Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the People Processes podcast. I’m Rhamy Alejeal and today I am so excited to bring you Sue Salvemini.

She is an author, speaker, and executive leadership coach. She helps leaders and teams align their work with their core values for maximum impact and fulfillment. She is also the founder and president of Focal Point Consulting Group. She founded it in 2016 and she is passionate about helping individuals connect with their authentic leadership style and love the work they do. She wrote a book, it came out in May, 2018. It’s called “Leadership by Choice,” seven keys for maximizing your impact and influence in the workplace right where you are and it draws on her over 25 years of experience in the corporate world and in the military to give those great lessons. Sue, thank you so much for coming on.

Thanks Rhamy. It’s great to be here today.

Well, Sue, I always start with this. Not many people dress up as eight year olds, as business consultants or advisors. It’s just not something they think they’re going to be when they grow up. So how on earth did you go from your start in this career up to where you are now? What’s your journey like?

Oh, it’s a great question. It’s been such a great journey and it’s still very much a journey. But you know, I was in the military. So right out of college, I was in the army as an officer and in leadership roles at a very early age from the military. I then had the great privilege to work in medical device sales, working in operating rooms. And over the years was through Johnson and Johnson. Gradually moved from sales representative to manager, to leader and led teams and whatnot. And fast forward, a few iterations and companies moving from the big corporate company right down to the ground level startup company. I came to a crossroad when my startup company was being acquired and I had to pause and say, “okay, so what do you want to be when you grow up?”

Now that you’re about 20 plus, we go 20 plus, we never say anything over plus 20 plus years in. And I could very easily have stayed in this amazing world of medical device technology and startup companies, which I loved. But I just sat down and got real with myself and I did. What I did was I became very prayerful. I gave myself a real month to just really dig deep and get real with what my strengths were, what my passions were, what my vision for myself, my family, and a greater vision for the world was. And it all bubbled down to, I’ve always loved people leading and working with people and leading and working with leaders. And I love speaking, training and coaching. And it was really literally one morning at like 6:00 AM after days of lots of thought and reflection that it came to me. Follow your dream, follow your heart and go work to help people be exceptional at what they do.

And the vision for focal point was formed. And I got goosebumps that morning. I get goosebumps as I’m telling you right now. And it was just crystal clear that my passion and my heart and my God given talents were around working with individuals and teams. Helping them realize how great they are and how great they can be and go out and help make that happen. And so I wanted to do that. That’s really where it started. You know, someone’s in the right job when they talk about it, you feel like they have the coolest job like that. How lucky you are to have that job. Of course it was a heck of a journey to get there. But like when you talk about what you do, it’s like, man, I want to be like that when I grow up too. That’s exactly the best job in the world for me. I have to tell you.

So now you’re in this position, you’ve got a focal point, you’re advising clients, you’re well-established. But I know along the way there had to be some pretty low lows. And a lot of our clients, a lot of our listeners are starting off their companies and they’re just getting into this world of scaling and growing teams. Some of them are in the position you were in, executives in larger companies and they’re thinking about jumping ship. Right. I asked my interviewees to tell us about the worst experience they’ve had with entrepreneurship and tell us that story. Really take us there so that we can relive it with you. Then we can talk a little bit about some of the lessons.

Well, it’s a great question and wow, there’s so many. I do have a motto, “you sort of fail forward to success and the sooner you stumble, the greater you’ll be”. So I think every good entrepreneur I talked to is just like, “Oh, there was that one time I made a mistake.” You know, it’s going to happen. So you just got to run close. The faster you run towards it happening, the faster you can say, okay, now that one’s done. So it’s funny, when you start your own business, there’s obviously the passion and the fire in your belly and you have this vision and then there’s the reality of the economics of it. And in some cases, for me this was going to be my income.

I wasn’t doing a bridge thing. It was it. So yeah, failure is not an option, which is actually a good motto because you don’t then look for that safety net. However, in a different way you do find safety nets. And this contributes to my biggest challenge and failure. And I’ll say failure lightly because it all contributes to where I am today.

Of course, failures are only failures. Exactly right. But I haven’t figured out a better way.

I know. No, it’s great. I love it. And it makes me think so, thanks to only one cup of coffee, but it’s good. So what happens is naturally, I’m building the business and I’m to get clients and my natural work was in medical devices, sales and technology and startup. So I had a lot of contacts that knew me for that. Naturally people were reaching out to me to help them with different ideas and whatnot.

So I took on some clients to do that, but that was not still truly following what I was desiring, which was building a very strong coaching and leadership development, leadership training business. But I took these clients on and I rationalize that this was the finances that was going to fund my ability to do and to follow my greater passion that I don’t think was a mistake. That was a very intentional, thoughtful view I had of it. Yes, I had to be. I talk a lot about core values and not just the surface values, really understanding why you’re doing something and how it’s serving your greater vision and purpose. So I knew unequivocally in selecting this work that it was filling one of my swimlanes in my company, which was consulting and it was also some income.

So I embraced it and I loved these clients. I love working with them and I loved the work and the work was easy for me. This is what I’ve done for 20 plus years. So here’s the obstacle though. What happened is not too long into it. I was doing a lot of this work that I did so well and I cared deeply about these clients. You became friends, you work so closely and then I would do my work. That was bridging more of the direction I wanted the company to go, which was coaching and leadership programs. And on a purely economic comparison, the ROI on the work I was doing was completely disproportionate to the work that I was wanted to be doing more of. Okay. I mean to like 10 X less. So I was putting in 20 and 30 hours for a consulting role with a medical device startup that was essentially paying me for about five, but it just required that much more work even though it was easy, but it was easy for me.

So I didn’t really calibrate that it was work. The gist of it is, I was a little fearful to leave that, but I didn’t know how to say no. And when it got real for me and so I consider it not so much a fit. It was a failure. It was a great learning moment because I got a new client for coaching and it became crystal clear. The more I worked with my coaching clients and the work I was doing, I saw the impact and I would lead a workshop, see the impact and I looked at the time it took me to invest in that and both the return from mostly what my clients were experiencing and my personal satisfaction doing it and the economic return was completely disproportionate to the other work that was now unfortunately was taking me away from my ability to do more of this coaching leadership training.

So I had to make a decision and I had to slowly migrate away from this type of work. And I think what happened was in hindsight, had I done that or been able to make that, see that so clearly sooner and make that jump sooner. My work and my ability to have an impact and influence and both and also grow my business, I would have been even further along than the businesses now. You know, I mean it was a necessary part on one level, but I held on too long. It was real and you know, I have a coach, I believe in coaching, so my coach would gently coach me around. “So what is it you’re holding onto?” You know, and it was a safety net. So the very thing I said that I tried to like run from, which is that there’s a safety net, but run from your safety net because you need to elevate your business and move forward towards your dream.

You’ve thought of it, you know, there’s a plan. There was a business plan. This isn’t just a vision for myself. I had a very strict business plan. I deviated from it because it was comfortable. And because I didn’t want to let a client down, I mean one of my core values deeply is the interaction relationship I have with my clients. It was the very thing that was an area of conflict. But from a business perspective. I held on to something that was not yielding both financially the right return and even on a deeper level, it wasn’t fueling the direction of the company appropriately. And I lingered in making that observation and then making a decision.

