If These Heels Could Talk: Recent Episodes
JoyGenea Schumer and Michelle Henderson
Good afternoon, good evening, and good night.
Thank you for listening and watch for what’s next!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPAgxg6NQWk
Michelle and JoyGenea talk with JoDee Schumer spirit guide and artist about her newest business venture. JoDee shares what she has learned about the importance of art in the healing process and how she now helps people and mentors people to find their own path and expression and include their connection to spirit in the process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMmG22bO45A
Michelle and JoyGenea talk with LeAnn Riley, a National Coach/trainer of Real Estate Investing Made SIMPLE. LeAnn shares her insights on how people’s financial baggage can get in the way of getting into real estate investing. She also highlights the importance of using trusted experts when it comes to real estate. The market is changing more than ever and having access to the right people at the right time can make all the difference in success.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54hMfP5NWl4
“Something wicked this way comes…” Well, not really wicked, but maybe a bit. Northern Wisconsin is getting a new quilt shop! Seams Like Quilting opens in early June, 2023. A joint venture between Michelle and her mom, Vicki Lyons, Seams Like Quilting will be a curated collection of designer fabrics from a variety of lesser known manufacturers, offering customers some options that are unique to the area. Visit us at seamslikequilting.com.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us42TdyrPqY
Lately, customers have been responding to frustration with businesses by lashing out at the employees they are face to face with, while many businesses have been falling short of their promises to customers. A great example of this cycle is the Southwest Airlines fiasco of this past winter, which left customers without the support they were owed. Many customers wanted to retaliate and took it out on the service workers in the airports who had no control over the systemic failures of Southwest.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea look at the many sides of this issue. What do customers owe service workers and what do companies owe their customers?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8xNWlsEE6o
Commitment isn’t anything to fear. In fact, it’s essential to gain fulfillment from any activity. And if you’re not really committed, it might be time to think to yourself: “If I’m not really ‘in,’ maybe I should be out.”
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk about clearing their calendars of those things that no longer serve the original or even a new purpose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_1Vo3pz-V4
A dangerous hoax from China? Or an innocuous way to spend an hour a day?
That’s the question the United States Congress is attempting to answer about TikTok. What they will discover is that neither scenario is true. Like all other private companies who run social media platforms, TikTok requires personal data collection to operate. And, like all other privately-owned social media platforms, TikTok saves some of that data without transparency or public reporting.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss the ins and outs of the TikTok debate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJtco7CwkTY
What happens when partners are at a different stage? Life partners, business partners - when two people are facing circumstances that require they move at different paces, it puts stress on their living or working relationship.
JoyGenea opens up about personal changes that require partners accommodate - and the challenges that come with accommodation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6z86AcJTWY
Tractor Wars by Neil Dahlstrom is a book about the disruption of an industry and the start (and end) of hundreds of American companies. The birth of mechanized farming was not a fast, easy, or simple one and had huge numbers of heavy hitters at the heart of the change. Working from John Deere company archives, the author describes an industry struggling to get a toehold with their target audience in farmers.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss the business lessons they learned from Tractor Wars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjbSdjFOp78
It can feel like recycling. It can feel like you’re repeating your message over and over and over again. And you are. Content Marketing is about getting your message to different audiences through different channels. And your message needs to stay cohesive, strategic, and highlight your unique selling propositions.
In essence, taking a large-form content piece, like a case study or whitepaper, breaking it into smaller concepts and adjusting the format of those ideas for digital channels is content marketing. But something is easier defined than done. How can you building content marketing into your everyday processes?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhU3hthMwqA
Some people prefer the roller coaster - dramatic ups and downs, twists and turns, high speed change. Some people prefer the merry go round - stable, predictable, measured regularity. Nothing inherently right or wrong with either. But some people love one and are terrified with the other. For those who love the roller coaster, there’s nothing more boring than the merry go round. For those who love the merry go round, there’s nothing more anxious than the roller coaster.
So how can you get these two people on the same page at work? On a team, working together? Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss tactics and techniques to help people honor each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70goMkN6efU
Coming soon to a Meta near you: paid identity verification. There are not many details available yet, but how the rollout works in Australia and New Zealand might determine quite a few open questions, like whether or not verification will be required to run a business or organization page.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk about Meta’s latest announcement for verified accounts.
https://youtube.com/live/BeCdPaSaKfI
How can you possibly work while you’re on vacation? From your family or friends pressuring you to ‘relax’ and ‘let go,’ to all the unexpected challenges of travel to the basic desire to do fun things while you’re out of town, working remotely on the go is certainly challenging.
JoyGenea’s current trip isn’t a vacation. Resetting her mind to working on the road is helping her to keep her business running while visiting other locations. And, helps to ensure her time off is really time off.
It’s incredibly difficult for small business owners to ‘get away.’ If only because our businesses need our daily or weekly attention to run smoothly. And the workload just waits for us when we get home. Listen in today to hear about another way to think about traveling while owning a small business. You really can work, live, and play mindfully and thoughtfully by thinking about your time and location a little differently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf41dElZ6uQ
How can a business leader work toward consensus? Is it the same as compromise? Can everyone walk away reasonably happy from a consensus-building conversation? And what does that series of conversations look like?
It starts with trust and continues with listening. Those who feel entitled to loyalty struggle to build consensus, largely because they don’t try. Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk about the consequences of not building consensus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW1lbjPWwts
You had literally one job. We all love these memes online that show something simple going wrong, like a manhole cover with pain misaligned from the road or a fast food counter covered in chocolate milkshake from a spill. It should have been easy - it’s just one job. Is messing it up incompetence?
What if it’s not so benign - like the mechanic who thinks that knocking sound might be the super expensive thing when it turns out there’s an acorn in the engine. Or something. Is the mechanic taking advantage of the consumer to suggest investigating both?
Truth is, when we’re on the receiving end of somebody’s work not going correctly, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is our response. Because in most situations, there’s only so much we can control. And our response, as a consumer or coworker, is what turns a simple mistake into something that impacts our day and our relationships.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea ask the question. And discuss whether or not the answer even matters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoxRAQH2sFY
Resolutions aren’t for everyone. In fact, they’re a huge boon to JoyGenea and absolutely crippling for Michelle. But that doesn’t mean Michelle doesn’t set goals or intentions for the coming new year.
Having a theme for the next year is a way to clarify your thinking, articulate your priorities, and help you make decisions that align with your overall goals in an ever-changing, dynamic environment. Listen in for JoyGenea and Michelle’s themes for 2023.
https://youtube.com/live/Hcj8Jpkk9As
Elizabeth Holmes, former CEO and founder of Theranos, was convicted and sentenced for fraud in late 2022. Bad Blood is a story of innovation, narcissism, denial, leadership, self-delusion, and a quest for truth.
In 2023, JoyGenea and Michelle will be reading more and sharing their conversations and thoughts on If These Heels. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Start-Up by John Carreyrou is our first installation.
https://youtu.be/seGGVu5wvf0
Fear and perfectionism seem to stop quite a few essential conversations. One of them is a routine callout of implicit bias in a professional and non-emotionally charged way. A simple, “hey, that’s not cool” can elicit defensiveness, fear, and even aggression. So much so that many avoid the callout in the first place. Which, of course, breeds mistrust.
So how do we break this cycle and start to find safe and effective ways to callout biases, react professionally, and move forward together in clarity and with accountability?
By doing just that. With the help of a purple flag. Or something like it. Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss an idea brought forward in a TED talk and how it might apply to all our workspaces.
Purple Flag Video https://youtu.be/VEP7_BeXH64
https://youtu.be/-mgupnPA6g4
Whenever plans go sideways, it can cause all kinds of problems, both practical and not-so-practical. A plumbing disaster in the work bathroom is all kinds of disruptive. And maddening - because now your day is about toilets instead of work.
Listen is as Michelle and JoyGenea talk about just how to adjust when best laid plans go awry - in real time.
Special Guest Interview with Tammy Stafford from JKA Law Firm. Michelle and JoyGenea talk with her about how she became a lawyer, what keeps her loving being an attorney and what she sees in the future of family law. Tammy is an advocate for domestically abused individuals and adoptions. She shares with us about shifting from starting and owning her own firm to joining JKA Law Firm, an all-woman attorney firm. Don’t miss out on this chance to learn more about the legal system and a little really good advice. There is also a surprise about what shoe she loves.
Company websiteLinked In
How do you measure success? In a super-driven environment, measurable results are often discussed as if every initiative needs to ‘pay off’ individually. Otherwise they’re not worth doing. But the totality of many efforts combines to deliver measurable results in the end.
When we sub-divide a process so much, we can lose meaning and measurability along the way. In marketing, we talk about an omnichannel approach, where multiple brand touch points add up across platforms to create awareness, sales, and, ultimately, brand loyalty. But when we start to try to measure each brand touch point against each other, we can lose sight of the importance of each.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk about initiatives that are more than the sum of their parts.
https://youtu.be/3WMJNpf3inQ
Ah, the dreaded holiday interaction with a long-distance, sometimes well-meaning, relation who doesn’t understand boundaries. Which aunt or uncle or great-grand-something will comment on your holiday sweater being a little tighter this year? Or ask if you’ve finally started dating again? Or how that embarrassing surgery went? Who will ask the most awkward and inappropriate question?
Nice, Spice, and Ice could be your answer. You can’t control others asking odd questions or commenting on your food choices. But you can control your response. You can choose to be nice (We don’t use that word anymore, Aunt Sharon), be spice (Thanks for telling me my sweater’s too tight. Did you know that Frank isn’t your real father?), or be ice (Rude.)
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle talk about these options and a real sense of taking back the power at large social gatherings.
https://youtu.be/FFuKNIh3Hn0
When we feel the pressure to say yes, where does it come from? Social pressures, business pressures, family pressures - how much are we adding the pressures for ourselves and how much is coming from external sources?
A complicated question but even more complicated answers from Michelle and JoyGenea. Listen in as they discuss the pressures they feel to say yes and the inevitable fallout from following the same social scripts over and over again.
https://youtu.be/1aLctI_XoO4
The sunk cost fallacy is a common belief that we should continue on the same course of action because it has already cost us so much. The faulty logic seems to make sense - we’ve already bet so much on this poker hand that we may as well see it through.
But the fallacy is that we cannot win our way out of a mistake. Once it becomes obvious that it’s the wrong thing to do, whatever IT is, the only way to win is to stop playing. In business, this is especially true. There comes a point when your previous decisions or your current course of action is no longer the best way forward. Sometimes it’s early in a process. And sometimes it’s not. And it’s way better to recognize you’re on a losing course and step out early.
Sunk cost isn’t just about money. It’s about time, emotional energy, physical space - JoyGenea and Michelle discuss all the ways our decisions can continue to cost us over time.
https://youtu.be/lZQAkOuRWaU
“Congratulations!” “Thanks, it’s really not that big of a deal.”
If you have ever found yourself in this conversation, it can be a difficult one to navigate. Where’s the line between proud and bragging? Between humble and self-effacing? Does it really depend on who we’re talking to or more on who we are? When do we get to feel proud of ourselves without complication, regret, guilt, or shame?
JoyGenea and Michelle talk about standing in our accomplishments kindly, while also acknowledging the accomplishments of others proudly. We can support and celebrate each other and ourselves.
https://youtu.be/2oe-gIRE2rw
It’s late and you’re tired. You’re doom scrolling through social media, a newsfeed, or YouTube and see it: the clickbait to end all clickbait. Maybe it’s 16 tips to shrink your thighs or 42 reasons a celebrity sucks or 15 ways to save money on car insurance. But it’s bait. And you fall for it, hook, line and sinker.
And then you wait for what feels like 15 minutes for all the ads to load and you know you’ve made a grave mistake.
So much of the internet is what we make it now with our behavior. And it isn’t our thoughtful, frontal cortex behavior, it’s our lizard brain behavior. Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk about the challenges presented by clickbait and the self-fulfilling prophecy that is the internet.
https://youtu.be/dTGiLo5Z4xA
What is a Cat Nap day? It’s a day of concentration, a day of focus, and a planned day of rest for those who want or need one.
