20 Joe's that I know, I think the one Michael Jordan. And if I hear Michael Jordan, I don't think the Michael Jordan down the street, I think of that specific, right. So that one, once you reach that level of famous ness, then you can actually trademark your name, you can get some rights with the trademarks. And so a lot of what that was dispute was, is because Michael Jackson and been you know, famous enough and you know, or prints in this case, now they can, he can actually get a trademark, there's a tangible asset, and they can contractually get rights to it. And now when he leaves he, he sold the rights. I mean, he got money for it, they paid him for it. And now because they paid him for him, it's part of a contract they own the rights to and that's why he went to this demo. And even if artists formerly known as brands, because he knows he's sold the rights to his trademark for his name, because he reached that level of infamy.

 

Roy Barker  27:04

Yeah. So the well, when we when you name a business, and it depends if you're a professional, or what you really plan on doing, you know, always talk, say, to me, personally, it's always better to try to form a company name, just because, you know, if you're in the professional services business, and you named the company after yourself, of course, anytime anybody calls, they want to do business. With that person, they asked for the name person, it's hard for somebody else to take over, eventually, if you want to pass this along, or sell it or whatever. So talk about the legalities of that, I guess for just a moment, if if you've named a business after yourself, it does it run into some legal issues later on when you're trying to sell it or, you know, if you want to, I guess start another business, maybe it would hamper you in some ways.

 

Devin  28:00

Yeah, if you wanted to sell generally you you're able to sell it and you can attach your name to it. And as an example, you know, Miller IP law, if I wanted to go sell that somebody wanted to take over, they could certainly I could, you know, we can make a transaction have an agreement, and they could get the rights to use Miller IP law. Typically, in those type of agreements, then I'm agreeing that I, if I can't use my name to start another Miller IP law down the road, and I'd have to come up with a different variation. So there's anything to hamper that other than you would have to be careful that if you wanted to start a new business, you're generally going to have to not use your last name or use something else. The other one on the business side, the kind of john was it is generally when you start to tie it to a specific name and one of the ones that comes to mind that if you notice, as you watch, if you ever get into the financial industry, a big name is Dave Ramsey, Dave Ramsey there, you know, he has a radio show a talk show, he has books, he has, you know, a whole bunch of content. And if you notice, for a long time was called the Dave Ramsey show. And you know, he tagged his name to it, because that's what you know, everybody knew by Dave Ramsey was the name he was a brand. And he was the face of the company. Now, as you notice, as their, you know, as they are trying to transition as he's looking towards retirement, they've actually renamed the show if you if you pick up on Ramsey show so it's no longer a Dave Ramsey show. And they also started to brand their company and one of their products, Ramsey solutions and that so now they're trying to transition that because it's difficult when you tie it to your name, you leave you you're no longer part of the business, you retire, you move on or anything else, then it'd be now now now all of that following and all that goodwill goes along with you even if you'd like to leave it you know, everybody is wants to be with Dave Ramsey. They want to listen Dave Ramsey and everything else. So oftentimes it creates a reason for that transition that you're having to actually rebrand or adjusted or anything else because it makes it difficult to transfer that with your name.

 

Roy Barker  29:47

Yeah. Well Devin, I appreciate you taking time out of your day. Any any parting thoughts you want to leave with the listeners concerning intellectual property

 

Devin  30:02

Yeah, I would say that the biggest thing is a lot of times people oftentimes, and I get why, but they wait too long on going after intellectual property. And the reason is, is because they're saying, Okay, if I don't know, if I need it, if I go into attorney's office, they're going to charge me by the hour. And then all I'm going to do is spend a few $100. And they're probably going to tell me, you don't need anything, or they can't help me. And it's going to be a waste of time, or they don't have the money. And so, but the problem is, is they always wait for too long, and they don't they never they lose out on the rights or it gets a lot more expensive down the road. So I would say at least have it you know, what, regardless of where you're at, get a strategy. Know the deadlines, go and talk with an attorney, a lot of them, myself and a lot of others. And you know, my firm and other people that I know, will oftentimes they will, using get a free consultation, consultation, a free strategy session to at least get an idea of what deadlines you're looking at, when you shouldn't be looking at things when you know what that's going to cost. And so if I were to leave kind of that as a parting thought it would be, regardless of where you're at, get a strategy, know what you're up against, and get a strategy and get a plan in place so that you're at least able to plan that out budget for it know when it's coming. And that way you don't create more issues down the row.

 

Roy Barker  31:12

So have you personally seen any of those cases where I came in with the either a great book I just wrote or something I book maybe a little bit too, too general, but just I come in with a great idea. And you start looking into it, and I'm like, a month, a year too late? Yeah, I've

 

Devin  31:34

had that conversation several times with potential clients, they'll come in say, okay, I've you know, I've been in business for a few years. And you know, we couldn't do a patent. But now finally, we've got we, you know, things are going well, we've got some cells, and we can finally get you know, we'd like to finally file for a patent on it. And I say, okay, so just to clarify, you know, how long have you been selling your product? Well, about three years, and then it's that conversational? as awesome. We have a business great, do you have a product? Unfortunately, I can't help you because you miss out one year window, and now it's donated to the public domain, and anybody can do so you better hurry and compete as well as you can continue to innovate. So I've had that one. I've had people come in the office and say, Hey, I'd like to get a trademark on our brand and then say, Okay, well, let's look around. Is there anybody else using it? Well, yeah, there's this other person that's using it. Let's see if they have a trademark. Oh, yeah, it looks like they have a trademark. Well, you've got a bigger problem now. So because now you got to go figure out how to get you know how to navigate around this because somebody else owns your brand, so to speak. So yeah, that happens on too frequent basis. People hold off too long.

 

Roy Barker  32:32

Yeah. Is there a trademark registry? Where if I'm thinking of an awesome name that I could go out? And do you know, a little bit of searching just to make sure I'm not infringing?

 

Devin  32:45

Yeah, so you can go on to the USPTO is the US Patent trademark office USPTO. Calm you are, and I think it's dot org now. But you can actually go on there, you can, if you're to go and just basically search USPTO trademark search, it'll take it to their page, you can go look at it. Now. Things are to be careful of as well, it's good to kind of get an idea and start out with, you know, if you don't know what you're doing, what you're looking for what's confusingly similar, what classes or categories and goods and services are, and all what that means. You can either think, hey, oh, yeah, we're fine. We're free and clear when you're not. Or you can not go after a trademark when you probably had a free path forward or clear path forward, because you don't know it. And so yeah, you can go and search, do some initial looking around. If you're gonna get serious, I probably go to someone that's more experienced that knows what they're doing. So they can make sure to validate what you found.

 

Roy Barker  33:34

Yeah, right. Yeah. And it's, I think you make a good point, you know, it's never too early even to reach out and just say, Hey, this is where I'm at, or this is what I'm thinking, you know, I get some expert advice. Because I guess the only thing worse than being able to have something is not being able to take advantage of it. If it's a really awesome in somebody, somebody's snatching it out from under you. Because, you know, there's people that do that, unfortunately, in it, it's part of business, but people you know, try to re engineer stuff all the time. And if you're on a good path, then, you know, everybody wants to try to ride that train with you as well. Yep, absolutely, completely agree with Yeah. All right. What do you have a Is there a tool or some kind of a habit that you use every day that you feel like adds a lot of value to your life?

 

Devin  34:28

Um, yeah, I mean, habits, you know, there's a lot of different habits. But one of the things that I've always got into the habit of is I always start out my morning with doing exercise. So I usually run about seven or eight miles in the morning each day. And I find that you know, one it keeps you healthy, keeps you active, because a lot of times you know, you're not able to get as much exercise throughout the day when you're in an office. But to the other thing I found is, for me, at least, is when I go out and I run and I have that time where I don't have the phone ringing and I don't I'm not in the office. It gives a time for my brain to unwind insensitive it kind tend to wander to those things that I need to get done or I've been thinking about, I really haven't had a time to because I'm so busy when I get in the office doing 100 different things that it kind of is that time to unwind to let your brain wander And naturally, at least for me, tends to reflect on and think about the things that I should be doing for the business that I've been putting off or things that I should be considering that so yeah, best habit I have is to exercise in the morning, go take a run, let me clear my head. And that oftentime does more for the spur new ideas and generate new business and anything else.

 

Roy Barker  35:29

While my up my game, I usually say I get down, take a 15 minute walk. So run in seven or eight miles, I'd really have a clear head if I could get out and do that. Now that is the best way. And there's a lot of empirical research on that is ever too late. Yeah, there's a lot of research out there too. You know, we just need that time away from everything. to be creative and have the To me, it's it's a real inspiration, that's when I can solve some problems or think about some things that are kind of been holding me up. But anyway, I appreciate you taking time out of your day to talk to us about intellectual property, if you would just, you know, tell everybody basically, who you can help, how you can help them and of course, how they can reach out and get a hold of you.

 

Devin  36:17

Yeah, so really anybody that's needing patents, trademarks, copyrights, we're happy to help. We're always here for businesses of any size. Now, we tend to focus more on startups and small businesses. So particularly if you fit in that category, we're definitely willing to help. But we also have medium and larger clients as well. So kind of as across the spectrum. You know, if they were wanting to we offer, you know, a couple ways to reach out or to find out more, if you want to get a one on one session with me, I offer free strategy meetings where you sit down for a few minutes, kind of go over what you're doing, strategize, kind of think out what are the next steps, what questions you have, what costs there are. So to do that, just go to strategymeeting.com. You can grab a time right there on my calendar, you can block that off, we'll have some time to chat. So strategymeeting.com. if you want to grab a one on one with me, if you're wanting to find this more generally about the law firm where the prices are gets and we have a lot of educational material on our website, you can just go to law with Miller all one word lawwithMiller.com, and that has a lot of information there that you can get going on as well. So that would be the two best ways to check out if you ever need help with patents, trademarks, LLC, business formations, kind of things that are related to your business. We're really here to help and set up to get you taken care of.

 

Roy Barker  37:28

Yeah, and the other good thing about reaching out I think, and correct me if I'm wrong is that even if I'm not in the place where I need to be, you can help me set those milestones that you know, once we pass these things, then it's time to revisit that subject again. Yep,

 

Devin  37:47

absolutely. So Exactly. As I said before, even if you're not ready to go in today, get your question in. Well,

 

Roy Barker  38:29

we had a little, a little zoom drop there, but Alright, I'm gonna go ahead and wrap up and we can take care of that if we need to if we have a little break there, but I appreciate you being here. Again, that's gonna do it for another episode of the business of business podcast. You can find us at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com You can find us on all the major social media platforms as well as the major podcast platforms iTunes, Stitcher, Google, Spotify, and video this interview will go live on YouTube as well so until then, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

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Do You Have a Plan For Success? Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan with Mary Sullivan

Mary believes being fearless means taking risks, and holding herself and those with power accountable to be their best. She encourages everyone to learn and evolve no matter where they are in their life stage. Learning is a journey, not a destination. And specifically for women as they maneuver in becoming leaders, whether it's corporate or entrepreneur.

About Mary

Mary Sullivan is a former executive leader in the financial services industry with over 30 years experience. She began her career after completing her Masters in Spanish and undergraduate in Political Science. Mary has held many leadership positions that involved starting new businesses around the globe, architecting service models and leading bilingual call center teams, all with business and leadership development at the center.

With her passion for helping women and other underrepresented groups, Mary has been an advocate for organizations that support and promote all women, Big Brothers and Big Sisters, Rock the Street Wall Street, #IamRemarkable facilitator and many others.

Mary believes being fearless means taking risks and holding herself and those with power accountable to be their best. She encourages everyone to learn and evolve , no matter where they are in their life stage. Learning is a journey not a destination and Mary has continued her professional growth at Harvard Business School and Cornell.   To keep living that belief Mary along with her co-founders established SweetbutFearless.com.

At Sweet but Fearless, we believe in the supportive spirit of professional women. In truth, we’re passionate about it! Building a platform where we could bring women together to share their unique ideas, similar experiences, challenges faced, and accomplishments achieved became our mission. Having access to these conversations can influence your career development and help you to connect with women who can be peers, mentors, and advisors.

We also recognize that today’s career path is no longer a linear journey and offer resources, training, and straightforward guidance to help you get over that hump, get out of a career rut, or achieve a long-held goal.

www.sweetbutfearless.com

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Full Transcript Below

Do You Have a Plan For Success Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan with Mary Sullivan

Sat, 9/4 12:59PM • 40:15

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, entrepreneur, business, mary, learned, helping, thinking, career, women, skills, resume, corporate, job, interview, roi, podcast, strength, reach, fearless, employer

SPEAKERS

Mary, Roy Barker

 

Roy Barker  00:07

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. I'm your host Roy. Of course, we are the podcast that bring you a wide variety of guests that can talk about a lot of diverse topics. You know, we want to help our small business entrepreneur solopreneurs. We want to try to help our audience to maybe think about some things that they haven't thought about that could help them or if they are having some struggles, we want to point them in the right direction. And so today, no different we have an awesome guest Mary Sullivan, she is an executive leader in the financial services industry with over 30 years of experience. She began her career After completing her master's in Spanish and undergraduate in political science. Mary has held many leadership positions that involve starting new businesses around the globe. Architects servers are architecting service models and leading bilingual call center teams, all with business and leadership development at the center. With her passion for helping women and under underrepresented groups. Mary has been an advocate for organizations that support and promote all women, Big Brothers Big Sisters, rock the Wall Street hashtag I am remarkable facilitator and many others, Mary believes being fearless means taking risk, and holding herself and those with power accountable to be their best. She encourages everyone to learn and evolve no matter where they are. in their life. Stage learning is a journey, not a destination. And Mary has continued her professional growth at Harvard School, Harvard Business School and Cornell. Mary, welcome to the show. Thank you for taking time. And I did want to mention that you now are with Sweet But Fearless and y'all help women, whether they're entrepreneurs or in the corporate world, y'all just help them to gain the skills in order to advance to wherever they want to go.

 

Mary  02:04

That's right, Roy, thank you so much for inviting me on the show. I'm so excited to be here. And exactly right. You know, after pivoting from corporate to entrepreneurial, I learned so many things, so many things through interacting with other entrepreneurs. And specifically, yes, helping the women as they maneuver in become leaders, whether it's corporate or entrepreneur, all the different skills, they need to level up right to get to that next rung on the corporate ladder on the entrepreneurial ladder. And there's so much interfacing between the two that, you know, I just think of myself as an entrepreneur now.

 

Roy Barker  02:42

Right, exactly. No, and I think, you know, that's great, because, actually, I had, in a previous conversation I was having this morning with somebody, we were talking about just that value of collaboration, it's not only to learn, you know, like from a mentor perspective, but sometimes it's just being able to bounce ideas off of people you trust. And, you know, I love the what I call that brainstorming phases, you know, somebody throws out a, and maybe a is not the answer, but a plus b, you know, maybe B or C is but being able just to have that person to talk things out is it's an invaluable.

 

Mary  03:24

You know, that's one of the number one skills that I've learned that has transferred over from corporate to entrepreneur. And that is building your advocacy team building that trusted, you know, advisor group, all of those colleagues that may be as an entrepreneur, especially if you're a solopreneur, by yourself. I'm blessed. I have two colleagues with me working, but you don't get to those meetings that you used to have in an office, you're not sitting around a table, chatting and brainstorming, you may be sitting around the zoom table or the podcast table. But it is more that you have to learn how to reach out to others in your industry. And when you're in the corporate world, I don't know if you're doing that as much, you know, I wasn't always reaching out to other, I get on some committees, but you weren't always reaching out to other financial analysts and financial relationship gurus to find out, you know, what stocks they're picking or what they're advising you we're kind of keeping those secrets to yourself, right. But I have found in the entrepreneur space, oh my gosh, specifically with all of the great social media that people are willing to share and to teach you how they started their business or what they stumbled through when they first began so that you don't do the same. And I have just found this to be just a wonderful community. And I'm so glad that you bring that skill, right? You bring that skill of mentoring from your previous into the entrepreneur or any skills that you wanted to but wow, yeah, collaborating and relying on others. You just have to do it. It's a must.

 

Roy Barker  04:59

Yeah, yeah. That's a good point that we don't really take this into account. But even when you're in a company, you can always find, you know, they call it different things. But sometimes they set up a council of peers or maybe, you know, skip levels where it's multiple people if it's a mentoring or just where you can not feel alone. And we if if you Trent's transition to the entrepreneur world, we need to think about recreating that as well whether you know, trusted advisors, kind of like a, you know, maybe a board, an advisory board that you put together. And I've even heard of some groups of competitors or close competitors in a market that they meet and have a roundtable because it's like, they may have a prot, you may have a problem that they've had in the past. So instead of you struggling by yourself, you can be collaborative with other people. So a lot of ways to solve that. But it definitely helps, especially as you transition. So when you transition from the corporate world to more of the entrepreneurial area, you know, what were some challenges that you personally ran into?

 

Mary  06:10

Oh, there are many challenges that I ran into, because it wasn't my first rodeo, I tried to transition from corporate to entrepreneur back in the early 2000s. And it was right before the 2008 crash. So it just didn't work out, I started a coffee house, okay. And I made probably the typical mistakes that most people do when they try to open up a eatery or a food business No. And, you know, I invested in the real estate, I invested in a lot of tables and chairs and a lot of things that wouldn't pay me back, right, versus trying to start small, and then go big. So I learned from that. And so this time around, when I was pivoting from corporate to entrepreneur, I kept my day job while I was getting the entrepreneur business going. So that was the first lesson I learned is, huh, make sure you have some income coming in as you're learning new things. That was lesson number one. And number two was really do something not only that you're passionate about but that you know about, right, that you really have a a deep, not only connection, because I think a lot of times people maybe take a hobby into a business. And I didn't want to do that this time, I wanted to take a strength into a business. And so that's why I focused with my colleagues on career counseling on helping women and men level up in their career. Because that's what I did for 30 years, right, I helped 1000s of people get promoted. So why not do that now as my own business? So one I learned stick to something you know, and you know, well, yes, that you also love. And number two is to do a lot of research. Yeah, I'm kind of an impetuous person. So I probably jumped in previously to something too soon, without doing a lot of research and just thinking my confidence and you know, grit would get me there. I learned over the years. Yes, that's a good start. But you also need knowledge and, you know, understanding of how everything works in the entrepreneur space. So I did a lot more research, this time around ROI that has made a difference. And just like you said, I did create an advisory board. I didn't go into it thinking I know everything. I went into it thinking I know a little and I need to know a lot more. But I can get started. I'm not going to wait till I know everything. And I think that's what a lot of entrepreneurs do. They wait until it's perfect. No way. I wasn't waiting till perfect. But I did wait until I had a better understanding. So those are three things I feel I learned this time around. And that kind of as I was pivoting,

 

Roy Barker  08:49

yeah. And it does make it a little easier to ease into it to well, not only to do that research, but also if you're able to keep that day job or a part time job to have that income to help you in that startup. Because any business, you know, in, well, if you're starting from zero, any business is going to take a little bit to get up and running. And unfortunately, you know, I've done a lot of pro forma work in the past in our pro formas are typically very optimistic, though, you know, we always think we're going to get ramped up in the first month or two and sometimes it doesn't always work out that way. So it's a it's a very good thing. And it just it adds a little peace of mind where the other thing is, you're not always worrying about paying this month's rent or the car payment or whatever. Because you need that creative energy if you're starting a venture you've got to have basically everything to give to it.

 

Mary  09:46

You know, ROI you should see my books on what we projected for revenue this year. Yeah, right. We need to you know, kind of back that up a little bit. Be a little more realistic. Yeah. But, yes, you have to have those high goals and Then the reality of the bills and I was fortunate, I mean, I was laid off. So on one hand that was unfortunate to be laid off in January 2021. But I was fortunate in knowing that in advance, right, so I had time to prepare as well as you know, received a severance. So that was also very generous and nice, because that does give you a little cushion, as you are going forward in your entrepreneurship, because it's, it is hard. Yeah. Because it's, it's really hard when you're transitioning to go from income coming in to only going out, you know, all you are doing is paying and then you're like, Oh my gosh, what am I gonna start making money. And then I think we start making poor judgment, right, we start utilizing poor judgment, because we're nervous about income coming in. So that's another piece of advice is if you can, if you can save as much as possible. So you know, relieve some of that stress. But also think of a product or service that maybe can go out quicker to enter to inject some revenue for yourself, whether it's a service, like we offer ebooks or courses, or whatever your entrepreneur business may be, that's one thing I learned too, is, maybe get something smaller out there to generate a little income, to at least hold off, you know, we're giving up right, as you're getting ready for your bigger product or bigger service or our coaching or whatever you're doing.

 

Roy Barker  11:24

It's a high wire act, because, you know, you made a good point earlier is that sometimes we have analysis paralysis that we want to wait until we have every answer for every conceivable possibility, you know, if the sun came up in West tomorrow, you know, how would it affect this, and, you know, you've just got a balance between that jumping out there, but, you know, still making it very calculated on how best to put you know, you still want to jump but you might need to make sure you parachutes work into

 

Mary  11:55

strategic Miss. Article risk taking, you know, we have all those corporate turrets for that, but it is that is true, right, jump and have a parachute.

 

Roy Barker  12:06

So, you brought up something that's good, I think we can touch on it. I don't know why it evoked this thought for me, but when we talk about planning, this works for the entrepreneur, but it also works for the person that's in the corporate. And one thing I've seen before, and I, you know, I was guilty of in my younger days is not really having a plan. Even in the corporate world, you just think things are gonna happen, people are gonna take care of you. And it's just the way things go. And I saw a lot of people get hurt, because they didn't have a plan. And you know, the old saying, What? Work? What is it, plan your work and work your plan. And so you always have to be thinking, you know, where do you want to end up? And how am I going to get there, and that it really true in the entrepreneur proneural space, but we can't forget that when you're in a corporation too, because you will get left behind.

 

Mary  13:04

Oh, right. You are definitely speaking to the choir here. You know, I mean, I've been laid off twice. So I have experienced that. And a lot of our what we call our fearless nation and sweet but fearless. We talk about that, because that's a lot of how it started was how can we help women and men who have recently been laid off, whether it was due to acquisitions and mergers as mine was, or whether it was due to COVID, or the pandemic, for whatever reason, you are at your lowest because your confidence has been, you know, really struck hard. But at the same time, you can be at your highest because now you have the freedom to do what you want. If you have a plan. And in our podcast as well, we talk about that we have a lot of guides on it as well, really talking about thinking through while you have a job. What you would do if you didn't have a job, right, that plan you're speaking of what if do a lot of what if scenarios, because again, your mind is freer to think through it because it has doesn't have the stress of I don't have a job on your shoulder, right? You have a job, or at least you have some income coming in. So you can be a little freer in what you're thinking, write it down, plan it out, what would it look like draw it? Some people are very pictorial, right? They want to draw everything or speak it into a microphone, whatever will work for you. But it's do it, act on it, because you said that if the inaction will never get you in, right, you have to take action that we learned as well as, frankly, not giving all your heart and soul to the company. Right? Right. You just can't give up everything of yourself. You can't sacrifice all your family time. You can't sacrifice all of your own personal interests for this entity that at the end of the day will always make the business decision they need for themselves Exactly. And their shareholders if they're publicly traded, you will be at the bottom of it. So give your great work to them. But Don't give your heart and soul a little bit of it for you. Because you're going to have to rely on it to get you forward. And I learned that the next the second time, the first time I was devastated, I was 17 years working for a firm, top performer, a leader in you know, they cut me, you know, and I got an email telling me I was laid off, I was devastated. And I was hurt, I guess, like people going through a divorce or, you know, I was just really blindsided. And I vowed I will not be blindsided again. So yeah, I would say the same thing in your entrepreneurial space. I don't wanna say have an exit plan, in case things don't go wrong, because you have to go be all in, but do have some kind of plan for if things aren't going the way you want. Right? What will you do to get it back on track?

 

Roy Barker  15:46

Yeah, and kind of that next step with that thought is, sometimes as entrepreneurs or professionals, we, you know, we hate to say ego, because it's, I don't know that that's the right word. But basically, you know, we let our ego get in the way that we know what we're doing, we know this path that we want. And we put blinders on to, you know, as we talked earlier about this council of help, but also just listening and watching for those signs that, you know, maybe if we're, you know, if we're a good plumber, marketing may not be our thing. So, reach out to somebody who does marketing and, you know, get some tips from them, it'll be money well spent, or, you know, whatever that looks like, but we have to be have an open mind to listen to get that input.

 

Mary  16:35

And also, I think froy, in addition to that is, even if you are good at it, maybe you should be spending your time elsewhere. And that's another thing I've learned in the entrepreneurs spaces. Where is the space where I can make the biggest impact and or revenue, right, the biggest impact on my business, and that's where I need to spend 80% of my time, and only 20% in all the other things, even if I like all those other things. Yeah, if I'm not spending 80% of my time in the spot that only I can do, because I have two colleagues, right? So they also have their strengths, right? I need them doing their strengths. And I need to stay in my lane so to speak. Because it's easy to drift or see the shiny Penny and go chase it, or, Hey, I heard a new way to grow my email list. Let me go do that. Yeah. And it's like, well, let's come back to it it is it? Is it in our zone? Is it what we should be focusing on? Because it's really hard, because you are getting a lot of advice from many wonderful people. Yeah, you just can't implement everything you do need to stay focused and stay on your plan. Yeah, as much as you can.

 

Roy Barker  17:40

Yeah. And that I think that even goes for the position that we take, because a lot of times that what I've seen before was a guy that started a business that was awesome in sales. Once the business grew, he, he hired salesmen, and then he tried to manage it and do the books and stuff that he could do, but it wasn't his strength. And so you know, that when we just tried to reposition him and say, Look, you can hire somebody that's good at books to do the books, but sales and selling your product or your service, that is your strength, you've got to go with it. And you can, you know, you don't always have to be that that manager person you can be, you know, out front doing what you do best.

 

Mary  18:23

Right. And it's the same thing in the corporate world, right? When you moved up from, you know, being a frontline manager, to a senior manager, you had to pivot and use different skills, the same skills that got you the first job, where maybe you were really the best at what you did executing. But if you want to move up to the senior director level, or a VP, etc, you have to start bringing more of your relational skills, more of your strategic skills forward. And being the expert at something maybe goes down a little lower. So it's all about moving different things forward. It's not that you don't have those skills. It's how we use them. And that's something I've definitely learned in the entrepreneurial space is that I have to find out more what the women that want to level up and move up in their career. What do they want? Not always just what do I think they need? Right? Right, right. I have to stop that thought and go to what do you want? Tell me exactly what you how do you want it delivered? When do you want it delivered? Because it can't be just what I think it should be. I've learned oh my gosh, you have to really survey and ask a lot of questions to make sure you don't just go out with your own thinking and then then yeah,

 

Roy Barker  19:36

yeah, that's a perfect analogy also to you know, just sales and listening to our consumer or our prospect to see what do they really, really need. So I think that message translates that. Yeah. What is it? We got? God gave us two years and only one mouth so we should be listening twice as much as we're talking. That's hard to do as a podcast host but it's good. It's good. Live by because you do learn a lot, sometimes you pick up those little keys. And I actually had a gentleman on not long ago that was a, like a body movement expert, he could, you know, kind of read things in and he said, not only two ears, but two eyes. So we have to pay attention to all of those, all of our sensories, I guess, in order to get that, but one thing I was gonna ask is, so what have you seen? Or what are people struggling with the most now, whether it's in the corporate or whether they're, you know, stepping out to entrepreneur, what have you been kind of providing the most help with?