There are a few lessons I kind of take from that. The first one is kind of the one you already had, which I get this question a lot from people in jobs that they hate, right? Like, “Hey Rhamy, I really want to leave and start my own company. I want to go out and do my thing, but I’ve got a wife and two kids and a mortgage and like you know, I’ve got enough money saved up that we could go like two months without a paycheck.” And then I tell him, “you can’t, you do have a responsibility. The things you know that you’ve committed to, you still have to do. And so you can’t just roll, go to the casino and roll it all and gamble at all.”

So first of all, of course, have a plan, all those kinds of things. But don’t be afraid to, you have to pray. You have to think pragmatically to a degree, you can’t go out of business because you refuse to do some work that doesn’t pay quarters well, isn’t exactly what you want. On the other hand, this is the bigger lesson. I see a lot of it comes across in a lot of ways, in your case, it was getting rid of, kind of align a business or a product effectively that was relatively under-performing and not fulfilling. But it happens in a lot of different ways. You may have a client that you like that you’re doing the thing you’re supposed to do, but they’re not a good fit. They cost significant film sums. But you have to, you have real trouble making that hard decision to let that client go. Maybe it’s about an employee, maybe it’s about a product line.

Like you said, as a business evolves over time, you’re going to wind up adding and subtracting product lines. I will say, probably one of the biggest killers of those businesses that make it past that first year or two that I see is, they just add lines and they never drop any. Right. They’re just like, I’m going to do this too, and this too, and this too. And then they know that the things they did three years ago, not what they should be doing now, but they can’t just tell the client. They can’t let the employee go, who’s responsible for it or they can’t let the client know, look, you’re gonna have to find someone else to do this. 

We talked with a lot of CPAs who are in the tax world and maybe they’ve been doing tax returns for 20 years, but in the last three years they’ve gotten much more into like CFO financial work. And they have a slew of old clients who just send them their tax forms in February and are like, go get it done. And they know it’s not that profitable. They know it’s not what they want to do. It kills their soul. But they just are afraid to let that part die. And I think they’ve given a great example.

It’s the constant quest. It’s funny, I find this with a lot of entrepreneurs and the financial, the energy around finances can be so, so funky, because some people view if it’s not financially smart, does that make me a bad person? That I want to get rid of something because it’s a good thing to do, but it’s not serving the business and I help people come back to. But if you don’t have an economically sound model, then you can’t fulfill what you’re supposed to be doing and serving the people in the greater goodness. So there’s actually a financial fiduciary responsibility to yourself and your company to say no to some of these product lines so that you can do and fulfill the greater cause. You know, it’s actually very smart.

Absolutely. And as you scale your company and you have employees relying on you or contractors whose livelihood depends on you. You have to be profitable and you have to be pretty dang profitable because things will hit you. Like we had a big hit in February and I had to cut a check. I mean I had to cut a check for $40,000 that month and since then we’ve spent another 80 just fighting it. And it wasn’t in the budget. If you cannot put yourself in the position as an entrepreneurial or even as a department executive where your budget is so tight, your margin is so slim that if the client asks you to go that extra step, you can’t do it.

No, no, no. We lose, we go out of business. If we did that, you would have the flexibility to answer the client needs, to help your employees to take a hit, a hard hit and going. Otherwise you’re never gonna make it right and you won’t be any good to the people that you want to serve. You know? Right. In my business as a payroll company or an HR company or a benefits company, we have to be there, right? To be there 10 years from now. Right? I cannot allow myself to discount something across the board to the degree that like, “Guys, if I get hit hard or you got, or there’s a screw up, we won’t be in business.” I can’t allow that. We get audited and we’re rated on like how we gotta make sure we have a lot of money.

It’s an advantage. You should go with us because I promise we will charge you. Right? So you gotta switch to that mentality. And it’s a really hard one for people who move from that technician role that I do a job for an hourly wage. I’m building a long lasting business that has that sustainability. 

Well, I think those are some really cool lessons from your story. I’d love to kind of move forward now. Now here you are. You’ve got a successful company growing, you’ve got a great book. What’s got you excited and jumping out of bed in the next six months? What have you got coming?

Oh, I’m super excited. So I have in the next month, I’m heading to Louisville. I’m going to be a keynote speaker for an event for a bunch of younger or not younger, necessarily newer CEOs and executives in different nursing groups. So I was asked to come out and speak to them about sort of different leadership, rallying their team, motivating their team, running effective meetings, which sounds so parochial, but it really isn’t. When you get to the executive level, it’s really critical. And there’s no one size fits all. So I’m super excited about this program. I just finished recording my audio book so it is in public, it’s in the process of publication. So we’ll be releasing it in the fall. I’m excited about that because when I wrote my book, just under a year ago and it came out and I’ve used it with a lot of my work, but the audio book is going to be so much more fun and readily available for people because if they’re like me, they multitask and listen to things all the time. So I’m excited for that.

Making me feel guilty when my book came out. No, my book came out in October of last year. It did very well. Number one Amazon bestseller in HR. We were really excited since it was launched, I’ve been emailed like, “when’s the audio book?”

That’s so funny, Rhamy. You have to do it because it’s funny. I was at an event with a gentleman that was, you know, he had a publisher and I went with a professional publishing group but I self published and I wanted to do that intentionally. And he looked at me and he said, “I can’t do my audio book. My publisher won’t allow it. So if you have control, you need to go do it.” Honest to goodness, that was the impetus. I was with one of my clients at an offsite and this was one of the speakers. And I literally came and that was it. I said, “I’ve got to do this”, and it’s super fun. The experience was awesome. That’s another podcast series we’ll talk about. But yeah, so I’m going to launch it and I’m excited about that launch because I didn’t really launch my book.

I published it to use with my clients. So I didn’t do a big social media launch, so to speak. It’s not necessarily, but I’m excited. Lastly, I’ve got some workshops coming up and I have a client. I think one of the things I’m most excited about is one of my newer clients in the past six months. They’ve been going through some pretty incredible changes at the executive level. And I’m super excited to watch their journey over the next few months because there’s dramatic changes coming. They’re a publicly traded company and I love being a part of their journey. But mostly, what I love is watching the leadership just come into their own even stronger and more directionally focused. So I’m super excited to watch their journey over the next few months.

Busy, busy couple months. Yeah. That’s awesome to hear. Now, when are your conferences going? What date is that recording? The last weekend in August. So that’ll be in the past by the time this comes out. But, we’ll talk at the end how they can look you up and see what else is going on in your calendar. I’ve got a couple of rapid fire questions. These are just questions that I think, let us distill some of the great knowledge and stuff we picked up. If you could recommend one book to go on your bookshelf or to read, preferably to go alongside People Processes, my book, and write “Leadership by Choice.” What book would you recommend to an executive or a CEO?

Okay. So I’m going to cheat cause I have to have two. So I can only have one. Okay. The one that is most highlighted and dogeared from years past. It has always been an awesome book. It Is the “Power of Focus” by Jack Canfield, Marketer Hanson, unless you had loved, loved, loved, loved, loved that book. It’s an oldie, but it’s so good. So good. It’s got more yellow in it in dog years. Then many of the leadership books or books on the team, and I’ve read so many. Then the second book is the book that I go to daily and it’s now and hear me before it’s the “Life Application Study Bible.” And regardless of your faith, I love studying Christ as a leader. And the reason I say this study Bible is because there’s a lot of texts beneath the physical biblical text that would take a lay person and just sort of guide them through the time and the decisions and the things that were going on. But I love, I just love, I learned so much about how to communicate, be with people and I just love the historical element of it being someone that was never a history person. I have now in these years really appreciated history regardless of what one’s faith is. It’s a study Bible. It’s very key. It’s gotta be a study Bible that gives you sort of that lecture series at the bottom of the text, so to speak.