To maintain high expectations but also help those who have high expectations of themselves, planned release valves are important. And it means that leadership is showing everyone the importance of rest. Once a month, for the last 4 months, a Cat Nap day is scheduled. As we get into 2023, we’re thinking about naming 2 a month, they’re that popular.
Culture is what we make it. Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk about this very specific move that is helping to create the culture Michelle wants to work in every day.
https://youtu.be/13-_ETFStR4
Wouldn’t life be so much better if we could just say what we meant? Especially when a well-meaning, lovely person in our lives offers us ideas that would be solutions to them but create more issues for us.
We get to say no thank you. We get to state preferences. AND we all get to have different preferences and experiences. JoyGenea finds inspiration and centeredness in her outdoor adventures and seeks time outside. Michelle finds mosquito bites and sunburn in her outdoor adventures and avoids time outside. Michelle enjoys coffee and the occasional adult beverage and JoyGenea avoids caffeine and alcohol of all kinds.
And there’s nothing wrong with either. Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk about the scripts that keep us from getting closer, the reasons we feel like we can’t be honest with acquaintances, and how horrible camping can be (can you tell Michelle wrote this?).
https://youtu.be/k-eBeEWOP58
Business partnership is like any other partnership and can be betrayed. The human response to betrayal is hurt, anger, pain - so why do we pretend otherwise? Why do we pretend, ‘it’s just business?’
So what happens when company leadership lets their humanity show? Check out the Try Guys’ recent PR master class in brand apologies and how to respond to betrayal. There have been all kinds of reactions and opinions about the entire story of one of the original Try Guys being, in essence, fired for having a consensual relationship with an employee outside of his marriage.
In contrast to more corporate, cold, non-apology ‘apologies,’ the way this incident has been handled was forthcoming, transparent, and authentic to the influencer brand. Instead of assuming that it wouldn’t be part of the brand moving forward, the Try Guys are openly acknowledging that their brand is changed by it. As are they as individuals.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss business betrayal and the aftermath.
Try Guy Video https://youtu.be/t6fIp7mMJ90
https://youtu.be/0iuIMVrSnqE
Nobody wants to think about the end of something at the beginning. That beginning excited feeling can be a little lessened by a single, fundamental truth: Everything that starts also ends.
It’s rare for entrepreneurs to think about the end of their business at the beginning. We’re so consumed with growing and next steps that it is hard to remember what we’re growing toward. Maybe you want to pass your business to your kids. Maybe you want to sell after 10 years. Maybe you want to grow a successor from your team. But you might not have given any of those paths serious thoughts because they are all ‘someday.’
If you’re lucky enough to choose your business’s end (or your end in your business), there are a few elements to keep in mind along the way that can make your business significantly more valuable. And they’re not easy to create once you’ve decided to end the journey - they’re much more powerful along the way.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss three key ways to make your business more valuable: Audited financials, Diversified revenue, and written standard operating procedures.
https://youtu.be/QEcgO9uUkJU
Welcome Brenda Eisenschenk! With a long history of client services and a specialty in telecommunications, Brenda and her team at InteleCONNECT have cultivated a huge local presence. Even more impressive when you consider the team's small size.
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle talk business, family, and stature with Brenda. And learn why Brenda’s top strength is Woo!
https://youtu.be/i18TF0Z_QK0
You decided to make a change. And you’re happy with the direction you’re headed. But there’s this time in between, when you’re actively moving toward something else but have to hang on to what was in transition.
Don’t believe us? Just think about what happens when someone decides to grow out their bangs. There are 2-3 awkward hair months in between bangs and no bangs. And we do the best we can during that time, but there’s no rushing the process. Hair just needs time to grow.
And so do changes and transitions in your business. We’re all anxious for sweeping change to just happen, but the path toward a new structure, process, or vision is rarely smooth and rarely comfortable for everyone. Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss awkward transitions.
https://youtu.be/VB4QENIGKCk
How many times do you have to get blocked on Bumble before you realize it’s a you problem? That’s the question the ‘single, lonely men’ need to be asking themselves these days. Not, why do women have such high expectations, but why can’t I do more than the bare minimum of not actively harassing women.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss the Psychology Today article taking TikTok by storm. And taking an entire generation of men to YouTube to search ‘emotional availability.’
https://youtu.be/22hTp_9PVFU
For some people, getting permission from others feels necessary in order to take action. Sometimes the most important person we need to get permission from is ourselves.
In this podcast, Michelle and JoyGenea explore all of the different ways that we grant ourselves permission or hold ourselves back by not granting permission. They also explore ways that micromanaging and waiting for permission can limit people from being great employees.
Quiet quitting is on everyone’s minds at the moment. But not only is it not a new concept, there have been many names over the years - work to rule, blue flu, even malicious compliance.
There are some assumptions in such an emotionally charged phrase. Namely, that there is no resolution to an inherent conflict between an employer and employees. Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss this conflict, how to avoid it, how to see it early, and how to solve it. Out loud.
https://youtu.be/-JGDl6zM4AM
Old hat? New ideas? When does experience become stagnation? When does comfort stop progress?
These are the questions JoyGenea and Michelle are asking in this episode of If These Heels Could Talk. In business, often we get comfortable with the status quo. Even if the status quo has pain points. Our change threshold is often higher than minor annoyances. But minor annoyances add up. And they’re felt differently by different people. Something that may be a minor annoyance to a leader could be a reason for an excellent employee to leave. Checking the leadership privilege and questioning the status quo is about inviting challenge - and seeing if current solutions stand up to that challenge.
Does your to do list leave you feeling accomplished or anxious? For JoyGenea, a to do list is a must. Her rolling to do lists are detailed and break large tasks down into smaller tasks that feel more immediate and manageable. For Michelle, a to do list is simply another way to fail and creates immense anxiety.
Which one is better? Neither - organization systems are only as good as a person’s ability and willingness to use them. And our abilities and willingness changes over time. The quest for a ‘perfect’ organization system that works for every one in every situation is a waste of time. And so is helpful organization advice between Michelle and JoyGenea. As they discover in this episode.
https://youtu.be/XGs2qb4BJ9o
You’ve heard of fight, flight, or freeze. You also may have realized that you have a harder time problem solving in those states. But recent research has shown just how much cognitive ability, in terms of function IQ, is lost during those states.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk about how problem solving and critical thinking skills can be impacted at work by what people bring to the office with themselves.
https://youtu.be/oLWeM-JjjCo
Michelle really took JoyGenea by surprise with this topic! After a brief chat with her coach, Michelle’s brain started working on this question: What Haven’t You Learned Yet?
Thinking ahead to life and business experiences that have provided valuable insight to others but haven’t been personally experienced yet - have you already learned along the way? What more will there be to learn if, or when, these happen in your life or business?
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle ponder the life lessons they’ve already had and the ones that are sure to come in the future!
https://youtu.be/iGVt9b9kO_U
It’s so hard to create a culture with intention. Because a real culture is an organic combination of the individuals that make it up. A true company culture shifts slightly with every person that is added or removed.
Large companies, especially franchised companies, have a hard time with culture and try to identify behaviors that indicate attitudes they find desirable. Flare is one example of this - some people love their flare and some people barely put up with their flare. But does someone’s engagement with a policy intended to drive culture really show their attitude?
Or is culture more a reflection of hiring, mentoring, training, leadership, and everyday actions? Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk about flare, unconscious bias, and the difference between the culture you want and the culture you have.
https://youtu.be/UJeSlqsfvPM
Jules’ Bistro is a mainstay of downtown St. Cloud, MN and has been growing immensely since their second owner, Donella Westphal, took over. Perhaps it’s something in the water, or perhaps it has something to do with Donella’s philosophies around leadership, business, and the role a restaurant can play in the community.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk with Donella, owner of Jules’ Bistro, about women in business, overcoming demons, and why she wears the same pair of shoes every single day.
https://youtu.be/47xBJkM1sz8
In an episode of The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin wrote, “Decisions are made by those who show up..” And voting in the primaries is just that! A way you can show up to help decide who will be on the ballot in November. And If These Heels Could Talk, These Heels Can Vote!
The brilliance of democracy is that it actually works better when more individuals participate. The more engaged we are, the more represented we are. JoyGenea and Michelle discuss primary voting in this short, special episode of If These Heels Could Talk.
https://youtu.be/toMpSoSfV2Q
Ever catch yourself driving down the road and suddenly wondering how you got where you are? Likely you were thinking deeply about something else while driving. Your short-term memory of the time driving would then be focused on what your brain was focusing on - errands, conflict with a friend, philosophical musings about cats - instead of focusing on driving.
Focus is like a flashlight for our memory, lighting specifics and keeping all else in the dark. This begs the question - what is multitasking? Is it even possible? Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss focus. And rarely get distracted along the way.
https://youtu.be/-aoi1RQxTMY
Sandy Voigt with the Women’s Business Alliance has decades of experience in business and helping others plan their small businesses. She has seen it all. And the rate of change in the last few years has truly surprised Sandy as much as any of us.
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle interview Sandy about the Women’s Business Alliance, the Entrepreneur Fund, and the central Minnesota business community.
Women’s Business Alliance
Women’s Business Alliance – Entrepreneur Fund
https://youtu.be/RbBPKKpPDO8
Michelle and JoyGenea talked about collaboration, how the recent changes in work environments have affected the way teams collaborate, and how important unplanned collaboration can be to business profits.
It is easy to get thinking about office space as numbers on a piece of paper. But there is more to it than that. Knowing your people, company, culture, and clients means you have to consider the factors not measured by dollar signs. Unplanned collaboration is one of those things as a business owner you can’t put a dollar amount on easily and yet is have value for problem-solving and more.
https://youtu.be/gPHw9h0oQnY
Gail Ivers is the Vice President of the St. Cloud Area Chamber of Commerce. Correction: WAS the Vice President. JoyGenea and Michelle had the pleasure of interviewing Gail in her last week before retiring off to enjoy her flower gardens and world travels.
But what does Gail see coming for the business community AFTER she goes? And what did she love (and not love) about her time at the chamber? (Hint: It’s the same thing!!) Tune in to hear from Gail, our second winner of the Brilliant Leader Sole award, as she looks forward to the next chapter!
https://youtu.be/FdMG86DbaGc
Feeling like we don’t ‘fit in’ is such a shared experience that there’s a whole genre of teen movies about trying to fit in. Our human yearning for community, for belonging, is incredibly strong. So many of us try to get the outward behaviors right. When we’re young (and sometimes not so young), it’s about the right hair or the right jeans or the right sneakers. As we get older, it might be living in the right neighborhood or driving the right car or even cleaning our house the right way.
But belonging, true belonging, is about being accepted as we are. So why do we mistake that for ‘fitting in?’ Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss the similarities and differences. And their own journeys to belonging.
https://youtu.be/FXfOpWmHOpo
Anna Marie’s Alliance is working to end relationship violence and Lori Eich is the phenomenal person in charge of raising money to do just that.
Non-profit development is about helping develop community resources to support an organization, including money but also volunteers, staffing, awareness, and overall support. Lori has worked in development in Central MN at several organizations, most recently at Anna Marie’s.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk with Lori and learn more about the unique mission of Anna Marie’s Alliance as well as all the ways that you can help support anti-violence work in your community.
https://youtu.be/qZq201K2YiM
Most of us try to skip right to the end. Or never get past the beginning. But healing from trauma is now thought to require a neurosequential approach - that is, be more effective when treated in order, starting with the connection to others and the world around us.
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle talk about how these steps can play out in real time and where work leaders can stumble into boundaries with the way people interact at the office.
https://youtu.be/_6A8sjhGdN0
Surely someone called 911. That person has been screaming for a few minutes now. Wish emergency responders would get here. That person really needs help. Surely someone else will help. Bystander Effect is a psychological theory that we keep seeing, over and over, in a variety of ways. If a single individual is asked to complete a task or feels compelled by circumstance to complete a task, the sense of responsibility is strong and they will most likely complete it. If a group is faced with the same circumstances, each person’s sense of responsibility is weakened and each feels sure that another will take on the task, often leaving the task undone.