 

Mary  20:37

All right, that's a great question. And I would say right now, specifically for my audience, to sweet, a fearless audience has been all about the COVID-19. Returning to office, the kids going back to school or not going back, it has been a rough year. And they were struggling a lot with balancing their careers and being either the mother in the home or maybe a caretaker of elderly parent, or just a woman, you know, with all that was going on with the illnesses, etc, and being a nurturer in their family nucleus. So that was the biggest struggle was how to keep moving forward in my career when all these other priorities are now pulling at me. And a lot of the data that we've been reading is reinforcing that that four times the amount of women have left the workforce than men. Now, I hope a lot of them are like me and are trying something entrepreneur and are really taking advantage of that potentially, and saying, Well, now let me do something for myself and my family and my community, right in my nation, let me do something. But I'm also a realist, and I know a lot of them are and they're going to be struggling to get back into the workforce, and not having to start over and that's what they're telling me is, hey, Mary, I don't want to start over. Yeah, I shouldn't have to start over. I didn't take six months vacation. Right? Exactly. Yeah, because there was an illness or because I got laid off, or I got furloughed, I'm trying to be a, you know, productive citizen in the workforce helped me out. And that's what they're wanting.

 

Roy Barker  22:12

And that's something I really haven't thought about till just now is that, you know, so many people, if they do return to a job, you know, to go find a job, they're probably going to be starting all over maybe a new position, maybe a new company. You know, hopefully things will open up fast enough, we might can find our way back to where we were. But I mean, that's a that's kind of a real threat, is that, you know, that I would hate to think at my age, I was have to starting over. But you know, the the other part I was going to mention too, is that, you know, knock on wood. This is the first time in life that it's been a blessing to be old, because you know, my kids are grown and gone. But I can't even imagine these young people that have had to deal with working at home, if they're lucky enough to work, but maybe even not working, having kids at home trying to educate them. I mean, what a trying time for so many people.

 

Mary  23:04

Right? I say, you know, my statement is we were all in the same storm, right, the COVID-19 store, but we don't have the same boat. Right? I had a different boat than others, right? I my son, too, is older on his own, you know, his his own career. So I didn't have someone that I needed to take care of other than myself. And then yes, you have these women in their 30s and 40s. To have children at home and having to balance, keeping them, you know, occupied and teaching them and being that primary teacher, and just all of the different things that we're pulling on them that. Yeah, I just feel that we all have to be aware of each other's tools that they had to get through it. Yeah. And what can we do to help them? Right, that is why we started our business because we wanted to help others that maybe weren't in a yacht. Right? They may be in that little canoe, paddleboard, standing up trying to just get by, you know, and we have to help them.

 

Roy Barker  24:04

Yeah, and the other thing that you mentioned, too, is women typically tend to be the primary caregiver. And I know that I've worked in the senior living field for a long time. And usually it's the daughter in law that takes care of everybody. And so now, you know, we've got the kids at home, and a lot of these women have had aging parents or aging parents in law that they've also had to provide care for.

 

Mary  24:29

We call it the sandwich. Yeah, right. The the mother sandwich, or the woman who has still kids or maybe even older kids have come back home, right? The basement dweller or, and they have the adult parents that they're taking care of. And we call it in the sandwich because they've got that both going on. And they're probably at the prime of their career. Yeah. Whether it's entrepreneur or corporate. They're in that prime spot in their career. Now they're like, Oh, my gosh, I have all of these competing priorities.

 

Roy Barker  24:58

Yeah, or some that are on lucky to have partners like me that are probably you know, worse than they'd Trade Me for a 10 year old in a heartbeat.

 

Mary  25:07

And the spouse, right. Hey, we know we can't do anything without our allies. Well, sweet, but fearless talks about women and supporting women. We believe me, we are all inclusive. And no, it does take a village. Yeah, exactly. Oh.

 

Roy Barker  25:24

So I guess the other thing I was gonna ask is kind of a predictive question more or less. But so what are y'all seeing it as women and men come to y'all? Are you seeing people that are going back to work more? Are they just preparing to go back? Do we think things are, you know, are Corporation starting to hire again for I guess, mid level to higher level jobs? Are y'all just seeing like everybody flooding back into the entry level? Or kind of what is that looking like?

 

Mary  25:57

Definitely, we are seeing the corporations opening up. So that has been wonderful, right. But, you know, I think a lot of people thought, well, due to the COVID, they're not going to go back into the offices, so they won't need as many people. And in my experience, and right now I know, in the financial services industry, they're opening up offices, and you know, safely and properly, but they're going back into the offices and working and they've even elevated their hiring. So more opportunity is out there. I think it's just gonna be a different kind of opportunity ROI in different roles. Okay. And that's what we're helping people do is be prepared for those new roles. Yeah, you know, elevate certain skills, right, make sure you know how to bring those forward. But also the art of the interview. Yeah, a lot of people were laid off or displaced. And now they're having to go interview and sometimes it's for the same company, sometimes it's for newer company, and those interview skills are rusty. That's what we spend a lot of time helping people is, let's help you prepare for that interview. And, and when the first time or the second time, so you don't get into that rut of 2535 interviews and you get discouraged excetera, we really want to help build that confidence through interview skills.

 

Roy Barker  27:10

Yeah. And I was talking to a younger guy the other day that was telling me about the about the I guess, the machines that recruiters and companies run these resumes through. It's an odd Oh, yeah. 80 is 80. Anyway, base, he asked her something. Yeah, yeah, basically, it's an automated machine. I think it's it's a, it's important for people, especially of my ages, you know, we made resumes that were pretty and functionable that you took in and you actually handed it to somebody but you know, from what I've picked up lately is that you got a really in I'll let you speak to this, but you've you basically almost have to have to you've got that one that you submit electronically, that can make it through this automatic tracking system. But then you need the nice one to actually carry in if you you know, get an in person call to give to somebody. So can you speak to that just a little bit?

 

Mary  28:12

I sure can and APS. Exactly. Right, that automatic system? Yeah. And everything's algorithms, right? Whether it's marketing online, or in your marketing online when you're finding a job because now no one really walks any hands. Everything's online, screeners, right? The recruiters are going through that. And definitely we talk about a lot in our courses, and in a lot of our free downloads, so people can feel free to do that is how you make sure that your resume matches the job description, right? I know, it seems like 101 ROI. But you find out that many people because they haven't interviewed a lot, right? They haven't had to do it or not thinking of Oh, the job is asking for project management. So let me find a way to say it five different ways in my resume so that however you describe project management, it's going to come up, right, that's what we work with people on ensuring that their resume does match the job they want. Yeah, right and match the needs of the company. But we also go a little further and we make sure that you are applying for the right jobs. And what I mean by that is not the ones you're going to get automatically, but applying for the ones you truly want and that match your interests match your skills and your passion and that you're not trying to fit the circle into the square and knowing if you're applying for a company that maybe their guiding principles are totally against yours. Yeah. Why are you applying for there? Yeah, and there's ways that people can research this for free and find it out. So we really helped them kind of put the puzzle together so that when they go into the interview, that's just icing on the cake. You know, they've already done all that research and reflection and now they're ready to just be them be themselves and knock it out of the park.

 

Roy Barker  29:56

Yeah. Yeah, the other thing too, I think that There's been a shift used to the resumes tended to be task oriented. And now we are more accomplishment, or you know what goes on? Yeah, outcome oriented?

 

Mary  30:12

Yeah, definitely that as well as even in the interview itself, right. I think everybody's heard of the behavioral interview question, tell me about a time when, right. And so everybody knows, they got to prepare and have at least, you know, seven or eight examples and stories and that are going to, you know, hit on different topics are going to hit on their communication strengths, their collaboration, strengths, their problem solving, and etc. So everything has become more about the outcome. And they even call it a star format. And you can Google that sta er, and it's all about setting up the situation, the task, your action item that you did in it, and then the result, okay? They even grade you on it and say, Well, if you don't talk about the result, then how do we know what you did with it. So even in the interview format, is that outcome as well as the resume, they want you to list your accomplishments. And to be very specific, so make sure your audience knows to be very specific, not just, I lead a large team, right? I lead 500 people in three divisions with, you know, 3 million budget, be very specific, so that, again, when they're interviewing you, and having that conversation with you, there's a story there you can talk about, and you can differentiate yourself from others. Yeah.

 

Roy Barker  31:36

Yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad that I am not out there. I know it is tough. And, you know, the, I guess, when we have this initial Scrum, with everybody, making the mad dash, you know, probably for the first few months, it's gonna be really tough and really rough out there.

 

Mary  31:51

Well, that's why a lot of people recommend a lot of us, you know, specialists, career specialists, we recommend, don't wait until you've lost your job to go find a new job, start always being networking, right, right. Use your LinkedIn, use your podcast, connections, use all of your network and make sure you are building relationships. Now, with confidence, because you have a job. So you're much more confident, do it now. So that when it does happen, and it will happen, probably in everybody's life, some kind of career path that you're ready, and at least you have a head start,

 

Roy Barker  32:23

right. Yeah, and you know, employers are, should be open, this is something that I preach all the time, because I do a lot of work and employee retention is that as the employer, we don't need to wait till the slot comes empty. To figure out who we want to plug in that we need to do the same thing we need to be reaching out. We need to be networking, talking, you know, that way it gives us kind of a think it gives us that honeymoon period is that I'm not having to make a decision on you. Because you walked in my office 10 minutes ago, it's like I can watch your social media, maybe we interact, even once things opened back up, we can go to a conference and see how people interact or you know, different things like that. But, you know, definitely tell employers, you know, recruiting is not posting a job on the internet. So you know, get out there. And so if you're on the other side, if you're the employee, don't be scared to reach out, because you'll be doing the employer a favor by getting in touch with them and starting to that networking process.

 

Mary  33:27

Make it easy for them to say, yeah, let me make it easy to say yes. You know, part of the role I had when I was an executive in the financial services industry was recruiting. Right, all leaders had to recruit and get the bench strength that you're referring to. And, you know, oftentimes, we were, you know, held accountable to having a deep bench because of the turnover. And you wanted to make sure that you didn't have a six month lag time between getting someone hired and on boarded, because that does take at least six months for someone to be on board and properly. So having that bench strength was so important. Now, what companies don't allow us to always do is hire ahead. Yes, I learned that one back in the early 2000s. That got him in trouble and had to layoff people because they hired too many ahead, but don't usually give you a month or two leeway most companies to if they see or know that someone's leaving, then for you to hire someone and get them on board. And so yes, having that been strength, whether you're the one hiring or you're the one wanting to be hired. Yeah, network network network.

 

Roy Barker  34:32

Exactly. Exactly. Well, Mary, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to drop by and see us before we wrap up, you know any other first off any other parting tips that you want to put out there? Before we go?

 

Mary  34:45

I would add to everyone that's listening, whether again, you're an entrepreneur or corporate, it really doesn't matter because you are talent, and you are trying to be successful in whatever space you're in right now. And I would say Just make sure you really do know your interest, and build your confidence. And if you're struggling with your own internal confidence, surround yourself with those that do love and support you and believe in you, because they will, they'll help build you up. Yeah, use them, especially as an entrepreneur, you need it more than ever, right? But do know that there's people that support you and let them let them give to you and let them support you. Yep,

 

Roy Barker  35:24

sometimes that's fine. Sometimes that's hard, we have people that are around us that want to provide us help. And we don't want to bother them or whatever the reason is, but just be open to letting people help you because they they truly do. And people, you know, I found that people are so giving of themselves, whether it's their time or their knowledge that they will help. So that's alright, so what is a tool that you use in your daily life could be a habit, it could be a, an app or something, but something that adds a lot of value to you professionally, or personally,

 

Mary  35:59

I would say the tool I use the most, and it's probably gonna be, you know, obvious when I was talking about career advice, but truly is LinkedIn. And that is a tool I use, because not only when I was looking for a job, it was very helpful. But recruiting people, it was very helpful. And now I'm learning in the entrepreneur space, which I wasn't in before. So I didn't see it through that lens. It is amazing place to connect with people in groups, and inventory have articles and information that can help anybody no matter what your business is, right. And they've even started adding new life functions and features. They're trying to evolve, right? They don't want to be left behind. Yeah, so they're evolving. And they're competing with clubhouse and Facebook and all sorts of other apps and sites. So that's one that I would say, I use every single day all throughout the day. It's helped me and I know it's helped many, many people that follow me and are in the industry. So I really like it

 

Roy Barker  37:07

no matter what, what side of the table, you're on the employee, employer or the career path or the level. Because I just get a lot of good information. I've got a lot of contacts. And you know, part of my litmus test is, you know, eye contact with people who are a lot more a lot smarter than I am and a lot more successful with them because they're putting out a lot of good information and things that I can certainly learn from so yeah, definitely a great tool to use.

 

Mary  37:34

You can repost them, it's not plagiarism, because of course, you're gonna give them credit. Right, right. But you can repost things as you're building your own business and your own credibility and your own voice. You can help leverage others voices, just like you said, we're much smarter than me much more talented. I leverage them all the time in one piece I'll leave you with is. Recently I saw an article on there from Harvard Business Review. And I thought, Wait a minute, I did a podcast on that very topic three weeks ago. So I posted it and said, Great minds thinking alike. So anytime you can tie yourself to someone a little higher. Yeah, go ahead and do it.

 

Roy Barker  38:13

All right, Mary. Well, thank you so much. Again, it's been a pleasure speaking with you. So tell everybody, you know, it's Sweet But Fearless. What are y'all? Who Are y'all helping? How are you helping them? And of course, how can they reach out and get a hold of you.

 

Mary  38:26

So I definitely invite everyone over to sweetbutfearless.com. We have lots of PDFs, and ebooks and Eguides and lots of free information to really help anybody going through a career transition who maybe wants it to be a career transformation, right? That just haven't happened to them, but be part of what's your dictating how you move forward. So we have a lot of things over at our website, www.sweetbutfearless.com. We also have a podcast the same name Sweet But Fearless. And of course we're on you know, LinkedIn, Instagram, everything under Sweet But Fearless. So we welcome you to come over and get to know us join our mailing list. And if there's a connection, there's a connection, we'll see how we can help you.

 

Roy Barker  39:11

Alright, awesome. Y'all reach out, see how meri can help you. Like I said, it doesn't matter if you're in the corporate world. If you're an entrepreneur, if you're an entrepreneur, go into the corporate world or somebody in the corporate world going to entrepreneur, reach out, see how they can help you there, you know, especially if you're of a certain age things have changed so much that never really hurts to get a little refresher kind of see what's the latest and greatest. And you know, as we talked about some things the maybe some different hurdles that you're going to need to cross as you do this. So, again, thank you and that's gonna do it for another episode of the business of business podcast. You can find us of course at www.the business of business podcast.com. We are on all the major social media networks as well as the major podcast platforms Stitcher, Google, Spotify, iTunes, If we're not a one that you listen to regularly if you'll reach out, I'd be glad to get us added to it. So until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.sweetbutfearless.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

Finally, Marketing Made Easy! From Branding to Social Media In Five Days with Elizabeth Pampalone

Whether starting a new business or spousing up an existing one, marketing should be one of the first pillars to get established. It's tempting to throw up something up with the best of intentions to come back and finish it up later. Don't put it off any longer Absolute Marketing systems will take care of all your needs in a week. Really!

About Elizabeth

Elizabeth helps clients achieve a unique, authentic brand that connects with their audience and customers on a practical and emotional level. Her unconventional approach has led to the successes of her many clients.

With client-focused ideas and business-friendly costs, it makes the partnership profitable for both her clients and their customers. With Absolute Marketing™ each pillar only takes one day to implement with Elizabeth’s easy-to-follow formulas. Many have praised her brainstorming sessions as “Gold Mines” for the non-marketer.

Elizabeth is also devoted to facilitating a perspective shift to aid clients through Business Clarity Coaching. Their dreams, fears, strengths, and achievements are brought out into the open to provide contextual clarity and a successful path forward.

www.getabsolutemarketing.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

Full Transcript Below

Finally, Marketing Made Easy! From Branding to Social Media In Five Days with Elizabeth Pampalone

Sun, 8/22 5:33PM • 52:26

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, day, marketing, business, brand, website, client, thought, elizabeth, months, solopreneurs, customers, ended, logo, social media, branding, person, years, started, knew

SPEAKERS

Elizabeth, Roy Barker

Roy Barker  00:07

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the business of business podcast. I'm your host Roy, of course, we are the podcast that brings you a wide variety of guests to talk about a diverse set of topics we want to help our solopreneurs entrepreneurs and small businesses be successful, maybe give you something new to think about. Or if you've got something that you'd like to work on, maybe present a professional that can help you out. So today is no different. We have a Elizabeth Pampalone with the She is an author, international speaker, successful entrepreneur and expert marketer. With over 20 years of experience, her innovative approach helps overwhelm business owners and burn out nonprofit non for nonprofit directors to achieve success and freedom throughout the power of absolute marketing. Elizabeth, welcome to the show.

 

Elizabeth  00:58

Thanks for having me,

 

Roy Barker  00:59

oh, had to snicker at the burnout. Because that's, you know, sometimes we all fall into that. It's like there's just never enough hours, never enough hours in a day to get the things done. We need to do much less the things that we want to do. So tell us, tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get here? How do you find yourself in this marketing space?

 

Elizabeth  01:20

Well, I actually started about 15 years ago, as an entrepreneur, I graduated with a degree in programming was a software developer for about eight months, well, ended up getting married in the middle of all that. And then my husband left me after about three months of marriage. So I had to move back in with my parents, I lost everything that I had worked towards. And I couldn't hold my software job. It was too stressful for me. Yeah. So I ended up moving to Florida with my parents, which they were all moving right when all this happened, Oh, my gosh. So I moved to Florida. And I started a business because at that time, it was during the recession, and there weren't really that many jobs I was qualified to do. And the people that did have jobs, I mean, they were holding on to them. So no one was really moving around a lot. And so I just decided, you know what, I'm going to start something and I started a computer repair company. And then I started a training company for small businesses, my marketing agency, which I still have today. And I also had a networking company as well.

 

Roy Barker  02:22

Oh, my goodness, well, I mean, it's a sad, you had to go through that. But as you came through it, it sounds like you came through it on the other end. And I think that, you know, that kind of mirrors some things that may be going on in today's time, you know, with the COVID in the pandemic is a lot of people, maybe they didn't set out to be business owners, but now all of a sudden, you know, they had to be in business for themselves to just survive. And so then the next thing is, you know, when jobs open up, do we go back to work? Do we stay and try to grow this business? So I think that will be, you know, I think your you will be insightful into helping figure out how do we do that? How do we grow our business, and that, you know, part of it too, is we need to grow responsibly, because as we've talked about some previously is that, you know, we actually can outgrow ourselves, not having business is not the only is not the only way to go out of business. But sometimes, you know, I've seen instances of people that have had extremely nice growth, but they just couldn't handle it, customers got upset. And then there we go. So anyway, we just talked about that. But so what really attracted you to the marketing in?

 

Elizabeth  03:33

Well, I had always been kind of a creative and that way. And the reason I even got into web programming as a kid was I started with HTML at 14. Okay, so I was building websites, you know, on our computer locally, and trying to do little things for myself. And then I started working at 16, with some small business owners, and locally in my area, and my mom would drive me to their house and I'd work at their home office, I started to realize that I had this like bent for marketing as well, because I would go to help them with something, you know, menial type tasks, the filling bags, or creating filling orders or whatever. And then I would realize, well, there's no more efficient way to do this, and why aren't we marketing this this way? And why aren't we telling people about that. And so I started to share these ideas, and people started to kind of pick up those things up. And so I knew I had that in me. And I knew I would like to do that. And my mom was also an entrepreneur when I was growing up. So that was very much familiar with, you know, going to shows and selling and things like that. And so I liked that part of it. But when I was looking at actually going to college, I thought, well, what's gonna pay me the most money. And of course, programming was a little bit higher than a designer salary at that point. And so I thought, well, I'm gonna go with this skill. And I can always add the other skill later, right? I can always just pick that up as I go. And what ended up happening is, when I started my own business, I had to do all of it myself. I had to program the site. I had to design the site, the graphics, everything. So I really kind of learned on myself. And I developed a lot of formulas for myself that I ended up using in my agency about four years ago when I basically cleared my agency and just started completely over and started with absolute marketing, which is the system that I created, you know, back in the day for myself.

 

Roy Barker  05:20

Okay, great. So where are we, you know, things have changed a little bit, especially from the days of, you know, hard coding websites, some of us, you know, we use the WordPress to kind of, so we don't have to learn all of that. Still, it's helpful, but what are some things that you've seen that have changed? I know, the space, all spaces, they've just gotten so much more noisier? And I guess, you know, that's kind of the question I've been trying to get to the lot is, you know, what's making people stand out today. And then, of course, compounding that I think this last year for some people to stay home a lot, I feel like that that noise is probably just even gotten higher.

 

Elizabeth  06:02

It has, it really has, but one of the things that I do with our strategies, and this is something that I did for myself, for the first 1012 years of my agency in my businesses was I actually developed these formulas that cut through that, okay, and get to your right customer. And so with my customers, I'm actually doing a talk in a couple weeks, on how COVID has changed marketing. And my answer to that, and you know, I'll give you a sneak preview, it's going to be it hasn't, I think there are these core things that people were not really doing before, they were kind of ignoring, they're pushing to the side, because they weren't flashy enough or exciting enough. And they were trying to do all this stuff, which created all that noise. But really the people who continue to do real marketing, when I call real marketing, stable marketing, right, that those people are the ones who didn't have to change a thing, they actually were able to just keep going and actually grow even some in during, you know, during COVID. And during the end of last year. And it's funny, because some of my clients were a little upset that they didn't get the second round or the, you know, a PPP, because they had grown. They were like, well, man, you know, but in a way it was good, but also also in a way it was good or bad. But at the same time, so. So I think that's one of the things that I say that, you know, marketing really has not changed, because everything goes back to the psychology of why people buy things. And I think if you just look at that for whatever current age you're in, then you're going to have the right strategy, because it's about how do people buy things? Why do they buy things? And then how do I can, you know, not even convinced but persuade someone, that what I'm selling is better. And I think that a lot of that goes to your brand, and your message, and having a good landing space where people can actually land and sit. So you mentioned, you know, WordPress, no, you don't have to really know how to code to do a lot of these sites anymore. But what I find is that people who are inexperienced with websites, they'll get in, they'll build a website, then they'll do tons of social media marketing, they'll do tons of ads, they'll pay a ton of money on that social side of it. But their website is just killing them. It is falling so flat that when someone goes to that ad, they pay for that ad, you know, they're doing all these things that they're paying for. And then their client or their new customer comes to their website where the sale is actually happening. The sale doesn't happen on social media, but it's happening on the website, then it fails them. And then they wonder, Well, why isn't my social media working? No, it's probably because your website or your brand, even Yeah, even further back is not even working. So I think a lot of people kind of put the blame on the wrong party in some of those instances. And so we really have to look at, you know, the five pieces of marketing and really say, Where am I strong? And where am I weak? And I think having someone from the outside look at that doing some kind of audit, I do audits all the time. Okay, really is helpful to give you that real perspective of is my brand good? Is my website strong enough? Then? Is my social media working correctly? For me? Is my email marketing working correctly? And is my blogging, you know, actually ating and connecting all these pieces?

 

Roy Barker  09:11

Yeah, I don't think you can stress that audit enough. Because, you know, it's, I'll be I'll throw myself under the bus and say, you know, we get wrapped up in what we do, or what we know, that sometimes we don't see, you know, it's just we don't know what we don't know. And somebody may be like, hey, and a good example is, you know, used two years ago I did. I did these interviews on Skype, and then it got to be so difficult for us to connect that we it's been 30 minutes getting the connection then everybody's like, I'm worn out, I can't even do an interview. So quit doing um, just went audio for a while and then you know, with the resurgence of zoom. I never really thought about it. But you know, I had a guest on we were talking and he's like, you know, putting these episodes up on zoom. I'm like, that's something I just knew I didn't think about it. So that's the good thing about an audit that can walk you down some paths that you never really thought about, or that you maybe didn't realize how important that was.

 

Elizabeth  10:12

Yeah, absolutely. And I, I love to do these because you know, even when I speak, I'll do a website talk or branding talk. And I'll spend the last 30 minutes of the talk, pulling up websites and going through them and tearing their first page apart, because that's the thing that's going to help them it's not going to help them for me to say, Oh, your website's beautiful, good job. Okay, moving to the next one, like I am there to Gordon Ramsay it right? tear it apart, tell you all the things that are wrong, tell you the good, good, good pieces, the good bits, but also say, look, this is what this is why you're not gaining the traction. This is why you're not getting the sales or the calls, or whatever it is you're trying to attract there.

 

Roy Barker  10:51

Yeah, and we could probably even take a step further back removed from that and talk about branding for just a minute because it's important to, to really think that through and I know we can change on the dime, you know, anybody can throw any logo up at any time. But I always feel like, personally, it's good to give that some thought prior to your launch. It's just for the consistency factor. But I'll get your opinion on that. And then also really sitting down and thinking about, you know, because I've heard a lot of different sayings your brand is you know, what people think about you or say about you when you're not around. But you know, really thinking about who you are, what do you sell, and your product, your service. Given all these things, some thought and again, hiring an expert, I think like yourself, to walk us through this things that we need to think about Anyway, I'll let you comment on the branding aspect.

 

Elizabeth  11:42

Yeah, branding is the most important piece, I actually use it as the first day of my five day system. So we do branding, in a day website in a day, 12 months of social media in a day, 12 months of blogging in a day and 12 months of email marketing in a day. So we've got all that stuff to do. But I'm like, No, no, we're spending an entire day just on. Yeah, yeah, because it's that important it

 

Roy Barker  12:04

1. And it's like, you know, coming up talking to a gentleman the other day about logos and how they, you know, can actually invoke thought, and he had a really cool one that you could look at a few different ways. So you know, coming up with clever, I think it just makes people remember you. And then of course, you know, the iconic brands that we know, today, you know, their logo really precedes them.