Well, there will be links in the description below to both of those on Amazon. I did have to verify there’s actually a couple of books that are the “Power of Focus.” So I wanted to verify. You said that was the one by Jack Canfield and the rest, right?

Jack Canfield. Yeah. Mark Victor Hansen and Les Hewitt.

Evil Brian Tracy has put up as a “Power of Focus” book right at the top. I liked some of his stuff too. I’m just kidding. But I know. It’s all good, but I love it. Always. We’ll put the links to those to below. Alright. So going back, if you could whisper in your ear, there it was the day you decided to form your own company and you could give yourself one piece of advice, what would you tell yourself back on that first day of starting your company?

I would say, “remember, you are perfectly imperfect. Just plow through the obstacles, get them behind you, keep learning. They’ll keep coming and just move forward. If you’re moving forward, you’re moving. If you’re standing still, you’re not moving. And if you’re pausing, you’re moving backwards. Blaze through it.”

Awesome. Okay. Outside of that, what is the best business advice you’ve ever heard? That someone’s told you? Some really cool business advice.

I think one that I always go back to and it sort of fuels a lot of what I do and what I talked to CEOs about and leaders is, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. That resonated with me years and years ago leading a team. It made me pause and stop talking, and listen more and really invest in my people. That the people are everything in a business regardless of how large or small it is. Even in startup companies with one marketing associate. We had an agreement together that I would invest in her and her development and she knew I cared. As a result of that, and this is consistent in all of the companies I’ve worked with. You know, when people know how much you really care about them, their development, growth and their direction, they dig in. They roll up their sleeves and they’re so loyal. And it’s just been profoundly impactful for me.

Well, on that art, our podcast is called People Processes. Of course we think a lot about the systems and processes around business. Specifically around the people element of businesses. What would you say would be maybe a policy procedure system or training that’s had the largest effect that you’ve seen either on your company or on your clients? And is it something related to making employees or trying to extend that trust that you do care about them? And what’s that look like?

Yeah. So it’s funny, the training that probably has impacted me the most, both in my own business and I work with a lot of 1099s and so I have a team of independence. And then I work with obviously larger executives and teams of different organizations, both big companies, nonprofits and small. But really, my coaching training that I received from IPEC and what that training did for me and it’s actually communicated a lot in my book. Which also contributed to sort of how the business is running. It really taught me a better, a deeper appreciation for what it meant to be genuinely curious around people and to allow yourself to be present in the moment and listen and dispelled judgment. 

And with that, through that training and the coaching training and obviously I’m a coach but I work with my leaders. I actually tried to teach them and model how to get a coaching style of leadership so that they can be people-centric and then the value of that and therefore the value of investing in systems and other non people dependent, like face to face that can free them up to do that. Because the challenge that I find with these, with CEOs and leaders is they’re caught up in details that they don’t need to be caught up in, that’s taking away from their time of being present and curious for their people in the moment.

So a less focused on the minutia and more on the holistic person or the ability to at least focus on it.

Yeah. And it seems it can be. I was in the military, I’m sort of a get it done person. That can sound fluffy to some people and I always, I use it. But the truth is your greatest asset is your people. And that’s the one asset to that. There’s no cookie cutter approach. Right? You can get a system for payroll, you can get systems for communication, but when it comes down to people management, that presence and connection, that requires a person. And you’ve got to free yourself up from the other things that are pulling you away from your ability to be there. So it was in my coach training when I went through the IPEC certification as part of forming my business, I became incredibly, profoundly aware of the value that that could have to a much greater degree than I’d had through all of my years. Leading and working with teams.

Of course, our listeners know our Poplar Financial, we focus on designing and implementing those HR systems. Like you mentioned, payroll benefits, timekeeping, retirement, absence management, scheduling, all these kinds of pieces and you have to systematize them to free you up to actually work with your people. It blows me away, the number of 10-man companies or a hundred-man companies who are or thousand-man companies don’t matter who are investing so much time in routine monkey work that can be automated so that if they can get that off their desk, they can do so much more. I do have one add on though, which is that when it comes to those ways of interacting with people, I believe you do need a process.

It may not be a technological constraint. I don’t think it should be a lot of times, but if you don’t have a way of repeating it and doing it consistently, then you don’t have a way of doing it. And that’s one thing I often come up against with HR trainers and coaches. They have great ideas, they have awesome ways of doing things. But unless you systematize it, even though it’s a personal matter, it’s not a computer unless you make a process for it to happen every time. I feel like you can’t improve it over time and you have trouble maintaining it consistently. So we try to push it.

I think you’re absolutely right. No, you’re right in the process. It’s interesting. The process liberates you to be present. When you have a process and you have a system in place of accountability and data in place, it just allows you to be more present with your people and it also keeps you on track. So I couldn’t agree more.

Well, our listeners I’m sure, want to know where to find you, Sue. If they were looking, I have two questions for you. One is, if someone’s listening to this podcast right now, what situation are they in? Or what does that person look like that they should contact you? We have people from all walks of life. From HR managers to payroll tax, to business owners, to CEOs, non-profit leaders. What position are they in, what are they facing as a challenge, that means they should reach out to you and how should they do that?

Great question. That’s a loaded question. I like to explode with all the answers. No.

I know, I try to put a bunch of preface on there because guys have so many interviewees who are like, “well, if you have a pulse, go to.”

I know, I know, I know. It’s terrible. And you know, it’s like focus, focus, right? What was the book? I said the “Power of Focus” and now I’m going to totally contradict myself but love me for who I am and forgive me for what I’m not, no, I’ll study like that. So you’re a leader of a higher level team, and I say this because first of all, I love every team, but what I find is these higher level, these executive teams, these senior leadership teams typically are the teams that need equally as much support, but they have fewer people to talk to because the higher in the organization you go, the fewer people you can talk to about challenges.

So if you’re an HR leader and the core leadership team seems to be struggling with, they’re all great people, highly, highly successful, but not necessarily jelling the way they could to maximize the opportunity for the organization. That’s my passion because it’s real and you’re not alone in this and the people are great. It’s just sometimes the nuances of putting a bunch of great people together at the Thanksgiving table. Everybody doesn’t always play nice or figure it all out. The second person that I work pretty closely with, you might be at a place in your career or in your own business. You’ve got great ideas, you’re super motivated and you can’t get there fast enough or there’s something t

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the People Processes podcast. I’m your host, Rhamy Alejeal, and I am really excited today to bring you Thomas Veeman.

The co-founder of Conversari Global. They upgrade people for the future of work. Thomas has worked in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, India, and Thailand. He’s lived in Mexico City since 2012. He draws on his international background to teach executive courses on emotional and cultural intelligence. Thomas is especially passionate about using experiential and narrative methods to help teams bridge cultural and communication divides. I’m excited to have you on here, Thomas.

The pleasure is mine as well, Rhamy.

Well, Thomas, the first question I ask all of our guests, you know, not everybody dresses up as a kid for as an HR person or a business owner. It’s not the most common life choices that get us here. How did you wind up where you are now? How did you get into this crazy world?