Anyone who has ever served on a large volunteer committee or even just done a group project in the third grade would be familiar with the Bystander Effect. In non-emergent situations, the Bystander Effect looks like apathy or an unwillingness to volunteer. More recent studies show that, when applied to workplace settings, subordinates will refrain from informing managers of their ideas or concerns out of the assumption that their idea or opinion has already been thought of, considered, and dismissed.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss the Bystander Effect and how it might show up in your workplace.
The inability to sense the passing of time is just that - an inability. For those with true time blindness due to ADHD or another sensory issue, time blindness can negatively impact almost every aspect of life. And not the least because the neurotypical world doesn’t understand the inability to sense time passing. They just see the behavior - consistently late for meetings or with assignments, vastly underestimating the amount of time a task will take, getting ‘lost’ in a task to the detriment of all other responsibilities.
The solution isn’t a to do list. Or, heaven forbid, another planner. It’s not an organizational issue. Time blindness is a sensory issue. There isn’t one solution for all those with time blindness just like there isn’t one solution for all those with misophonia (selective sound sensitivity) and a partner who chews loudly. Coping mechanisms help, but an understanding from the neurotypical world is going to be important in reducing the shame and guilt some people experience.
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss their own experiences. One from the time blind point of view and the other from the hyper-time aware point of view.
YouTube: https://youtu.be/R3RCMBZqRrQ
Health is more than just physical. And non-combat veterans and military families serve the country in their own way. Kerri started VREC, the Veteran Resource and Enrichment Center, for all those who contribute to our military services. It’s a place where people understand, a place for engagement in the community, and a transitional resource center for veterans and their families. And it’s completely unique to Central Minnesota.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea interview an amazing woman with an amazing story.
Open house on June 12th 1 to 4
Motorcycle Ride for Families of Veterans June 25th 2022 starting at Harley Davidson, St. Cloud, MN
Website for VREC: www.vrecmn.com
Facebook: www.Facebook.com/veteran.resource.and.enrichment.center
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The Brilliant Leader Sole award is a way of recognizing those that struggle to be recognized. On a large scale, women entrepreneurs are overlooked for public recognition. Their accomplishments tend to be in more spheres - women who own businesses are often still the primary (or sole!) caregiver to children or aging parents. Still the ones in charge of the household management. And often at the cost of what their business could have been.
And while each woman must make those decisions personally, at If These Heels Could Talk, we recognize the tremendous impact these women have on their communities, quietly, over decades. Donating time and resources to community non-profits and children’s sports teams, keeping diners and salons and boutiques open for business day after day.
There’s not a ton of recognition opportunities there. So we made one. It’s called the Brilliant Leader Sole award. Hear the story.
Women choosing careers in STEM fields or trades are still few and far between. Why? That’s what Daniel Larson, chair of the St Cloud Area Technical and Community Colleges would like to know. And what he’s dancing to change. You can donate here to support Daniel and his cause.
Michelle and JoyGenea talk about the things that we often set aside or don't use, because they are too precious to be used. In business that can be things like ideas, gifts, and digital files. In our personal life that can be things like heirloom gifts, quilts, and photos. Two generations talk about their differences and similarities. Michelle is the minimalist and JoyGenea is the keeper.
Sarah Noble became a financial planner in an environment that told girls that math and money weren’t for them. And she doesn’t ever want girls to experience that again. Women need to be empowered to run their own financial futures, Sarah says.
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle talk money, podcasts, and dreams with Sarah Noble from AIS Planning.
Cutting Edge or Bleeding Edge? How do you know when you, or your market, is ready for something new?
The reason they call it the bleeding edge is that super early adopters take on all the risk. For well capitalized and established businesses, there are substantial rewards for being the first one in a space and huge downsides to missing the boat. Enough to take on the giant risk of being so early that the effort might waste resources.
For smaller businesses, the danger of missing out is less and therefore the risk of being a too-early adopter is incredibly high. Too high for most to consider it.
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss the pros and cons of being too early or too late.
Mary Jane owned Hairitage Square, a small-town salon with giant impact in a small Minnesota town. Oh, and she happens to be the first recipient of the Brilliant Leader Sole Award from If These Heels Could Talk!!
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle talk with Mary Jane about the decision to close her salon, the aftermath of life as a small business owner, and what it’s like to work for someone else again!
Social Links from client: https://pin.it/4RIbQpP
When was the last time you interviewed a potential vendor, contractor, or consultant and thought, “I don’t need them. I can do this myself.” Did you hire them?
We bring help into our businesses for all sorts of reasons - time, expertise, capacity, or some combination of those things. But every professional we ask for help needs our trust in order to really do their work well. We have to share financial documents with the accountants. We have to give logins to the digital marketers. We have to give keys to the cleaning crew. Regardless of why we hire this help, we need to be all-in on our trust with them for them to do their jobs. And if we’re not, our money on these professionals can be wasted.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk about trust the professionals you hire. And how lack of trust can lead to waste of time and dollars.
Creativity is about problem-solving. While most people look at efforts by visual artists and say they’re not that creative, others know that creativity is not about oil paints. Or sculpture. Or poetry.
Creativity is a way of thinking - a brain muscle that anyone can develop. To access our creative selves, we need to be focused. For some, that means calm. For others, that means chaos. For some it means working ahead. For others, it means procrastination. And while we all access and experience creativity differently, for most of us, creativity is about work.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss how they access creativity and help their teams trust their creative processes.
Flowers are amazing. Getting flowers can make anyone’s day. But what about making and delivering them? Rhoda Paurushas owned St. Cloud Floral for more than a decade. The industry has changed tremendously in that time. Listen in as she talks with Michelle and JoyGenea about what it takes to continue to be the premier floral shop in central MN.
YOUTUBE
https://youtu.be/rRuRfPXxy9I
EPS 119 When it comes to marketing sometimes we can overlook the things right under our noses and spend tons of money on stuff that gets us nowhere. Listen as JoyGenea and Michelle talk about the biggest opportunities you might be missing.
Tara is a business and leadership coach with seventeen years of experience in leadership development and small business operations. She has leveraged her experience into ALIGN, a business consulting company focused on utilizing individual strengths to grow teams and leaders.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea have a frank and open conversation with Tara Gronhovd.
Guest Notes:
Tara Gronhovd
Name of your Company: ALIGN
Links to your website and 2-3 social media platforms:
https://aligntransform.com/
https://www.facebook.com/aligntransform
https://www.instagram.com/aligntransform/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/align-transform/?viewAsMember=true
hy away from our competitiveness? Avoiding losing by dropping out of the competition may or may not be the best thing you can do, depending on your intentions. And owning your competitiveness will help you use the behaviors it gives you to your advantage, while helping you see how you can avoid hurting others with behaviors that might not serve.
We all lose. Michelle and JoyGenea lose every day. It is how you lose, how you treat other people in the process and what you learn from it.
Is it generational? Leadership is becoming more focused on mental health, authenticity, and transparency and less focused on authority and the mystique of infallibility.
In conversations between business owners, this becomes very clear along generational (and sometimes gender) lines. Different styles of leadership are trending, largely due to employee demand. The additional pressures of Covid have brought many of these conversations out in the open.
Michelle and JoyGenea question adding more transparency to your leadership. Why not include more transparency in your company? Why not push back on decades of beliefs that no longer fit and have been disproven. Change is uncomfortable and it is refreshing.
We can all think of times when a system was so flawed that it was totally broken. As owners of growing small businesses, Michelle and JoyGenea are working to add systems, processes and procedures. Can we overdo it at times and leave no room for the randomness that is required in business?
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle talk about the differences between processes that are built around solopreneurs and pivoting those processes to support and engage teams. Turns out, flexibility is key.
Imagine you’re a doctor. A patient walks in and says, “I need this medicine.” Do you prescribe the medicine? Or do you ask some questions first? How about, what are your symptoms? What are you experiencing that makes you feel you need that medicine? What do you think the medicine will do for you?
Now pull back to the last time someone called up your business and said, “I need a website. How much?” Or “I heard a business coach can help my sales. How much revenue do you add for your clients?” Or “Can you teleport me?” There’s no good way to answer these questions without more information.
Sometimes strong communication requires you to hear what others aren’t able to say. Sometimes sales means you have to think around the request that people are making and to the goal they actually have.
Michelle and JoyGenea talk about answering the questions your client doesn’t know how to ask. The best way is to drive the conversation toward their goals, what Brene Brown calls ‘painting done.’ Turns out, a teleportation request might be as simple as calling a car service.
Or manage your calendar. Or take out your trash. Or create meeting agendas.
Why? Because your time is better spent running your business. Paying attention to the things that only you can pay attention to. Creating new products, developing your leaders, dreaming about what's next - that's your job description. And it doesn't mean that you can't answer email. But it does mean that every hour you're doing what someone else could do, you're costing your business money.
What's stopping you? Likely a belief about those tasks. Does one of these sound familiar?
It's not a full-time job!
No one could do it as well as me.
It will take me longer to explain than to just do it myself.
No one wants to clean up after me.
You might have your own version. Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle talk about how they overcame the beliefs that were no longer serving them and developed job descriptions that would help run their businesses and keep their focus where it belonged.
Michelle and JoyGenea know a little about pushing the boundaries between ‘able to handle whatever comes up’ and ‘more than can ever be handled at one time’. This book is a great place to stop and check in on if you are managing your life or if your life is managing you.
Written in the context of modern feminism, Burnout is about completing the stress cycle and recognizing how the Human Giver Syndrome and our conditioning within the context of a patriarchal society to be all things to all people prevents us from doing just that. The idea of doing it all ultimately means we’re doing it badly.
Complete the cycle of stress. Recognize your worth. Celebrate being instead of giving.
https://youtu.be/5Q-rJ9wDODQ
Perfect is a limiting belief: a subjective state of being that is not only impossible but also damaging. No one is perfect and nothing is perfect. But our belief that we can be if we only try hard enough damages our relationships with others and our self-worth.
The double-edged sword of perfectionism is likely rearing in your mind right now, “But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try! Working toward a goal is important!” Working toward goals is important. But goals and perfection are not the same thing. We can work to make something the best we can, but if we’re always judging our best by a literal impossible standard, we’re always going to fall short. And what do we miss in the meantime?
Listen as JoyGenea and Michelle embrace imperfection and talk about silencing the judgy, critical Stickler in ourselves so we can show up with flexibility and strive toward our goals in peace.
How do we lie honestly? Stating opinion as fact, misremembering things, detail avoidance and more are all of the ways we lie without intending to deceive. Confabulation is the fancy word for it. In psychological terms, it is often associated with memory disorders and a variety of conditions. Brene Brown talks about confabulation in Dare to Lead using examples like stating opinions as facts, leaving out salient details to make the storyteller more appealing, and ‘spinning’ information to not be the bearer of bad news.
In a relationship, confabulation can have many impacts. But eroding trust is something to watch for on working teams. Listen as JoyGenea and Michelle tell the truth about all of the daily lies we tell ourselves and others.
Next year will be the year for…what? Setting a theme for the year isn’t about resolutions or goals, but intention. It’s not as specific (or pressure-filled), but can help you focus other efforts for the year ahead.
Goals and resolutions can feel like pressure to perform, where a theme for the year can be a more flexible way to focus on the overall picture of the business and your decision-making. If you’ve never found goals to be helpful, try a theme first. Then work up to goal setting with third party who can help make the goal-setting and tracking more accessible.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk about setting a theme and their ideas for the upcoming year.
Understanding "Letter of the Law or Spirit of the Law" and how as a business owner these questions can often land in your lap that have multiple answers and some fall under "Letter of the Law" and others are under the "Spirit of the Law".