 

Elizabeth  12:30

And branding is, you know, logos of that. So I think the brand is a multifaceted right item, or asset. And your logo is just that visual representation of your brand. And I like the idea that that will provoke thinking mode. And when I see a certain color on a logo, when I see a certain font, I'm going to feel a certain way about a brand, regardless of what I know about them. If I know anything different about them, it doesn't matter, right? I'm gonna feel this way. And so you know, if I look at there's a brand, here locally, I'm not sure if it's national or not. But it's 511 tactical or something like that. And they're I mean, it's it's the tag word tacticals in the name, so that's one thing, but their colors are orange and black. And the the font is very heavy and bold, almost like what you'd see on you know, on like a typewriter type of font, and it's just really heavy, really thick and very bright. And it reminds me and when you say tactical, I'm thinking okay, guns, and you know, hunting equipment and things like that. And it that's what they sell. And that's great. But at the same time I get this sense of, you know, this masculine sense from that brand in general. Like she right like the orange and the, you know, the big numbers and everything. And so then when you look at something like la petite Paris cafe, you know, and their font is scripty. And it's light blue, and everything looks very feminine. There's a chandelier is their logo, like it's very, it's what you would think Paris cafe would look like. And and it gives you that feeling. And you almost hear the music in your head, right? Like it's all there, you can smell the croissants like so even the name itself, the words evoke some kind of emotion or some kind of memory, but also the colors and that feeling of it. Now, if the opposite parents had their font in orange, and it was bold and typewriter looking. And I wouldn't think the same thing about that. I wouldn't have that feeling initially. Yeah. And so I feel like that that branding, and especially the visual representation of that is really important to get that right. And I see so many brands, I'll actually turn away companies that do not have it right yet. I'll say either work with me and we'll get it right or you need to go away and fix it and make it right before we can move forward because your website is then built on that your your social media is built on that. And when you have that message that goes with the visual representation, you know who you are, what you do, and who you're sharing it with. If you have All those pieces, that is just like a magic combination so that when you go to do that website, that's easy like that just pops right off the page. You don't have to think about it. When you go to share stuff on social, you're not wondering, what do I share? When do I share it? You just know because it all comes from that brand.

 

Roy Barker  15:15

Yeah, no. And you're right about the different colors, the font just, sometimes that messaging, it just gives you a feel. And people like to do business with people they feel comfortable with people they like. And so even if you were in the market, if you felt it was just too in your face and too masculine, it may actually steer you to go somewhere else. So that's something else you brought up, though, too. That's interesting is the name of the business. And and the reason I bring that up is because a lot of times professional solopreneurs, they just work under their own name, which it's not, I guess, in my opinion, it's not a problem. But I think that we have to think about the end game is that if we ever want to sell that business, if we ever want to, you know, might maybe even step back and have somebody kind of be the front, it's what I have personally ran into, I will just say this is a personal opinion that people wait, if you're going under Elizabeth, people want to speak to Elizabeth, because that's the name of your business. And if I have to speak with Amy, or Joanne or anybody else, I'm not speaking to Elizabeth to the business purse, so speak to the name. And then you know, kind of that working under somebody's personal name versus developing the an actual name for a company?

 

Elizabeth  16:35

Well, I had many names in the beginning of my, I could not sell on one. And I actually ended up working with a brand or myself because I was that scattered on my own business. Yeah. And this was for my computer repair company. So this wasn't even this before I even kind of started my agency. And I had, I had just struggled so much I was I was eh technologies. I was I mean, I just had all these weird names, ie three technologies, I was all these things. And then when I worked with a brander, she really asked me a lot of questions which I asked my clients today I've incorporated a lot of those things into my system that provoked me to to actually think about my brand in a personal and a business way. So it wasn't that I was gonna use my name, particularly, but I wanted to be enough of me in it because I was the face. I was the only one out there. And then what ended up happening was a good thing. Because I named my company, the jacks computer chick. She said, you know, you knew this one thing she just instilled in me initially was you have to say who you are, what you do. And for me, it was a regional thing. So I really could only go so far in a day. So I had to say I'm in Jacksonville. It wasn't something I could really do remotely. And so Jax I had to be in there, or the Jacksonville name. I was the computer person and a lot of my clients called me that computer girl. And so I thought, okay, we're just gonna check because it sounds different. Nobody else has that name. And there was actually another company in town called the Jack's computer guys. Okay, so I had to differentiate right had to be other the other one. And when I started that company, I didn't think it would be anything but being I didn't think it was going to go anything beyond that. I ended up getting remarried. And my husband ended up coming to work for me after we were married for two years. So this was our only business our only income. And because he did that, and he said he worked for the chick. That's the day I worked for the chip. I was like this fun little thing. And everyone knew he was my husband. And they were more comfortable because he was kind of a part of me, in a way an extension of me. Yeah. And then we ended up and hiring another woman technician as well. And then also another male technician. So we we had all these people and they just worked for the company name it was Jack's computer chip. That's, that's who they work for. And so it didn't really matter who was in it or not. But that was the name of the company. And it worked out really well because we ended up selling the company to one of our employees. But then when I branded my agency, I was just Elizabeth pampelonne. For the longest time just it was the Elizabeth pampelonne you just go to my website, everything was there. And what I found was that I knew I wanted to bring in more people. Eventually I knew I wanted it to move, you know, move and grow and all that kind of stuff. And I was not there yet with the name. I still couldn't figure that out again. I was what for yourself. It's a lot harder, right? And so I worked with a coach, and she was helping me with speaking engagements actually. And when I started working with her, she started to draw out of me this this offer that I had these five days that I had that I was doing, I just hadn't put it all together. And that's what you see today is as absolute marketing. And that's when four years ago, I just was like, You know what, I just need to do this. This is the only thing that really is the most impactful thing that I'm doing. It's the most helpful thing and it's also the most exciting and One thing that I get to do, yeah, so that's when absolute marketing was born. Because I want this system to be like, the only thing you need, it's the absolute thing, right. And so using that word, you know, going through that process that I use with my first branding person I worked with, going through that same process again, for myself, on my own, and finding that word absolute was very important for me, the word marketing can be thrown to anything, right, you can attach it to anything, almost. But I knew it, no need to say marketing, but it had to have something else to it. And so using that specific word was important. And that's built an entire, I would say, little Empire, if you will, of products and all kinds of stuff. But starting with that brand, is what got me to this place where we have a membership, we have products, we have services, we have coaching, we have all these things, speaking engagements. But if I hadn't started with that brand, I would not have all these other things that were able to easily flow out of it and become successful.

 

Roy Barker  21:02

Yeah, that is awesome. Because it is such a nice umbrella that you can put a lot of things under it and still stay true to you know, your mission. And I think you also brought up something else is that collaborative pieces. It's invaluable, especially when you're brainstorming, things like names are that creative for me, I'm not, I'm the non creative guys. So you know, numbers in a spreadsheet, I'm all good with that. But when we start talking about this creative stuff, it's like, it's nice to sit down and bounce that off of people. Because you know, sometimes we can be too close, if it's our own, and just having that output from somebody outside the organization. very beneficial.

 

Elizabeth  21:42

I always say even coaches need coaches, even branders need branders.

 

Roy Barker  21:47

Exactly. Let's talk about something else that you talked about for just a minute. As you know, our customer, I think it's important to at some point, you know, sometimes we start out, maybe side hustle doing this, and that, but when we want to get serious, and we want to really focus, talk about building our, you know, consumer avatar, or our consumer model for just a minute, because I think it's important to, you know, before we can really build a website and put words on it before we can reach out on social media, we really need to know who are we trying to reach? And what is our message to them?

 

Elizabeth  22:25

That's absolutely correct. And I that's why when I start with the brand, it's those three things, who are you? What do you do and who are you sharing it with. And if you have those three things down, the rest of it all comes actually really easily. And even though you might think those other things are hard, the website, social, whatever, it's actually a lot easier if you have a good a good brand. So now that you know you know who you are, you've got that name, you might even have done the logo, you're kind of putting all that together, that that message needs to go to someone. And I always look at what people are doing. And a lot of times no one, really then they'll say no one, but very few people will start a business, just to start a business of nothing, they have something they have no idea. start a business they go, I've never owned a restaurant, and I really don't like to eat out. But guess what, I'm going to start a restaurant, right? They're going to start a restaurant because people told them their food is amazing, they should definitely be selling this. And they've had this encouragement, but they've also had these customers, right? These free customers, even if that's the case, or someone's been starting a coaching, you know, job or you know, business, or they're starting, they're going to be a plumber, it doesn't matter what it is you're going into, you've had customers could be your mom could be your sister could be your friends, it doesn't matter because you've helped someone with something. And that's how you know you're good at it. And so once you've kind of decided what that is, and you know what the thing is you're actually going to be doing for people, then just look back at all those people you had as customers, who were your, you know, free customers, those initial people who told you you were good at something and say, okay, who are they? And why did it work so well with them? Was it because they were at a certain stage in life? Was it because they were male or female? Was it because you know, because if you're going to go into custom brazing ears, you don't want to be working with a lot of men probably it's not gonna be your man. Right? Right. So you're gonna go with that women population. So those kinds of things you have to know who were those customers that you've already worked with? You've already had success with, even if it was just that they said, Oh my gosh, your food is amazing. Okay, those are people that like Asian food. There are people who like Thai. They're people who like Mexican, they're people who like Italian, whatever that thing is, even if your food is kind of off of those things are not you're not pigeon holing into one right. But they're all these people also liked, you know, Mexican food or all these people also liked Italian food. Then you're going to say okay, now I'm going to go after people who like Italian food, because the People find it really similar and they really like it or whatever the answer is. So you want to go after the people you've already actually worked with that has been successful, or people have told you, this is the thing you're good at, okay? And that's a really great way to start, then you can start to branch out from there. And as you get more and more customers, you'll find customers that you go, I don't want to work with them again, I want to work with a client like that again. And you can really say, was it a certain stage of life? Were they not ready? Did they not have the finances? Whatever was that case that made it difficult to work with that person? They should be at the bottom of the list of people you say yes to? Obviously, we all say yes to people, we shouldn't, because we need to at some points in our lives and our businesses, but at the same time, that should be at that low. And, okay, this is the low hanging fruit, if I really got to do it, I can, but is difficult, right? So then we pick that high, high performing person that we were like, these are my favorite people, I have to work with this person again.

 

Roy Barker  25:57

Yeah, and you just jot down, you mentioned, you know, basically, unfortunately, as professionals, sometimes we have to fire clients, and I think you bring up a good point is that you really have to think about that person you want to work with and evaluate them. Because sometimes they can be such a drain on your resources or your time or just your emotions, that it's like whatever they're paying, it's so not worth it. So, you know, give that some thought. And, you know, like you said, In the beginning, sometimes we can't be as picky as we would like. But at some point, it is a much better path to pick your customer and work with people that you really, really want to lead, the outcomes will be better, because, unfortunately, sometimes the people that are difficult to work with, they just seem like they hang around for way extended periods where you know, when the job ends, or when it should be over with, it's like, you're still dealing with that.

 

Elizabeth  26:54

Yeah, and that's one of the things I've actually had to learn how to do this year, which was not fun. But I had a five figure job that came along, it was, you know, on the heels of the pandemic, I'm thinking, Okay, this will be good, we can get ahead of ourselves a little and, you know, move forward. And it was a great opportunity. It was not the type of client I like to work with I they had a lot of issues that I don't usually deal with, I can deal with them very equipped to do it, but don't like to don't, it's not part of my wheelhouse anymore. And I told them, yes, I did a five day session with them. We only completed four days, because it ended up we were supposed to do one day on each thing, just like, you know, our system works, right, we ended up spending four days on their website, because it was not one that I typically take on. And they had very specific ideas that were not accomplishable the way that they had things set up. And I tried to explain that it was just one of those things where you're just like, Why don't do this to myself, and why did I do this to them? You know, just tell them no, and make it better for everybody. And so I ended up telling them at day four, I was like, you know what I have to leave? I can't even do day five, I'm gonna refund you, you know, the days that we didn't do, but I can't do it. Because I'm not helping you. Yeah, I can't in good conscience, take more of your money. After I've tried and tried and tried and tried. It's not going to be what you need it to be. Yeah. And so I gave them some instructions on like, try these things. Once you get to this point, we can revisit all this. And they're they're still not quite there yet. But they're getting there, that it was one of those things that was really hard for me to say, you know, and this is an ego thing to as an entrepreneur, you can't fix everyone. Exactly. You can't fix everything. And having you know, hindsight saying no, initially saying no upfront, would have been better. And I had a client come along a couple of weeks ago, another very large, you know, job, really great info, you know, just great stuff like just oh, this is going to be amazing. And I said no, because their brand wasn't right. And they didn't want to do the brand with us. And I said you've got to fix the brand, when you fix it come back. And they haven't come back yet. But I have hope for them. But at the same time, I didn't let them down or myself down because I knew the limitations of how far I willing to go in certain circumstances.

 

Roy Barker  29:15

Yeah, it's important that you mesh just like, you know, friends that you go out to eat with, you're gonna sit and you know, across the table and try to have a conversation for an hour. You don't want to go out with somebody that's confrontational or that, you know, it's going to be bad time. And so it's the same thing with picking our customers i think is, you know, they need to work with somebody that they like and trust as well as we do. Because especially in the marketing, it's like, you can tell me all the right stuff. If I don't take your word and I don't implement it, then I'm gonna say well, you know, that was a really bad experience because none of this stuff is working well. It's because it's not because of the information given it's because of the way it was carried out. So that there's a so much To wrap around that for sure. But you bring up a good point I wanted to talk about for just a minute, you know, you have systemized your approach. And you know, you tell us about the five day approach. But let's talk about the marketing aspect of a systemized approach. And also, you know, the ease of you explaining it to just let's just talk about the whole systemization for just a minute.

 

Elizabeth  30:25

Yeah, so when I was doing websites, and social media and all that stuff, I had my agency for a couple of years, and I was still running my computer repair company, everything was kind of rolling together. And then I just got to a point where I was burnout, I was doing these websites for 30 days, 60 days, three months. And I had clients who were coming to me their sites hadn't been done by other designers for a year. And but the problem was the clients, they were taking so long to get us everything that I would sit there for 30 days, I would call them and email them and let's meet and let's, you know, try to get them on board. And they were like, Oh, I'm so busy. Oh, I'm so busy. And then on day 29 to 30, my inbox would be flooded with their information, I would sit there and drop everything I was doing cancel all my appointments. And just work on that because I had only can only take two clients at a time. And I had two more clients coming in the next day to start the process all over again. And so this was my cycle for like about a year to two years. It was it was insane. I was going mental. And so I said, You know what, I'm going to sit down because I was basically building websites in a day I said, I'm starting, I'm starting over, I took everything off my website, and I put up a website in a day, other in a day products available upon request. And I put a flat rate, it's the is the one day you sit down with me, we do all this stuff in person back and forth one on one, you right I design. That's how to work. And we just put it together. And when you leave your website is done. And you don't have to talk to me again if you don't want to. And once I did that, I got my first client with that I took everything else off. No other stuff was on my website. I mean, that was it. Yeah. And the first client said, Oh, I need a brand too. And I was like, great, we can do that in a day. I'd never done that before. I was like, I'm sure I can make that work. And then she said I need social media also. And I was like, Great, let's do 12 months at a time. And she's like, sounds good. I'd never done those two things before. But I knew in my mind a plan of action. I was like, let's see if this works. And if it doesn't, I'll refund her some money or something. It was the most amazing three days I'd ever had a client was amazingly happy, I was amazingly happy. She is still my client. Today, we've done we've gone through this process several times since she signed on with me. And it's just been amazing. Like that was just the first thing I was like this is this is what I need to do. And so from then on, I started to develop What does every business need, they need a brand, they need a website, social media is a must in this day and age. Unfortunately, blogging is really helpful for SEO, let's just do that instead of worrying about all this SEO stuff that's almost nonsensical. And then let's just email market because that just gets to our direct customers, you know, much easier than social media. Right, right into their inbox. So and I've had a lot of success with email marketing as well. So I was like, Okay, these are the five things you need. And then I started to say, well, there's a few alternates. Some people need memberships, we do those in a day, some people need a podcast, we help develop those in a day. And so and then some people just need help with just everything, right? They're just a mess. They just need somebody to come in sort out their mess. And we call that our la carte de so really those five things are our pillars. But then there's those three alternatives for people who need that. And so it's a system, and it works for every single business that's tried it that I've worked with, and their businesses, I know it won't work for I turn them away, I say go to this person go to that person, they'll do much better job for you. Yeah, but the people that I know, it will work for products, services, coaches, doctors, lawyers, I mean, just tons of different different industries. They are the ones that they can then pick and choose who can say, Okay, do you need a membership? Let's replace that with this or whatnot. So it's a really great system. And it is kind of interchangeable pieces. kind of feel like it's like Lego blocks, you're building a something up for them. But But yeah, it's been a really great system to use for myself because I use it on myself first. And I know it works. And then to build it out for my clients as well.

 

Roy Barker  34:30

Yeah. And it makes it you know, I look at it from your perspective, it makes it easier because you have this defined list that you know, of expectations, but then also, it makes it easier to I think to market it to your prospects because they know exactly what they're getting. It's not an open you know, sometimes when you come to professional services, it's like, Hey, I'm gonna do your marketing for you. And you know, you think so, what does that actually mean is that just like I just pass you a blank check and you fill it in when he get done in your day. But this has, you know, you have the set expectation. And the other part I like about it is that set time limit that, you know, typically, especially if you work with smaller businesses, professionals, entrepreneurs, it's like, you know, they're busy with their thing during the day, this is usually a night thing or a weekend thing that they're trying to get you information. And, you know, you're so right. It's like, you know, Friday at 430 is like everybody's hitting the send button trying to get stuff off of their desk and off of their plate. And you know, you've been waiting for a week or two for this information. And now, you know, it just can mess your schedule up going forward. And so I think that's one thing I really love about this is that you cyst systematize, then I think there's a lot of other businesses that can really look at that model to help themself as well.

 

Elizabeth  35:51

I've seen a lot of companies, because they've come and done stuff with me, they've kind of adopted that in their own businesses in different ways. I have a photographer that I've worked with, and she does mini headshot day, and it's a one hour session, you get professional hair, makeup, it's a very much reduced rate. But she gets like five or 10 people in one day. And she's just like doing to do her makeup person is there all day, her hair person is there all day, she's there all day, she runs through everything, and you get two photos. For some people, that's plenty, they don't need anything else. But she takes more than that. So then you have the opportunity to buy more at the end of the session. So I think it's those kind of things where you can like systematize it get more people in at a time, or get that one big job done quicker or more efficiently by actually condensing it down. I'm a big believer in Parkinson's Law, which is that if you have an amount of time and you have a task, that task will fill the time that is given. So if you say I've got an hour, I can do the dishes and a little bit, it's gonna take you a whole hour to do those dishes, right, because you got a whole hour to fill. So the time will fill it, or the task will fill it. So you know, if we say we've got a month to do a website was gonna take us 30 days, it's gonna take us a day less. But if we say we have eight hours to build a website, we have to hustle, we have to make it happen, because that's how a lot of time but at the same time I've done this so much like, I know it's possible. Yeah. But you know, people do you see it as this is my time to get this done. And stop the procrastination, which is usually what people end up doing with those things.

 

Roy Barker  37:31

Right? Right. Yeah. And you can just sit down and go through that checklist and knock it out for them too, which is nice. Well, what is a tool that you use either a tool or a habit? What is something that you use in your daily life professional or personal, that really adds a lot of value?

 

Elizabeth  37:50

Well, personally, and professionally, when I read the book, profit first that changed my business and my personal life, okay? I was it was about four years ago, I was living paycheck to paycheck, I was making over six figures. And I was going, wait a minute, where's all this money going? And a lot of it was going back into the business about I think it was I calculated about 65% was going back into the business. And while we all know that, you know, it takes money to make money. Right, right. But at the same time, a lot of that was unnecessary. And once I read profit first and I started implementing that into my business finances, it made so much sense, it was so amazing, because it didn't matter. If you had a steady income or an in stable income, which is my was mostly unstable, right? Then it didn't matter. It always works. And so it took me about three months to kind of get into it and actually figure it out there was a little painful at first, but it took me three months to get to the targeted allocations he talks about and once I got there, I have not had to worry about taxes, I have not had to worry about paychecks, I've not had to worry about paying employees, all of the money I needed was always there, even if something unexpected came up, there was money there. And I've used that in my personal life as well. And those types, that type of system and that idea in my personal life. And that just it just changed everything for me to the point of reducing my stress to the level to a level that was I had not seen in years, probably a decade at that point. And also, it allowed me to be more creative in my business. So instead of worrying about the money so much and worrying about the client so much and being so focused on that piece of it because I felt like I was always behind. Now my business was not suffering creatively or intelligently, intuitively whatever, because I wasn't worried about those things. I knew they were taking care of I knew the money was coming in and I knew what I had to do to make it and I you know, everything just seemed to fit better. And so now in my business I wasn't that desperation person going yeah, buy from me, right? You know, I knew that next time or whenever the next person coming along, that would work. And I also knew that I needed x, y, z for the month or XYZ for the year, I had more clear goals rather than just going, I just got to make it this month, I can't worry about a goal. Yeah, I'm worried about this slump, you know, or this week. And so it really freed me up. And I can't even tell you how much that freed me up mentally. Because then once I started looking at my personal life, and my prayer and my business practice, on a different way, rather than through this, this money lens, because the money was kind of taken care of, in a way. Then I started to look at it in the sense of minimalism, tech minimalism, actual, like family minimalism. And then I started to declutter all of our stuff. I mean, I got rid of 50% of the things in our house. Yeah. And that even had a more of an impact on my mental capacity, ability, my mood, everything. And so even though these things aren't marketing related, they helped my business and in my personal life so much that, honestly, I don't know if my business would have survived COVID if I had not found those two things,

 

Roy Barker  41:10

well, that's awesome. I'll have to check that out. And because it's, you know, that strain, it doesn't matter what business but I think it's worse when you're in a creative business is that stress? And when you're worried about all that other stuff, for me personally, it's just hard for that creativeness to flow. I mean, we have to have that open mind. And you know, the other thing, just talk about for a minute, is that downsizing. You know, after the kids are grown and gone, you know, a couple years ago, we downsized tremendously, I mean, like very minimalistic, and it's been the most freeing thing, because I don't just have junk to worry about or stuff that needs to do, you know, we can focus on our business, what we enjoy doing, and then also have that free time. So definitely, there's the balance, you know, we talked about the work life balance, sometimes it can mean other things like, you know, if stuff is stressing us out in our personal life, then that definitely carries over into business and vice versa. So

 

Elizabeth  42:10

yeah, and I've heard this idea of the silent to do lists that the more things you have, the more they silently speak to you. Like, let's say there's this pen you really like. And you know, you need to get a new ink cartridge for it. And you go to pick it up every time. But oh, there's no ink in it. And then it tells you, you got to buy ink for me, you got to go to staples, you got it. Right. And so then you got this like silent to do list from this one item that is it worth you keeping this one item because then there's this other thing you have to do with it. And I'm the worst plant lady in the world. You know, a lot of people think that minimalism equals plant ism. And it was no. And so I actually go to IKEA, and I buy the fake plants. And I have them all around my house. And it looks great. It looks like I have a lot of plants. But I don't have to look at it every time and go, Oh, man, I gotta water that you know. Exactly. So it's just one of those things that once you find that that happy medium for yourself that but having less it does impact your business and your personal life, and does give you that extra free time, which does really, really help so that you can actually get things done like you know the laundry.

 

Roy Barker  43:17

Exactly. Well, Elizabeth, thank you so much for taking time out of your day. I know we've hit on all the points, but tell us about absolute marketing. You know, tell us about your, you know, the, I guess there's now like seven or eight, we've got the five basics, and then a couple different add ons, but tell us about the modules that you have. And then also tell people you know, who is your target client to work with what you can do for them? And of course, how can they reach out get a hold of you?

 

Elizabeth  43:47

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much. I love working with people who are at that overwhelmed point. They're like, I've tried to a social media, I always fall off the wagon. I start in January, I'm good for February, and then March, it's done. I've gotten more busier, I have things I'm doing. And then they don't market themselves. And then they find July, August, maybe even September, business starts to wane. They don't know why they're trying to scramble, then they feel like they're more busy scrambling, just to get people in the door. And so that is the person I'm the person who's just like I don't have time for it. I know I need to do it right though that combination is perfect for this system. And even if you have someone who's helping you in marketing in house, or even if you don't, those people can come along if they're if you're have them with you or if you have a helper you're using or VA or whatever. And if not we can knock this out with just two people on you know from our team. So you and one of our team members and that's it. That's the minimum amount we need. And that's a really fun day I go My team and I we fly to locations and visit We have offices all over the country and we'll visit them at our office in that location or they can come to Florida and have fun here in the sun. And so then come to our office and we have people do that all the time. So that's that's one option. But the five days is branding to get your your logo, your message your, you know, the person you're trying to reach. Who are you? What are you doing? Who are you sharing it with that name, get that name, right? All those pieces that go with that brand. And I even like to write an E book on day one, just because you know, why not throw that in. more to do, right, yeah. And then day two, we build the entire website. And when you leave the end of the day two, it's live, it's up, it's running, it's complete. And then day three, we build 12 months of social media posts. And this is designed written schedule, this is not a plan you have to implement, we literally get everything done in that one day, well, and then day four is blogging, design, write and schedule, 12 months of blog posts. And then day five is designed right and scheduled 12 months of email marketing campaigns that go with your email, or your blogs, and your social and your messaging from all the other days that we put together. So we definitely have a lot of work to do in those five days. But if you need a membership, we do those in a day, if you need, if you want to start a podcast, we actually get all that up and running in a day and do a couple of episodes. And then we also can do just an hour cart day where you're like I got a mess. Let's just bounce around and fix a lot of little things here and there. And that's a great day as well, because a lot of people can start with that day and then go, Okay, now I know I need these three days, let's knock those out. Because sometimes you don't even know where to start. If you have too much, too much overwhelm and too much of a mess, right? So. So those are my ideal clients, just people who are just stuck. They're just overwhelmed. They don't know how they're going to get it all done. This can really be that that helping hand and this gives you that 24 seven marketing wheel that's just running in the background for you. Yeah, it's done. You don't have to touch it for a whole year. Well, you add stuff to your marketing, of course you will, will you know, will things come up that you'll want to say of course, when my clients were going through COVID, they did not change their marketing that we did for them the previous you know, for the year, yeah, they left it, they added to it, because of course with social media, the more the merrier, right? But they added to it, but they didn't have to remove anything unless it was an event that was cancelled, those are like the only things we really had to remove. So it was great way to get them something out there that they during COVID they were working on, how do we get? How do we move forward? How do we pivot? How do we do all these things they didn't want to have to be worrying about and how do we put out social media? And how do we do emails right now, they all that was running for them. And even for myself, I was in the same boat with everybody else. And my marketing was running, my emails were running, I didn't have to worry about those so much unless it had to do with some event or something that got canceled. So that's a great way to start off even the middle of a year, you know, the second quarter, it doesn't matter, you can start anytime and go for an entire 12 month period. And they can visit my website is www.getabsolutemarketing.com. And you can find all the information there all the pricing you can have if you have questions, you can email me through there. And also you can book a call because I like to talk people through this. It's not something that's for everyone. But if it is for someone, I like to also know which days do they really need. Some people don't need all five. And that's cool too, because we can get more done on the other things. But then I also have two free things that I want share. One is the pro toolkit. And all the all the stuff I use every email marketing platform, I have one that I really love my social platforms, I have one of those that I really love a scheduler, that's great. All these different things that I use for my business, my invoicing, all the stuff that works together that just flows really well. And is also inexpensive, or on that more, you know, cheaper side or free side. Then I put all those tools into a toolkit. And you can get that for free at the top of my website. And then at the bottom of my website, you can actually join my membership where you have marketing questions you can ask them, I do trainings, there's guest experts, there's tons of videos, I do special offers to my members and so on. It's all free. So definitely have, you know, I'd love for people to check that out. And also just come say hi to me either in the membership or let's book a call and I'd love to talk with them.