Well, that’s a great question and it’s a long story. As a kid, I certainly never thought I would do anything related to business. Actually, I grew up moving back and forth between Switzerland and the United States. My mom’s Swiss and my father’s an American. And I think it’s kind of like that was the era before you had cell phones. But if we imagine it in today’s world, it’s kind of like every year I had to switch the SIM card in my brain to work with a different set of values, a different set of rules for how to behave. That was just normal to me. I learned later on and even growing up that’s not necessarily normal for everyone else. If I fast forward, I thought i was going to be a pilot because pilots, they travel a lot and that would allow me to do that.

Yeah. I didn’t become a pilot. If I fast forward, several years, later on after college where I studied in the U S. I Had been going to Switzerland and I studied in Thailand as well. My first real job in which I got to see a way to apply more of myself than just a job working the forests of Oregon. And later as in wilderness therapy in Arizona. And through that work when I really got to see was the beauty of it. Of people learning not only something that they can do to make themselves more effective, because the whole job and being effective as a job wasn’t very compelling to me as something to do with your life growing up. But when I saw him here, these were practical lessons that you learned. You’ve figured out, if we use this kind of plant in this way. If you use your effort to make this tool, then you get these skills that make your life happier and getting to be part of that and seeing that within people kind of switch to chip for me and said, “you know what, that’s something I need to find a way to do with my life.”

Wow. What an interesting background. Just to start with, but then to have those experiences after college. And so you said, all right, this kind of work moves me. It’s something I could see myself doing. There is great value in it. How did you go from that to co-founding an incredibly successful company?

Yeah, the road was interesting. From working in wilderness therapy, I realized, if I’m going to take this step forward in my career, what could I do if I had a family or to be able to buy a house and afford a life. I gotta pay those bills, right? Meet the practical requirements of life. Well, the next step was either go into the therapeutic side. So to be a therapist, a masters in psychology now at the time, life is complicated. 

So I was dating a woman in Monterrey, Mexico. And through that long distance relationship we had to figure out well to keep this relationship a chance, where do I go? She worked for the United Nations here in Mexico City, so she couldn’t move. I had to come here. So I thought, well, what am I going to do that’s relevant? Professionally, if I come to Mexico City. And I found this great program, Masters in Counseling Psychology that I could do here, that brought me here. Now studying in English U S school out of California and doing work with local populations here. Basically the ghetto of Mexico City with youth. Like I was working before now to make money on the side.

I was teaching English in organizations. And from that I started to not care very much about the English part, but I started to see, look, there are really creative people who have a lot to give, but who are in teams or in organizational cultures that are holding them back from bringing the best of themselves to work and through first, as an English teacher. I thought, well, why don’t I use some of the skills? Some of the tools that we used in either wilderness therapy or in the psychology training to help bring some of these creative energies out so people can really be alive with what they do. And it worked beautifully. It worked beautifully. People bloomed. They enjoyed coming to their classes. I enjoyed coming to their classes. And often we didn’t look at a single element of grammar. 

Right. The result was the ability to communicate. It doesn’t matter. It’s not about the language. It’s about the ability to actually get out there and get the ideas across. Right.

Yeah. That’s a big part of it. Getting the ideas across. And that requires also having the courage to share what you really think. To be aware of what you really think by going through a process of understanding yourself both emotionally in terms of what you really want from life, what your priorities are and what you have to give. And then finding a way also to make that work in a team and to bring value to an organization.So yeah.

And from that, you decided to launch this global organization now.

Yeah, exactly. So I knew Kevin Kennedy Anderson from my studies and he had already gone into consulting and frankly, at that time I didn’t even know what consulting was. Alright. So I thought it was going to be a therapist, a psychologist, but then working in the organization, I thought, well, how can we do this in a way that we actually get to create the programs that have a bigger impact. Sat down with Kenneth, brought him into the organization to do a special kind of course company. Loved it. They bought it for consulting prices. And from that moment, Conversari was born.

Very nice. Yes. Those kinds of consultant prices are always a good place to start a business.

Sure. I mean, it’s a big difference right here. And if you’re in the box of an English language teacher, you’re always limited. No matter how much value you add to people’s lives, that’s not going to be reflected.

In transferring from that hours for pay to value for pay. That’s the shift. Well, that’s awesome. So now you’ve got a successful organization. You guys are really bridging those cultural communication divides, helping companies and organizations out. And I know that you have had that experience of growing your organization. You’ve had to have had some amazing highs and some amazing lows. Now I think our listeners, maybe it’s because a little shot in Freud, but mainly I think they learn the most, not from the successes, the great ideas, but from failures.

So I always ask my guests to take us to the day. Tell us the story in that narrative form. You’re so good at, about your greatest entrepreneurial failure mistake. Very, very, very bad day. What came of it?

That’s a great question. I think there’s a few places it could go with this, but the hardest part is,

Picking one, right? You’ve been in business long enough.

There is one that sticks in my mind right now. We were lucky enough to work with a multinational company here in Mexico and they liked our training so much that they said, “alright, we have our partners in Krakow and in India that would like your services, are you able to travel and deliver there?” We said, “of course, right. First class ticket each way, please.” Right.

Then here’s the funny thing, we went to India, we delivered a course and it was actually relatively straightforward in terms of the cultural element. Then we got to Krakow and kind of in a way the train came off the hinges. What happened was we have our courses, we always like to do them in a way that prioritizes experience, right? Because it’s great to have theory and to have constantly and all of that. But at least for me and for the other, the other, now 16 of us. 

One thing that binds us together is that we like to see things in action. So we put that first in our training and we came to our training in Krakow, now crack coasts, kind of the European training hub for a tech company that we were working with. And you’re going to have to help me because I’m not asking for me, where’s Krakow Caicos in Poland. Okay, well it’s behind what was the iron curtain of course, as much deeper, longer history, they’re just fat. But it’s kind of the new growth area of Europe where some of the infrastructure costs are lower. But also not as much experience internationally yet. 

So we come to Poland and there’s participants being brought in from all over Europe and not only Europe, but also Africa and the middle East. So you ‘re training a group of people that’s widely diverse. We start our training the way we normally do. And that’s when things start to look a little different in terms of the response people. They had that quizzical look on their face rather than nodding the excitement that you look for as a trainer had that quizzical, the crossed arms.

A lot of questions. That doesn’t seem to go away about what we’re doing, why we’re doing it. And then we started getting feedback. All right, we’ll get feedback from our contacts there. You know, people really don’t, they’re not on board with this. They feel like it’s very American in its style and they don’t trust it. And we’re like, “what’s happening? What’s happening here?” Right. Lowest reviews we’ve ever received. And I remember walking back that night in it’s cold in Poland, in the winter and just feeling like, man, I don’t know how I’m going to get up and what am I going to do the next morning to make this feel different.

Right. And of course, these are big risks for your company too, right? I mean, not just this one training, going back. This isn’t. These are very costly to put on. I’m sure there are significant risks to the company and career.

Sure. I mean not only to the self-esteem that was happening with regard to the organization. This was our first as Conversari Global. This is our first reach into actually delivering globally and we’re being faced with this big challenge. If I don’t turn around, we will lose that continued contact and that feedback will come back to our biggest client. Right.

So of course the opportunity for more work in that area.

Yeah, exactly. So we met with the leadership, with our contacts there. We went out to dinner actually, where they tried to explain what was going on. We started reading and looking more at the cultural elements of this and part of that we were already doing, but we were missing a key element. Right. Well, it turns out as we’re looking at these things, it turns out that the main element we were missing was the difference in pedagogical styles from one culture to another. And in this sense it was shared by most of Europe and an approach that puts theory before applications.