Michelle and JoyGenea talk about a recent situation that really made Michelle question these points a little deeper.
It’s the “Most Wonderful Time Of The Year” to do your business plan. We have given or have heard all of the excuses as to why there is no time to make a one page business plan. All of them are BS unless you are on your deathbed.
Of course, you can’t make ALL the decisions in 15 minutes. But you can get broad strokes on paper. Sometimes, that’s all you need to motivate a start. And if this is your first business plan, 15 minutes may be all you need to understand if you even want to keep moving forward on the idea that just won’t go away. Join us, get out your pencil and a piece of paper or just hit pause and take a voice memo and you too can have this done in 15 min.
Link to the one-page business plan we used.
https://www.hubspot.com/business-templates/one-page-business-plan
Youtube Link
https://youtu.be/Lym5C14gjVI
When you spend every day in the trenches, it is hard to know the way out. It is hard to see any other path than the well-worn one in front of you. Time away is essential for creative problem-solving. When is your next true vacation?
And we don’t mean when is your next day that you don’t go to the office. Because today, we take our offices with us everywhere we go. Boundaries are blurred between work and home, work and life. We can answer email everywhere. So we do. We can ‘take a quick call’ anywhere. So we do. And we teach those around us that we are always available.
How can you get out of those trenches? How can you pull away so your brain has time to rest and gain perspective? Because when you do, you will solve problems you can’t even see right now. Your business will grow. Your team will succeed. And your family will thank you.
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss true vacations and the benefits to their businesses.
It’s one of the most highly recommended books by women in business - Burnout by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski. Centered on the female experience as well as the human stress response, Burnout is one of those books that people describe as a pivotal moment in their development.
But Michelle and JoyGenea haven’t had time to read it. Yet.
Follow along as If These Heels Could Talk discusses reading Burnout. What resonates? What does not? And will both JoyGenea and Michelle get through the book during the holidays - one of the most stressful times of the year - without experiencing burnout?
Seamless integration. Stellar customer service. Fantastic value.
In marketing, we call it puffery. Not being shy about what our businesses do well. Sometimes, puffery borders on overstatement. When it enters the sales process, it can be downright harmful. Because if you can’t deliver what you promise in a sales meeting, you might get the client, but you lose the relationship.
Why? Sales is about promise. Delivery is about fulfillment, or living up to that promise. So if your sales and onboarding team aren’t communicating well, or the person who needs to work through a process at a client’s business isn’t part of the team choosing a vendor, delivery can’t fulfill the promise of sales. Trust is broken. The relationship devolves. And maybe you get to keep that business, but you won’t get the referral or the next project.
Michelle and JoyGenea talk about preventative selling. That is, making sure you sell what you can deliver. And then working to fulfill those promises with intention, everyday.
If you could go back and tell your pre-pandemic self something, what would it be?
That’s the question that Michelle springs on JoyGenea in this episode of If These Heels Could Talk. If you could write a letter and your pre-pandemic self would read it, what would it say?
Hear about everything from being resilient to change, to turning off the news faster, to just plain chilling out. Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle talk about what they have learned, what they think is still coming, and why we should all embrace life without the concept of normal.
Someone has just asked you to go to something. Maybe it’s a holiday party. Maybe it’s a networking event. Maybe it’s a community service club. Maybe it’s a fundraiser. You will be representing your business at this event. And the event isn’t one that you want to go to - not because you generally dislike events (that’s a whole different podcast!) but because the event doesn’t align with your values.
How do you say no without alienating the person asking? How do you gracefully decline without sharing personal information you may not be comfortable sharing?
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss navigating the shark-infested waters of being ‘other’ than the predominant culture, when the predominant culture assumes you’re one of them.
NPR reported economist Alan Cole’s concept of Skimpflation - the idea that consumers are receiving less value for their dollar because businesses are reducing quality of goods and services while maintaining prices. So instead of pricing going up (inflation), quality is being reduced.
We can see this all around us in longer wait times, fewer goods on shelves, lower quality packaging, and smaller quantities. For most large businesses, it’s far simpler to reduce the amount of rice in a box by 8% than it is to increase the price of the box by 8%.
But small reductions in quality for a brand are like moths to a sweater. Small hole after small hole after small hole and eventually the sweater disintegrates. If you’re Amazon or 3M or Walmart and you have a bazillion sweaters, you will survive. If you’re a small business, it’s likely that you wouldn’t.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss Skimpflation and the opportunities it creates for small businesses to message their story of quality to their customers and clients.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss the 100th episode of If These Heels Could Talk, where we’ve been, and what we’re planning for the future of the podcast.
They say that practice makes perfect. But what if practice is scary and perfect isn’t needed? Does that mean you don’t need to practice?
In business, we plan for lots of things that never happen. And lots of things that do. We buy insurance against fire and data loss, theft and tornados. We might even put disaster plans on paper. But when do we train our staff in the plan? When do we practice?
Anxiety is partially about not feeling prepared. What do we do in the event of a fire? Terrible weather? Or even a human-driven disaster like an active shooter?
There are some simple things you can do to reduce the stress for your staff and yourself and increase the safety of everyone. Listen in as JoyGenea tells the story of being a visitor in a hospital ICU during an intense Active Shooter (ALICE) Training. And as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss the importance of preparedness. Even reluctant preparedness.
To access local Active Shooter Training, visit https://www.alicetraining.com/our-program/alice-training/
Hiring is hard. And it’s harder when fewer people apply for an open position.
When it was an ‘employer’s market,’ tons of people would apply for job openings. Employers had their pick. Those employers in upward trending industries or with great reputations or with fantastic benefits packages tend to have less trouble, but none of those factors are easily maneuvered or controlled.
Today, hiring is very, very hard. Because attracting applicants is very, very hard. People are leaving the job market. Not everyone, but enough so that we feel it. We feel it at our favorite restaurants and retail stores with slightly longer lines and slightly longer waits. We feel it when we’re hiring when 3 people apply for a position that, two years ago, 15 people would have applied for.
Everywhere, Human Resources and Marketing departments are racking their brains, trying to figure out how to fill open positions. How to advertise their job listings in new places or with new parameters. But they’re missing something.
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle talk about rethinking hiring, from the job title to the job description to the ‘ideal candidate.’
It’s like a break-up. Someone is going to want it and someone else isn’t.
As a small business owner, when you have to fire an employee, you know it’s going to be emotional and difficult. Even if the emotion is anger. But how do you handle it when someone decides to leave?
Employment is a relationship. It can feel transactional and distant or it can feel emotionally intense, but it’s still a relationship. And all relationships require both parties to consent to continue the relationship. As employers, we earn our employees’ trust and loyalty through our leadership. Employees earn an employer’s trust and loyalty through job performance and their contributions to the team. Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk about what it feels like to get ‘dumped’ by an employee. And, more importantly, what to do to re-engage the rest of the team in the transition.
Swag or promotional products, can be an excellent way to extend your networking and help build your small business. But, like any other advertising options, swag needs to be executed correctly. Every real estate and insurance agent in your area will give away a calendar, or a pen, or a can cozy. The bank and law firms will also have pens. The law firm ones might be slightly nicer. Coffee cups, hats, and whatever is on trend for the year (pop sockets and fidget spinners have been popular recently) will be at every trade show, conference, and parade. Not to mention the all popular charity 5K t-shirt.
And some of these get worn or used. You can often see a 5K t-shirt in action while someone is mowing their lawn or painting. But when is the last time you saw a promotional product on someone’s desk at work? When was the last time someone said, “You should see this amazing thing I got from XYZ company.”
The power of promotional products isn’t always in the universal appeal. Sometimes the power is in the unique. Or the remarkable. Or the creative. None of which automatically mean expensive. But all of which mean time, effort, and thought given.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss the power of swag and what it can do for your business’s reputation.
You’ve networked. You’ve been introduced. Lots of people know who you are and that you’re in business.
While networking is an ongoing activity, part of the process is nurturing relationships for the long-term. But how?
Frankly, the same way you would nurture any relationship. Show up. Be present. Be interested and engaged. Enthusiastically cheer on the other business’s success and be supportive in more challenging times. Listen to what is important to the other business owner and then act on it in conjunction with them. Look for opportunities to work together on special projects or promotions.
JoyGenea and Michelle discuss nurturing relationships in their business lives, including the most important step - choosing which relationship to nurture.
Oh, look. You stumbled over a consequence.
Consequences of our choices and other’s choices are all around us in business and leadership. And sometimes, like children, we stamp our feet and proclaim it’s just not fair. But outcomes of our decisions are rarely all one bad or all good. In fact, we typically don’t know all the consequences of our actions.
Natural consequences are the ones that just happen - drink to excess, get a hangover. Imposed consequences are things like getting grounded, getting ‘written up’, or getting arrested. An authority develops a system of corrective action intended to incentivize desirable behavior. Say you’re always late for work. Your coworkers may gossip about you behind your back, resent your behavior as disrespectful, or act in a way that feels disrespectful to you. Natural consequences. Your boss may start disciplining you or fire you. Imposed consequences.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea apply this to various situations in their life and pose one question: Which one is more likely to change behavior?
What we tell ourselves about a situation is a powerful thing. Business not growing? It’s easy to say it’s because of the market. Or because of circumstances. Or because of the weather. But what do you do when you’re watching someone else thrive with the same circumstances?
When JoyGenea and Michelle met, they quickly joined forces as office mates. And Michelle’s business started to achieve some of the things that JoyGenea had wanted for her business. Michelle thought JoyGenea had decided to keep her business small. JoyGenea didn’t realize that the small decisions she made every day made sure her business stayed on it’s course, even while she set goals for the kind of growth she was seeing in Michelle’s business.
Three years later, JoyGenea and Michelle discuss this dynamic for the first time. Listen in.
We’re probably all familiar with the idea of a workout buddy - someone to make sure we show up to our workouts and complete them all the way through. This is an accountability partner, and we need them in our businesses. Why? Because being accountable only to ourselves in the short term means procrastinating on the really important and difficult things in the long term.
People who like to workout don’t need a workout buddy. Business owners all have things we enjoy and things we don’t. Sometimes it’s reviews. Sometimes it’s budgets. Sometimes it’s strategic planning, or posting to social media, or getting those website edits done.
Romantic partners make lousy professional accountability partners. Business coaches, therapists, counselors, and professional executive groups make amazing accountability partners. Why? Because the relationship has clarity of purpose and goals.
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss what qualities make for a successful accountability partnership, including their own abilities to hear what others are saying.
Hiring family and friends. The place most small businesses start and, if done well, can be an absolute boon to a business early on. Once a business has non-related employees, hiring family gets extra tricky. The owner isn’t just navigating the familial relationships and dynamics, but internal business dynamics among staff.
Clear communication, expectations, and standards are the key to successfully hiring family, as both Michelle and JoyGenea can attest. JoyGenea has navigated the family in business many, many times and had learned many of the same lessons that Michelle, fresh from her own experience, just discovered.
Ever see a headshot on a business card? How many times does it look like the person who handed you the card? What about images for your website? When was the last time you updated those?
Some businesses recognize the need for professional images, but don’t update them frequently. This happens for coaches, consultants, real estate agents, insurance agents, and others who build their personal brand professionally. Some businesses don’t understand the importance of professional, quality images, spending the bulk of their resources on a powerfully designed brochure or website and then putting in whatever image they can find from a free stock photo site.
Either way, updated professional photos are essential to your marketing efforts. Creating a library of professional photos requires some time, effort, and the right photographer. Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss finding the right professional partner in this episode.
Sorry, we don’t take that card. Sorry, the computer won’t let me do that. Sorry, we’re not allowed to process refunds without a manager.
How many times have you heard something like this at a national chain or a government office or some other organization where decision-making is removed from the person who is standing in front of the customer.
There are solid business reasons to make decisions centrally in large organizations - consistency, employee training, fewer hiring requirements and larger labor pool. But the challenge is that when you are creating universal ‘policies’ that are made to be implemented without any real-time information or decision-making, your policies will only cover the situations that you’ve foreseen.