 

Roy Barker  49:20

Alright, great. Yeah, that's a lot of great information. The other thing I don't want to you know, we could talk about this for a couple more hours. But I think that the nice thing is is that you're giving this people these tools to you know, for a year, the blogging the social media, because you know, what I see too with solopreneurs is that we get into this habit of I don't have anything to do today. So market market market. Now I need to fulfill so no market, no market, no market, and then when that's over, you know, so we get on this roller coaster and you know, at least having the Is this laid out for 12 months? It should really equalize everything out and just make it easier on everybody where it's not like, Okay, well, I told you this to do, you know, for the next couple of weeks and then trying to recreate that. So because marketing is, you know, well, we all hope we can send out a message, and then we just get flooded with consumers. But the reality is, it's a long term play, we have to stay after it, we have to be consistent in order for it to work as well as we want it to.

 

Elizabeth  50:30

Consistency is everything in marketing, and it takes seven to 10 different things that someone would see before they actually even just remember your name. Right, exactly. They have to know who you are. And they have to also, you know, I tell tell people this all the time that when someone goes on social media, and they go, Oh, Roy, I have to tell you about this thing I saw the other day. Let me see if I can find it. Yeah, we don't want him to say that about us, right? We want them to say, oh, Roy, Elizabeth posted this thing the other day, let me show you. Yeah, because they know exactly where it is. Because the branding on those things on social media on email, whatever was so strong, that they were able to connect it back to a person that they exactly knew who posted that thing, or sent that thing. So we want them to say that about us. But that only comes from consistency, using the same colors using the same fonts using the same tone of voice the same message day, day, day after day after day. So definitely consistency is huge. And this eliminates so much of that, which is why I use it for myself because yeah, I'm not that consistent of a person in that way. This is definitely helpful for me as well.

 

Roy Barker  51:36

All right, All right. y'all go out, reach out to Elizabeth, I know she can help you out, put her system to work for you. So thanks again for your time. It's been wonderful talking to you and hope I'll get you back on here and he can give us some updates and some more good information. All right, that's gonna do it for another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. Of course, I'm your host, Roy, we are on at you can find us at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com. We're on all the major social media platforms, as well as the major podcast platforms, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Spotify, if we're not a one that you listened to regularly reach out, I'd be glad to get aside and so until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.getabsolutemarketing.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

Growth Strategies, From A Great Logo to Consistent Content Creation with S.A. Grant

How is your business today? While its been a difficult time, hopefully things will continue to get better. A key piece of recovery or growth of a business is strategy. Strategy is the cornerstone of success. Whether you're a new or existing business a road map for needed for success. This road map should be dynamic, not static

About S.A.

Long, Long, Ago… I’m sure by now you’re pondering why should I listen to this person? Who is S. A. Grant? My core background began with the love for graffiti in Brooklyn in the 90s. From there, I became a Graphic Designer and then transitioned to a Web Designer and multimedia expert in the early 2000’s. Next I found a love for video and audio while working as an IT professional at a local art college. For the next few years I hopped from job to job searching for fulfillment all the while, gathering experience and holding titles ranging from Web Designer, Creative Director, and IT Director to name a few.

My desire to become an entrepreneur has always been in the back of my mind. Like most of you who are currently searching for answers, I started trying a multitude of things. I converted my freelance graphic design and web design business into a corporation, Serebral360.com. Then I went after getting clients that needed various branding, marketing, web development, and consulting services. Still on the hunt for more, I jumped into multi-level marketing, dove into the financial space, got a Life Insurance license, Property and Casualty license, and a Series 6 license. I started building financial teams from New York to Atlanta and every state in-between. Then my crazy @$$ back flipped into Travel and became a Travel Agent. Oh yeah, I also became a first-time author. I laugh out loud when I look back at it, I was collecting accomplishments like kids collecting new social media accounts.

I did all of this at the same time while being a full-time single dad. Over the years our routine became, wake up, drag my son and myself out of bed (note it’s still hard waking him up everyday and he is currently a teenager). I would then get my son ready, drop him off at school, work on my businesses, go to client meetings, put out fires until I picked him up. Then I would take him to after school sports or activities, and depending on the year, coached his basketball team, flag football team, became the cub scout assistant den leader, PTA president, and the Creative Director of the school’s foundation. Add to this, a few late evening conference calls, evening meetings, get him home in time for bed, cook dinner, dream up new ideas and get started on the action plans for more licenses. Finally, I would tuck him in bed, read articles online, and take action on what I just learned.

Step and repeat, step and repeat until all the long hours, stress, and genetics caught up to me on October 14, 2018. This was the day I suffered a stroke and I officially have a stent in my head to prove it. Even though my superman complex and genetics had gotten me into health troubles to begin with, I still will not claim I’m an overachiever. Understand I’m letting you into my world so you get a clear picture that no matter what you are going through, there is a light at the end of every tunnel. I knew I had to become UNCAGED to make a full recovery. Driven by 100% determination and mental toughness, I made it a reality one day at a time by applying layers of systems to get the work done. Systems that I will reveal throughout the on coming book series in order to help you BECOME AN UNCAGED TRAILBLAZER.

It started with helping to guide entrepreneurs and business owners in the right direction. I’m here to tell you once you step into something and complete what you start, all other actions become realizable. Now I’m dedicated to writing 56+ books to help the entrepreneur get a grasp of the requirements for SUCCESS. I’m not saying all of this to impress you or make you fearful of the journey ahead. I’m stating how parts of any story can be relatable, inspiring, and absolutely unbelievable and only you can create and deliver your story as you want it to be told!

SUCCESS will come to you if you hunt it down and I am grateful that you have made it this far. Your awakening may be found in the pages of this book much like the point I discovered Rich Dad Poor Dad’s money quadren.

This epiphany smacked me dead in the face. A book that gave me the “Oh $hit” realization that I was on the wrong path. I wasn’t a business owner or an investor, but I owned my job and was self-employed. So I went into overdrive and started self educating on everything that was associated with renewable revenue, passive income, and investments.

“I WOULD RATHER EARN 1% OFF A 100 PEOPLE’S EFFORTS THAN 100% OF MY OWN EFFORTS.”
-John D. Rockefeller

The way I look at it I survived the stroke to spread my lessons learned. I’ve dedicated the rest of my life to REACH ONE TEACH ONE.

www.successex.com

www.podcast.bossuncaged.com

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

Full Transcript Below

Growth Strategies, From A Great Logo to Consistent Content Creation with S.A. Grant

Sat, 8/14 10:30PM • 36:23

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, logo, business, strategy, brand, podcast, graphic design, growth, page, reach, educational component, videos, talk, website, represent, evergreen content, build, software, journey, steps

SPEAKERS

S.A., Roy Barker

 

Roy Barker  00:07

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. I'm your host Roy, of course, we are the podcast that brings you a wide variety of guests to talk about a bunch of diverse topics, try to help out our small businesses solopreneurs entrepreneurs, maybe get you to think about something that really hadn't been on your radar, but also give you some places to go. If you do need some extra help. We want to see everybody be successful. Today, we're excited to have S.A. Grant he is a business growth strategist. And he also is a host of a Podcast Boss Uncaged. And they're they talk about strategy and growth as well. So S.A. welcome to the show.

 

S.A.  00:48

Definitely, I appreciate you having me, right.

 

Roy Barker  00:50

Hey, you bet. glad to talk to you. I love business strategy. And, you know, we were talking pre show that now is probably a good time, we have some glimmer of hope of coming out of COVID. So I think there's a lot of businesses that are regroup in and figuring out, you know, where do we go from here? So not a better time to talk to us growth strategist? And, you know, see how can we start growing our business? So tell us a little bit before we get started, though, you know, kind of how you ended up here in this space a little bit about your podcast, and then, you know, maybe some things that you're seeing out there right now?

 

S.A.  01:25

Yes, I mean, my original background started as a graphic designer. And while I was in art school, I was just thinking, Okay, graphic design is great. It's a way for me to monetize art, but they weren't teaching me on how to monetize art. So in that journey, I decided, Okay, I needed something else to support that. So I went back for another degree, and I got a web design multimedia degree. And in that journey, I was like, cool. Now I know how to build stuff. And I know how to design stuff. Now how to how do I sell it?

 

Roy Barker  01:51

Right? And that's always the trick, right?

 

S.A.  01:54

So you know, just just on that journey, I just kind of just dove into business development, business strategy, you know, and on that journey, became a travel agent. I still hold life insurance licenses for like maybe six or seven states up and down the East Coast. I had a series six, I kind of let that go. Because you know, I'm not I didn't want to be controlled by FINRA. So I've doubled and dabbled in multiple different facets. And now with Okay, how do I put all these different things that I've journeyed upon and stumbled across and work then. And that's how I kind of developed the Boston cage brand, it was more so opportunity for me to help small business owners and entrepreneurs, and also leave evergreen legacy for my kids to understand my journey and other people's journeys on their success.

 

Roy Barker  02:36

Yeah, and you know, that's, it's mean, it's really a good place that you come from, because that is who I feel like, this is who we are talking to more today. It's people that found themselves in business. I mean, they may have a trade or a skill, just like yourself, and but it's like, okay, you know, I've had to do this to survive through this pandemic. But now, you know, where do we go as we come out of this, and, you know, a lot of people don't have that, that next step, like you've took is, you know, if it's just me, it's cool, I can do my thing, and be okay, but now I've got another employee, now I've got this, you know, more customers. So there's got to be some change and some growth in the business to actually survive. And, like, so a lot of people didn't set out to be entrepreneurs, they were just kind of forced into it lately.

 

S.A.  03:25

Yeah, I think I think that that stands true. I mean, especially with 2020, you know, behind this, but still current and well alive in 2021. A lot of people have the opportunity to figure out that, okay, we're losing jobs. What's our next step? So everybody went online, which was kind of weird. When you think about it. We've been online marketing forever. And now we have this influx of all these new people that essentially need us to guide them in the right direction.

 

Roy Barker  03:49

Yeah. Yeah. And that's an important part, as well as that. You know, there's just been increasingly more and more noise on the internet. So it's important to, you know, how do you differentiate yourself because a lot of a lot of people may not last in the space or, you know, when jobs pick back up, they might go to work. But still, there's just, there's, it's everywhere. There's just so many more people, so much more videos. And one thing I've noticed an explosion of in the last week, it seems like are people doing surveys on LinkedIn and used to that was a pretty good little little space, you could be in do a survey here and there, but you may be the only one but I guarantee you, when I checked my LinkedIn during the day, I there's like five to 10 surveys, all right, in a row. So again, it's it's not that it's a bad tool, but it's just one of those things, like the bigger pictures, how do we make ourselves stand out where we can kind of rise above all that noise that's out there?

 

S.A.  04:51

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that that's kind of like a long, long tail keyword, right? It's, it's one of those things that in the markets Currently, right now, people are in the discovery phase, they're discovering all these new tools. And they're just going to use them. Yeah. Right. But once you get seasoned, then you kind of figure out like, what really works, right? So timeless things that were evergreen, they're always going to work is education, right? And that's the first platform in that education, then you want to look at probably books, Kindle, or physical books, those are not necessarily the million dollar items within a gateway drug, there are enough to hook someone to say, Hey, here's some information, I'm telling you a couple steps on how to get there, this book will get you part of the way there and then use that book as a lead magnet to then call me into the coach you either help you monetize, or to give you more information through an online tool, or even upsell, a software that I've created.

 

Roy Barker  05:46

Yeah, no, and I think I'm glad you mentioned that, because that is definitely what I talk about as much as I get an opportunity is that educational component is I feel like, to me, for my strategy that is just the very best is trying to educate people. And that doesn't mean I'm going to turn everybody into consumer, but you know what? We can't I don't think we can worry about that. We have to put it out there. So because it's like anything else there's going to be do it yourselfers that you know, they're going to take your instructions, and they're going to do it yourself. But the other component of education, I think is sometimes if you read my strategy and my steps, you may be like, Holy smokes, that's a lot of stuff. I need to hire a professional do that. Because you know, I could maybe do it. I mean, like, I could probably put a car together. But do I really want to take the time to you know, buy all the pieces and try to assemble this thing and hope that it runs, you know, when I get it all put together?

 

S.A.  06:44

Yeah, yeah, I think based on what you just said, I was trying to make this this funny analogy. It's kind of like, if you're working on repairing something at your house, right. And if you're like a do or die kind of person, no matter what happens, you're going to get it done, then that's great. But then you may be the person that may bite off a little bit too much. You may you may take down a wall and realizes this, this powerlines. And you may see water lines in there. And then you Okay, I'm going to cut the water line. And then you cut the water line, but you forget a step like maybe turning off the water, and then you end up with a bigger disaster. And then you're going to hire someone as a professional to come in and clean up your mess and fix what you raised.

 

Roy Barker  07:21

Yeah, yeah. And I'm that guy. I mean, I'm not I'm not scared to start anything. But you're definitely right there times I've started that project and got into it. And you just realized, like, why this is way over my head, or you know, the time constraints or whatever it may be that I've got to reach out and get help. And that's why I feel like this educational component. And let's see, that's not just marketing, I think in sales, you know, out when I was more of in the sales space, I use that as well. Because, again, my listeners get tired of hearing me say this, but instead of reaching out, like, Hey, I say, you know, we talked yesterday, I know you weren't ready, but I'm circling back with you to see if you're ready to sign up. And let's get started. You know, and I realized that we you got to differentiate between smaller dollar items versus, you know, high dollar items, but typically, you know, selling consulting services, and that it's usually higher ticket items. And so there's that educational component to like, you know, build some rapport. And instead of, you know, like I said, just circling back to see, are you ready to buy more stuff, you know, like, Hey, this is some information I found the other day that may help you in your business, or may help you with this decision or whatever. But you know, just kind of keep that relationship going. Because the reality is, you may not need my service today, he may not even can't afford my service today. But if I stay with you and keep, you know, that, you know, trying to keep that relationship up and sending you some information when you do get ready, then I'm top of mine, and you'll you know, hopefully reach out.

 

S.A.  08:55

Yeah, definitely. I definitely agree with that. I mean, I look at it from the standpoint of is just the medium has changed, right? If you go back to like the late 80s, early 90s it was all about faxing, faxing, and faxing, and faxing, and vaccine vaccine and and hopefully through these millions of faxes over the course of two, three years, someone raises their hands, right Same thing with mailbox, right? You get these little packages in your mail about roofers and plumbers and all this other information that comes in from time to time. And then eventually you may actually pick up a flyer and contact someone so it's just staying front of mine.

 

Roy Barker  09:31

Yeah. Yeah, no, that's to me it's it's the most important part because there are people that you know, they they're the one and done I reached out he didn't want my stuff. So I'm moving on to the next person in the list. But you know, we forget about that Top of Mind thing that you know, if if I got something from you in the last week, I may have gotten something from a guy that your competitor a year ago, but you know, he's not top of mind I'm thinking hey, I'm gonna reach out to so He's a guy that can help me with this. So I think it's important and we've got so many options that that's the other great part about this now is, you know, we've got these books, we got ebooks, we can do videos, so easy. I have, you know, of course, we tape so we use zoom a lot teams, but also, I just found loon not long ago. And you know, what an awesome tool that is, you know, I've got some, you know, people helping me with some processes, so being able to record that, send it to them, but also it may work, you know, for you in that marketing space, or reaching out to your customers, following up trying to get an ad on sale or reaching out to a prospect. I mean, that's the great thing about today is we've got so many things out there. But then I guess it's a drawback as well, we've got so many things out there, we got to, you know, figure out what's working and where we want to put our time and energy, especially, you know, for small businesses that, you know, we don't have teams that can we can assign a, you know, guy blog or got videos and this and that we, you know, we have to make those decisions based on our time availability. Yeah, definitely. I definitely agree with that. Yeah. So it's, what are you? What are you finding that's working as far as the medium or what works best for you? You know, like blogging, I know that you're doing the podcast, but a lot of newsletters or, you know, kind of what, what has your strategy man that's working well.

 

S.A.  11:28

So my strategy once I came to terms with it, right, because to your point, a lot of times people, they talk about systems, but they don't implement systems. Yeah. So for me, it was more. So I'm like, I'm big systems guy, I'm a big automation guy. So you know, I'm always looking for lifetime deals, and I'm making purchases, and I'm utilizing the things that I'm okay, I'm utilizing them, maybe one or two other people on my team is utilizing one part one component here, to the next phase, I need to orchestrate all the software into a system to say, Okay, I use this for this, these are the steps and procedures for this particular software. And this is what the outcome of the software is going to be, because then I can delegate that Yeah. And then once I have somebody to own that, then I can move on to the next thing. So that's part of what I'm doing on my personal brand right now, is I'm compiling all the information from the different sources that I use for my different pH vas, you know, and also myself and putting them all into one system to be here, the mastermind of Lawson cage, and then I can kind of pass it on to someone else to kind of run operation.

 

Roy Barker  12:31

Yeah, and that's another good point too, about getting you're getting everything consolidate, instead of having, you know, some people pieces, some team members using this piece, I'm using even a different software, a different program to do something and having it all consolidated, where you can kind of look down over that whole process, which kind of gets back to, you know, writing down. Documenting processes and procedures, I think is extremely important as we look at growing a business because I mean, you know, you bring a team member on, I can tell you how to do everything right this moment, but in a week from now, you know, are you going to remember exactly what we talked about? So again, using these different tools to document these processes, I just feel is extremely important.

 

S.A.  13:20

Yeah, I totally agree with that. I mean, and to your point, if someone new comes into your team, right, you have to think about if you have an HR department, if you're large enough to have a HR department, if you're not, then obviously you're the executive staff, you'd executive board. And then you're going to have to train someone will have someone else train someone, but they may miss steps. They may not do things exactly where you're going to do it. And you don't expect anyone that you're going to hire to do exactly what you're going to do. But if you put steps and procedures like step one, step two, step three, step four, Step five, and as long as they follow these particular steps. And again, they have to be comfortable with being bored to a certain sense to move past these steps until it becomes self explanatory to them. So they don't have to think about the steps anymore. Right? That's when you got to get to that that nice limit rock of a situation to where you can pass off that torch. Yeah,

 

Roy Barker  14:09

yeah. Yeah, because you know, we get it I think kind of gets into a little bit too about I'll say this nicely, not holding on too tight. I don't want to say control freak, that sounds pretty harsh and abrasive. But, you know, if we're going to move past that, if we want to, I mean, there's people that you know, they they like to operate as a solopreneur professional, and that's just kind of their space. But if you really want to grow at some point, you've got to be able to let go and know that you can't do everything all the time you know, you've got to, but that's why it's good for this brain Trent knowledge transfer to get that stuff out of your brain, on paper on a video or whatever. So we can help our team members to grow as we you know, as we do try to expand. Yeah. And then also those strategies about you know, when To expand, that's always a challenge. Because, you know, sometimes there are people that we want to grow the business. And unfortunately, I think there can be a downside to growth too, we can kind of outgrow ourselves. So we have to decide, you know, what is this marketing plan? You know, how are we moving through it. So we can have the people in place to serve, I mean, because, you know, there's nothing, nothing more satisfying than to implement a plan and getting business from it, or, you know, start getting phone calls or emails or however, but it can also be a very scary moment, the minute you know, hey, instead of getting five emails that you can handle, all of a sudden, I got 100, you know, 100 inquiries, or if you're a product fulfillment company, instead of Yeah, I got five orders yesterday, and I got 3000, you know, tomorrow. Because you know, we talk about that some, too, on the show is that not having business is not the only way to go out of business. Sometimes you can actually be too successful and have too much success. But you if you don't plan for that, it can be very detrimental.

 

S.A.  16:12

Yeah, I think definitely, with that, I mean, automation. And I know people that they hate the whole AI way that's coming. And that's here now. But that allows us to really focus on what we love to do. And then we can have a system in place that's going to automatically execute day to day tasks, right? I think that's, and that's how I juggle like my business, like, you know, if I get 100 people that come in one time, I'm gonna segment them based upon why they're contacting, I may have someone that may need coaching someone that may need counseling, someone that may need a website, someone that may need graphic design, and then I'm going to take each one of these elements and put them in their respective systems and automate that process.

 

Roy Barker  16:50

Right, right. Yeah. So you know, graphic design, it's having a good piece of real estate on the internet is very, very important. So, you know, just they wouldn't have to go way in depth, but just off the top of your head, you know, what are some things that we really need to look at our, our web properties and make sure that we have done you know, not only that text, but also making sure we have some pictures and videos, things like that.

 

S.A.  17:17

So even before the visual, I mean, the browser, your site could be completely hideous. But is the functionality primarily and coming from a design guy, you're going like, well, what, why? Why are we talking to this guy about this design guy, but I had to learn that myself in the process coming from a design background, everything looks great. But then what's the conversion? Like? What is it doing besides looking? Fabulous? Right, right. So one thing that you need to do on every single website, and I see tons of websites still to this day that have this one crutch is that in the first top 10% of your page, that there needs to be something to gravitate information from, whether it's a lead magnet, whether you're giving away a free ebook, or whether you're saying, hey, download something, or you just say, hey, sign up for my newsletter, like, that's the first and foremost, any website, that you have to have that front and center, before you even get into your services, or gonna do anything else you want to capture that lead for the game time is short, you only may only have 30 seconds, and somebody may land on your page, they may fill out the form, hit submit, and then if only Right, right, yep,

 

Roy Barker  18:17

yeah, that in the needing to load up fast, because there's nothing worse than having an awesome website that you just can't get the darn thing to load. Because, you know, we're all impatient on this, I have to admit, I'm the same way. If I tried to load that site, and it's too slow, you know, I'm moving on, or if something, you know, whatever, but so let's talk about that. I don't know what you call it technically. But that screen, you know, when you hit a website, you have a screens worth of information. And, you know, my philosophy in the past has always been, you know, have that catchy, draw people in there, and not try to explain everything, like rolling down a page, having, you know, back in the old days, when it was mainly tax base is may may have 10, or 20 pages worth of material just ran out all on one page where people had to scroll down and find but kind of tell us about how to, you know, what is a good plan to organize the information to take people deeper into the side instead of you know, I guess more length was?

 

S.A.  19:18

So I think that it really comes down to like your sale procedures, right? I mean, is your website, a sales tool? Are you using it as a conversion tool? And what that really means is that, as your sales people or yourself is responding to emails, you're having a conversation with someone, are you using a page on your website to send them to, to give them more information, then to convert them or if someone finds you do a Google search, and they're going to find general information and then you want them to contact you or they're going to submit an email address that you can contact them and that's kind of like the two pipelines right. Do you have to kind of distinguish between those two? for mine, you know, I have a mixture of both. What Honestly, I found the most rewarding to be Like to podcasting, just to podcasting is evergreen content. It's not like I'm selling, as I'm promoting without promoting, and I'm giving value. And to your point it's going to last right? So somebody may find my podcast five years from now and hear a particular topic that we were talking about. And then by the fall at the end of that podcast, there's not necessarily upsells, but I'm directing them to my social media platforms, where I'm directing them to a free opt in page where I'm directing them to a particular landing page based upon that particular topic that we were talking about. So that's the thing that I would say you kind of want to figure out like, Where's your pipeline? Where does it start? Where does it stop? And where did the conversion happen?

 

Roy Barker  20:39

Yeah, that's a great point to bring up about the evergreen content, I think it gets back to our building our brands and our reputation. And it doesn't have to be, you know, I'm not advocating one particular medium, there's so many good ones, since some people are better writers, some people, you know, don't want to get on and talk in front of a microphone or a camera. And it's okay. I mean, there's ways that you can find out, there's ways that you can find ways to promote yourself and your business and your brand that are comfortable for you and for your prospects too. But I think the, it's that consistency, and putting stuff out there, because, you know, the reality is, and you've, I'm sure you've learned this doing podcast, as you can record one episode, and put it out there, he may have some people that look at it, but not everybody in the whole entire, not everybody that seeking your service that title or that, that episode is not going to resonate. But if you've got 100 of them out there, then all of a sudden, it's just the number to me, the numbers become exponential that, you know, I don't need to get somebody interested in this one episode is like I've got, you know, 100 now that they can find something in there that you know, will work for them.

 

S.A.  21:56

Yeah, I totally agree with that. I mean, it goes back to the whole definition of being evergreen, right. And if you think of things that were published from, like Napoleon Hill, Napoleon hills content is evergreen content. You could listen to it when years ago, 100 years ago, 100 years from now, and it's still gonna be relative. And as he's not talking about, like, particular software, or particular niches, he's talking about the general content that's going to be forever useful.

 

Roy Barker  22:23

Right? Exactly. Yeah. And it's in the same thing works not only with podcasts, but with blogs, if you do just personal videos, but just be consistent pick out, like you said, topics that will live forever, put them out there. And you know, it's a slow, this is a long game. This is not, you know, we say it's not a sprint, it's a marathon. And we're doing a few things. I think two is it's not, you know, we do want to convert, I mean, I would love to send out emails or put something up, and people just flood you with wanting to do business with you. But the other part is, we want to build that pipeline, you know, we want to reach people that may not even know about us may not be interested in our service today. But like we said, You keep putting it out and stay in front of them, you kind of build that pipeline to where it just continues to grow and grow.

 

S.A.  23:14

Yeah, I think he brought a solid point of like, just list building. And it will say the riches are in the niches. But the reality is, is the riches are in the lists, right? Yeah. Like the larger your list is. And think about a list from the standpoint of what you just said, I may have 100 people in my list, much like I may have 100 episodes of the podcast, out of those 100 people, they may not listen to every single episode, they may listen to one episode. So let's say I send 100 emails, by the time you get to this email five or six, that particular email, that particular service, that you're helping them to resolve whatever problems they're having may talk to that person at that time. It's not necessarily a hit or miss game. It's just a quantity game and giving value over a period of time to get the best results.

 

Roy Barker  23:54

Yeah, no, exactly. And have anything else to you know, that you want to add about the brand building or any growth strategy, some things that you know, you've been working on here lately?

 

S.A.  24:07

Yes, I mean, we like to brand development brand strategy. I mean, that kind of goes to my core graphic design. And even think about like my brand, like the Boston cage brand, does multi different facets to it, somebody can look at it and be it's very simple. Somebody may see arrow, somebody may see a person, somebody may tie it into being an cage. Like that's what makes a good logo, right? You want people to kind of talk about it, and kind of ask you questions, like, you know, did you do that on purpose? Like, does this mean that Oh, versus just having a logo that's too overly complex, and people are still trying to figure out what's going on with it. And it doesn't really invoke an emotional reaction.

 

Roy Barker  24:42

Yeah. Yeah. And for those that aren't watching the video, you need to go watch it because you can see the logo behind essay and it's cool because it does look almost It looks like a man. But then it also looks like all the arrows pointing in. I look at it as you know, that's where all the answers lie. We're all the arrows are pointing.