So what was happening is, we were explaining things with examples, with demonstration, with popping people into role-plays before we explain all of the process and then working backwards to develop the process. Well that tended to work pretty well in the U S and here in Mexico. But doing that in Europe, people don’t feel open to trusting an application until they understand the process behind it.

Wow.

And even more than that, like the people, I remember people, some of them were like shaking to do this and getting angry at us because we were putting them in a position where they had to make a mistake by not being able to do something well yet.

Because we didn’t tell them what the goal, what the theory was, what the outcome should be.

Exactly. They didn’t know the criteria. So they hated us because we were putting that emotional space that was really uncomfortable.

Wow. That reminds me, gosh, so what’d you do?

Well, one part of it was really just like when you understand what’s going on, that’s half the battle, right? Pending that we just backed up. So the next day we made the adjustment of changing some of the order, putting more of the explanation of why we’re doing things and giving more space for that upfront. And then we did find that they could debate a little bit back and forth once they got the concept. There was almost you could see this palpable nod with people and that was the cue that okay, now we’re ready to put it into practice. And then it worked a lot better.

That is so interesting. At my company, Poplar Financial, we do systems design. So companies come to us because they have a great training like yours or anything that they want to systematize to make sure it goes out to everybody to keep track of, to issue certificates for all that kind of stuff and we just picked up. 

We’re licensed and we practice in the United States and we very much work in the HR function for consultation. But we had one client that came to us earlier this year. I think they started January 1. They only have about 20 employees in the U S but they have 300 contractors internationally. Some of Ukraine and some of the Philippines. And they wanted us to systematize their training, their on-boarding tools, their performance management, that kind of stuff that they already have figured out, but they wanted us to systematize it.

Right. And I’m sitting here staggering, thinking. I’m just like, because something as simple as the order in which information is presented could vary by culture. Like that had never occurred to me. Very interesting. So given your experience, our listeners, they run the gamut from an HR person and a 5,000 man company to mom and pop shop with three employees or their CPAs who have no employees but just working a bunch of organizations. 

What do you think they could take from your story of this that’d be a really rough time that you turned around and what they apply in their own businesses?

Well, that’s a great question and that’s what we always try and do too, right? Getting slapped upside the head with an experience like that. What can we do to learn from it and not make the same mistakes and open up new opportunities in the future. I think a key one is recognize whether it’s a small organization or a big one. You have to think globally in today’s business and so much of both geography and time borders are breaking down. Like we’re having this conversation across an international border. It becomes so easy to do that, that the flow of work is going to require more and more of that to happen. Whether it’s a supplier, whether it’s a business partner, globality is a norm that you have to take into consideration. So that’s the first part.

So then the second part, once you understand, okay, we have to be able to deal across the borders and also understanding the differences. It’s like, the culture is an iceberg, right? There’s the part of the surface, the part that you can see where people speak different languages. They might look different, they might wear different clothes and have music and food and all of that stuff, right? That’s the visible part of culture, but it’s the underneath part. That’s where the ships often wreck in business, right? It’s the values. The assumed, the expectations of how things work there. And even often in cultures that are seemingly similar inferences are exactly where you end up with conflicts.

Oh yeah. Not too many years ago, we were just in the Southern United States, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas. These good old Southern States with barbecue. And in the last few years we’ve expanded nationally, picked up a lot of New Yorkers, a lot of Washington tech people in California and business owners that are coming up with the next big idea. And we’ve had to do internal training and conversations about when you’re talking to someone in Nashville, Tennessee, if you don’t ask how their kids are doing and what’s up with their dog and how’s business, how’s life, how’s the weather? You’re downright rude. But in New York, if you ask that, they’re like, who the hell are you and why are you asking about my children?

Yeah. And why don’t you get cut to the chase and we’ve got work to do here. Exactly. Well, we noticed that one. That’s one of the things that you notice very quickly in Mexico, right? Mexico is very much like the Southern U S in that respect that you prioritize relationships before task in a sense. And until people trust or if they get a sense as a person, they don’t trust to open up into doing work and to rolling up their sleeves and getting into the fray with you generally. All right, so it’s a different order of business.

Interesting. So this is another ordering idea, right? So is it relationship and then task or test and relationship, or in your story, is it theory or practice first?

Right. And to be honest, I’m taking these from Erin Meyer’s, “The Culture Map,” got to get a reference my sources here, but that she offers a very useful framework for understanding culture and I’m writing a paper right now for HBR, for Harvard Business Review in Poland. Exactly applying some of those methods and some best practices for how to best do business across those particular borders.

You told me it was “The Culture Map.” Who’s the author on that again?

That’s Erin Meyer.

Erin Meyer. If anybody wants to look that book up. The one of our rapid fire questions that came up later is a book along with going alongside People Processes, my book up on your bookshelf. If you could recommend one, what would it be? I’m going to go ahead and put “The Culture Map” there.

Fantastic. There’s a few that we could get back to your earlier question too, the two really tied together. What is it that you can do to be more effective working across cultures? Well, one is, you’re going to make mistakes so it’s more of understanding the frameworks, understanding a little bit of how your own values come into play in the workplace is critical. 

But then the second part is, recognizing that there is an anthropology phase to all of these kinds of international, or not even international, but all collaborations, all work with other people. You have to take some time to understand and to listen to the cultural values, of let’s say, if you’re coming into a new organization like we do the work and the offer services, you have to understand what are the values of that place. And one part of that is the national cultures, but in other part is the organizational cultures. You know, Google is very different than working for a construction company out of Texas.

So in your studies, I guess these are some of the book references, but especially for our smaller companies, I’m thinking about some of my smaller clients right now. Where often are these cultural shocks for when someone starts with them, or even when they work with a new client in a new way. What would you say maybe is a concrete step they could take, to reorientate or this is what I feel like some of my clients would say, look, I can’t be everything to all people. I’m just going to do business with guys who are like me and anybody else can go find somebody else. What would you say to someone like that?

Well, I think the word was shrink drinking for people to be able to narrowly choose their business contacts like that. I think it’s another important point. And you say you can’t be everything to everyone. You can’t completely change the way that you’re wired and your value system that doesn’t work right. But what you can do is become more aware of it and talk about it. So I think that opens up another important point of all the work we do or I think of all the work that’s critical in today’s economy is, this idea of understanding through dialogue. We do it in terms of building feedback or a coaching culture. But I think in any sense, if you’re going into starting a business relationship, one of the ways that you can avoid some of those problems that can come by not talking about it is to say, “Hey, look, we’re starting this out.” 

These are some of the assumptions we have. These are the ways we like to work and do business. Is it similar with you guys and explain things and even if you don’t get it right, you’re opening a conversation. That difference could be here and it could play a role, but we’d rather talk about it then just deal with it, you know, making assumptions in the background.

I think that’s a really interesting point. I’m imagining one thing in our company, this is just maybe our clients or our listeners can relate to this, but our number one pet peeve, the thing that infuriates my employees more than anything is being treated like a vendor. And I know that’s a really silly thing because we are a vendor, but we’re partners with our clients. Like if a client comes to us and says, we have a problem, maybe it’s something we did, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just that they have a problem. Every single person in my organization will stay late, come in early, put their own money, whatever’s needed. We’re going to help. Like all you need to do is to get my company motivated. Anybody who works for me, it’s just like, Hey, help me and we’ll be there.