And so the customer standing in front of your employee, waiting to return something broken, is going to have a bad experience. Because you’ve made a decision for that situation that makes your life easier, not theirs.
Large organizations like chain retailers and restaurants can accommodate these bad experiences and exceptions due to the sheer volume of customers and transactions. Government offices can accommodate these bad experiences because there are no other options for most of us. Small businesses cannot survive this kind of decision-making.
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss business decisions made for the running of the business without the customer or client in mind. And the slippery slope some business owners find themselves on when they prioritize their convenience over their customers.
Every week, there’s another headline about millennials and what they’re doing wrong - not enough of this, too much of that. Millennials have, evidently, killed the diamond and dairy industries, refused home ownership on a massive scale, and slowed the birth rate to its lowest point ever. Wow. That’s a ton of responsibility.
Employers just shake their heads and ponder how to engage with a millennial work force. Now that millennials are in their 30’s and gasp 40’s, employers need to face up to a different type of leadership emerging in their companies. It’s a leadership style that has less foundation in accountability and more in compassion. Less focus on competition and more on collaboration. But also mired in self-doubt and a lack of sustained follow through.
As a millennial and Gen Z’er respectively, Michelle and JoyGenea share a unique perspective. Employers have an obligation to train and develop leaders from the millennial generation. Because without those future leaders, where will your company go?
There’s nothing that can replace practice. Think about gymnasts. Years - decades really - of practice to perform a routine that’s about a minute long. Talk about pressure. And talk about dedication to practicing.
In business, practicing can mean many things. Those arguments that you have with yourself in the shower or the car are practicing for real conversations. Practicing a pitch or presentation helps calm the nerves and clarify intentions. Practicing with a coach is even more powerful, as a great coach can show you a mirror of your own thinking, restating and helping you determine the best path forward.
Regardless of the task at hand, practicing helps focus the mind and frame your goals. Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk about all the
Imagine 3 adult siblings with respectful relationships who primarily see each other during holidays. Imagine now that these 3 siblings are faced with planning a parent’s funeral and dissolving a household, estate, and life. The amount of time and work this creates is like another job. And it requires all siblings to step into the challenge in different ways.
It’s a stressful challenge for any sibling group. When one of the siblings owns a business, there is more to consider. For example, the person who owns a business will, out of necessity, have legal and financial partnerships that can help. Siblings, parents, and other close family who are not attuned to the day to day realities of owning a business are unlikely to understand to the time constraints placed on owners. They may assume that owning a business means a vacation whenever you want or need one.
Often, as adults, our family communication patterns haven’t evolved with us. So when we get together in larger family groups (like holidays), we fall back into familiar communication patterns. In times of stress, these communication patterns can be incredibly destructive or incredibly useful. Business owners have unique tools to handle conflict in communication.
Listen in as JoyGenea talks about her recent experience planning a parent’s funeral while keeping her business running. Learn about her successes, like setting clear goals and objectives with her siblings, as well as her challenges, like managing time, relationships, and bureaucracy in a completely different way.
It’s not about how much your product or service costs. It’s about the value of that product or service in your client’s mind.
It’s not about who sees your ad. It’s about what your ad says (or doesn’t say) that creates desire.
Marketing isn’t advertising. But strong marketing and strong advertising emanate from the same place - understanding your brand’s unique selling proposition and then communicating that, over and over, in different ways.
Often, both Michelle and JoyGenea hear from clients who want to place advertisements. And when asked what we’re advertising, it’s a throwaway answer, like ‘whatever, we just need to get our name out there.’ And then a month later, the same client comes to us with a ‘how do I know if it worked?’ question.
It’s not about having all the answers in advance. It’s about being thoughtful with the questions, knowing your business’s unique contribution to your clients, knowing the value you bring to their lives, the pain point you help them resolve. And then telling people about that.
There are obvious differences, like holidays that are religion-based. And there are subtle and individual differences, like Memorial Day feeling different for a family that has lost a loved one in military service. But relatively recently, more mainstream media attention has been focused on what might be termed political or historical holidays, like Independence Day or the Fourth of July, and those for who mourn the day.
In other words, our cultural sensibilities are shifting to encompass a more complete version of our shared history and how it impacts ourselves and our families today. Businesses are listening and starting to act differently on social media and with their messaging. Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss the many questions that surround small business owners who may be struggling to find the path that will best serve their goals.
In marketing, we work to create value in the audience’s mind. But when the entire value is driven by marketing and not the laws of supply and demand, does that leave us vulnerable to the ‘next big thing’ that undermines our value?
The diamond industry is a great example. Now that man-made alternatives are readily available, much more accessible, and visually indistinguishable to the vast majority of people, how can diamonds hold their value? As the industry’s advertising moves toward the more strident messaging of real diamonds equaling real love, the notes of shame and judgment couldn’t be more prevalent. It’s not kind and, as more and more individuals embrace the design possibilities of man-made diamonds, not sustainable. What happens when celebrities start talking about their fantastic jewels on the red carpet as man-made? What happens when the general public doesn’t care if it came from the ground or from the lab?
We’re watching this industry try to pivot right now. Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss what makes value real. And how you could see something similar coming in your industry.
Read any professional job description and it will describe a linear path toward the open position: this degree, this many years of experience, and this background. And in the next sentence, the job description will talk about initiative (self-starter!) and drive to succeed. It will describe a company that values resilience and being open to change.
In short, the job description will ask for a background based on skills and experience as well as characteristics that are largely learned by those who never seem to have the right background for their goals. People with the audacity to dream of something bigger for themselves and others. These are scrappers. People who didn’t come from the ‘right’ background but succeeded in their goals anyway.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss how to find scrappers in your resume stack. How to look beyond the GPA and course list and see character instead of qualifications. How to see commonly held hiring ‘red flags’ as opportunities and interview people anyway. A few gaps in employment or many companies in a short time frame could be a problem. Or it could be a single parent who had jobs that couldn’t accommodate flexibility in schedules. No extracurricular activities in school? Could be disengaged. Or could be working full-time to keep up with family medical bills. You’ll never know if your HR software automatically discards those resumes.
It’s not that you think you’re wrong. You know you’re right. But you also know that women get negative feedback from others (women and men), when we insist on getting what we want - what we order in a restaurant, what we pay for at the auto mechanics, what we need from our doctors. A purist may say that holding our space is important in every situation. A realist may say that is exhausting so pick your battles. So how do you decide, in a professional situation, when to insist and when to back down?
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss ways to hold your space and the allies we find along the way. Sometimes, when we think people are going to be upset with us for asking, we discover that they actually wanted to know all along. Sometimes asking someone to hold an employee, consultant, or subcontractor accountable allows them the opportunity to do so. If we don’t ask, we’re filling in the gaps in the story and assuming what another person will think or do. Not very flattering on us or them.
You might be overlooking talent and leadership in your organization and not even know it. Many times, introverts are uncomfortable speaking up in meetings, voicing ideas, or even just so overwhelmed by the social interactions that the meetings are uncomfortable. If this is your only interaction with some of your staff, it may be the only way you can assess their work and potential. Introverts do this in in-person meetings with their hands tied behind their backs.
Think back to spring of 2020 when all your meetings moved online. Most extroverted people struggled - struggled to connect, struggled with the technology, insisted that meeting in person was the only way. Most introverted people transitioned easily and enjoyed meetings more. In fact, as virtual meetings continued past spring, many introverts were able to shine in ways they couldn’t before.
As an introvert, JoyGenea has been questioning the efficacy of in-person meetings for many organizations. And then starting to wonder about why she and other introverts are pushing back so very hard. And why some members are just assuming that everyone wants to be in person again. As a social introvert, Michelle is also noticing the benefits of continuing virtual meetings - on time, productivity, and efficiency.
So why are we rushing back to in-person?
If you think buying or selling a home has you prepared for the commercial real estate rollercoaster, think again. There’s a reason the game Monopoly is all about becoming a tycoon by buying residential real estate - between zoning, the Small Business Association, permits, tax incentive programs, and the National Historic Registry, buying commercial office space is not for the faint of heart.
Listen in as JoyGenea interviews Michelle about her recent commercial office purchase. And the 14 months of ups and downs that came with it!! From lessons learned to tips about choosing an agent, Michelle spills all.
It’s often described as a cup. Our cups are over-full or not full enough. With things that have physical limitations, like a building or a production line, we talk about capacity. The number of people a building can hold. The number of widgets a line can produce in an hour or a day.
Capacity is all around us as entrepreneurs and small business owners. Often, we are working beyond our capacity in a variety of ways: beyond our time, beyond our skills, beyond our understanding. Resources in small business are limited and that means not only owners but employees are often working beyond or outside their own capacity.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss knowing when you’re outside capacity and understanding the warning signs in time to add capacity before it’s urgently required.
Between depression and flourishing, there is a state of being that most of us feel. We might call it the ‘blahs.’ We can still get our work done. We can still find joy in our kids and our lives. But it feels like everything is harder. Everything takes effort. Our motivation is duller. And so is our focus.
This is called languishing and it is a very common response to long-term anxiety and grief. We’re all exhausted - tired of the fight with COVID, tired of the fight with those who disagree or dehumanize, tired of trying to keep our businesses alive. And it shows.
While we might have no symptoms of mental illness, we’re not well either. According to a recent article in the New York Times, languishing ‘may be the dominant emotion of 2021.’
Naming it is the first step toward changing it. Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss how they are dealing with their own languishing.
How do you set a price for your time? So many factors go into this decision - market, services, client budget, selling propositions, and competition are the straight-forward, left-brained business decisions. But self-worth, confidence, and desire to ‘help out’ all factor into an entrepreneur’s decision-making around pricing. You need to be able to look someone in the eye, say your number,. and not apologize for it. This is much harder than it sounds.
As frequent failures (do we get miles for that?), JoyGenea and Michelle discuss how they price their services and how their pricing has changed over the years. In some cases, from charitable to profitable. Learn to avoid the common pitfalls of pricing in this episode of “If These Heels Could Talk.”
So often, people think creativity is about some sort of art or craft. But really, creativity is about problem-solving. Transforming something, or some circumstance, to what we want it to be. And creativity is not a magical, mystical concept that only some people can grasp. Maybe it is true that some people are more naturally creative, but creative problem-solving is a skill that can be learned, practiced, and developed over time. Those who creatively solve problems consistently can access that muscle more easily.
When you think of what people create, think past the product and look at the hard work and dedication it took to get there. All the false starts and crumpled up drafts add up to a finished product. The problems that you face in your business can be addressed and the more practice you have in creative problem solving, the easier it will be to try draft solutions, identify the weaknesses, throw solutions away, and solve it better the next time.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss their creative problem-solving strategies and how they reduce noise in their lives so they can focus on being creative.
Not all agencies white label, but some specialties within marketing are difficult to have on staff. So how do these relationships work? And why not just tell the clients exactly what is going on?
Michelle and JoyGenea discuss the line between transparency and the ethics of working through other companies while working on their own business brands. Not to mention, transitioning between owning a business and working for someone else again.
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Getting SMART about goals is about making sure your goals are easier to define and manage. Breaking them into long-term and short-term helps as well.
A long-term goal like, say, a million in revenue by year 5 in business, is a great aim. But until it’s broken into smaller, short-term goals with time frames and action steps, it’s easy to let time just pass. Technically, goals that aren’t SMART aren’t goals. They’re dreams.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss making sure your goals are SMART, working them into your business plans, and how to review and refresh your goals periodically.
Why would anyone leave a healthy relationship? Professionally, we do it all the time. Sometimes we outgrow a group. Sometimes we find something that fits our professional goals better. Sometimes we’re recruited. Sometimes another relationship, like a partner or children, takes precedence. The trick is to alter the terms of the relationships in a way that continues building them. You’re not really leaving a job - you’re opening up an opportunity for someone else. You’re not really firing someone - you’re freeing them up to find someplace better.