 

S.A.  25:04

It's beautiful that you said it. Cuz I mean, every single time I hear and interpretation of the logo, it tells me that that's the right logo because everyone's interpretation is uniquely different. But the messaging is globally the same. Yeah. It's about internalizing, it's about focusing, it's a person. Those are all the things that we do, right? I mean, I'm talking to people about what they need to focus on, and how they need to grow, or my podcast is talking about, if you are currently in corporate America, and you want to break out, first you need to focus on what you want to do, which goes back to the arrows pointing inward, and then exploding out, which goes to the on page. Yeah.

 

Roy Barker  25:39

Yeah, that's awesome. And yeah, you know, and, yeah, just talking about the people that want to get out there on their own. I just mentioned this for many, you know, find your passion. And, you know, I'm sure you're the same way that podcasting is awesome, I get to number one, I learned so much from my guest. Just me having a conversation, but I get to meet a lot of great people learn a lot and but find something that you're very passionate about. And the same is true. If you find something you're passionate about, you'll never work a day in your life. Because it's it's fun, you jump up out of bed and want to rush to do this stuff, because you enjoy it and you get value out of it. So if you're, you know, thinking about it, just go with your heart. And sometimes that money and success, you know, we all want that. But that doesn't that money doesn't always measure success. Sometimes I think, you know, we can be happy in our heart. And that's a little altruistic, I know, but we can still be happy and have a pleasurable life, you know, doing some things that may not make us all the, you know, the money that we think we need.

 

S.A.  26:46

That's me, I'm happy that you went down that direction of like, just passion, because I mean, one of the books that I published last year, was pretty much 100% of my passion is about how to figure out how to target how to develop and build from your passion.

 

Roy Barker  26:59

Yeah, yeah, I think it's very important. Because, you know, there, I know, a lot of people that have good jobs make a lot of money, but they're miserable. I mean, they just their life is not their own. And there was a local news article about a guy that used to be a, he was an options trader had some kind of a medical event. And now he, he's a mural, muralist graphic, you know, he's an artist that paints on the side of buildings and things like that. And he's just like, and he's like, I am so happy. And this is so much better, you know, for my quality of life. So it's kind of an inspiring story. Yeah. I didn't mean to didn't mean to go down that road. But since we're talking about the, you know, people coming out the corporate world, and since it's important to give that some thought, where I was going to go with that was the logo is back to that to say, you know, it's very important to give your logo some thought, because, again, that's going to become your brand. And, you know, we're going to hopefully spread it across websites, social media, and everywhere that we go. So you want it recognizable. You want something memorable, and I like what you said about, you know, different people having different interpretations. I think that's something I've never thought about.

 

S.A.  28:15

Yeah, yeah. And the other thing too, about like, just branding, you want to keep the lettering, pretty self explanatory, like bossin cage is pretty simple. I mean, you know, five year old can pretty much spell it out, sounded out and spell it out. Yeah. And that's another reason why I wanted to kind of name it something like that, versus something that has 20 syllables, right. Sometimes you may have a last name, and you want to represent your last name. But if your last name is extremely long, or hard to figure out, right, you're not going to get any traffic, because everybody and their mom's gonna be on Google typing it and do a search results and another five, and they're gonna keep trying, by the time they do two three times, they're not gonna land on the page.

 

Roy Barker  28:52

Yeah, or hit somebody else that's close. I've done that before, you know, typing the wrong, trying to get somebody's name, right, hit the wrong and say, Oh, this person does pretty close to the same thing. So one last thing on logos, I think it's important because in the past, I've had people when I reached out said, Hey, I'd like to develop a logo. And they say, hey, great, I'll get you five ideas. But there was never any really discussion about you know, who, who I am, what I want, what the business doesn't, you know, and I'll let you explain the importance of, you know, find somebody that will sit down and have a conversation with you to really uncover the these types of things.

 

S.A.  29:32

Yeah, there's a caveat with that, right. I mean, like, probably, as of right now, I'm working on company wise, we're working on three, three separate logos. Yeah. So and obviously, this is not the first logos we've worked on for these companies, right. But usually what we do we start off with benchmarks, because anytime somebody wants a logo unless they're a visionary, and they can establish in their mind, what they want to see and perceive represent themselves. They have no idea so I always say, give me a benchmark, give me something that you see that main Not be in your market that may not be in your brand it, but it has the colors, it may have the shapes, it may have the iconography that you like, it may be the stylistic font that you like, then me that verse, yeah, right. In your company profile, I mean, I can go online and do all the research and do all that. But if I'm taking the iconography of what you're looking to look like, right, and then I'm gonna mix it with what you represent. That's how we come up with this new creation of something uniquely different that represents you.

 

Roy Barker  30:27

Yeah, yeah, because there's some people that are very buttoned up straight laced, and you know, they're gonna want something different than kind of that, you know, that funky artist type person that's a little bit more free spirited, it's going to, they're going to both think that each is going to have a very different interpretation of what works good for them, you know, or what represents them as their person, because that's really what you want. I assume that's really where we want to get to, as you know, we want it, especially small businesses, we wanted to represent who we are and kind of get our message out there as well.

 

S.A.  31:00

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely. I think that one of the tips and tricks about just logo development strategy, in general, is that usually, if you're gonna say, I'm going to give you three logos, right? Yeah, usually, what you're going to do is put the worst logo first, like the one that you do not want them to pick, right that the most, the one that you just don't like and you just built because they give you they gave you direction to build that, yeah, then the middle one is kind of like usually the one that they're going to pick. And then the third one is like, hopefully, they may or may not pick it. So you present these three to them. And then the first one that I'm like, they're going to get to the second one, they're going to get to the third one. And then psych the psychologically started kicks in to where they're going to look at the third one, and they're going to go back to the second one, they're not going to really remember the first one because it's hideous, and they're going to kind of stay in the middle. That's like just a general strategy when you're being presented with logos.

 

Roy Barker  31:47

Yeah. Yeah, that's also I've heard that about offerings as well, you always put the put the one that you want people to land on the most in the middle, you put the kind of crazy ones to the left, and to the right, to drive him to that one in the middle. That's the, you know, kind of the sweet spot.

 

S.A.  32:04

Not works, yeah, works. So at least probably eight out of 10 times it works. And the part of like, the logo development side is like, you know, obviously, you give someone an opportunity, the first revision, like I always call it, the initial cost. So your logo is not going to come from the initial concepts, initial concepts is going to give me the angle to figure out which way you want to swing, and what looking to feel you're really asking for, because what you gave to me, is not what I'm going to present to you 100%. And it's not going to be the final product.

 

Roy Barker  32:33

Yeah. Yeah, just put some thought into that, you know, it My advice is hire professional like yourself to really put the thought into it that, you know, after you've done a few, you kind of develop a little bit of intuition. And you know, people like myself is, if you need a spreadsheet done, man, you come to me, I can put some numbers in a spreadsheet, and I'm pretty good with that. But you know, trying to come up with that creative, you know, something a little bit extra ordinary, kind of difficult for me. So that's, again, a good reason to reach out to a professional to get some help and work through that. Because it's important, you want it to live with you for a long time. Not that we can't change logos along the way. But you know, we want it to be recognizable where when people see it, they know exactly who you are and what you do. Yep. Because it's been around forever. Yeah. Alright, so well, thanks so much for your time. Any, any closing thoughts before we wrap this up?

 

S.A.  33:30

I mean, this this, this particular episode, maybe went down like just the design path, I would just say, you know, keep in mind, like when you're working with a designer, and there's just two levels of desire, right? There's a designer that can actually create anything from scratch, if you give them free will to do whatever it is, without any abundance of hinderance or hovering over them over them, you get a creation that you may not even imagine what have happened. Yeah. versus if you come to the table with something envisioned in your mindset. But it may not be achievable because of the limitations of what your company represents, versus what you're trying to put on the table. Yeah. So when you're looking at the two options, keep in mind that there's a value add to that someone that is going to create it from scratch, definitely should be would cost more, versus someone that's going to take your ideas and recreate something based upon the principles that you're trying to instill in them. They're not necessarily thinking they're more so just developing your ideas for

 

Roy Barker  34:29

Right, right. Yeah, exactly. No, that's a great point. All right. We'll tell everybody, of course, how you can help them with growth and how they can reach out and get ahold of you. But then also, tell us how we can find you on boss uncaged as well.

 

S.A.  34:45

Yep. So anything growth strategy wise, I mean, I think today, we kind of just dabbled a little bit on these aspects of what growth strategy really kind of looks like. And I think some people that really don't understand the definition of it and the definition, it could be graphic design, it could be web design, it could be you know, your Counting, it can be any one of these different puzzle pieces. But sometimes they're just fragmented, right? So when you come to a growth strategy, the goal is for us to pull these compartments together and give you a clear path to get to your next step. Yeah. So if you need any help with growth strategy, you could definitely go to sa grant.com. And you can pull out the form right there at the top of the homepage, like I suggested earlier, or you can kind of look through to see what kind of content and services we have there. And for the podcast is simple. Go to boss. Well, podcast.bossuncaged.com. So that's just podcast.bossuncaged.com.

 

Roy Barker  35:36

Alright, y'all go listen, a lot of great episodes out there and give S.A. call, he'd be glad to help you with your growth strategies as well. So thanks a lot for your time. Certainly do appreciate it. And that's gonna do it for another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. Of course, you can find us at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com. We're on all the major social media platforms, as well as all the major podcast platforms iTunes, Stitcher, Google Spotify, if we're not a one that you listen to regularly, please reach out I'd be glad to add it. So until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.mysucessex.com

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The Recipe for Success Combine Your Passion, Your Talent, and Helping Others with Ezra Chapman

We're really such an early age with children for us to really educate them and distinguish between them how they feel. So actually being able to separate those feelings and recognizing that, you know, anxiety or the feelings of anxiety, and actually, if they're feeling that way.

About Ezra

Ezra Chapman is a UK based entrepreneur/executive with a long history of building companies across industries.  He has been a chief executive and an investor and also became incredibly skilled with people management and all of the aspects of building a successful business. He can speak extensively on things like how those in charge of hiring can make good decisions about applicants, tips and tricks he has used over the years, what makes a business successful, what investors look for and more.

He has an impressive history in business leadership - he founded and built the largest niche (single technology) recruitment company in the world, his first company was in the Top 100 Fastest growing companies in the UK for 5 consecutive years, 3 different companies he founded were in Top 100 employers in the UK. 

Chapman is also a partner in the UKs leading Fintech business that won Her Majesty the Queens award for Entrepreneurship.  He ran the Number 1 rated recruitment company on Trust pilot, and many of his companies were the high profile winners of multiple  technology and innovation awards.

Additionally, he speaks on entrepreneurship and building companies, value and Principle driven leadership, and what he has learned about sales and hiring, with a focus on Education / Recruitment and Technology”  

Recently, as a new father to a one year old, he has turned his thoughts to education, how we teach our children and how we can do better - his recent endeavor, Lifewise.

Ezra says : “ Offering free courses during lockdown, to primary schools across the nation to support teachers, parents, and children in these difficult times we work directly with schools, giving them all the resources they need to prepare lessons with our 4 programs:  Mental Wellbeing, Lifestyle, Life Prep and Survival Programs and provide 4 years' worth of PSHE delivery targeted at specific age ranges, lessons covering topics such as mental health, healthy lifestyles, first aid, cyber safety and finance, pre-planned lessons with easy step-by-step guides to save time for teachers and coaches, interactive, offline materials to teach pupils and encourage engagement.

Program Benefits For Schools : We use interactive tools and the power of activity and sport to better prepare children for their futures. Ezra can speak on all aspects of business, as well as on children / education and mental health and how teachers, kids and families are being affected by the last year. 

www.lifewise.co.uk

[email protected]

Ezra Chapman on LinkedIn

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

Full Transcript Below

The Recipe for Success Combine Your Passion, Your Talent and Helping Others with Ezra Chapman

Sat, 8/14 10:30PM • 43:14

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, uk, build, coaches, absolutely, business, children, curriculum, realize, learning, talk, sport, platform, school, perspective, world, principle, club, answers, life

SPEAKERS

Ezra, Roy Barker

 

Roy Barker  00:00

Roy, of course, we are the podcast that brings you a wide variety of guests that talk about a lot of diverse topics and today is no different. We are pleased to have Ezra Chapman. He is a UK based entrepreneur, and executive with a long history of building companies across a lot of different industries. He has been a chief executive officer and an investor and also became incredibly skilled with people management and all the aspects of building a successful business. His first company was a top 100 fastest growing company in the UK for five consecutive years with three different companies he founded, we're in the top 100 employers within the UK. Chapman is also a partner in the UK is leading FinTech business that won His Majesty The Queen's award for entrepreneurship. He ran the number one rated recruitment company on trustpilot. And many of his companies were the high profile winners of multiple technology, and innovative rewards, awards, excuse me. But today, what we want to talk about, he's created a new company, that's basically it's an education platform life was, and this is for primary school children in the UK, that focuses on the p s, h, e. And I'll let you explain those as as we get on here, but that it's a theme that prepares them for life, as well as for, you know, business and just, I guess, a higher plane. If I explained that correctly. I'll let you weigh in. Ezra, thanks so much for being with us. And looking forward to excited to learn and, you know, I feel we don't prepare kids for life anymore. Barely. When I went to school, at least they taught us how to balance a checkbook. But you know, now I don't even think we do that anymore. It's just can we how fast can we get them out? So anyway, thanks for being with us. And looking forward to talking to you about this.

 

Ezra  01:58

Yeah, great. Thank you for the the invite. And it's, I'm really looking forward to talking to you, as well, right? And yeah, so psi g with Lifewise. So I don't think that you guys over in the US have a similar subject. But in the UK, back in September 2020, which is the start of our school year, just last year gone. It became part of the British curriculum, okay. And their pre primary school in the country needs to include a subject called PSAT and PSAT is personal, social health and economy. Basically, it's all the stuff that you and I wish we've been taught at school Exactly. Which we didn't get all the practical advice as to, you know, what's the government? Or why do we pay taxes or things about mental well being? All those things that were never really, really covered? Great to say it's become part of the UK curriculum.

 

Roy Barker  02:57

That's awesome. And so you were able to take advantages of this, and you have developed and are rolling out a platform to help with this specific portion of that primary school education. Correct?

 

Ezra  03:11

Absolutely. Yeah. So yeah, we we've got a very specific shg platform and our vision lifewise is to become the best platform in the world, but positively preparing children for life. Yeah. And, and, and in the UK, that's primarily focused on PSA G. And but we see that that's, you know, whoever I talked to, even on the international stage, right talks about the same need for these types of the same preparation and the same learnings anywhere around the world. Because, you know, our world is so fast changing, yeah, that we need to be better preparing our children for it.

 

Roy Barker  03:51

Yeah, that's for sure. Not a doubt that this is a problem that's limited to the UK, I'm sure that you know it, because we talk about it. Here, not even to that depth of the government and things like that. But we also talk about paying rent that you know, you when you get out of school, you live on your own, you pay rent, you might have a car payment, you got insurance, and then lo and behold, there's groceries, and there's all these other things that go along with life that, you know, we're just not taught about.

 

Ezra  04:22

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's really funny, because, I mean, I think the most incredible part of it for me was that. I mean, I can go into the background and why this was really, really passionate. I'm very passionate about it. But even from a practical perspective on the things you just spoke about there, you know, over here in the UK, we've got a tax haven called HMRC. You know, which, which collects all of the tax across the UK, and the government has 1000s and 1000s of workers chasing people all around the country to pay their taxes. Yet, at school, they don't You know, educate children to let them know that they need to pay them.

 

Roy Barker  05:04

Right. Right. Right. Yeah.

 

Ezra  05:06

And it's, it's, you know, it's just incredible. I always thought that growing up, I was like, wow, we have to babysat. Now I mentioned this last school. Yeah. I'm wondering how many people aren't doing it? Well, yeah,

 

Roy Barker  05:18

well, in, you know, here in here in the US, if you go to work for somebody, of course, you know, they drag those out, right out your paycheck. So you really don't have a choice. But as we encourage people to be entrepreneurs, and as our economy is made up of more and more smaller businesses, you know, that is a key point that people go out in, have a product or service, they make a lot of money. And then at the end of the year, they're like, Oh, I was supposed to hold back some money, you know, for taxes and for growth. And for all this other stuff that, you know, nobody ever really talks to him about until it's usually too late.

 

Ezra  05:56

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's it. And so so that that was a an early sign for me that there was probably more that we could do from a from an educational perspective. But like you were saying earlier, you know, it's much broader than that. And it's, I think it's an international thing. And probably the thing that we see most and having the biggest impact on children's life right now is social media. And, and I think that we all recognize that that's a global, it has a global impact. And I'm probably over the period of the pandemic, actually having the Yeah, the impact of that on a mental well, being perspective, being huge across children, I think it's brought to life, you know, the need, and the importance of these PSAT program in the UK and similar internationally. Really,

 

Roy Barker  06:45

yeah, you know, social media, you got to love it, because it can be such an awesome tool, but such a detrimental tool as well, you know, I think this is a great thing to, you know, teach kids that whatever you do today lives lives forever. Number one, but then that the the mental health aspect is I think that, you know, people don't take pictures of themself when they stubbed their toe, and they're crying and holding their toe, or, you know, when the times are really bad, or they don't come on, you know, some people are very transparent, honest about their failures. But a lot of times, it's more of this is my fancy car, my fancy yacht, and it's a fantasy world that kids growing up just, I don't think that they have a handle on that, that that's not sometimes it's not even reality. Number one, but it's, it's not everybody, it's not a, it's, it's hard to achieve, you have to put a lot of work, you don't come right out of college or high school, you know, start a business and all of a sudden, you're just rolling in all this money.

 

Ezra  07:50

Absolutely, yeah. For sure. And, and that's the, that's the very much the the sort of the impact it has, as you mentioned, but even for a broader perspective, that, you know, we're dealing with children. Yeah, I think in in the US in the elementary school, sort of five to 11 years of age. And in the UK, you know, it's the primary school. And at that point, you know, we're really such an early age with children, but it's an opportunity for them to, for us to really educate them and distinguish between them how they feel. So actually being able to separate those feelings and recognizing that, you know, anxiety or the feelings of anxiety, and actually, if they're feeling that way, that there's, there's a need to share it. And, you know, it coming back to the social media piece. It's a powerful tool, you know, Nelson Mandela said that, that there's no greater weapon in the world to influence the world than education. Yeah. And right now, really, you know, what would you say is the most influential, you know, tool out there in the world that's influencing and educating people? It's social media. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So, so what we're saying there is we've ended up putting, yeah, including to Nelson Mandela, right. And I agree with him, which is we put the most powerful weapon to influence the way that people think into the power of the people. And what that means is that which is great in many respects, is incredible to democracy in many ways. And, but but from from from, from a child's perspective, that means that they're elicits they're experiencing different emotions at a much earlier age. And and, and we have a responsibility really to ensure that they're as best prepared as possible for that.

 

Roy Barker  09:36

Yeah. So now was the the p s. h. e. Is this an effort that the government came up with? Or is this kind of like, was the business community and the community at large? Were they kind of forced in this issue to push into this or how did this come about?

 

Ezra  09:55

Yes, it's come it's come from different angles. So Psh has actually been been running schools as, as an additional topic, as it were, for a whole series for a whole period of time, and there have been loads of people lobbying for it to become part of the curriculum. And and we're delighted to say that, you know, as of September last year, it's become part of the British curriculum. And, yeah, and I think that it's, I think the pandemic has really only heightened the importance of it.

 

Roy Barker  10:25

Yeah. So is this something, just for my clarification, is this something that's taught during the day that the actual school administers? Or is this something that they kind of are expected to do on their own and completed and just, you know, maybe test out of it?

 

Ezra  10:42

Now? Absolutely, absolutely. there there's a there are a Yeah, when it becomes part of the curriculum in the school, the wrists, there are a series of outcomes that our schools regulator offset here, expect each school to deliver for each child. Okay, so, so off. So PS, dg has a very specific set of outcomes, that the offset regulator expects chill schools to deliver for children. So we've lifewise our platform, what we've done is created a completely unique platform that has over 200 lessons on it, and every each one of those an end to end lesson that the, the the teachers are responsible for then delivering to the, to the children, okay. So,

 

Roy Barker  11:32

you know, I can speak from the US experience that dealing with being an entrepreneur and in the business world, it's a totally different game than dealing with government. And obviously, I've had to get very deep into that to, you know, get this as part of the curriculum, and then having to deal with the different schools and things like that. So, talk to me about what were some of the hurdles that you've encountered, you know, going on this path versus as an entrepreneur?

 

12:02

Yeah, that's nice. That's really?

 

Ezra  12:03

That's a great question. Question. So I've been, I've been running businesses. So my first business, my first business actually, earning money was when I was 16 years old, and it started to pay a few bills at that point and help fund from my university. And then I entered the corporate world, building my first corporate business, in in when I was 2223 years old. And, and since then, I've been we've been growing businesses. And then what's really interesting about this is that I've always been very lucky, you know, to have been blessed with a high really high level of self motivation, and a certain level of resourcefulness. I think that comes from, from, from, from, from my upbringing. And, and that's pretty well for as an entrepreneur, and, but what was great was that back in a couple years ago, we launched lifewise, as it actually launched as a public Academy. We launched the philanthropic football academy to get a particular area, an area in the UK that doesn't have any professional soccer clubs. And what that means is that there's a lack of experienced soccer coaches in the county, and it means that those, the standards of coaching are really poor, which means that children come into the sport. And obviously, soccer is probably the most popular sport in the UK, children come into it. And then because they're not being coached properly, or there's no professionalism, they just follow our sport, and then they end up doing all the wrong things were. And so so we launched this football academy to help help help, help address that need, then the coaches themselves weren't, weren't coaching during the day, because this kid children were in the in school in the day. So we built a little proposition and got them coaching from schools. And, and that's led, you know, it from one or two lessons from a sports perspective into a couple of years later into, into an education platform. What I found was that is the best lit this completely new level of self motivation, which went from self motivation to this much greater purpose. And, and I think the fact that when you wake up every day, and you realize that actually, if you can make a 10 or 20% improvement to your proposition is in a business, that it's going to positively impact hundreds of 1000s of children's lives, right, then you really get out of bed up making sure you're on your A game and making sure that you squeeze every little bit out of that. 10% Yeah. So So interestingly, you know, for me, and what that meant is that I actually have now sort of left that larger corporate world and I'm now much more focused in this startup lifewise where We're super focused on it, this son, this, this, this purpose really, really, really got me going. And so for me, from a personal perspective, I've left a much larger corporate organization that we've built, my day to day is become very much on a start up again. Yeah. And I think that poses a new set of a new set of challenges. And I think coming back to your original point, so that gives a bit of history to getting there. Yeah, the biggest challenge, I think, with any, any any business is, you know, when you really start out understanding your audience, and teachers are very, very different. My background is, is recruiting into Corp, recruitment and technology, providing services to corporations all around the world, b2b, sort of dealing with fortune 500 businesses, and then all of a sudden, I'm making and then I'm having to communicate and think about how we address and the teaching community. Yeah, so that was probably the biggest challenge.

 

Roy Barker  16:01

Yeah. Well, you know, that's one thing I think is interesting is this is basically what the advice people give to entrepreneurs is really find something that you're passionate about. So I mean, you have to, I mean, if for those that are only listening, you have a big smile on your face. So I mean, it's obvious that this is very deep passion, but then you get to combine it with that entrepreneurial spirit to, you know, develop and roll something out. So I mean, congratulations on finding the sweet spot in life.

 

Ezra  16:33

Yeah, thanks. You know, I sort of being from that perspective, I totally agree, Roy, that. And I think Steve Jobs does a really fantastic speech when I think he might have been addressing, not sure it might have been even the Harvard graduation process. But talking about the number one thing that that he recommends is, you know, searching for something that you're really passionate for. And I think that, you know, I have a newborn son, he's just turned Well, he's actually now 16 months. And my advice to him as a father is definitely going to be, you know, an early age, take your time to find something you're super passionate about. Because the moment that you can turn work into in the what, what is a normal work into, into enjoyment? Yeah, you know, it's great. And then, as you say, from my perspective, turning that into something, which I enjoy, but also has an incredibly passionate, strong purpose. Definitely is is super helpful.

 

Roy Barker  17:34

So what set you up for this, let's let's kind of step back to the to the soccer coaching modules in that day, did you just realize that there was just a need, you know, for I guess, probably more in the outlying areas where there just weren't the available of talented the soccer coaches were, you know, like, cuz same here in the US is like, you know, we have soccer, baseball, football, all these sports, but at the youth level, at the very beginning level, you know, they draft the heads out of the bleachers, to, you know, whoever has the time to coach and, you know, some of us even though we've played we don't have the the ability to coach somebody else. And then like you said, kids get discouraged. So they leave the sport altogether. So is that just something that you recognize? Did somebody come to you and say, Hey, this is a problem that we've got, can you help me solve it?

 

Ezra  18:26

Joe, I said, this is interesting story, actually. So my hometown, a very small village, in the down in Cornwall in the southwest of the UK. And I moved back there for six months to spend some time my father and the local football team, which probably had about 20, or 30, spectators, had all of my old friends, which I hadn't seen since I've moved to London. And whilst I was down there, I helped them restructure that committee. And, and a couple of years later, I've sort of watched what they're doing. And from that restructure, they got some success. And the next time I moved back down, I went back down that, they said, Well, you know, we got this committee, and we've done this thing, these things done this. We've done really well. But we'd like to kick on and go a bit further, we'd love to get your thoughts on that. So then I said, No problem, come and meet me for a cup of tea tomorrow morning. And I turned up and walked out. And there was the next morning as committee of about eight or 10 people, or SAT wanting to have a cup of tea. And people have known since as at the age of three or four years old, and people as old as 75 whole mix of people that run the club. And they said they really wanted to drive the club forward. And so so the first thing that I wanted to help them do was I wanted to help them to think about what's the greatest vision of building a club, what's the greatest purpose that we can put into the club. So I looked at that and said, Well, you know, where's the opportunity and where's the greater purpose to build a cup of coffee With a vision, and if you want that vision to be emotionally attached to its supporters, its committee members, everyone needs to have a vision, which is has emotional attachment, great purpose. So what I recognized was that there was no other clubs across the county, which were really focused on their youth. And actually is that is there anything going to be more people are going to be more passionate about a football club, or a soccer club or a sports club, if it's incredibly passionate about developing its local players and its local community. So when we looked when we thought about that there happened to be no, we then realized that the fact that no one was focused on that is because there are no professional clubs. And if you think about it, people went to, if you went to a county, I'm sure so many you at the last, but if you went to Yorkshire, in the UK, there might be 20 3040 clubs, which are from sort of semi professional through to professional levels, maybe more. And each one of those every year has players, coaches, and managers that have all experienced incredibly high standards, but then they retire from the game, or they don't quite make it, they might have gone through the whole system. And all those people filter out into grassroots football, grassroots soccer. What that means is that they're naturally replenishing and offering these great experiences and high standards. You go to a county like Cornwall with no professional clubs, and those, you know, those nutrients which are driving the game up in, in these other counties just don't exist. So we recognize that, and we decided that every other club in the county invests money in players. And we, we were the first to invest money in coaches. And we invested all of the available resources into coaches, which attracted all of the younger talent. And we started to build a club with a greater purpose. So it was really looking at the environment and looking at what was the had the greatest purpose? And that's, that's, that's where we got to really yeah. Yeah, that's,

 

Roy Barker  22:02

I mean, that's a perfect blueprint for anybody that wants to be an entrepreneur, you seek out, listen to people find the problem, you know, and develop the path in which to solve that sub. That's awesome. That's a great lesson, you know, not only in life, but in business as well. So one thing I wanted to ask, too, is, so what is the delivery system? Is it well, and we can talk about the the coaching side versus the educational component for the schools, but is this? Is it electronic? Do you have some in person combination?