But that alternative feeling is something like, it’s not a request for help. It’s a demand for service or demand for subservience, like being treated as not a partner, but as a transactional machine that you interact and you put in quarters and outcomes policies, right? I’ve never figured out how to really explain that to clients, but the clients that love us the most and spend the most time with us and get the most out of us are those. And I don’t want to be like, Hey, if you don’t treat us nice, we’re not going to work with you. But I wonder if there’s something that we could do at our company and our listeners can do at their company to better define the type of relationship or the way in which you communicate to make that better.

Yeah. That’s a beautiful and important point you’re bringing up. And we deal with this from a few different directions. One from our own experiences. We are also a vendor that sees ourselves as a strategic partner and even sometimes the word strategic scenes, cold and distant, but they’re really see ourselves as part of the team, as part of the organization. 

We work so hard to understand the language of an organization. We speak the languages, we know how their KPIs work, how their business works. And then from there, we work on the human side. But sometimes not all organizations value or even key people in roles of value, those relationships in the same way. Sometimes they have a value system that says keep vendors at an arm’s length away, keep them unbalanced so that you have negotiation leverage. That’s a different type of psychology to deal with. 

And then there’s another kind which says, coming back to culture. Not everyone builds trust at the same pace or in the same way. So you often have organizations that are also similar in dealing with Europe. The trust happens a little later, right? There’s this image of, coconut cultures versus peach cultures. And the coconut culture is one that has, when you first come on, when you first make contact with people from a coconut culture, they seem hard and unsmiling and distant. But then once you’re in, like you really have a trusting relationship. You can make demands of each other. Peach culture like the U S is, we’re a quick, you sit down in the airplane next to somebody and you’re sharing your story, like within 15 minutes, how many times you’ve been divorced and all of that.

But then there’s this kernel of privacy in the middle. You know, after that conversation happens, you walk away and you never see each other again. And that’s kind of expected in a way. But first, let’s say, Germany from Poland, from many other parts of the world, they feel hurt by that because they expected. Now we’re friends. I think there’s similar types of values. Also work the vendor relationship in the sense that sometimes it takes longer, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that somebody wants to maintain this arms length negotiation position with you. It just takes really close listening and I think listening not just to the words but to the atmosphere and to everything else that goes into understanding the values of a place .

I’ll tell you, I’ve done about 150 of these interviews and I think what you’re saying is startling, I’m super impressed. Our interview, our episodes normally run about 30 minutes guys. I know we’re coming up on the end of that, but we’re going to keep going. I think Thomas here has some amazing insights. If you’re having trouble, go ahead and come back on your ride home. I want to keep on diving in. 

So Thomas, I’m going to ask a few more questions that weren’t on our kind of pre-list just because I’m so absolutely intrigued by what you’re saying. In this idea, this happens a lot in HR and culture talk. There are these overarching concepts like what you’ve brought up of understanding each other’s cultures and taking your actions differently to have a better outcome at our company.

Nothing exists unless it’s a process, because having a different mentality or a different insight is a one off event. So while a suite executive may hear what you’re saying and be able to change their behavior and eventually that filter down through the whole company, for those who are thinking about this in terms of how can we improve our processes, our actual business day to day functions with this insight, do you have any ideas, like what could be the steps on implementing even the most basic bottom hit, low hanging fruit for these insights you’re providing?

Well, I think there’s many things we could talk about. The first that comes to mind is actually a project that we’re excited to begin right now. Where we’re working with one of the big six financial services consulting firms in the world to help them develop a coaching culture. Now what that means is, a coaching culture is as related two parts. It’s the culture part and the coaching part. So like many organizations, they struggle to get deeper bonds of trust internally as a model then of a relationship that they take out into their clients to build deeper relationships. Just like you were talking about with vendors. Now that has to start internally, but it’s really tricky if you’re an organization that’s based on individual performance metrics. And so what you have to do is we’re coming in and we’re looking at some of the process elements.

How is everything related to human resources? How do you measure somebody’s performance? How you measure and make the determination. How well are you doing? Your job matters a great deal because for instance, if you want a culture where people are taking the extra time to listen to each other and to help people across functions, but the only way that your performance is being measured is let’s sa

Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome to the People Processes podcast. My name is Rhamy Alejeal, and today we are interviewing Linda Brown. Linda is awesome. She is a Master Certified Profit First Professional. She’s a Certified Preventive Growth coach and she’s the founder of Spire Business Inc. Linda supports entrepreneurs in demystifying their business finances and providing guidance to increase business profits so that they can bring more money home. She’s often referred to as the Voice of Reasons by her clients, Linda Equis, business owners with the tools, strategies and skills they need in order to create sustainable growth in their business and profit. We’re excited to have you on, Linda. Thank you so much for having me. It’s a wonderful opportunity. Well, we’re glad you’re here. So my first question is, and I have to ask this for our people in our field, most kids don’t dress up as CPAs and accountants and bookkeepers when they’re kids. How did you wind up in the field and doing what you do today? By accident, but most people kind of fell into that one. I was actually in corporate America for about 14 years where I was a securities analyst for mutual fund companies. I didn’t have enough people interaction, so I went there to make a profit. Let’s just say I worked on a lot of estate plans. But what I realized is that, all entrepreneurs , when they were having their estate plans done, they didn’t actually know how much money they were making or how they would bring it into their business. Interestingly enough. At the same time I was a financial planning, I also had started a boat dealership with my husband. So I literally went out on maternity leave and within six weeks, my CPA came up to me and said, “Hey, you know, QuickBooks? I have a couple of clients that need some help. Would you please help them sell for the first five years?” I actually did this for free. They didn’t charge it all. I charged nothing. I went home on maternity leave. I said, “Hey, this is really cool.” I didn’t go back to work. I just helped a couple of clients that the CPA sent to me. Yeah. It was, will you work for free? The answer is yes, I did. I helped businesses grow tremendously and then all of a sudden saying, Hey, I’m helping all these businesses grow and I’m not making any money. There’s something that’s not right here. So then I started actually creating the business. So if you were one of those lucky clients between 2002 and 2007 and there was no charge. Well, that’s it. That’s tuition, right? That’s you. You got to really learn and do the real life work. That’s a great journey. Well, having back in 2002 you’ve been doing this a while now. A lot of our listeners are CPAs and bookkeepers. Most of them though are entrepreneurs or HR leaders who are in charge of the staffing and organization inside their company when they’re listening. A lot of our guests are very successful people like yourself. I try to bring that back because the biggest learning doesn’t come from talking to somebody who knows everything. A lot of times it comes from the big mistakes and the problems. So I’m hoping Linda, you will take us to your greatest entrepreneurial failure mistake bad day. And tell us that story, how you got there and what happened. My bad day is actually digging out of the hole right now. To be honest, as most entrepreneurs, I was really good with numbers and business and could run my business really well. And most entrepreneurs start their business for whatever reason they start their business. Yours is HR, someone else might be interior design or engineering, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we know all the aspects of business to run our business. So mine was the numbers. I was really good at the numbers, but the marketing, not so much. I grew for the first 14 years by word of mouth. It was really good. I had enough time to do my stay-at-home mom’s stuff and I had enough time to do business stuff. But when I decided, okay, it’s time to get serious, my kids don’t need me anymore. I had absolutely no idea on how to market. I took marketing class after marketing class and basically what they taught me is what you should do but not how I should do it. And so I got very frustrated and so I’m still digging that out. Now, learning how to dues, not what to do. So when was the kind of moment of realization that you needed to really start investing in the marketing side of the business? Believe it or not, it was when I joined profit first and Mike McCalla woods is a big believer in having a niche. And when I met Mike McCalla with some profit first, I had 44 clients in 44 industries. Mike’s like, you need to niche it down. You need to set up a system and processes within this one niche. And I realized very quickly that he was right because when we see my first profit to profit first clients, I couldn’t bring on staff because each individual client had an individual process or procedure. So I couldn’t actually bring staff on because there were no systems and processes. So to set up my systems and processes, which meant I made it to me show that all my clients were the same and then I could start marketing and growing it. Should you wind up both focusing totally? Actually it’s dual because it’s female entrepreneurs that work in the coaching and the design and staging industry for their homes. Nice. Okay. Well, cool. Any lady, female entrepreneurs out there, especially those in the coaching or the interior design. We’ve got a specialist right here on the podcast for you. We’ll talk about how to reach out to her later. What do you think our listeners can learn from the kind of your journey and story? Why do you think they could take from that? It’s not enough for two things. One, it’s not enough just to know what you know, you also have to find somebody that’s going to teach you what you don’t know. And by teaching, it’s not telling you what you don’t know. It’s how to solve the problem of what you don’t know. So just like yourself are teaching people how to get the HR into their business because it’s a big thing. Right? I can tell you, I don’t know everything. That’s why I come to you. Right.Yeah. No and I’m in the same boat. I have a full time bookkeeper and two different CPAs and both of them, all three of them I know enough to hopefully tell if they’re trying to cheat me. That’s about it. Other than that, I’m trying to find the best people and letting them direct me. And that’s the key aspect right there, is to find the people and know enough not to let them cheat you. I have quite a few clients who actually did just what you said. They went out and got a bookkeeper and got a CPA only to get audited and not realize they weren’t doing information correctly. So the course comes down to when you just blindly hand something over, are they actually doing what they’re supposed to do or not? And how do we as small business owners know and be able to track what they’re doing? Right? But the reason I have two CPAs is because I still have a third party. I have a third party audit, right? Just to have someone go behind, it’s worth paying twice as much to make sure that the first guy does the job. Right? There’s a great quote by Steve jobs and he says, I don’t hire smart people to tell them what to do. I hire smaller, more smart people to have them tell me what to do. And I think there’s a balance between that and giving up the responsibility of running your own company. Right? You have to balance both. You need smart people telling you what to do, but that doesn’t mean it’s not your butt. On the line. So it’s still your responsibility, even if it’s someone else’s acumen that’s directing you. Exactly. Well, that is awesome. So what’s coming up in the next six months? What have you got looking forward to? That’s got you excited that you’re doing over at Spire? Well, I’m really, really excited because we are switching over to group platforms in group training for our clients. We have a four step process of understanding the foundation of which to me, is your money. If as long as your money is working correctly for you, you should be able to do everything you need it to. So we have a money mastery class, a profit mastery class we have from the first implementation and then pump plan growth workshops going on. So good. You’ve been doing those things for a long time, but now you’re focusing kind of on the group class version. Right. I was doing it one on one and I realized that I wasn’t reaching as many people and my calendar got full so I was turning a lot of people away. So we’ve started implementing the cost strategy sessions. Interesting. Are those already live? Are they up and running? Are you coming up on your first one soon? We’ve done a couple beta ones that were word of mouth. But we’re starting to advertise this month for the first classes. That will be just 90 minute workshops in August, going into full classes in September. Well, this podcast will air in August. So guys, we’ll talk about at the end where you can look up information on this. But by the time this is up in live, you should be able to check it out. And if you’re interested in a course , or a group class, that’ll help you dive into the money side of your business. That’s pretty cool. Well, let’s talk a little bit about what we call rapid fire questions. There’s just ways to maybe quickly share some of the key knowledge and bits that you’ve picked up. And one of my favorite questions is if you could recommend one book to maybe go alongside a people processes, how your people can be your organization’s competitive advantage, what book would you recommend for new business owners out there? Honestly, it’s a children’s book, the little engine. Yeah, I remember this book. I think my parents read to me the little engine. What I find is that, most entrepreneurs need the mindset to know that they can go forward. I can do this, I can do this. We tend to get so discouraged and bring ourselves down, that little engine, he believed that he could get over that mountain if he just found the right partner to work with them. And so he went asking and asking and asking until he found the right partner. Well that’s a great one. We’ll put the link in the description as well. We’ve had maybe a hundred 110 interviews or so. Never had that book recommended. And I think it’s an awesome one. That is so cool. Alright. So if you could go back in time, send a letter to yourself or whisper in your ear on the first, that first day you took maternity leave and we’re starting up your business, what would you tell yourself? Oh, what would I tell myself? First of all, Linda, you can do anything that you set your mind to. Second of all, is set up the processes and the systems your business needs long before you need them. Make a plan. Well, make a plan. Yes, but more than the plan, actually have them. Because what we find in business oftentimes, possibly even yourself, is that we know the plan is there. We know what we need to do, but unless you actually have the plan working for you and the system’s there when you really need them is when you’re too busy to set them up. Sure, sure. I have a joke that I do in a lot of my talks. It’s not a very good one, but it’s about naming your kid before you have it or at least before the epidural comes in. Because we had a very good friend who didn’t do that and then wound up having to change their daughter’s name three days after birth because she named the child after the epidural. Just saying, have a process in place before you need it. I often use it for maternity leave. If you’ve got employees, make your maternity leave policy before your first pregnant employee is wondering what’s going to happen to her. Exactly. And I’m going to play, I was that person. I had two children, one six weeks early, one five weeks early. Neither one was named within the first 48 hours. I hadn’t gotten anything there. And Hey, it works for some people and every once in a while you