Leaving a relationship better than when you arrived is a skill that not many people share. But even great relationships end. How can you cross the good-bye bridge without burning it behind you?
Michelle and JoyGenea talk through the missteps they have seen, from over explaining to not listening, in their small community where no relationship ever really ends. It just changes.
In so many professional situations, small talk abounds. As women, we are inevitably asked about children. For women without children, these conversations can be emotional and social minefields. Do you share intimate details of your infertility history with acquaintances? Suffer the social awkwardness when you deflect the question or appear emotional? Say no and hope the other person just doesn’t ask why not? Say you ‘want to focus on your career’ right now and appear cold or distant?
14% of adult women in the United States do not have living children. By choice or not, answering questions about why are often painful and always personal. It also isn’t an issue often navigated by men in professional situations. Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss their experiences and how they’ve navigated these tumultuous waters.
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AUDIO INTRO------------------------------------
Hi, I’m Michelle owner of BadCat Digital
And I’m JoyGenea and I own Solutions by JoyGenea and welcome to ‘If These Heels Could Talk’
Today on our show, we will be talking in detail about white labeling. What it is and how we work with it and what we think about it.
Well, that’s all for today’s episode of ‘If These Heels Could Talk’ We hope that we have brought you some new ideas, encouraged you in a new direction and inspired you a bit.
Thanks for listening.
When a relationship is over, it’s over. But how do you tell a professional service provider that helped your business grow that you need someone new? In a small business community, your brand is at stake when you’re firing a professional service provider. Treating others with respect and dignity honors the business relationship you’ve had in the past, but leaves room for you to move on to another provider with grace.
Michelle and JoyGenea teach you that you should never burn a bridge, never respond emotionally, never overreact, and always acknowledge your own role in any relationship. This episode of “If These Heels Could Talk” is all about how to maintain positive relationships with former vendors, if at all possible. Your business reputation could be at stake.
No one wants to think about emergency preparedness. Recorded in late 2019, before COVID-19 shut downs, the topic remains pertinent.
Michelle broke her arm and what happened to her business? What should a small business do to prepare for the unexpected? What haven’t you thought of? Where are your blind spots?
Michelle and JoyGenea discuss their business blind spots, their personal blind spots, and how to listen when others (kindly) point them out. Listen in as they discuss finding, sorting out, and developing processes around the blind spots. Become a business prepper!
They say there’s nothing more flattering than being copied. In business, trying to do things just like a competitor may not be the best strategy. Nothing wrong with learning from your competition. But there’s something wrong with copying your closest competitor.
In any business, there’s competition. When you’re planning your business, whether you’re just starting out or working on your tenth annual strategy, knowing the competitive landscape is incredibly important. Knowing the competition helps you understand where your pricing falls in the market, if your unique selling proposition is truly unique, and ensures your ability to answer questions about your industry.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk about their competitive analysis processes, both when they started business and today.
Would a rose, by any other name, smell as sweet? Would a brand, by any other name, be the same?
Naming is a tricky business. You want something unique. Something that describes the business. Something you love.
But don’t forget the other factors in naming. Spelling. Trademark abilities. Unintended cultural meanings. Domain availability. And the all important Google.
Naming and branding needs to leave room for the user/viewer so they can create a relationship with the brand. It is that relationship that is important to the long-term success of the brand. Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss naming and branding and the tips and tricks they have learned over the years of helping clients find their brand identity.
Are your assets covered? That is, is your brand accurately trademarked? Is your web content copyright protected? How do you know?
JoyGenea and Michelle cover the wonderful world of Intellectual Property in this episode of “If These Heels Could Talk.” From their own experiences with trademark violations, cease and desist letters, and brand name confusion, Michelle and JoyGenea share in a conversation that every business owner should hear. Whether you’re the newbie on the block or the third generation owner, there’s something to learn about Intellectual Property. Hear from two marketing business owners who have been there and learn from our expensive experiences.
Cover Your Assets. It’s not hard. It’s not that expensive. And it can save your business.
Marcus Lemonis is famous for saying, over and over during many seasons of The Profit, “If you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know your business.” But what numbers is he talking about?
He’s talking about profit & loss, cash flow, and debt. He’s talking about your balance sheet - revenue vs. expenses. In reality, he’s talking about 6 or 7 numbers you should be aware of. At all times.
But we’re so very busy! And numbers are not our thing. Don’t we talk about having an accountant on our short call list for help because of this? Yes, we do. But it doesn’t take an accountant’s background to know if there’s more money flowing in than flowing out. As women, we don’t have the historical background in business ownership. Many of us were actively discouraged, in one way or another, from pursuing business ownership at all, nevermind the kind of financial support that many use to help a business get off the ground. It was only a few decades ago that women gained sole access to consumer credit. All this has caused us to be a little behind when it comes to our knowledge of financial support and the kind of projections and planning that can open another’s vault.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss the financial aspects of a business plan and the barriers, both internal and external, that keep women from knowing their numbers and knowing their businesses.
From logins to employees to insurance to password managers, small businesses have very little in place for their own privacy and don’t do much about client and customer security. The thought that small businesses are not targets is patently false.
This podcast is a reminder to stop doing these things:
Emailing passwords
Using the same password for multiple sites
Sharing passwords among employees
On February 4th, 2021, the head of the Olympic Organizing Committee, Yoshiro Mori, was in the news for making derogatory comments about how women interact in professional meetings. Some of the quotes:
“Women have an annoying tendency to make meetings run unnecessarily long.”
“board of directors meetings with many women take a lot more time.”
“When you increase the number of female executive members, if their speaking time isn’t restricted to a certain extent, they have difficulty finishing, this is annoying.”
“Women are competitive.”
“When one person raises a hand, others think they need to speak up as well, that’s why everyone speaks.”
Dr. Deborah Tannen, professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University, has authored several books on inter-gender communication and found that in women’s personal lives and around other women, they talk more than men. They do not talk more in meetings or professional settings.
So where does this common assertion come from? And, more importantly, how can women hold their space in professional settings if others consider them over-sharing, annoying, and/or shrill (common complaints). Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss what seems like an ever-present burden on women to constantly temper their thoughts for the comfort of their colleagues. And, more importantly, how it’s changing.
Mean, Sorry, Just, Little, Correct me if I’m wrong, I know I’m no the ultimate expert, It’s just my opinion… These words and phrases keep us from showing up to business meetings and in relationships with our full expertise and brilliance. Qualifying, passive statements are used to soften the edges of our words so we can make others more comfortable with our thoughts.
Something to ask ourselves - why do we feel the need to do this? How does it impact our professional lives? Dr. Judith Baxter’s book, The Language of Female Leadership, calls this Out of Power language.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss the ways they have heard themselves use out of power language and how they catch themselves. Not to mention how to practice showing up 100% for yourself and your team.
Why can’t we type when someone is watching? Why do errands that we hate always fall to the bottom of the to do list? Why is it that simple tasks turn into impossible ones? Because our emotions get in the way of our executive functions.
Working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control (even coordination) are our executive functions. In children, this translates into the ability to sit quietly and focus on multi-step instructions. In adults, it looks a little different, but is impacted by the same stressors.
Strong emotions - like, say, anxiety over your business finances in a pandemic - make executive function more challenging. This makes tasks that require executive function - like, say, filling out an SBA PPP application - more difficult and daunting.
So what can you do when you feel overwhelmed by something that should be simple? Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss accessing executive function when you need it the most.
What’s stopping you from trying? Maybe it’s fear of failure. Stops a lot of people from trying a lot of things, especially those who are used to being successful. But what if the opposite of success wasn’t failure. What if the opposite of success was learning?
Reframing failure isn’t just some pie in the sky idea. There’s actual science behind it. Here’s some: The Super Mario Effect. And in leadership, it’s important to reframe failure as learning so your team can stretch and grow.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss reframing failure so your business can grow.
Women own 40% of the small businesses in the United States (according to the Small Business Association). But 90% of them don’t grow past the owner. They never hire an employee.
In 2021, as more and more women start businesses after being disproportionately cut out of the job market during 2020’s layoffs and furloughs, many will have all kinds of barriers in their way. Luckily, the Women’s Business Alliance and Entrepreneur Fund are expanding their locations in Minnesota. All over the country, lending sources are gearing up for a BIG 2021 and there’s a real emphasis on access for historically underserved populations like women and people of color.
With more of these traditional barriers to funding sources breaking down and a large population or professional women displaced from work, Michelle and JoyGenea are anticipating a tipping point in the business community. 2021 will be the year of the women.
Listen in to hear how Michelle let go of the fear and excuses when she hired her first employee and how JoyGenea overcame her anxieties and literally fell backwards down a wall. Learn how to shift your mind from thinking about cash to thinking about capital. Gain the confidence to take the leap!
Ever see someone calmly reading a novel in a bar? What about on a Friday night when the music is loud and the place is crowded? Trying to work during times of shared cultural or political upheaval is similar - it takes a lot of focus.
When you’re self-employed, this kind of focus can be very, very difficult to achieve. Motivating yourself throughout personal or professional chaos is a real challenge. The secret is time management. Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle give away their techniques for motivating themselves and focusing during chaos. And the next time domestic terrorists invade the US Capitol building, you’ll still be able to meet your deadlines.
As entrepreneurs, both Michelle and JoyGenea have no shortage of ideas. It’s more a lack of time to see them all through.
It may seem like the only people in your life who have ideas are creative people. Turns out, that’s not the case. But there are so many different ideas. The ideas we have come to see as Big Ideas are disruptive or energizing. We don’t always recognize our ideas about making something better (like putting the dishes away next to the dishwasher) as ideas at all. And we also don’t always recognize that the Big Idea we admire from someone else is rarely fully formed when it arrives in someone’s brain. It takes work - and more ideas - to make it reality.
So the secret to having more ideas is to actually see all the ideas you have through the day and make sure you’re not judging them harshly and dismissing them as they come.
Have you ever driven for hours on a really boring highway? There’s nothing like a smooth stretch of clear road on a sunny day with no traffic, right? The temptation can be to zone out and enjoy the ride, letting your eyes rest on the hood of the car.
This can happen in small businesses. We’re so used to so many issues, that when we finally get a chance to ‘zone out,’ we take it gratefully. But it’s important to rip your eyes off the hood of the car and look ahead to see any obstacles coming your way.
There is no one else in your business who can do this work. A 1-3 year plan (short-term) is essential to continue growing and developing your business. And long-term planning (5+ years) is about creating a vision for your team. Both are essential in communications, marketing, budgeting, and decision-making.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss planning, risk, and team buy-in. As well as the hope planning provides after a year like 2020!
There are four simple things you can do today to watch your cybersecurity back. Attacks on small businesses are very common, as systems tend to be less secure due to lack of resources. Small businesses also lack the capital to overcome a serious breach - most actually close after a breach.
But there are four things you can do today - have a person, back-up data, have business insurance, and use a password manager. Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss the details of each of these 4 things and how you can add them to your business plans. Today.
Ah, winter holidays. Snow (for us in the Midwest), vacations, finals, gifting, family togetherness, food - all a recipe for stress. Add in the end of the fiscal year, and it’s enough to take down the best small business owner.
But 2020 has brought its own gifts to the season and jumps in COVID infection rates in many areas are seriously hampering holiday cheer. What could possibly take some of the pressure off this holiday season?
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle talk about 2020’s special brand of anxiety glitter, sprinkled all over the end of the fiscal year.
Automations are an excellent way to accomplish marketing tasks and maintain communication with customers and clients. From drip campaigns through email to SMS text messaging to Zapier connections from one system to another, automations remove the need for all kinds of resources spent on redundant tasks.
But they’re not perfect. Especially if they’re broken. The question to ask yourself is, “Are my automations set up in a way that multiple people and troubleshoot them, know what to do, and help a customer regardless?” When people don’t have an overall picture of how automations, especially automated communications, work or say, they need to repeat information or request repeats of information from customers. Not ideal.