 

Ezra  22:36

Yeah, absolutely. So, so if I, if I continue that story to get to that point, we, so so the coaches then went into the schools and on we started off with a bag of balls and some cones. Yeah. And and then we realized that, that there was more we could do in those couple of hours. And it turned into a presentation. And then a few weeks later into a flip chart, and then into 40 lessons and then into 200 and then into a technology platform. Yeah. And, and like you say, we we started very much at the grass roots, but just asking questions and understanding what the opportunities were to build a tech platform. And that tech platform is the delivery mechanism. For an end to 200 lessons, it's an end to end lesson. But the objective is that it's really, it's really just the skeleton of the lesson. And the objective is that we take the children offline. So that we're doing exercises, activities, we've got videos of activities, and we deliver the message through sport, through playing through challenges through activities. And then also there are some videos and other online resources as well. But we tried to get almost two thirds to three quarters of the lesson offline out away from the screen. Yeah, that's

 

Roy Barker  23:55

awesome. It's engaging, you know, I wasn't the as a youngster, I probably wasn't the best student because I was bored and read rather be out. But if you could take my lesson and put it out on the ball field, you know, I would be much more amenable to learning that for sure. So

 

Ezra  24:12

absolutely. Yeah. Different learning types. That's right. You're right. And that's what we realized. So So actually, you're right, you know that we incorporate storytelling for those those that really audio or audio based listeners, and then we've got very much sort of gamified learning and then there's a whole play section as well, so that all of the learnings are incorporated into physical physical activities. So the objective is that within an hour, we will have touched all of the different learning types to try and deliver the most effective message we can now

 

Roy Barker  24:53

you know, here in the US, our schools are controlled by local agencies. So I mean, you cross one air to another, there can be some significant difference did did you find that there were challenges to roll this out to the different entities that you had to? or Are y'all different maybe a little bit more control since it was dictated curriculum i get i know that they had to have it. But you know, sometimes, there's a kind of a different interpretation of how we want to deliver this.

 

Ezra  25:24

Yeah, now we have our competitors like everyone else, right. And we're so we're out there, you know, the curriculum was was slightly say, it became part of the British curriculum, and in 20, which meant that there's been a significant focus on it. But what we've had to do, you know, as any small business needs to do, you know, we've got to continually pivot and, and evolve and ensure that, you know, where, as many steps ahead of our competition as possible, and then that's what's led us to be able to, to, to really get ahead of the competition, and to, and to build market share quickly.

 

Roy Barker  26:06

So, and this applies both to coaches, and to the, you know, the Psh II, part two, but so where did you go to get experts? Did you actually find retired coaches and players that could, I guess, maybe do videos of different things, or at least write some stuff? And then on the other side, professors are real people in real life? How did that look like developing it?

 

Ezra  26:34

Yeah, so that was quite fun, actually. So it sort of served its purpose, because we evolved from the sports field, you know, from a bag of balls and cones into this tech platform is quite gradual process. But what we've done this and, and there's a, there's a is we we built it, we say with, you know, it's built by teachers, for teachers, okay. And what that means is that we decided to build a community of teachers and coaches, which were specialists in all of their fields. And we started to work with them. And there was a great opportunity you. The first one was, we were talking to our audience, right? So we really understood what made them tick, whilst also building out the resources that we needed on the platform. And the thing that is interesting, I'm, I'm a massive believer in principles and values based leadership. Well, I'm super lucky that I have an entrepreneurial father. And he told me at an early age, he said, you know, Mark, he said, he said, not so clever person is someone who doesn't learn from their mistakes. A smart person is a person who, who learns from their mistakes, a really smart person, someone who learns from other people's mistakes. And that, and that was stuck with me a long way. And that's where my values and principles based leadership came from, which was not just based on my own learnings, but building a set of principles and values, which really guide my decision making, or our decision making as a business. And, and it's funny, because in the US, I'm not sure if you've seen Have you seen the TV series? Making a Murderer?

 

Roy Barker  28:15

Yes, yes, actually, I have.

 

Ezra  28:17

Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Now, the second series of that, I don't know if you remember, but there's an amazing lady lawyer that gets involved with the case. And she does a really great job of sort of unwinding and unwinding the case. And she says that the best way to understand a case is to completely experience the case. Right? And what she does, she actually goes through herself every step of the process, as if she was actually committing the crime or, or whatever it might be. And so when are you coming back my values and principles based leadership? Yeah, that was a significant sort of value or principle. But I develop bizarrely, from that that show, which was that whatever I do, I try to get into the footsteps as closely as I can, as my audience. We want to live and breathe it and experience it, because there's nothing you know, one of the greatest mistakes that I've made, and I'm sure that loads of other people have made people listen to that. I'm not sure you've done this as well, really, whereas you're convinced that your idea, right, is the right idea. And you get so passionate about it. Yeah. And you can lose sight of, of your audience. And yeah, I think if you can bring any idea you've got if you can bring it back to that principle of experience it to understand it, right? detach yourself from the emotion of the idea or the concept. Yeah. And get in the shoes of your audience, work with your audience, and really test it and with lifewise that was just a really valuable principle, which meant that the first thing we done was build a community of teachers. And we just dropped ourselves into that. And we started talking about it and understanding what was important and wasn't important. And I think that that's expedite. And again, it comes back to that, that principle that my father gave me around, you know, learning from other people's mistakes, whereas all those teachers can tell us all the things that our competition have done that they don't like. Yeah, yeah. Right. And it's incredibly valuable process for us.

 

Roy Barker  30:27

Yeah. And I think that also translates into something is we we don't always have to have the answers that, you know, I kind of look at that as a second part of that what you were saying what your dad told you is that the smartest man in the room doesn't always have the answers, but he knows where to go find them. That's the important part.

 

Ezra  30:47

Amazing. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And that's, that's also, bizarrely that comes back to back to that that's an incredibly powerful principle. You talk about that, really. And I'll ask you a second where you've got that from, because I'm sure there's someone or some way you've learned, but but there's not lifewise, we trying to teach people skills, as well as knowledge, because we recognize and from my experience, I don't know about your work. But skills and tools are far more powerful than knowledge. I want to teach people and help people to find the answers to the questions they need, rather than trying to teach them some of the answers to some of the questions they might get asked one thread,

 

Roy Barker  31:34

right. Yeah, and I just, you know, I guess I picked that up from being around sales for so long is that, you know, you see people that struggle, because if you ask me a question about my product or service, and I don't know the answer, you know, I may feed you a line of BS just to get you make you be quiet or make you think that I know what I'm talking about. But if you look at really successful ones, they are not scared to say, you know what, I don't have this answer, but I can definitely get it for you. And I have so much more respect for that. You know, and especially also, as I can relate to, you know, the hiring process as well, that's what I'm more interested in, is if somebody is resourceful enough to say, if I say I need you to learn, you know how to build a nuclear reactor, I don't expect them to say, Great, I got the plans in my back pocket, I expect that, you know, hey, I can research it, and I can lay you out some best practices. And, you know, that's just really all we can expect. And, you know, that's another great thing about the internet is it makes it easier. You know, back in my day, it's like you had to go to the encyclopedia and follow the, you know, hope that yours was up to date. And I think we had when I was growing up, we had to set from World War Two, like the 1940s. So, you know, you had to hope your encyclopedia set was up to date, and somebody didn't borrow the S section, and it was gone.

 

Ezra  32:53

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Coming back to your point that I wrote another point, which was around hiring, what you've just said there. I'm also a huge believer, and I don't know about your experiences in this. But from a hiring perspective. When you're maybe you're asking that question, you know, how do you build a nuclear reactor? Right? And what you're looking for is someone who is going to tell you, for me, it's about how they deal with that question, as opposed to the answers they give the knowledge they share. And I think that's a really important part from from a hiring perspective, that what you should be looking about is how people go about is learning from how people demonstrate what skills or tools they have to achieve the objectives that you're giving them, rather than do they have the answers to the questions you're asking. Yeah. And it comes back to that same thing you're talking about, which is, you know, having the ability to get the answers rather than just happen.

 

Roy Barker  33:53

Yeah. And in this fast changing world that, you know, I may have had the answer, a week ago, or a year ago, but things have changed. And there could be something even better. So it never hurts to do a little research to just, you know, find out what is the latest and the greatest. So I don't think you can go wrong. You know, a lot of times people look at resumes, and they look at education, and it really stops there. But then if they don't have, you know, I guess what I like to call that grit factor. If you don't have that grit factor. Some of that can be lost as well.

 

Ezra  34:26

Yeah. 100%. And, and what's, what's interesting there is that all over the years, we've built a whole series of different you refer to the malaria recruitment and services, businesses, and those businesses. They were global businesses across from all the way from the Philippines, right the way through the UK, Europe into the US, but they're all sales lead businesses. And I don't know about yourself, but but one of the most difficult people to hire is salespeople. Yes, right. Yeah. So really You refer to it as a real, real challenge. And, and what I don't know about you, but on our list of set of criteria for hiring most salespeople, were looking for self motivated people. Was that, was that part of what you'd look for?

 

Roy Barker  35:15

Yes, yeah. somebody that's self motivated that, you know, and I'm a little different in that sales aspect, because typically, I've sold, you know, higher end services. So I want somebody that's, that knows how to educate. I don't want to just say, Ezra, you know, we spoke last week, and I know you're thinking about it, are you ready to sign up today, you know, I want somebody that's going to be pulsing you like, Hey, this is something that I just read this article that I think it might help you and your business or your struggle to make these decisions. You know, it's not a it's not a quick, you know, if you're selling $5 widgets, then yeah, it's like, Hey, you want to buy or not, I gotta move on to the next guy. But when you're selling high priced services or equipment, you got to take the time, and we we in this instant gratification society, you know, I like the agrarian model of we plant we, well, we take care anyway, we plant we take care of the seed, and then we harvest. And you know, we've kind of gotten to this point of, we throw a seed out there, and then we're trying to harvest it, you know, without the cultivation. That's what I was trying to think of, you know, we leave the cultivation part out. And I think that's an important step in this process. Like I said, the higher you get up the dollar chain is that it takes time, we have to build a relationship. And I have to know, am I solving your problem? What is your problem? Listen, like you were talking earlier? It's the same thing. I have to listen to what you're saying. So I can decide First off, can I even solve it and then pitch you on these benefits? Oh, yeah.

 

Ezra  36:53

Absolutely. Yeah. Curiosity has got to be one of the greatest, great, greatest character traits than I think most successful people have. Really. So yeah, and that curiosity around to continually questioning. But coming back to your point earlier about grit, you know, when you're hiring people, you're looking for that grit, you have the same thing with that sort of high levels of self motivation. And this actually, is what made me realize, we've been hired, we've hired literally 1000s of sales people over the last 20 years. And as I got older, I realized that actually, the difference between most people that say, and then every sales guy in every interview, are you self motivate, yes, I'm actually being self motivated. We've all been there. Right? But how do you scratch beyond the surface, right, because salespeople then learn to took they've learned to communicate, and the nine out of 10 can effectively communicate. So you have to really scratch on the surface to really understand it. And what I found that I don't know if you've been through this, but I ended up then we ended up as looking at people's childhoods, right. And I would, I absolutely got to a place where we recognize that self motivation normally came from experience, you know, how that that comes from, you know, their, their learnings and how they were brought up as a, as a child, they might be their environment, it might have been, their teaching their learning their parents, it could be could be anything, but, and nine times out of 10, there's a reason there's a reason that people got that grit that you're looking for that and it's and what we realize is that, you know, super self motivated people. Yeah, we have amazing stories where you know, you come across when you go, I just know this person is 100% committed, they have so determined, yeah, tell me about your childhood. And then I'll be well, you know, we, my father, really cessful then he lost everything. And then we had to, at the age of 11 years old, I was in my garage, and I was rebuilding these, he was going to sell these widgets and me and my brother and my mom we had when we got back from school for four hours every night, build the widget. And we've done that. And then eventually he got back on his feet, you know, and you go, right, there you go. You really knew what it didn't know what it takes, what it's like to fail, and also what and what it takes to succeed. And that it's that experience, which made us realize the huge opportunity that we have with lifewise now to positively prepare children for life, and actually, there's so much more. There's so much more we can do to positively influence the outcomes and prepare children for life. But it's at that age, you know that the developmental broke brain, you know, the process is 90% done by the time they're five years old. Yeah,

 

Roy Barker  39:43

yeah. Right. No, and that's an interesting interesting thought on the recruitment about asking about childhood. I'm gonna remember that for future But yeah, you're right. I think that's the great thing about this plan for life wise is you know, reaching these children at such a young age because Like you said, so many times, habits, thoughts, things are already formed. You know, by the time you can reach out in, you know, like in the business world by the time we can reach them when they're in their 20s. It's easily sometimes it's too late by then.

 

Ezra  40:15

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, come back to Nelson Mandela speaks you, you'll hear you'll hear me continually referring back to these principles from other people. But what he says is that there's no great, great, great way to affect the way of the world and through education. And for sure, when my eight, my 16 year old son is framed. Oh,

 

Roy Barker  41:26

yeah, looks like we zoomed out there for a minute as I finish your thought, for me, you're saying your 16 year old 16 month old son? And that's where we kind of

 

Ezra  41:35

Yeah, not saying that. Yeah, we were talking about inverse input positively influencing children, young age, and I said, When, when your 16 year old child or you know, 16 month old child literally frowns at you for your behavior. And you realize that they're smarter than you think.

 

Roy Barker  41:56

Exactly, exactly. Well, I guess that little bleep means we're running, probably running late on time. I know. I appreciate you giving me so much extra time. This is so not only interesting about life wise and that concept and how it developed but also just your thoughts on you know, the entrepreneurial business and recruiting world. So I certainly do appreciate that. Problem. Thank you. It's been a real pleasure to talk to you. Yeah. And so if you don't mind tell everybody if you know, number one, how can they reach out if they want to talk to you but if they want to check out life wise, how can they do that as well?

 

Ezra  42:33

Yeah, not from so when. So you can find me on on LinkedIn as Ezra Chapman. You can also email me and [email protected] Okay,

 

Roy Barker  42:46

great. Well, thanks so much. that's gonna do it for another episode of the business of business podcast. Of course I am Roy, your host and you can find us at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com. We are on all the major social media networks as well as all the major podcast platforms, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Spotify, we're not on one that you listen to please reach out I'd be glad to add Till next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.lifewise.co.uk

[email protected]

Ezra Chapman on LinkedIn

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

Want Better Relationships in All Areas of Your Life? Learn To Read People with Alan Stevens

When you put it together, but the words are worth about 7% of the communication. Oh, wow, the tone of voice 38% the body language 55%. Now, that doesn't mean that the words aren't important. And the words are equally important to the communication as the body language and the tone of voice. Because without it, you don't have communication.

About Alan

Alan Stevens is an International Profiling and Communications Specialist regularly featured on National TV, Radio and in the World’s Press, profiling the likes of our leading politicians, TV and sports stars as well as Britain’s Royalty. He’s been referred to by the UK Guardian as the leading authority on reading people, globally and the mentalist meets Dr Phil by the Herald.

Alan has worked with international clients, the likes of Disney Films and Gillette, and high-profile organizations like the Australian Federal Police to help them to understand how people tick. Alan works with business owners and executives, helping them to understand and engage their clients and prospects, enhancing their presentations and negotiation skills. And with parents and teachers to help them enhance the ability of their children to reach their full potential while improving the experience of parents, teachers, and students.

His latest community initiative is The Campfire Project. The Campfire Project is a safe place for men and women to give themselves permission to tell their stories. To share their experiences and wisdom from around the world. This is his #WeTogether initiative.

This is the link to the 7 Secrets to Reading people https://www.alanstevens.com.au/7secrets/

Short free course 

https://alanstevens.thinkific.com/courses/Free-Course

And The Campfire Project is https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheCampfireProject/

www.alanstevens.com.au

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

 

Full Transcript Below

 

Want Better Relationships in All Areas of Your Life? Learn To Read People with Alan Steves

Sun, 8/1 1:08PM • 50:07

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, read, listen, questions, person, talking, analytical, men, understand, talk, interested, alan, important, close, body language, sale, relationship, telling, information, expression

SPEAKERS

Alan, Roy Barker

 

Roy Barker  00:00

Roy. So we are the podcast that brings a wide range of guests that can talk about a lot of diverse topics and today is no different. We have Alan Stevens with us been waiting for this interview for the last couple of weeks This is going to be very exciting. So Alan is an international profiling and communication specialists regularly featured on national TV, radio and in the world's press, profiling the likes of our leader leading politicians, TV and sports stars as well as Britain's royalty. He's been referred to by the UK Guardian as the leading authority on reading people globally. And The Mentalist meets Dr. Phil lby the Herald. Alan has worked with international clients like the likes of Disney films, and Gillette and high profile organizations, like the Australian Federal Police to help them understand how people tick. Allen works with business owners and executives helping them to understand and engage their clients and prospects, enhancing their presentations and negotiation skills. And with parents and teachers to help them enhance the ability of their children to reach their full potential while improving the experience of parents, teacher and student. He his latest community initiative is the campfire project, the camp for our project is a safe place for men and women to give themselves permission to tell their stories, to share their experiences and wisdom from around the world. This is his hashtag we together initiative. Alan, thanks so much for taking time out of your day to be with us.

 

Alan  01:41

It's been my pleasure, thank you very much

 

Roy Barker  01:43

wish I had met you 30 years ago when my kids were young. might have been a lot less grief for all I was going through that had my skills back then as well, because I would have been better with my kids as well. Right? Well, you know, reading people, it's important, you know, we've we've had this conversation, that's a reason why I'm excited to get you want here. Also, we'll just let you know, I usually let everybody know that the video of this interview will be put up as well. But the nice thing about video versus text is we can actually see these the reactions, you know, sometimes I could, I mean, sometimes I'm just have to say I'm probably one of the funniest people I know. And I will send a zinger to my girlfriend or to one of the kids and you know, I'm sitting there dying laugh, and they're like, Yeah, I just don't get that. Are they? Like, what are you saying? You know, they take it totally wrong, because they can't see my impression. So I'm gonna let you take it from there. It's just it's such an important part of that community. Communication.

 

Alan  02:51

Oh, that's right, because they say that, when it comes to communication, body language, the tone of voice, the words, that makes up 100%, when you put it together, but the words are worth about 7% of the communication. Oh, wow, the tone of voice 38% the body language 55%. Now, that doesn't mean that the words aren't important. And the words are equally important to the communication as the body language and the tone of voice. Because without it, you don't have communication, like I'm sitting here and I'm just shuffling around and I'm ranting making noises. There's no communication. So you've got to have the words, right. But as far as the amount of information that's conveyed, the words only convey a very small amount. Yeah. As I always say to people that when you're with somebody in the talking, you but everyone says you got two ears and one mouth, and I go Well, you've also got two eyes, two ears and one mouth, use them in that proportion. Okay, because it's not just Well, at school, we were told to sit and listen. And so all of our focus is on listening. in a court of law, everything is focused on listening again, as well, you've got to listen to what's being said, you got to uncover the truth. It's got to be spoken. And in that we don't focus much on the nonverbals. But as children, we were very good at reading people, we had to be able to recognize somebody's facial features to recognize whether we knew them or not know was always safe to be around or not, but then also be able to read their expressions, and their tone of voice and everything else. All of that gave us so much information it was about survive, as in tribal times, and also as young children. And let's face it, children, if anyone's got young children, just ask yourself is how often do your children push you right to the edge but not over the edge? Because they are reading you. They're experts at it. But like any geek as we get older, we focus on everything else we're doing and we forget about that. Yeah, so the end result is we're now told words are the most important thing, but they're not. It's a tone of voice and everything if I said I didn't say she stole the money in a flatline. Well, there's just one reaction. Take the meeting anyway. But if I said I didn't say, or if I'd said, I didn't say, he told the money or the inflection changes, the whole meaning of the sentence would be the first one that somebody else said it. The second one is I didn't say, I actually wrote it down, or I left a message for somebody in a written format. So the words change, as soon as you put the inflection in, that's what we need to focus on. Right?

 

Roy Barker  05:24

Yeah, before we get too deep into it, kind of how did you find yourself here? I mean, what what path led you to be able to, you know, help people read other people.

 

Alan  05:34

When you said about a little while ago, I bet your children why chocolate, what about fat is the fact that I was dreadful at reading people. I'd grown up as pretty much a loner, and then got involved in, in when I got employed, I was put in charge of men who are older than me. So I had to get them on side. And all the way through, I always struggled to try and connect with people. I've been through two divorces, I've had a lot of business partners who a couple of them who actually emptied the bank out, and a lot of other relationships. And then my first wife, they've had three boys to raise on my own. So right through my life, I've always been in the deep end. And through necessity, it was after my second device, and then working with people who were currency traders who weren't making any money with the company that train them got me to come in and have a look, I needed to find out a lot more about how to read people. And that's how my skills have increased over the years that was owning, first of all body language, then it was being able to understand the words my NLP masters, and more recently into the facial profiling. Yeah, it has given me so much more information.

 

Roy Barker  06:43

Yeah, that's awesome. Because it's, it really is a skill that we should use in our lot, you know, in every facet business, our personal relationships, friendships, even when we're dealing with merchants, vendors, negotiating contracts. I mean, it just applies to everything.

 

Alan  07:02

That's it? Yeah. Well, at the end of the day, relationships are the foundation of everything we do. And without having built a relationship with somebody, we don't have any impact with them. If you're selling, nobody buys from anybody they don't know, like, and trust unless they have to, you're the only person selling and they definitely or desperately need the product, right. But even when it comes to a relationship, no left, by the way, finding your right partner is probably the biggest sale of our life, to try and convince somebody, they should spend the rest of their life with us. Right. And so with that, we need to be able to read the other person, we need to be able to build that relationship without the relationship, nothing's gonna happen.

 

Roy Barker  07:41

Right, exactly. So, um, you know, so many times that we spend, I guess, not being what we call an active listener. You know, we've, I think it's something that's not new, but it's come along, but it's also, I think it goes with the what you said, because that's saying, We've got two ears listen twice as much. But now we've got, you know, as you point out, we've got two wise. So I guess now, instead of trying to formulate, you know, maybe the first sentence that comes out of your mouth, I'm already thinking, alright, this is what I've got, if he'll just ever quit talking for just a minute, this is what I'm going to say. And you know, sometimes we spend our time instead of listening or watching or paying attention, we're just waiting a an opening to jump in and kind of spew whatever we might have to say,

 

Alan  08:33

that's it. And the end result we're doing that we're not building relationship, the more we can focus on the other person, if you know, whatever we're if we're selling, for instance, it's all about being able to build that strong relationship. And to do that, we have to give them the ample time to be able to get their message across. And then we need to be able to listen to that we need to be able to respond in conversation. So I don't walk in and try and solve somebody, I want to find out what's important to them why it's important, why not only why they need it, but why they want it and what's things behind that. And to do that, you just got to shut out. The choice. Right?

 

Roy Barker  09:11

So is it better? You know, I guess, kind of walk us let's talk about the sales process. First off, that's a good one. But you know, we want to put some questions out there, we always want to ask probing question, but then, like you said, kind of walk us through how we want to set back what we some things that we may want to watch for, as they answer these probing questions.

 

Alan  09:32

One of the things is before I actually go and see somebody, I've already done everything I can to find out about their personality. And the good thing about it with the profiling that I do, all I need to do is see their photograph, whether it be a website photo or LinkedIn profile or anything like that. I can then I'll know their personality. Okay, so I don't even have to ask him a single question. It's like somebody walks past me in the street. I've got them. Wow. And then I know how to speak to them. Because if I look at you, for instance, I know that you're analytical or certain degree, you need a certain amount of information before you make your decision. Once you've made the decision, get out of the way, let me get it done. So you're not going to look for all the different possibilities is not the best one getting into it, and move on to the next project after that. So if I know that, I know that there's going to be a lot of information you're going to be asking for. So I know you're going to ask me questions. If I just give you an overview. You'll try and stop me and get more information on each item as I go. Right. Now, if I want to set the conversation up with you, I'd say, Well, look, Roy, there's a lot of information in here, but so I don't forget anything, what I want to do is just put it all on the table, first of all, give you the overview. And then we go back and spend as much time as you need to cover every aspect of what's out. Okay, I get the yes from you. I started to give the overview. And if you interrupt me, then I can say, Well, as I said before, right, it's, it's really important that I don't forget anything, and that's going to be important to you. So I'm getting yeses from you. We're getting your confirmation of that. And then I can put on the table because say if I'm, if I'm the person who just needs the overview, first of all, that's why I need to put the information out to you. But also, I need to know to know that you need that time, you've already get all your answers as well, I pre frame the conversation before we even start. And that's interesting. I

 

Roy Barker  11:21

mean, and you know, for full disclosure, I think that we've spoken this a couple times maybe for as little as 15 or 20 minutes. Very good call, you know, I do feel I am very analytical. That's I've just always been in that role in my life. And it's kind of taken at home. But so. So what are some of the clues, either that you've picked up, as we have been talking or, you know, looking at LinkedIn, or pictures? What are some things that were the giveaway for that?