wind up with the infamous fun Yetta, as a child because that’s what you’re craving, right? Especially in all seriousness and business, you don’t want to be deciding, what’s your disciplinary policies going to be when it finally happens? You don’t want to, when you have five employees or 10 employees and you have your first complaint that you know, one of our clients harassed me or I’m worried that my manager isn’t treating me well because I’m a woman. Those are things that are not fun to think about, but you really don’t want to be trying to figure them out in the hours after someone brings it up. Right. Oh my, I got injured at work today. Here I was, it’s an office environment. It’s a CPA or a bookkeeping shop and you know, getting into the office, I slipped and fell and I hurt myself. What do we do? Who do we call? Do we even, you know, do I go to mind? But doctor, do we, you know, just a little plans like that, that there’s not that many. But if you have a process or a plan in place when it’s actually needed, it’s going to save your butt. Exactly. Not just the plan, but the process document. And it’s easy to find out because when we’re in the moment, we can get scattered. Right? And it needs to be, I mean, in the long run, it needs to be accessible, right? It’s not just written down. It can’t just be in a binder that one person knows. It needs to be accessible. It needs to be communicated well. You know, someone needs to be responsible for it. Perhaps the most important thing of having processes is how, and when does it get updated? How do you review it and improve it over time? All of those pieces, the differentiator between businesses that can scale and those that don’t. Right. Exactly. That’s where I think most people want to go. They want to be able to scale. We want to have the infamous four week vacation. Right? Absolutely. Well, let’s go on. So outside of the wonderful book of the little engine that could, and that you have told yourself back on the first day, you can do anything and to think big and also that you need to have actual processes in place. What is the best business advice you’ve ever heard from someone else? The best business advice someone’s passed along to you? My very first employer as an adult, I’m actually on the very first day of my job with him, said, “I don’t care what you know, I don’t care what you don’t know. The most important thing that you will ever have is who you know and what they know is. So get good contacts, find out what they know, what they’re experts in.” You know, because everybody has a background, right? Especially entrepreneurs. We all have some type of corporate background or knowledge behind us. So figuring out what they know as well so you can go and ask questions because you don’t need to know it. You just need to know the person that does. I like that. I can’t remember who said it, but it’s something like in business there’s never a how problem. There’s only a who problem, something like that. I always keep in mind whenever I’m trying to figure something out is like, how are we going to do this? What are we going to do? Well, the real question is who, who do I know who can do this? That’s the reality. Exactly. Well, I like that. We’re an HR podcast. Of course a lot of people listen to us to think about scaling those people operations side of your business. What do you think is the number one policy, procedure, system training that’s had the biggest effect on your clients or your company internally? Two-fold, if I may. First, it’s figuring out, because I work with a lot of entrepreneurs. Are they in fact an employee or are they in fact a contractor? So that’s first and foremost for any company, especially the small employer who doesn’t want that person to be an employee because it’s going to cost them extra money. So in the long-term, figure out who actually needs to work for you and then get them set up correctly. Bring in the expert HR person, make sure you’re covered with your disability and your workers’ comp. Have your employee manual inset. You really don’t want to mess up when it comes to people’s resources. Oh, I like that. But yeah. So number one, is get your people right, especially the classification independent contractor versus employee. You know, I always say, money is the foundation of your business. You can float by for a little bit. If something gets undone, you cannot float by if something ever happens to your people. Right. So, money is the foundation, but money’s important because you gotta pay your people. That’s the number one reason, right? The people are the thing that executes nothing but nothing, but people execute anything in it. Exactly. And you have to make your people happy so that your business is going to grow. Because even times these solo entrepreneurs, right, their worst boss is themselves. They could have worked in corporate America for years and years and years, but the worst boss is themselves. So yes, money is key and fundamental, but you need to make sure your people are done right because they’re going to be the ones that support you and grow with you. You said there were two parts, the first one is getting that right. First part is getting the people right, but the money, you really need the money as the foundation. Hence the fact that I’m here. But you are definitely the human resource aspect of any business that has to be done. Right? So in terms of like a financial process that you put in, what would that entail? What’s it look like to actually have a process around that? So most of my clients, I actually have trained to do their own bookkeeping and five minutes a day, the biggest problem was even if you went through and became an MBA or you’ve become a CPA, you learn the theory of business. You do not learn how business practically applies to you. So I even have actually an auditor from Deloitte and Touche who left and went out on his own, came to me and said, “Hey, can you set up my chart of accounts with me and teach me how to use QuickBooks? Because I only know how to look at it when it’s all done. I don’t know how to get it where it is.” And so we sat down and we worked through it with him. And so it’s really important that anybody understands how money comes into the business, how to have it go out of your business and how to categorize it when it’s in there. So sitting down with an expert to really design that chart of accounts, that general ledger, so that it actually reflects what’s going on in your company. Not just like using the default and trying to hope that it’s sorts automatically correct. Right. So whether you’re doing it or you hire that CPA to do it, because oftentimes that CPA’s trying to do tax savings for you, they’re not thinking exit strategies or growth strategies or you’re going to need a loan in five weeks or five months or five years strategy. So we need to make sure that not only is your profit and loss being calculated correctly, but that your assets are truly shown where they need to show. Interesting. Honestly, I think you’re giving most CPAs too much credit. I love CPA’s and they’re half my audience, but most of the people listening I think would know that the majority of CPAs, at least the ones I’ve worked with. If they’re actually looking for tax savings for you, they’re there. They’re in the top 10% already. The majority that I’ve ever worked with are just purely transactional. I’ll get the darn taxes filed one way or the other. I think it’s even a top 10% that will put the time in to advise you on how to better structure your taxes much less, go into the depth of design and that you’re talking about. Well, I actually have created partnerships with a couple of CPAs that are tax experts. Specifically because I want to make sure that the books and my niches are set up to help the individuals but also help them tax effectively. So we’ve actually gone back and forth on, I need to see this as the bookkeeper who’s tracking the pennies too. I need it to look like this for the tax return to get them the biggest impact. So very interesting. Yes. Partnership. I have a friend who’s not a client, he’s a small business ,who’s a contractor. He does some of the work on some of my rental houses and he set up his business about a year ago with his brother. He didn’t come to me to do any, you know, work or really a CPA. And of course almost as expected. He and his brother had a falling out and now they’re in this world where none of their books are right. They don’t know who I was. They filed an extension April 15th. Then I was telling him and he was mentioning that he wasn’t even clear that he owed his taxes by April 15th if he filed an extension. He just thought the extension, you know, gave him till October 15th. It is shocking, the level of financial knowledge that many small business owners have. They don’t really need to know more until, until they really do. I mean, I think you’re exactly right. If I were advising any company that any new business is getting started up, I’m going to go register my company tomorrow. You need to know who’s an independent contractor and who is an employee. Get that right from the beginning and you need to get a financial process so that you know what dollars are coming in, where they’re going, how they’re being spent, how they’re being categorized, how to spend them. I think that’s awesome. I think those are the basic one and two for becoming someone other than an independent contractor yourself. To become something other than just the guy who does the work to actually run a business. Even the independent contractor needs to know the money. No, that’s very true. That’s very true because it happens time and time again. You think you’ve got things done right and Oh, you’re mixing personal money with business money or Oh this wasn’t really a business expense. So what happens often times is that one or the other can get audited and because you’re mixing money’s up now if your business is getting audit now you’re personally getting audited or if you were personally getting audit, now your business is getting out of it. Right. So gosh, one audit is hard enough at a time. You really don’t want to have to go through two at a time. Makes a lot of sense. Well, if we have listeners on here who are interested in reaching out to you, how should they find out more about you and what should be the trigger in their mind for when they should? I’ll reach out before you think you need to. So if you are a small business, I would say it’s time to reach out. But they can either go to my website which is spirebusiness.com S P I R E business.com or hello@spirebusiness.com is our email.  Awesome. And are you on social media? I am on social media. I am N S L I N B coaching or Spire_business. Nice. We’ll put links in the descriptions below. Linda, thank you so much for coming out today. It was great to talk with you. Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that’s it today for our interview with Linda Brown of Spire business, I’m excited to have her on. We covered some very interesting pieces, some of the key takeaways. I really liked that she crystallized that to really start a business, you need to have a financial process in place. You need to. It’s a basic setup, but you need an expert to come in and it’ll be worth its weight in gold to come in and help you design how that money’s going to come in, how can be categorized, how it’s going to be spent. I appreciate her plugging the HR side too. I’d love to help you out there. Of course. In the meantime, check us out @poplarfinancial.com and peopleprocesses.com. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you can get subscriber only content, like our new on-boarding checklist for small businesses that we’re really excited to share with you. You can also find us at Poplar Financial on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Love to see you there. Now it’s time for you to go out there, have a great day, and get your work done.