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss how to avoid customer service issues caused by inattention to automations. And think about the right role for automations in your organization.
To tell or not to tell, that is the question. But it’s only the first one. It has a bunch of follow-up questions. Who to tell? When? How? Who does the telling? Where?
Sharing something happening at your business that could potentially disrupt business (like, say, a pandemic is running through your office and several employees are out sick) is a huge decision. And one you don’t want to make on the fly. Being proactive with your decisions allows you to weigh the pros and cons, even when it seems it’s all con.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss the merits of telling. Or not. And how that decision speaks about your business’s values in a very real way.
During COVID, business owners have faced many lose-lose situations. For a group used to strategically finding the best path forward, it’s been a frustrating year, even in those industries that have been less disrupted than others. Many of us have had to reconcile what we thought we could control with what we can actually control. It’s a whole new face of courage.
Who ever thought that an early introduction to Al Anon would help JoyGenea in business? With an Oz-like devotion to finding out we always had the heart, brain, and courage we needed, JoyGenea and Michelle reflect on the different ways they find courage to change.
In this episode we reference:
- Serenity Statement
- Grant me the Serenity to accept the things I can not change
- Courage to change the things I can
- And the wisdom to know the difference.
- The Awkward Yeti (https://theawkwardyeti.com/
The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things. Of shoes and ships and pandemic effects on our businesses. Welcome, everyone, to the third wave. Here in the midwest, we’re experiencing quite the surge, with a ton of new cases and, unfortunately, hospitalizations and loss of life.
What is the impact on business? Outwardly, it’s different for different industries and different companies. But in reality, we’re all on different levels of stress and anxiety overload. This impacts areas of a business owner’s world - employees, operations, budgets, and personal life - very differently.
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss the impact of the third wave and how they’re pivoting business...Again.
Business is dynamic and so are decisions - as circumstances change, our decision-making has to change as well. Are there decisions you’re making passively? That is, decisions you’re making by simply allowing the status quo to continue or allowing someone in your organization to ‘take care of it’ without forethought or proper compensation?
This happens in our personal lives all the time - partners negotiate who is going to be a primary parent to their children at different times (drop-offs, pick-ups, emergency calls) as well as who is going to be responsible for different tasks at home. That is, partners negotiate the work of living: dishes, laundry, trash, calling the pest control guy because there are raccoons in the attic again. Often, partnerships negotiate these responsibilities passively, with one party simply doing the work and the other person not even seeing the way the work benefits them. This leads to resentment and contention - all of which can be avoided with open communication and negotiation.
The same thing happens in your business when Jan from accounting is the only person who cleans out the breakroom refrigerator or coordinates staff birthday cakes. It might seem like the stakes are pretty low here, but a year or two of unacknowledged labor will cause problems. Michelle and JoyGenea discuss what you can do to be more active in decision making and how to prevent these issues from creating resentment and undermining your team’s culture.
Recorded Pre-Pandemic and still, if not more, relevant today than in 2019.
Why is it that when someone sells a business, people feel like the business failed? What is your business exit strategy? Small businesses are personal and our personal feelings color our expectations of others.
No one lives forever, and no business goes on forever. So what does your ultimate transition look like? To quote every insurance commercial ever, Have you planned for the unexpected? Denial gets you nowhere. Recognition of reality is key to successful transitions.
Proactive or forced, business transitions are challenging. Selling, ending, stepping back, get your 6 trusted advisors. Who are those advisors? Besides the attorney and accountant, those advisors are key to a successful transition.
Michelle and JoyGenea talk about limits, preparation, and making decisions in advance. And how to manage internal and external expectations along the way.
Numerous studies have shown how attractiveness can help people get ahead in their careers. In this episode, JoyGenea and Michelle discuss a new study that explores the drawbacks of beauty. Spolier alert: Those drawbacks disproportionately affect women.
As two women who do not identify as particularly beautiful, both JoyGenea and Michelle question their own responses to themselves and other women in their lives. Why might this bias exist in the first place? How can we can address our own judgments and assertions so we don’t contribute to this bias?
Advice isn’t always welcome, even if it’s requested. It can make us defensive and angry, even if it’s true. We can’t always see the truth through those emotions. Even when we ask for advice, it can hurt. And sometimes, great advice from great people isn’t in agreement. What do we do then? How can advice help us make decisions if it’s not consistent?
Join in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss advice and feedback - solicited and unsolicited, from friends and from strangers, welcome and unwelcome.
The idea of writing a business plan fills some entrepreneurs with dread, some with excitement, and some with dogged determination. Depending on who you talk to, a business plan could be a 120 page graduate thesis or a single page outline. But the purpose of a business plan goes beyond gaining start up funding. The purpose of a business plan is to help you make decisions. Which, of course, means you need one and need to keep it updated.
Michelle and JoyGenea talk about the uses for a business plan - the things that make the time and energy actually worth spending. Not to mention how you can prioritize, organize, and think about this living document for your business.
It’s not you, promise. It’s all of us. We’re all tired. We’re all overwhelmed. We’re all anxious. And when we hit a wall, we hit a wall.
Michelle and JoyGenea give you a raw look into what two successful business owners sound like when they are in the middle of scaling and going over the walls that we hit. It’s not pretty and it’s not nice. Yet, it is one of the reasons people become entrepreneurs and business owners. When you overcome something you didn’t think you would, it’s an amazing feeling.
You’re not built to do this all the time. None of us are. But we can surprise ourselves. You’re stronger than you know.
“Would you really trust your life to 50 white male designers, age 20-35?” That’s the question posed by The Social Dilemma, a Netflix documentary about social media’s role in our lives - whether we fully engage or not.
Social media is a reflection of us - individually and collectively - and not a very flattering one. Why? Because every decision we make teaches the platforms we use what to show us next. And they have to keep upping the ante to hold our interest. Using principles of positive intermittent reinforcement, social media provides us social approval every 5 seconds. That’s a powerful pull when we have access to the platforms in our pockets.
Join Michelle and JoyGenea as they discuss The Social Dilemma.
In our businesses, it can sometimes feel like ‘Help’ is a four letter word. Okay, it’s always a four letter word, but saying it feels wrong. We have a much easier time helping others than we do accepting help for ourselves. Why is that? Maybe because it feels like accepting help creates a future obligation to do the same. But think about it in reverse - does this mean if you help someone else, you have future expectations?
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss receiving help. Everyone needs help sometimes, including us.
There’s no shortage of confusion in the workplace right now. And clarity is about confidence - something really hard to find for leaders of all kinds at the moment. Sometimes, a mark of confidence is knowing when your thinking is flawed. Sometimes, it’s realizing that a negotiation isn’t going your way.
It gives new meaning to ‘Know when to hold ‘em / Know when to fold ‘em.” There’s so much noise out there at the moment and so many new things to negotiate as we develop cultural norms collectively. Knowing when to walk away from a thought process or a negotiation is where the confident leader lives.
Hear more from Michelle and JoyGenea in these 2 bite-sized episodes.
What’s one of the weirdest things about the pandemic experience? Wearing a mask while sitting at your desk or walking into the gas station? Not shaking people’s hands at a networking event? Zoom meaning something other than ‘super-fast’ in our daily vocabulary?
All those experiences are things we’re sharing, but we’re sharing something else too - the process of negotiating these new behaviors in our professional and daily lives. What was super practiced and smooth - meeting someone new and shaking their hand - is now an awkward moment full of bumping elbows and nervous laughter.
We’re used to making decisions looking for the best path through. We’re used to finding a way to get almost everything important to us. What happens when that solution, experience, interaction is elusive? What happens when we have to trade off things we want for things we might want more?
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss trade-offs, risk, and social negotiations in this episode of “If These Heels Could Talk.”
What is Surge Capacity? Hint: It has nothing to do with the power strip under your desk. Instead, it’s about our ability to adapt to incredibly stressful circumstances, like a natural disaster. Or, say, a pandemic. But the thing about our coping mechanisms is that they’re time-based and intended for short-term emergencies, not long, drawn out (seemingly never-ending) circumstances. Like a pandemic.
JoyGenea and Michelle discuss surge capacity, resilience banks, and ambiguous loss - all the fancy names for these feelings of uncertainty, loss, frustration, and heightened anxiety that we’re feeling. And what could help you deal with those feelings for yourself and your team.
When we were kids playing Tag, most of us had a Free Zone - a place where we could go to rest, regroup, strategize. A place where no one was chasing us and we could stop responding to circumstances and start being proactive.
As a small business leader, life can often feel like you’re being chased. What if there was a Free Zone? What if you got a couple days away from everything to think, to dream, to plan for your business? Sound impossible? It’s not. In fact, it’s incredibly important, but no one is going to do it for you. You need to develop your Free Zone for yourself. Unstructured retreats with no agenda are the perfect way to land in the Free Zone and power down.
Need incentive? Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle talk about their professional retreats and why they value time away.
Bullies create false power imbalances through words and actions. And, for a huge variety of reasons, many of us don’t recognize the signs early enough to prevent problems. But whether we’re looking at personal relationships, conversations with ‘authorities,’ or work situations, toxic power imbalances enter all our lives in a similar way. And just like sugar in our diets, these situations creep into our lives and we don’t always notice until there’s a real problem.
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle explore the patterns in words and actions that create toxic power imbalances for so many of us.
Sometimes Michelle and JoyGenea talk about one thing. Sometimes they talk about more. Usually, when they record an episode, they have two or three other conversations right before and right after off-mike. Well, this week, those conversations were recorded.
This episode of If These Heels Could Talk is actually about two different topics: an idea to recognize a lifetime of the kind of quiet leadership practiced by owner-operators and how to react if an employee makes a personal choice that could have massive negative impact on your company. Enjoy!
Failure is hands on and involves effort and even some pain. It’s messy and dirty and shameful. Or so we think. In reality, failure is the only way to truly learn and grow.
JoyGenea and Michelle have both had their own version of learning how to fail successfully, one from the point of view of a childhood marked with dyslexia and academic frustrations and the other from a former ‘gifted’ child who spent early adulthood not living up to the promise of her gifts. Hear about failure from two pros who have paid for their own lessons in their own ways on their journey to business success.
There’s a reason that romantic comedies end when the couple gets together. It’s all sunshine and roses at the beginning of a relationship. Conflict starts later. Business partnerships are the same way. Everyone is on their best behavior at the beginning of a partnership, but the end of a partnership may not necessarily be the same. Why? Because everything has an ending, but endings are usually sad. No one wants to hurt the beginning of something by bringing up how it will end.
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss setting up a new joint business entity and hear just why it is so valuable to discuss the ending before anything even begins.
So we’re in a time of disruption. So what? What can you do? First step is to recognize just what is being disrupted. Then you can look into your crystal ball and discover just how you can capitalize on disruption through innovation. Maybe it’s a public service campaign around turning in change for the banks. Maybe it’s a creative solution for upcoming evictions. Or maybe it’s as simple as developing an ad campaign that shows how your product solves the challenges of tomorrow instead of yesterday.
Join JoyGenea and Michelle as they discuss their predictions for tomorrow based on what is being disrupted today. Are they right? Only time will tell.
Disruption can be many things: scary, exhilarating, expensive, and even revolutionary. One thing it’s not is passive. Turns out very few people enjoy having the status quo questioned, especially those benefiting from the way things are.
But when we settle for less than optimal experiences as consumers, it creates an opportunity for visionaries to create better experiences. And in a circumstance of disruption (like COVID), businesses that survive will be nimble, flexible, and seek out opportunities. JoyGenea and Michelle talk about disruption in the first half of this episode.
You may have heard about #StopHateForProfit - a social media ad boycott that intends to urge Facebook to evenly apply hate speech standards and improve marking misinformation and false news on the platform.
Several large national companies have joined in. The question is - should your small business? And the bigger question - what happens when your company’s values can start to impact the bottom line? JoyGenea and Michelle discuss this and so much more in this episode of “If These Heels Could Talk.”