 

Alan  11:54

Oh, look, well, first of all, when I meet somebody for the first time, the very first thing I'm going to do is, if we're meeting in real life, we're going to be close to each other, I need to know first of all, how much space Do you need. Because if I come into close, I'm highly affable, I'm quite comfortable standing close to people for the first time, very close to them. Some people need space, not that they're not friendly. But the more that they're more discerning, they want to check out who's safe to be around and who's not safe to be around. That one, you'll find in the height of the eyebrows, the higher the eyebrows are set away from the eyes that are bigger the gap between the upper eyelid and the eyebrow, the more that person needs some space. And the way I measure that one looking vertically through the pupil. If I imagine a vertical line, because people have different shaped eyebrows, I'm looking for the gap at that particular point, it tells me how much space that person needs. So when I walk up to them, if they got high set eyebrows, I'll stop just before they get to me put my hand out and I let them set up the space that they need. Now I know that whether I've got rapport with them, if you're if there's a lot of noise around, and we've been talking for a while and I lower my voice, if they lean in, then I know that they're comfortable with me now. And it's also interesting while I'm talking about interesting though, I can test everything because I go but on the one with yourself analytical but not super analytical to the point this is in the actual eyelids, exposure itself. With people looking at the video here, they'll see that you've got a bit of a folder skin and the eyelash comes close to it but doesn't go right underneath it. Where the eyelash goes underneath the guy that goes underneath that folder skin, you'll have somebody then who is highly analytical when there's no gap, no line there at all, there's a large gap to between it, you've got somebody who is more big picture, they just want the overview, the least amount of information, they would like they're on a mountain peak, and there's another mountain peak and they got to get from one mountain peak to the other one. They just want to know where's the bridge. Whereas somebody who's highly analytical, we'll go down the mountain checking all the details out across the valley. before they even got the other side they've worked out where they want to get there on. And so they will take longer to make a decision. They also need more information. So if I've got somebody who's highly analytical, I'm not going to give them too much. Give them just the overview. I'll set it out that way. But I'll be waiting for them to ask me a lot of questions. And I'll keep answering the questions as long as they're asking them because I know while they're asking questions, they're interested. And I know that they're getting what they need, which is all the information if it's somebody who just wants the overview, and I'm analytical, I would say to them look, there is a lot of information here. I'm going to give you the overview. You ask the questions that you want to ask and I know there's not going to be too many but also the outside look if there's something there that I think you need to know that you haven't asked Is it all right if I asked you that that and so now i given the overview, okay, what questions I got they ask those questions and then if there's something they have an accent I think they need to know also will remember I said before there might be something you need to know that boring stuff within hours that okay I generally get like a smartphone getting for you as a smile and a nod, that I can give them that information. But see, by doing it that way, instead of me just hitting them with all the information, which is me talking at them, right now I'm having a conversation with a where we're talking together backwards and forwards. And so that this whole thing, so the whole thing is to be able to read the other person and know that, how to make them comfortable, and how to give him the information that they need the sale, if you're selling something the sale will take as long as it needs to take based on their personality.

 

Roy Barker  15:32

Interesting. So I guess, you know, you mentioned the the nod and the smile, what are some other keys that we can pick up from? And I did like the one about the you know, when you lower your voice, somebody leans in and let you know that they're comfortable and interested, but what are their other I guess reactions or facial, you know, besides just turning up the nose or frowning? You know, are there other things that we can look for in that as well on that exchange?

 

Alan  16:02

You know, when the talking to us, or things, what we call micro expressions. They're very quick expression expressions on the face that happened. At the moment something is said or something happens. If we think about it, we know that and by the way, the way these work, how many times have you been speaking to somebody, everything sound perfectly fine, but you've had that gut feeling something was wrong. Now, what you'll find is the tone of voice, the body language, the expressions on their face is something that is out of whack, unconsciously with recognize it. But then consciously, we don't know what we're saying, we just know something's not right now, with this with a micro expression, they will appear as soon as something is said or something happens. For instance, out of the cornea, right, you might see something that's on the ground. So we get a feeling of surprise, because all while is that we turn around and then realize it's only a piece of, you know, a twig or something like that all rolled up hose. And so we go, Okay, now it's fine. In that one moment, it's as fast as a fifth of a second to 1/25 of a second, the unconscious mind reacts, when the conscious mind steps in, and the expression disappears. And sounds pretty fast to being a fifth of a second or even 1/25 of a second, we're down to about 40 milliseconds, it's extremely quick, however, the eye picks it up. And the unconscious mind definitely picks it up. But once you've got the unconscious mind tuned in, you're understanding what's going on, you're able to pick all this up. And there are seven expressions which are universal, doesn't matter if you've been born in a capital city, or tribal village, being blind from birth, if you feel one of those emotions, you'll have the corresponding expression on your face. And you're looking for that. Okay, but I'll put this caveat in here, people understand this. Not it's like when I'm reading someone's profile, their personality, not one trait on it only on its own defines you. It's a combination of all the traits together. Now, it's the same thing with the nonverbal indicators that tell you what's going on emotionally. You need to look at as many as you possibly can. But the old saying that somebody with folded arms, they closed off. Well, it could be that they're cold for a myriad of different reasons. Right? It could be that you intimidate them, because they've got you up on a pedestal. But what all the other indicators saying if they feel are facing towards the door, they're leaning back, they're facing starting to lean away from you? Yeah, okay, they are closed off. If your arms are folded, and they're leaning forward, feet straight towards you, they're nodding, they are responding to your conversation as you're talking, then they're interested. But the arms are just giving themselves possibly a little warm hug, because, or it could be their cold. It could also be that they're intimidated with you a lot of reasons. But if they unfold their arms on talking to them, and they still got the indicators, and all the other indicators are facing towards me. I know they're even more switched on now. Yeah. They're more interested in what they were before.

 

Roy Barker  19:02

Yeah. And so what about I actually just written that down? And so that thank you for answering that. Because about the folded arms. What about the next one was setting with your hands folded on a table? And I think, you know, some of that is, if I'm leaning into what if we're at a conference table? If I'm leaning in towards you, versus leaning back? Is there that have any significance?

 

Alan  19:27

Well, hey, it's actually sitting here. This is why my hands were on my lap. So I'm certainly not dis interested in what you're, you're asking me and everything goes, you're so kind to actually be interviewing me, which I'm very appreciative of. So this is just me feeling comfortable. If I'm leaning forward, then what do you do? Do you have your hands out like that? They feel awkward. Yeah. This just makes it feel a little bit more comfortable. As far as people might say off. That's because you know, you're trying to give yourself another hug again. Yeah. I do these talks regularly. It's not about being nervous or anything goes. Yeah, it's just that it's a comfortable way. I do think I've probably been doing that since I was a kid. I was a habit more than anything else. Because I said, What's all the other indicators showing you? Yeah, no, just take one on his own.

 

Roy Barker  20:15

Yeah. No, that's good. The other thing that I tried to look at, too, is the engagement. If if we're talking and before we start interviews, make it clear with my guests that, you know, when I'm bending down and writing, I'm taking notes constantly, not only for myself to remember, but you know, as things come up, I may ask questions, so. So that's really not, you know, I'm not disengaged, for sure. I'm very interested. But, you know, let's just say we're having a meeting and conversation, people that are constantly turning away and don't know, I don't have my phone's not in, not close. But you know, you could tell if I pick my phone up, if I'm always distracted. A lot of times, you know, people, well, I will say people close to me, sometimes I'm say, hey, look, I need your full attention. You know, I'm trying to communicate something to you, I don't mind being a little bit more abrupt and straightforward. But when we're in a business negotiation, or a business phone call, I'm probably not quite that abrupt. I may say, you know, if you have a question or try to redirect, but let's talk about that from it. A lot of times people say, Well, I'm multitasking, you know, I can think about this. And that, which, I don't know, I've read a lot of a lot of literature lately, that says that is certainly a myth that, you know, our brain can perform one function at a time, we may have three or four balls in the air, we can do that. But I can't simultaneously be typing a text message to somebody and listening to what you're telling me.

 

Alan  21:51

That's exactly right. See, as far as multitasking goes, it's a myth. Absolutely. The people that say that they can. That's ego, because as you said, the brain can only handle one goal at a time. There's when people talk about multitasking, when you think about multitasking, there was things that were happening at the same time down the same pathway. And there's things like time division, you'd something we'd go out, somebody else would follow behind it. And something behind that. Yeah. So there's a switching on and switching off. So when you multitask, and you think you're multitasking trying to do two things at once the brains going on and off, on and off, every time it goes off, it's like putting the brakes on coming up with satellites, you slow down, then you accelerate away. So you're actually extending the period, here's a little test that people can do, if they've got a piece of paper, or a whiteboard or whatever. Yet, you're talking your stopwatch out and time yourself, write the numbers one to 26, and then write the alphabet a through to Zed. And see how long that takes you. Then go one, a two, B, three, C, write them down in that way. And I guarantee even though you've written down the same numbers, and the same letters, it will take you longer on people, it takes them two and a half times as long. Some people only 10% longer. But there is nobody can do it in exactly the same time, which proves that you cannot multitask. So somebody is doing something else. In a meeting, what I'd actually say to him is, well look, I can see that there's there's something else, it's more important. You want to get onto that, and reschedule that usually means that you got to walk out and wasted that period of time. You're putting it you're also showing that you have importance, don't they find not as important, you may think the phone's more important than me. But I'm more important when we've had this meeting. This is a post about mutual respect, right? So I'm happy to pull them up on that. And say, Well, look, you know, Let's reschedule for another time when you've got a bit more time to do this. Okay? Because if they're not listening to they're doing that, and I'm trying to assault on wasting my time anyway, it's gonna buy exactly the Why should I continue anymore? They've already disrespected me and everything goes, No, I'm out of there. Thank you very much.

 

Roy Barker  24:07

Yeah. And, you know, you mentioned the whiteboard. That's another exercise, but also I was just thinking about, you know, props and PowerPoint slides or, you know, some kind of material that we're trying to share with somebody to what are some reads that we can get from them? If we've, you know, passed them a piece of paper, if they're looking at it, taking it in doesn't really matter. Are there things that we can pick up from that?

 

Alan  24:35

Well, what I used to do, instead of just getting him to look at something, I'll have it partially prepared. Like, I'll use blueprints when I'm explaining things to people. And I'll get them to go to write things in. So if we're talking about science in a sale, for instance, I'll be asking, Well, how much you know how many sales you're missing, etc. How much money is that per sale, I get them to write that down or I write it down and show And then I'll be sitting in a position where I've got their engagement, right. But the more you can get them engaged, the more they focus there. If you give them something to read, then you need to get them to show you going through it with you. Because if you don't, you got to put a large sheet of paper in front of me, and it's all black and white, and everything goes on. I'm trying to listen to somebody I can't read at the same time. As I said, I can't multitask. Nobody. Can you give them time to read through that you might ask him, okay, can you check out this first paragraph or whatever it might be? And then ask about what do you think about that. So always go to get the engagement. As you said before, you said, You pre frame that this is the thing always pre frame, what you want to do. You've pre framed it by telling me that, because I can't see down below your shoulders, I can't see your desk, I can't see the notes or the pen or anything else. So if you're looking away all the time, I can make the mistake and assume that you're not interested. But you've already pre framed it by having say to me, Look, it's an All right, I'm going to be taking some notes, because I want to make sure that if any questions come up, I can react. And so you're telling me what's going on. So every time you look down, I'm not giving that a second thought. Yeah.

 

Roy Barker  26:10

Yeah, no, that's good. That just gets back to communication. Sometimes it's just good that we just have that conversation that takes away any doubt that we may have. So let's talk about, you know, a situation came up the other day talking to a guest actually, and he was just kind of, he was just reiterating a situation that had happened to him that he had, he was a site in sales, been talking to a client, they had been saying, Yeah, you know, everything's good, we're good. They had been going down this path for some period of time. And as they were hanging up a phone call on a conference call, somebody on the other end said something to the effect of, we're really not going to buy from this guy, but I want you to get all the information that we possibly can out of him. So you know, as we are going through, and I will say the sales process is a little different than, you know, maybe the hard negotiation. But as we're going through that process, what are some keys that we can pick up on because we don't want to waste our time. And if you're not going to be a buyer, I need to move on. And I don't want to be there just to feed you information or help give you leverage against another supplier, things like that. But are there things that we can read? that may help us know, if we have to ask some reaffirming questions to say, Look, I'm kind of getting this vibe from you? Are you really interested? Do we really need is there really any reason to move forward.

 

Alan  27:42

If they're, you know, sitting with you where you can see them, you're always watching for their body language and everything else. But remember to if you are somebody who's analytical, the impulse here is to talk is to give them a lot of information. Well, you don't know what they're getting, you know, unless you can read their facial expressions and their body language and know that they're interested in or not. The style is not made in talking to them. The style is made is made in listening to them. So it's a matter of getting them to ask, you know, ask them a couple of questions, get them to respond back. Then listen to what they're saying. As I said before, you've got two eyes and two ears. You know, listen to what they're saying as well. Then ask them questions. And while you're asking the questions, watch to see the responses. They their interest in everything else. If they're nodding at the right times and leaning in, they're asking questions. And as they're giving you information, like a good interviewer, you're always going to be asking them questions to re qualify what they've said, you're taking a deeper and deeper because I've got a friend of mine, who always talks about the ATM equals the ATM. So the ATM being the automatic teller machine, okay, and the ATM being the emotions time and money, because we only do things to save money, make money, and to save time. And the third one is the emotional reason why we're doing it. So yes, we have a need. We therefore we have a want around that. But beyond the one what is the things beyond that, that tell us why that person really wants that? What are the emotional connections, because if we're only satisfied in the sale, when we're emotionally satisfied, we're 18% logic and 82% emotion. So until the emotional side has said, you haven't got a sale, okay? You have to get them into where they're responding to you. They're telling you all they need to tell you they're telling you about why it's important to them what they're going to get out of it by having and shaving all this that is allowing them to talk themselves into the sale. If you do it properly. You're not selling but the other person is buying,

 

Roy Barker  29:45

right? Okay. No, that's awesome. I know this, I knew this was gonna go by fast I just had there's so much to talk about let's let's kind of switch over to our personal relationships. You know, spouses love ones girlfriends, let's talk about that. Some things, and I would put it, I'm gonna put this on me and say, not only what I pretty much know what to be looking for, and when to turn and run, I've, I've, you know, it's like I've made, I've lived this long, so I know how to survive. jokingly, but you know, what are some things that we can do are as in to better communicate with our spouses, the body language and show them that we're interested in their problem or whatever's going on at that time.

 

Alan  30:33

Excellent. Well, I've got what I call the seven secrets to reading people is the very first three for the most important. The first one is to know yourself, first of all. Second one is to know your partner. And the third one is then to speak to them in the way that they need to be spoken to. So don't talk in the way that you need to be spoken to match the way that they need to be spoken to write. And the more that we understand our part, the better off we are, but knowing where we are, first of all on the world scale, where do we fit? And then we look at the other person, where do we fit in comparison to them? So do I have to give them more information? Or I have to give them more time to listen to them? What do I need, will both have aesthetic appreciation how inside. So I know that when you're got something on your plate, when you're busy, you're going to withdraw into your Cove, you want to fix it yourself, just leave me alone to get it done. Now, if you've got a partner who has what I call dramatic appreciation, and they need to know what's going on, and they'll come up and go, and they'll just start asking you questions and more they ask you questions, the more you then disappear in the UK. So it's like this choice. And all of a sudden, then they're going well, what's wrong? Why aren't you talking to me, but they haven't recognized that you need space to be able to work on solving. So in their case, if they've got the drydock appreciation, you've got to take appreciation if they know that you need to work on something if they just came up and had two questions in a statement. First question, Is this something that that is good to me? It's something that I can fix. Now, what's not? Okay, is anything I can help you with? No, there's not, then becomes a statement. Okay, I know that Roy, you need to be able to work on things this on your own at some you've got your mind on, I'm going to leave you alone to do that, can you come and talk to me when you're finished. And at that point, you feel like you'd have to run back in the UK to get away from all this chatter. You're able to work on it, you're more appreciative or more likely go back and see them in your partner's case or the medical present, you can hear the talking about all the things that are stressing them. You've got one question? Is this something you want me to fix? Or is this something you want me to just listen to? Because I can do either, right? And if your partner then goes, No, it's I don't want you to fix it. I just want you to listen, then you go, Okay, fine, you know that they need to vent. So if you care about your partner, you just listen without any stress, you know, it's they're having a shot about somebody else. If they say yes, I want you to fix it. But it's either something you can fix or possibly something that you did in the first place I want you to fix. But now you know what your instructions are. And nice men always go to the fixing role, right? women go into being able to share it, because they've put it off the ones with a dramatic appreciation, right? There has been gender changes, and a lot of men who are like this as well. But the women will need to voice it, but the man needs to fix it. But the problem is we don't communicate in between. But by saying to the woman, first of all asking her that question, Is this something talking with writing appreciation by asking them? Is this something you want me to fix? Or just listen, you've shown that acknowledgement. And they will be appreciative of that. Don't just jump in and try and fix it. Yeah, and don't run away because they Oh my god, they're drama queens. Yeah. And by the way, every trade has an upside and every trade has a downside. There's no right or wrong trade. Whatever trades you have the nurture traits, or the nature traits, first of all, that were passed down in the DNA from your parents, because every memory we have is stored every cell of our body. So at the time of conception of a child, memories of both parents are passed down to that child. That's why each of our children the generation of first child and the second child and the third child are different is because we are we are different when we conceived them their memories are different. So that's your your nature drives there in, in, in the DNA, then we have our response on nurture, which is our response to our environment. Those some of those traits are going to be in those children. So when we're talking to him, the more we can understand the other person, the more we can connect with them on their level. So when we put the traits together, that's when we can define someone's personality but not define them on one trade on its own. Yeah, dramatic appreciation rate for presenting natural presented so that Write on stage and everything because they don't have to practice. I had to practice a lot before I was able to be animated and more entertaining on stage. Whereas the dramatic appreciation just walked out and had it. But the downside the trade is when they're stressed to me another aesthetic appreciation people that will come across as drama queens, they want to other people like them, as I said, no right or wrong, right. But it'll be the fact that they were very expressive, and everything's our exciting to be around, which will be the reason why I was attracted to them. Yeah. But then if I get used to that, yeah, the excitement because something that we get every day is like, we might have a favorite food, really love it. But if we ate it every day, we get bored with it over a period of time, we wouldn't like it anymore. So now we've noticed the downside of the trade. And we say our partners changed. No, they haven't our awareness items changed. So if we understand when we know how to speak to them, we can then circumvent all those issues, and bring the romance back into the relationship. And this is where marriage counseling can be done in the flesh. Okay.

 

Roy Barker  36:07

Yeah. And that's awesome. That is something I will say I'm very bad about is always that fixer, you know, it's like, here's a problem, oh, I've got a solution for you. And where it's like, I wasn't looking for a solution. I just was trying to, you know, blow off some steam and just let you talk. So yeah, definitely guilty of that. One thing he did bring up is the, in the way you speak, and something I've heard in the past that we should try to not necessarily with our spouse, but with people in general, if we're talking to them, we should try to match their speed, cadence volume. And sometimes, if you pay a tension really close, you can bring somebody back down. If you know, like, I know a guy, that's a really fast talker. And sometimes I just have to even start talking very slow to bring him back down. Is there any truth to that working and having a better conversation with somebody when you can match that?

 

Alan  37:06

Yeah, there is that there is a conscious way of doing it. And there's the unconscious way of doing it. The conscious way is where we're, we're trying to match and mirror. Now, we're looking at looking at them, we're watching them, and everything goes and we try and match with them. But our concentration is on us, looking at them, but trying to change ourselves. When we focus unconsciously on somebody we really focus in on them. It's surprising how we then start to match them without even thinking about, okay, is having processed it. And if you process it, and you think right, when they lift their hand, I'll do the same sort of thing, or they lift their right handle, lift my right hand to, to match it, or I'll lift my left hand and when they got their right hand up to mirror. And mirroring, by the way usually has a faster impact than the matching. Okay, so go on stage, you'll always find that most people are right handed. And when you ask questions, we'll see the announcer will actually put their left hand up and say like, What does everybody think? Does everyone agree with this? Put your hand up? If you do, everyone actually goes with their right. We presented some of their lives. So there's a natural the natural connection straightaway. That's why the presenter doesn't just ask the question. He also does, he or she does some movement. Yeah. And so it has an impact. But when you're able to really focus in on the other person, it's surprising how you automatically change with them. You can try this as well, one of the things is that I'll go into a, I've taken people into large gatherings, I go to the unlock in the room. And they might look at somebody on the other side of the room, they could be a male or a female, the other person as well. And they'll pick out somebody, okay, just watch them. watch their breathing, and just start to try and get in rhythm with their breathing. See the way they're standing and everything goes the other person on the other side of the room is not even looking in their direction. But over a little period of time. They'll turn around and they'll notice you. So if you ever want to connect with somebody, by matching them in that particular way, you will get their attention because we're energy beings, we pick things up. How often have you walked into a room and you've got on Oh, I don't want to be here. You've picked up the energy thrown away or other times have walked in. You got all this is really nice. Yeah. Right? Because we pick that stuff up. Whether you like it or not, whether you think that's all crazy. You think it's all woowoo and esoteric and everything else. It is a science, that once you understand that, you can then use that to connect with people. Yeah. So when I'm going into a meeting, I'll have a quick look. As I come in, I'll see how people are sitting in everything, call us I'll see how they're breathing. And I'll try and match that forget that incident report. From there. Then I'll just listen to them and the more I focus in on them, I just naturally match and mirror them without even thinking about it. And as soon as I've done that They're also feeling more comfortable as well, because it's, we feel comfortable, we got people who are just like us. That's why we all our friends are very similar to us. And so the more I can then do that, but do it naturally, and not be seen to be trying to deliberately do it in the connections always much stronger.

 

Roy Barker  40:20

It's very interesting. So before we wrap up, you'd mentioned three, three of your seven, what can you tell us? What number four or five, six and seven are?

 

Alan  40:31

Well, that comes into looking at the the micro expressions, okay, and the other is, but what I'll do if you like, I'll give you a link. Yeah, it's a free download. Okay, you can share it with your audience and check it out for themselves. No,

 

Roy Barker  40:43

that'd be great. No, I'd certainly like that. And also, before we wrap up, too, I want to get you to talk for just a minute about the campfire project that you have.

 

Alan  40:54

Okay, well, with all my work with people in business, especially with the men, when I was asking him, you know, about what was the main thing that you have confusions, what areas did they have issues with? And I said, well, confusion was a big problem. And I said, In what way? And they said, Well, look, in the family, we were told our job, we grew up this way, our job was to go out and you know, pay the mortgage and everything else earn the income be the breadwinner. But now we're in trouble. Because we're absent from home, we're emotionally disconnected, and with, which can be in two places at once. And at the same time, in the workplace, we've got all these gender issues, political correctness, and the way we used to be able to talk to each other. Now we're so on tender Hawk to be very careful about what we say. And it's, and that's picking up creating problems, because people not trusting us anymore, because we're not ourselves. And I realized that all of that was causing a lot of frustration. And we know that things like domestic violence come from when one party is completely frustrated. Now you've got you're used to that small percentage of people who are just absolutely nasty, but for the bulk of the others, it's a case of, it's the frustration, and then when you're frustrated, you get angry, when you get angry, then things start to happen. And I realized also that in the workplace, in 2016, it was 66% of people were disengaged in the workplace, that rose to 87%, just before COVID in 2018. Wow. And that's gone up again, with all of the isolation. So I realized that men needed a safe place where they could come along and feel, give themselves permission, feel free to tell their stories that have somebody just sit and listen without criticism, without trying to fix anything, but just hold that space for them. It's like being pushed with, you're out there with your mates, you're sitting around a campfire, there's a connection, there's a camaraderie you don't get anywhere else. So I created the campfire project for that. I went through a process with the Aboriginal community of back 1820 years ago now, and went through initiation. And that was bringing boys into manhood. And so it was, how do we help boys to become men. But then the second stage from there was how do we help men to become better men. And so I realized that by bringing many in, they could tell their stories, then we brought them into panel discussions. And they'll be able to discuss all different issues and no subjects being off the table, we will talk about anything and everything. But I didn't want to just to be a men's group, where the women were going, you know, one of the men doing that. And I thought, right, at the same time, it's like going to a motivational seminar, you can be all excited, had a great time you go home, and everybody tells you a why work, you're waiting for the next seminar. And I could see that with a lot of men's groups. And so I realized I needed something that runs 20 473 165 days a year, where any man could go in. But at the same time, I didn't want them to come in and then go out and get hit in the face by the real world by there's a lot of trolls out there, both males and females, they want to keep pulling things down because their lives rubbish, they want to have everybody else's same state, right? So and then the men want to rush back in again. So I've had women in there from day one. And that was an opportunity for the women to hear how men can really speak when they feel safe to do so. At the same time, I wanted the men to note that women were listening to them. So the one on ones were pre recorded. If somebody said something in that you always shouldn't have said that. I'll hit the delete key, not a problem. I haven't wasted my time because I've fulfilled my purpose, which was to give them space to actually hold space for them because they've never had a chance to voice things before I've done that for them. We then put those videos up if they're happy with it, then I've only had two that people asked to redo it again another time. And in that then the women couldn't contain themselves especially when I started doing the panel discussions. I was getting personal messages saying never heard men talk like this before. We love it. We want to talk to them because this is a depth they're going to that we've never heard men do before. So I interviewed the women one on one, which was what I wanted to do from day one, but I was waiting for them. And then I brought him into the panel discussions. In just over two and a half years now we've had close to 271 on ones. And we've had a about 130, something candor and 33 panel discussions. But you might consider close enough to 400 hours of interviews and panel discussions in two and a half years. All video we're not once there's any man or woman being rude to anybody else. Well, total respect. By having no hashtag we together. As I say, if you're going to individual groups, they're looking at each other as the problem. Yeah, when you're together, shoulder to shoulder, you're looking at the problem. And you're fixing it together, not looking at each other as the problem. And so in that it just keeps growing. And what I've been doing is getting, because I've interviewed people from all over the world, both men and women. And it's getting more and more people in because the moment we had people came in, no bigotry, no racism, no way gender issues or cultural issues, sexism or anything else, all of that stuff. completely gone. Wow. And so just proving that if we want to make a change in the world, it's a matter of choice and nothing else. Each person choosing to be that way. Weber advocated all of that immediately. And I can't do that, you know, locally across the world to everybody, at least I can create an environment where those that want to be that way can come in and is for that's the Campfire Project.

 

Roy Barker  46:31

Wow, that is awesome. So tell everybody, first off, how can they reach out look at, you know, some information if they want to get involved? How do they get involved in the Campfire Project. And then also tell us how we can get a hold of Alan Stevens. If we want to talk more about how we can read people the art of reading people for, you know, business negotiation, relationships all throughout our life.

 

Alan  46:56

Like I will follow the Campfire Project is I created the closed group, but there's also a business page as well, a community page, okay, does anybody who comes in and tells their one on one, if they're a coach, for instance, the idea was anyone who totally one on one, if then we have a coach who comes in and they want to tell their story. And I always encourage them to do that, because they're looking for clients. How do you know if you've got a good coach or not? You need to know the god the experience, or by telling them one on one story, you know, they've got the experience. So a lot of them are picking up clients through that, which is great, because my job is facilitate that connection, not endorsed and facilitate. So people can make their own decision on them. Right, right. And so they then can advertise the projects and things that they're running. And I got right, we've got all the videos in the campfire page group, and therefore the cue meeting page, that's where we advertise it, because we advertise the talks we've got in there on that community page that allows people to come in, get the curiosity and then come and join the group. And so if they just do a search on the campfire project, I'll find the community page, go to the community page and like that, and then you'll see the ads for the talks that we've done in the group, click on one of those, and that'll take you to the group page. From there, you can join that. Okay, so questions when you come in? both have the same question, but rephrase. And then at the end, it's mostly asking, will you be respectful to everybody? And people said, Why did I do the same question twice? Well, simply because these are two chances you've answered yes to being respectful to everybody twice. You're disrespectful to somebody and that you're out with I don't care if you're male or female, I don't care who you been disrespectful to your hours, and you say out until you can prove that you've got you can be respectful before you can come back in again. And to contact me, there's my name, Alan Stevens.com.au. So Alan with one L, a l a n s t e v e n s.com.au, for Australia. And you'll find my web page where you'll find a lot of what I call success stories, people talking about what they've achieved. Kids with parents with their children with autism and Asperger's and the results they've got others just raising their children been in business in mental health because it works in all areas. This stuff. Yeah, you'll find that on the union contact me through the contact page.

 

Roy Barker  49:17

Okay, great, Allen. Well, thank you so much. It's been awesome. A lot of great information y'all go check out Alan's page. I'm gonna put I'll put the seven secret secrets up in the in the notes of this podcast, as well as your contact information and about the campfire project too. So, again, thanks a lot. that's gonna do it for this episode of a the business of business podcast. You can find us of course at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com. We are on all the major social media platforms as well as podcast platforms. iTunes, Stitcher, Google Spotify for not a one that you listen to regularly, please let me know No, I'll be glad to have that added. So until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.alanstevens.com.au

www.thebusniessofbusinesspodcast.com

Are Illegitimate Reviews Bringing Down Your Star Rating? Learn How To Get Your 5 Stars Back with Curtis Boyd

In today's business environment rates can be the difference in a successful business and one that fails. Also, its good to keep in mind that happy customers tend to tell 1 person where unhappy customers will tell 8. Are these all legitimate reviews? Could it be a competitor? A friend of your competitor? Well worth it to find out for sure.

About Curtis

Curtis Boyd is the Founder who conceptualized Objection Co. His expertise in Online Reputation Management gave Objection Co the direction for the reputation technology. Working as a consultant with so many reseller opportunities in Online Reputation Software, he saw a lack of tools that provided insight to why bad reviews qualify for removal and what to do about them.

Objection Co started as an idea to save time for a Reputation Management Firm. That Reputation Management Firm started many years ago at the end of Nursing School. Right before the owner graduated, he figured out how to remove bad reviews. He immediately helped a local physician dealing with bad review, who introduced him to the entire physician network. Over 1000+ customers later, Objection Co is paving the way for identifying illegitimate content online. Thanks for listening.

To provide affordable and quality software that can identify and dispute illegitimate content. We want to empower business owners and marketers to feel confident that they have protection from consumers who feel they can write whatever they want, to help them comply with the terms and conditions of the websites they write reviews on. We want to help businesses create responses that generate consumer confidence, so even bad reviews can help them win new customers.

www.objection.co

www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com

Full Transcript Below

Are Illegitimate Reviews Bringing Down Your Star Rating? Learn How To Get Your 5 Stars Back with Curtis Boyd

Sun, 8/8 6:55PM • 32:18

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

review, business, people, legitimate, week, google, customers, doctor, nursing assistant, curtis, hired, money, service, clients, company, experience, business owners, pretty, administrators, roy

SPEAKERS

Curtis, Roy Barker

 

Roy Barker  00:08

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the business of business podcast. I'm your host Roy, of course, we are the podcast that brings you a wide variety of guests that could talk about a wide range and diverse set of topics. We want to help our small business people or solopreneurs entrepreneurs, we want to point things out that you may not even be aware of exists, but we also want to try to help you with some existing problems. So today, we've got an awesome guest. I've been waiting for a week or so to talk to excited. It's Curtis Boyd. He is with objection.co. C O. And I'm gonna let first off before we get into what Curtis does, I'm gonna let him tell his story. It's such an interesting one. I didn't want to take a chance on reading it and not having the right flavor. So I've asked him just to tell a story. I think it's it's an awesome story. So Curtis, welcome to the show. And thanks so much for taking time out of your day to be here. Sure, sure. Thanks for having me, Roy.

 

Curtis  01:04

Yeah, my story is a fun one. It starts about nine years ago, I was a nursing assistant working in a hospital. And you know, I bathed patients, I took care of them, I fed them, I took care of people who couldn't take care of themselves, bottom of the food chain. And that being said, One day a doctor came onto the unit. And he started complaining about a bad review that he just got, and I was in a bad mood kind of you know, I so I started complaining about my student loans, and we kind of got a laugh about it. And, you know, he he kind of sarcastically said, Well, you know, if you can, you can get this bad review off, I pay for your student loans. And I was like, I kind of rolled my eyes at him. And I was like, well, Doctor, like this is you know, I owe about $32,000 he rolled his eyes right back at me. And he said, I probably lost $150,000 just this week from this bad review. He's like, you know, I charge 10 to $15,000 a surgery. And I lost 15 consults, at least that I can count this week because of this bad fake review. And he's like, so Curtis, I'm not joking. If you can remove it, I'll I'll take care of your student loan. So it was like, wow. At the time, you know, I I was a nursing assistant. I didn't know about business. I didn't know about contracts. I didn't know how the exchange of money worked in exchange for, you know, services or goods. But anyway, my mom worked at the hospital at the same time. She She vouched once she said she knew who he was, and he was a good guy. So if he said it, he was probably good to go. You know, the next day I called his, his, his his office, you know, his private office and verified with his assistant to the Secretary that, you know, just wanted to make sure like that we're good if I can, if I can really do this for him. He really, he really paid that amount. And she was telling me you know, how he had hired lawyers, how he hired marketing consultants and, and reputation guys, and no one was able to help them angered so I was like, Okay, I'm on the case. Like, we don't need to sign anything. I don't know anything about this. I'm just I challenge accepted, because I knew it would take me probably two to three years of non stop saving and to make that kind of money, right. So just all at once have that kind of fun, that kind of money. So I was like, Okay, let's do this. 24 or 48 hours of me banging my head against the wall trying to do everything I could that I knew, like, I failed miserably, right? I was like, I'm computer literate. I'm competent on on computers. I'm sure I could figure it out. got nowhere. I, I had about $800 in my bank account at the time, I bought an airplane ticket to San Francisco to stake out employees that worked at a certain company. And I literally hung outside the building. And I would ask people walking around the building. Hey, I'm sorry. Excuse me, do you? Do you work at this company here? Do you work there? No, no, no, I don't need any money. I need to know. Remove a bad review. Got a doctor in Los Angeles. He's got a fake review. I'm trying to remove a form I need help. And then you know, no, no, I'm sorry. Can't help you can't help you. You know, I did that for three days. I did that for three days, hundreds of people. And I felt like a crazy person because I didn't know what I was doing. I was a young kid just trying to solve a problem. I was 2023 years old at the time, pretty much broke just desperate to try and solve this problem for this doctor. Anyway, on the third day, I met a girl at the time. She worked in this in a very specific department at that company. And she took me to a Starbucks is right down the street and she sat down with me. And she took about 20 minutes of her time. That changed my life. But she she wrote step by step she she instructed me what to do on how to get that legitimate review removed from the site. And I implemented it that night and about 48 hours later, I had a check for $32,000 Wow. As a physician who started raving about me, right, he was on the board of directors for that entire physician network. So within a week, he had referred me to almost 670 doctors, right for the whole Medical Center, he taught me how much to charge per month, he set me up with a bookkeeping CPA guy. And before I know it, I'm running an online reputation practice disputing legitimate reviews for doctors, one reputation, you know, one, one physician network turned to five or six over a few years. And before you know it, I had a I had a thriving business, I ended up going back to school, you know, I heard that I was going to replace our jobs, you know, that AI was going to take over, right. And I was like, Well, you know, if AI is gonna replace me, I may as well be the one to build it. So I started up, I went back to school to learn how to code. And I started a software company that could look at reviews, the same way that I do, that could look at reviews, and make a determination if they qualify for removal, based on all my years of knowledge and doing this as a service for some for so many businesses. And that's exactly what objection.co does. objection.co does. We use technology, not only to identify legitimate reviews at scale, but to actually do all the fulfillment at scale. So to write out these letters, and disputes and flags to the administrators at all these different review sites, and that way, computers gets to focus on fulfillment, or while I get to focus with my sales team on growing the business.

 

Roy Barker  06:36

Wow, that is such an awesome story. I mean, talk about being, you know, in the right place at the right time, but also listening to somebody's problem and thinking, Hey, you know what, I could solve that problem. So, I mean, what a success story.

 

Curtis  06:51

I didn't know if I could I just knew that if I could, if I actually did it. Like, if I really was able to solve this forum, I would, I was gonna have all this money. I didn't know what I was gonna do with that money, but I was gonna have it at least, right, right. And for me that that opportunity I just couldn't pass up is too big of an opportunity. Like, I took, I took weeks and I've, you know, finally took the courage to say, you know what, like, I'm not I need help. And I don't know who can help me. I've called everyone I could think of, I've called, in all the people want to talk to me, I need to go, I need to go there. And I need to do it. And so I ended up just doing it, and it ended up panning out.

 

Roy Barker  07:32

Yeah, and perseverance today. That's it, you know, sticking with it. So that's awesome. So, um, let's just talk about how big of a problem this is, before we go too much further. I mean, because it, it is a problem. But how big of a problem would you estimate this to be?

 

Curtis  07:48

Yeah, that's a great question. Um, you know, in 2020 2020, Google, on their blog, published that they removed 55 million legitimate reviews off Google Maps. Wow, that's just Google, right. That's not Yelp. That's not TripAdvisor. So Google had 55 million fake reviews on their platform, it's a huge problem. You know, a lot of legitimate reviews. You know, a lot of competitors, unfortunately, are paying these astroturf offers overseas, to defame their local local competition, because they want to outrank them, right, they want to, they want to have a higher star rating, they want to have more, you know, they want to be be looked better online than their competitors. And for those for those business owners who, you know, don't have, you know, any ethical dilemma doing that they're getting away with it right now to they are that, you know, they're spending money hand over fist on these fake reviews. Well,

 

Roy Barker  08:54

yeah, I mean, that's probably a half the estimate, but, you know, just for your doctor alone, $150,000. And he said, that was in the last week that it cost him that.

 

Curtis  09:06

That's right. That's right. He thought that in his private practice, he probably lost 150 grand that week. You know,

 

Roy Barker  09:13

so we can multiply about half that times is 55 million and that's an astronomical number.

 

Curtis  09:19

Yeah, yeah. I didn't know doctors made that. You know, I didn't know cosmetic surgeons made that kind of money. Yeah. Turns out to do yeah. And it opened my eyes to the world a little bit, you know, working as a nursing assistant, you know, making you know, 11 $11 an hour and change learning that some people make 150k a week Yeah, right. Oh, why why didn't ya dries a little bit? Yeah.

 

Roy Barker  09:44

So, um, how to first off let's talk about how do we tell if we do have a bad review as as something that we should be looking through? Because I don't know I'm sure the Google Maps I don't know if you know, if you have the account, if you get deemed if I mean, like you get a, an alert, if you get a review on that, or what do what should people do to help themselves here?

 

Curtis  10:08

Yeah, absolutely, you know, when you're, when you're getting your business started, it's really recommended that you get all your listings set up, right. And that includes your Google My Business that includes your Yelp profile that includes a lot of other social profiles that are out there. That's really good for your local SEO, right. And it's not just for the record, like the notifications, which are great once they start coming in. But But really, to get your online presence really set up, there's a list of about, I'd say, 300 directories that you want to get your business on, that have the NAEP data, the name, the address, and the phone number, you can google afraid is like business directory listings, list, you know, the ultimate Business Directory list, right? And you can, you can just do it one by one yourself, or you could hire a freelancer to fill them all out for you. But um, but that's certainly an important thing. And once you do claim your business, your you know, once you do get your business on Google My Business, and once you do get your Yelp listing set up, you want to claim it, make sure you're the admin and not be that way you receive all the notifications, anytime there's any type of engagement, whether it's a review, or someone's messaging, you, you know, and they'll notify you for sure. But also what I recommend setting up our Google Alerts, these are Google Alerts also will notify you anytime someone creates an article or someone creates a Google post about you either by your your name as a keyword or your business as a keyword. And you'll be notified via email anytime it hears something about you. It's like a social a free social listening tool.

 

Roy Barker  11:44

Okay. Yeah, that's awesome advice. And so, you know, we talked a little bit, excuse me, in our initial conversation, as you go through time, something's going to happen. And I look at, I look at the reviews as a good thing, legitimate reviews, let me clarify, I look at legitimate reviews as a good thing, because I can't always monitor every piece of my business. So if some, something else is not happening, right, it may clue me in that here's a process or an employee, or here's something that needs fixing that I can actually get a handle around. And so you know, we talked about, we need to engage with that review, let people know, Hey, sorry. And this is a it's a delicate technique, because we don't want to, you know, we don't want to start a firefight with. You don't know what you're talking about, you know, we didn't do this, you just because all of a sudden, now you've just taken a little kernel of something that could be fixed. And he really blown into this big bonfire. Whereas if you address it, say, Hey, sorry, we're fixing it, what can I do to make it right? That really shows to a lot of other people that, you know, you've got your stuff together. So can you comment on that?

 

Curtis  12:57

Absolutely. Absolutely. So when you get a bad review, the first thing you got to do is figure out Who's it from? Right? Like, well, who is this person? And what's the relationship to my business? Right? If it's from a customer who had a personal consumer experience with you guys, they have every right to review you, right, and every reason to review you because they had an experience with you whether it was good or bad. Um, anyone else kind of goes along the lines of maybe they shouldn't be on there. Right, right. But yeah, for the for when for your business that gets a legitimate review from a customer who's unhappy? Yeah, the first thing you want to do is privately, you know, take the conversation offline, and try to provide a secondary experience, roll out that red carpet, do whatever you can to provide a secondary experience that inspires them to come back online and say, You know what, they screwed up. But I'm really, really, you know, I'm really excited that the business owner did this, this and that, for me, he really cared. I was really shocked by how much this company cared. And I'm so glad that they were able to take care of this for me, because when, like, for me personally, in the reputation space, if I'm going to hire an expensive consultant, or an expensive roofer or solar company, like doesn't matter what they do, if I see a one star turned into a five star right off the bat, I know that that company cares about customer satisfaction. And I know that if they screw up, they'll at least try to make it right. Right,

 

Roy Barker  14:31

right. Yeah, and so, you know, that's pretty, pretty simple philosophy for legitimate You know, when they, when we can trace them back to the US they were a customer, they did business but so let's talk about this illegitimate factor because I guess the reality and I'm not that big of a writer, I mean, I've gone out and give some good reviews, when I've had superior service or it needed it, but can I just get on it. anybody's Can I just review anybody's service or, you know, I guess, let's take the local restaurant up here, I could just jump on there and give them a negative review without ever having stepped in their door.

 

Curtis  15:12

Technically, can but it, the review May, you know, violate the content guidelines, right or the terms of service of a given review site. Okay. So you know, whether it's a community member who you know, participates on that site, or a moderator or an administrator, they can flag your content and remove it, based on what your review says. Now, if you let you know, what happens a lot of the times is people who kind of know how the review sites work, even though they never had an experience with the company in their in the content, they'll say that they did, right, though, they'll lie and they'll say, you know, I hired these guys, and they were horrible, yada, yada, yada. So when the administrators look at it, the administrators here is going Why do you want us to remove it says that, that they worked with you. And it says that they had a real, like, legitimate root experience with you like, that looks legitimate? Why do you want us to remove it right? And even though it's completely fake, so that's, that's when business owners, then we'll come find a company like ours and say, hey, look like we're having trouble here. We get two to three reviews a week for the last month and a half like this, it you know, we were at 4.5 star in our like, three, six, and it's hurting our sales team, like our sales teams getting killed, like objection, after objection is lining up, like their customers are afraid to work with us. And Google or whatever site isn't removing them like that. They're not listening like they, they're, they're not agreeing with us. They're not doing anything about it. And we're I feel like we're starting to go under.

 

Roy Barker  16:47

Yeah, and so the other thing I was gonna ask quickly, do you target the the services like the Googles, and the the yelps or let's just say, for me, I've got a, you know, a blog, if I just wrote in that. I had terrible service from XYZ. Sir, company, do I'll pick that up as well? Or is this mostly confined to the rating sites?

 

Curtis  17:15

So yeah, sites like Google and Yelp, are really our main point of focus, because it includes content and the star rating and involves a business. Okay, you know, as a b2b SaaS company, that's our, that's our main point of focus is helping businesses with their online reputation. And, yeah, I mean, sure, there's like forums and review sites, you know, like pis consumer and, and what have you, where you can complain about businesses, but it doesn't include a star rating, it just gives you a, you know, a place to rant and write about your experience, okay, as

 

Roy Barker  17:50

an article, and I guess those the other significant difference I'm speculating here is that I could write a blog about anything, the chances of that local consumer actually seeing it are probably pretty small. Whereas these ratings that you're targeting, when you pull up something on Google, usually they have the ratings that kind of fall right under them. So they are kind of present in your face.

 

Curtis  18:15

Absolutely, because customers, once they you know, for once they learn about your business through some some sort of marketing channel, right? They engage with you, they get a quote, and then before they hand you the credit card, they do research, they do their due diligence, right? And they would they, if it's not a word of mouth referral, and they really trust you in like, you know, they're going to look at your online reviews, especially if what you sell is over 20 $500 there's a lot of research, that anything above 2500 bucks, that due diligence starts to skyrocket 80 to 90% of consumers well are going to do their due diligence, if the ticket is more than 2500 bucks. So once that happens, and your ratings are not so good, they're gonna scare off your estimates, they're gonna scare off all the people you've already invested time pitching and proposing to and your conversion at the bottom of the fell out your sales funnel is going to plummet. there's a there's a lot of research on this. Harvard did a great study as well as Stanford. And what they said is for every star rating, you're missing, you can attribute that to nine to 20% of your annual revenue, right? So if you're missing two stars, that's 20 to 40% of your annual revenue, just gone.

 

Roy Barker  19:34

Yeah, and that's another great reason that we should always follow up and ask our customers if you're happy and satisfied, you know, please rate and review us so we can kind of build up those goodwill because I don't know if this is still a good fact or not but used to they said customers that were mad at you would tell eight people how bad you were. Whereas a happy satisfied customer Tell one.

 

Curtis  20:03

That's right. Yeah. Numbers are even higher. I think it might be 11. But, uh, yeah, it's it's crazy, you know, customers, when they pay for something, they expect it. Right? Right. I just gave you money, like, you're doing your job, right? Do do whatever it is, I've hired you to do. Right, thank you. Right. And less than that, but that's kind of it like, you know, kids businesses, you know, they want to earn reviews. But, you know, unless they're really providing outstanding, outstanding experiences, right? They're not going to generate that feedback, because customers are like, well, I gave I paid you like, what more do you want? Like, I'm sorry, like that, that, like, I'm not, I'm not being like, what am I? What am I getting out of this? Right? Right. So, um, for that's why it's so hard to get lots of business reviews. And what I try and tell my customers is that in order to generate five star reviews, you know, they need to generate five star experiences. And on top of whatever it is that they took money for that product or service, they need to go above and beyond that, in order to get that five star review. Because if you want something extra from your customer, you need to give them something extra, not money, right? Not like bribing them, but a little thing, like lots of little things. And I can give you an example. Um, you know, I was, uh, I was at a car dealership, and I was I was looking to buy a car. And as soon as I got on the lot, you know, they're like, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna wash your car and polish your tires for you, whether you buy a car or not today, and they did it right. Like, without asking for anything, like, without me purchasing a car without me leasing anything that you know, right where I parked the car, they took care of me, they took care of my car, they did something that they didn't have to do, just to just to make me happy, right, just to make my experience better with their dealership. And it works. Like I was like, wow, that's, that's, that's really fantastic. So I like to encourage business owners to just go above and beyond what it is they were originally hired to do. If they want to earn five star experiences, just blow the blow that blow them out of the water.

 

Roy Barker  22:14

Yeah, that's definitely good advice to get people to, to do that. Just because it is so hard to get, you know, like you said, I've exchanged money for a service. So I'm pretty much as a consumer, I'm done. And if you ask me to do something extra, it's got to be over. We've got to be over normal. So it's for myself, you know, working with a handful of clients. I mean, I could tell pretty quickly if it was one of my clients. But, you know, let's say the pizza place down the street or a larger business that just has a lot of churn. You know, what is a clue that a review is not from a legitimate customer?

 

Curtis  22:57

Yeah, that's a great question. Um, you know, sometimes they say it like right in the review, like, I used to work here, and the manager, Tom is such a, this, this and that, like, sometimes they'll just stay in the review. And you be like, what, like, I get like, we had, like, you know, when we fired you like you weren't happy? Like, you're not technically allowed to write a review for us. Right? Right. Those administrators, they'll remove that review. Yeah. But of course, you want to take a look at the content. Does it sound like like a normal experience? Because you're living and breathing and what your business does? You know, exactly what type of experiences that you're turning out? Does it does it sound? Okay? Like, does it sound kind of right. And then also, you want to take a look at the profile, like, actually click on the profile, because on Google and Yelp, what's really great about these sites, unlike a lot of other sites, you can actually click and do some research on who this person is, Where do they live? Where what other businesses have, they've been reviewing, fill looks filled out complete, organic, canned stuff, most likely, it's probably a real person. Now, the con artists are getting better at doing that doing a better job with this. But yeah, just spend a minute or two just clicking around to see to see what the behavior of this profile looks like and, and try and make a determination for yourself.

 

Roy Barker  24:19

Yeah, and I have seen where there's been accidents that you know, for bigger chain, like I went to, you know, pizza place number one and pizza place, reviewed pizza place number two accidentally, so it doesn't hurt to go through those and just make sure also that it's even your business and sometimes it just it's a matter of reaching out and saying, Hey, are you sure it was us? Can you give me some details and see if they'll even respond to most of the time legitimate is probably will.

 

Curtis  24:48

Absolutely. When you message people privately through Google or through Yelp. Most real customers will respond to you. Yeah, absolutely.

 

Roy Barker  24:57

So how long does this process take? Let's just say if if it's me trying to do this versus your your software is identifying it. And then he said, it takes care of a lot of the back end as well, sending in the, I guess the objection letters.

 

Curtis  25:20

Yeah, so takes, um, so from start to finish, when we onboard a new customer, it might take 10 minutes. But by the time that the administrators get our, get our dispute letters, okay, it's pretty, it's pretty fast. Yeah. So they have to identify their business, we pull all the reviews in our software grades, those reviews, and then they have to just push the one button, they just have to push the dispute button, and then our system gets to work. And usually within, you know, from, from the time that, you know, they they registered for free account, to the time that an administrator actually gets an email from us. It's, it can't be as fast as 10 minutes. Absolutely.

 

Roy Barker  25:59

So it's gonna take me about an hour just to look up who I need to send an email to, and hope hope that I can get hope that I can get it through there, too. So that's pretty amazing that it will do it that fast.

 

Curtis  26:10

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty incredible. Um, you know, I think a lot of business owners, you know, just don't have a lot of experience representing themselves, whether it's portal or whether it's with an administrator on one of these review sites. And that's because they don't take the time to learn. What are the content guidelines? What does the community service say? Like? What are the reasons why a review qualifies removal? Most people have no idea. Yeah, once you learn about it, you can become more familiar with it. But then, you know, it's not just becoming like, familiar with the rules. It's also in the, in the removal letter itself. Yeah, you know, having having submit 1000s and 1000s, and 1000s of these letters, you know, we know what to say, to get them to listen to us, right? To get them to respond to us in a way that provides a good outcome for our clients. We don't have any special relationship with them. But having experience in doing this for years and years and years, you know, we know what you know,

 

Roy Barker  27:12

sentence in the right order, right language to use to get to make

 

Curtis  27:16

Audible, right, so their own terms of service, otherwise, you're gonna get a canned answer, where they're gonna say, Thanks for reaching out to us, or siding with the reviewer on this one. Right. So yeah, it's, it's, it's just a just a matter of experience at this point.

 

Roy Barker  27:32

So how long does it take for the bad review? You know, once y'all do your thing, send it out. How long does it take for it to fall off?

 

Curtis  27:40

Yeah, the fastest I've ever seen. It is about 90 minutes. Wow. And then, yeah, real fast, right. So geographically, each, each business area has its own set of moderators. So certain certain cities fall within a certain bucket of geography and their their, their, their moderators might have a really short queue. And they might get to you right away. Whereas some cities, like right now, Los Angeles, we have some clients who have been waiting almost a week and a half for just to be just to get just to be able to have their their dispute request looked at. So. Yeah, depending on on the city and the size of the queue. It could it could be you know, up to a week and a half. That's about the longest we've ever seen.

 

Roy Barker  28:23

Well, that's still pretty quick. Still pretty quick. Yeah, I agree. All right, Curtis, well, we appreciate you taking time out of your day to talk to us about you know, Objection, Objection, co but also just about the review process and how we can object and you know, we have the right if we think that it's fictitious, especially if it's not, if it's a true legitimate review that's poor, then the best thing to do, of course, is reach out, try to try to handle that try to make it right. Because it it will actually, it can actually benefit you when other people see that you've turned this review around. Is there anything else that you want to talk tell us about before we wrap this up?

 

Curtis  29:06

No, no, I just want to say thanks, Roy, for having me on your show. Reach out, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn. And I'm on. I'm pretty active on there.

 

Roy Barker  29:16

Okay. Yeah. So before we go, what is a tool? I mean, besides objection CO is a tool that you use in your daily life that really adds a lot of value to your either business or personal life. Yeah, yeah. What tool do we have? It could be a habit.

 

Curtis  29:37

Yeah. So you know, let's see here. I wouldn't have to say either HubSpot, which is an amazing CRM for our business. It helps us just stay organized with everything in our operations. Otherwise, I'm going to say Python. And Python is a it's a it's a, it's a type of coding that allows us to kind of do anything We want with computers and data. So if without without either of those things, I'd be pretty much completely lost.

 

Roy Barker  30:08

Yeah. And I have to verify with the Hub's. I'm a satisfied HubSpot user as well, I think, you know, when I, it's probably been four or five years ago, I tried like seven, eight, you know, smaller CRMs. And there was nobody that even came close with the tools that they have. So we'll put in a plug for them. But one thing I was going to ask so like, for, for me, you know, smaller clients is one thing, but for like larger clients, not when once they sign up, y'all kind of scan through your keep that scan updated. So the minute something comes through, I guess, you notify the, your client and then they can either hit accept, reject, and that starts the process.

 

Curtis  30:48

Yeah, exactly. Okay, can even get text notifications that they got it and they can just hit a button on their on their text messages. And our system will take start to take care of it. So yeah, it's a it's it's pretty cool. Okay, that's Python that allows us to monitor millions of businesses simultaneously. So it's a really, really fun tool.

 

Roy Barker  31:10

Okay. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I just wanted to double check because you don't like somebody that does a high volume that is a godsend just not having to go through all the all your reviews every day, on your own. All right, well, y'all reach out to Curtis Curtis, tell him one more time, what's the name of the business and how they can reach out and get a hold of you?

 

Curtis  31:29

Sure, sure. So, again, my name is Curtis Boyd. I'm the founder of objection.co. Objection, CO. And you guys can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on there. Be happy to connect. All right.

 

Roy Barker  31:40

Thanks a lot, Curtis. that's gonna do it for another episode of the business of business podcast. Of course, I am your host Roy. You can find us at www.thebusinessofbusiness podcast.com. We are on all the major social media platforms as well as all the major podcast platforms Stitcher, Google, Spotify, iTunes, if we're not on one that you use regularly, please reach out I'd be glad to add it on there for you. So until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.objection.co

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