After experiencing a few challenging interactions as a customer, JoyGenea was wondering, “Should a business owner negatively review another business online?”
Listen in as JoyGenea and Michelle discuss online reviews and how to interact with other business owners after challenging service experiences in a small town. How do you discover or craft a win-win scenario to manage your own business brand after experiencing a negative interaction with someone else’s? In other words, how can one business owner effectively complain to another without inviting reprisal or revenge in a small-town business community?
The answer? Never is as simple as it sounds. Michelle and JoyGenea discuss how to be a better consumer, business owner, and empathetic reviewer in this episode of, “If These Heels Could Talk.”
Michelle mentions a really good PSA video about organ donation in our podcast today. Here is a link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH04JOjzYu4
You might still be scarred. Or scared. Or anxious. Or frustrated. Or all the above.
No, we’re not talking about murder hornets. We’re talking about surviving business right now. For those of us who were in business through the recession in 2008, we’re seeing a bubble right now that is eerily familiar but also really different. For those of us who didn’t, but who’s businesses survived quarantine (mostly due to the industries we’re in and an influx of government assistance), we’re treading unfamiliar waters. And the way people are interacting with businesses right now is different.
We’re different. Our clients are different. Our employees are different. Business feels like a whole new ball game. JoyGenea and Michelle talk about how that feels in this episode of If These Heels Could Talk.
Your reputation is arguably the most important asset of your business. Brand reputation is gained over years of dedicated service, hard work, and careful craftsmanship. It’s also the most ephemeral and a fairly easy asset to lose, especially over social media. The consequences of an errant comment or reply or lack of strong employee communication are very, very high.
Michelle and JoyGenea discuss brand reputation in this episode of If These Heels Could Talk - how you get one, how to be thoughtful about your reputation, and how to protect your reputation through thoughtful policies and actions.
There is so much to do when starting a new business that new entrepreneurs typically have trouble prioritizing. So much demand on time and money resources that decisions get made for expediency and costs. But some of those decisions have long arms and can impact a business negatively in opportunity cost - that is, if they don’t get done correctly and well the first time, it costs more to fix them in the long run. And fix them you will, or they will hold your business back.
A banker would say it’s a business plan. An accountant would say it’s accounting software. A lawyer would say it’s business filing documents. All these things are true. Michelle and JoyGenea are marketers. And with so many people contemplating starting a business right now, they’re sharing the Top 5 Money Saving Marketing Tips. These are 5 simple things that an entrepreneur can do (or pay for) to get their business set up for success online. In other words, the 5 things JoyGenea and Michelle have to fix most often in year 2 or 3 for a business. Take notes! It really does save money to do it right the first time!
Life should be like peanut butter on bread. Thick and abundant. But what happens when the peanut butter is spread too thin?
How do you set and define your own limits? Do cisgendered women fundamentally have different types of expectations for themselves? Where does that come from? Shouldn’t we want to have it all?
In reality, it’s about how we define having it all and recognizing the difference between internal and external pressure.
JoyGenea and Michelle talk about their own limits and responding to internal and external pressures to ‘Have It All’ while learning to fail personally and professionally. What are your red flags and warning signs when you’re spread too thin? And how do you extend your limits?
So many hats. So many competing needs. So many challenges with answers that don’t make everyone happy. As small business owners, many of us are stuck in lose-lose situations. Our employees need, deserve, and want to stay safe, our customer and clients don’t want any changes to services, hours, or their experience, and our resources to achieve it all are very, very limited.
It is so amazing to see our business communities come together to support each other with kindness and patience right now. Hear about JoyGenea and Michelle’s many, many hats and how they are juggling those competing needs in this episode of If These Heels Could Talk.
Time is on your side. Except it doesn’t feel like it. We experience time in a variety of ways and one sign of being stressed and anxious is time feeling disjointed. Sound familiar? Yeah, us too.
Join Michelle and JoyGenea as they discuss time management when the time feels all wrong - days that drag on with tasks that feel unproductive, but whole weeks and months flying by. So the past feels simultaneously close and distant. So much has changed, but nothing has happened. And if this is all starting to feel like an existential essay from Jean-Paul Sartre, we’re with you. How can we relax into this enough to experience the ever-elusive Flow that comes from sinking into a task and losing ourselves in time?
Tempers and fuses are awfully short these days, leading us all to do and say things we regret. But how can we truly make amends and move on from that regret?
Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea talk forgiveness - personally and in business. How we seek it, how we ask for it, and what happens when we don’t find it. Along the way, we reference TRE techniques and Psychology Today’s Forgiveness Protocol. It’s a seriously introspective episode of If These Heels Could Talk.
“WE ARE NOT IN THE SAME BOAT ...
I heard that we are all in the same boat, but it's not like that. We are in the same storm, but not in the same boat.” - Unknown
A friend of the show posted a poem called Perspective not too long ago. It’s the same metaphor that JoyGenea and Michelle use in this episode of If These Heels Could Talk: a boat, adrift without any sense of just where the shore actually could be.
We’re feeling a bit adrift this week, untethered to those things that usually help guide us in our decisions. But is it all bad? What if the tethers were holding us back from possibilities? What if, like a 14 year old article on Preparing for a Pandemic, we advise ourselves to make a plan and stick to it. To set a course and trust that, eventually, we will see land on the horizon.
We’re in a pandemic. We’re feeling stuck and it’s difficult to keep our spirits up. Part of the challenge we’re facing is a disconnect between what we expect our lives and businesses to look like and what they actually look like. The dissatisfaction of unmet expectations is combining with our fears of the unknown to create a swirl of emotions that is keeping us from moving forward, professionally and personally.
Michelle and JoyGenea discuss what happens when our expectations DON’T meet our realities in this episode of “If These Heels Could Talk.”
When change is our choice, it’s daunting. When change isn’t our choice, it’s overwhelming and scary. The feelings we have about change being thrust upon us can stop us from accepting and embracing the change. Personally and professionally, these feelings can be disastrous - worse than the change itself.
There are things you can do and elements of your business that you have total control over, even now. Listen in as Michelle and JoyGenea discuss how to stay mentally strong, embrace change, and focus on what they can control in their own lives and businesses.
Referenced book
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Facebook video of LIVE stream of this episode
Thank you to the government workers who are making so many things happen quickly and the banking employees and our legislative bodies
Anxiety, concern, fear, grief - call it like you see it. We’re all mourning normal in one way or another. Those of us who own businesses are feeling all those things too. And we’re making decisions about our businesses every day. How do we know if we’re acting in the best interest of our customers, our employees, and ourselves?
The short answer is that we don’t know. And many of us are facing problems without win-win solutions. All we can do is attend to our own mental health so we can find some sort of equilibrium and make decisions in a clear-headed way. JoyGenea and Michelle discuss how they’re addressing their own mental health during the longer days of isolation, from online classes to radical self-acceptance, and how the unknown is affecting their businesses.
How do we do this for the long haul? Especially when we don’t know how long the haul will be.
It’s not just that we’re inside and missing some vitamin D. It’s not just that we’re not getting to hug or touch or be in the same room as friends and extended family. It’s the unknown - the shifting timeframes and the loss of comforting routines.
On March 28, JoyGenea and Michelle chatted, from their respective homes, about how they’re holding up and where to find hope, happiness, and joy. Because we’re all grieving the loss of normal. And small business owners are facing a larger and more unknowable future than most ever have. There’s a new way of thinking about business emerging. And we’re just starting to have words for it. Listen in.
It’s not fun to think about. And it’s really easy to think that your whole business could change just by turning off a few lights more often and ordering fewer K-cups from Amazon. But a business budget is just like a household budget. When disaster strikes, it takes more than a quick belt-tightening to keep it afloat. A crisis like a fire, a flood, a storm, or a global pandemic, for example, will test your business acumen.
Both JoyGenea and Michelle are in the same metaphorical boat as every other small business owner in the world right now. Asking the big question: How is my business going to survive this? This episode of If These Heels Could Talk is about asking yourself this question and how Michelle and JoyGenea have answered it for themselves. No one knows what tomorrow will bring, but planning today is essential to having a tomorrow.
Don’t Panic. Not only is this emblazoned on the cover of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it should also be your small business rallying cry during the current coronavirus pandemic. But don’t panic doesn’t mean don’t plan. In fact, planning is the best way to hold off feelings of panic, fear, and anxiety.
From employees to customers to your own health, there’s a lot to think about right now. And a lot of unknowns. Reasonable precautions and planning for your small business will get you through the current health crisis. JoyGenea and Michelle talk about their own plans, how they’re discussing coronavirus with their own staff, and how to keep calm and carry on. With or without toilet paper.
Entrepreneurs take risks. It’s in the job description. In fact, it might be the whole job description.
In this episode of “If These Heels Could Talk,” JoyGenea and Michelle discuss risk. Not the board game, but the actual scary stuff that business is made of. When to hire, buy a building, add a product or service line, even sell your biggest customer - all are huge risks that can make or break your business. So how do you know when to take a risk? And how do you protect your life and loved ones from your choices in business? (Hint: you can’t.) This episode is not for the risk-averse!
How to separate personal from professional on social media? It’s not something that occurs to most entrepreneurs early on, but having a strategy for how to manage your online persona is essential to a small business owner. And helping your staff manage their time and online personas is also essential.
How do you create boundaries in a world where lack of boundaries are rewarded? And how do you create a boundary between personal and business on social media when you are your small business?
Covering the social media policy and employee expectations as well as owner expectations. What if an employee posts something inappropriate? How deep is the representation for your business?
With ideas and experiences, Michelle and JoyGenea share their thoughts on the boundaries between personal and business online.
Starting something new takes a ton of courage. It’s easier with an amazing friend by your side.
Michelle and JoyGenea, a platonic love story to end all love stories. First comes love, then comes co-working, then comes the podcast in the Apple feed.
Learn about Michelle and JoyGenea’s journey to podcasting - how they met, how they started, and where they got the audacity to think anyone would want to listen in on their conversations. This is just the beginning of a long podcast journey toward inspiration, enrichment, and even, at times, the best kind of failure.
As a small business hiring is one of the biggest hurdles you will have to jump. The first hire can be pivotal to how you feel about growing your business and having more staff.
Michelle talks about the first hire she added and what that was like for her as a business owner and now being at the place of having seven employees and growing. JoyGenea gives insight into using subcontractors to grow her business and supporting other solopreneurs. Together they talk about the tools they use and the best steps they have found to attract the best talent to work with.
They touch on a section of an article in the Harvard Business Review Nov/Dec 2019 “For Women In Business” Professor Sheppard about hiring as anonymous as possible. Assigning numbers to applicants and removing ways to google candidates. JoyGenea talks about recently being on a hiring committee and actually doing these things and what that was like for her.
Don’t be afraid to grow your business because you are not sure how to hire. You can be afraid you will screw it up, we all feel that way at first and then you push through it. Learn some tips from Michelle and JoyGenea and laugh with them as they explore hiring and expanding your business.
What is a business pivot? Adding services, subtracting product lines, adding employees. Whenever your business’s direction changes, it’s a pivot. The trick is making it intentional.
JoyGenea and Michelle discuss their business pivots. Why they happened, how they happened, and when. Not to mention the anxiety that comes along with the change. Especially when it comes to pricing. No pivot is harder than the pricing pivot. But it is an essential pivot as a business grows.
How do you brand your pivots? How should they be communicated internally and externally for the best effect on your business?
Are you ready for the pivots coming in your business?
“You can should all over me, but…” This amazing statement will release you from the shoulds in life so your All is truly your own.
Having it all isn’t about what we think it is. It isn’t about stretching and stretching and stretching until you break. But it is about defining your own all and having the ability to say no.
JoyGenea and Michelle discuss defining your all, what they have let go to get through their days, and how to prevent giving all of yourself away in an attempt to Have It All. So go ahead and lean out, people! You get to pick what you lean in to and no one gets to tell you what you should do to be happy.
Do you know how to own your own toxicity?
Can you see when your own toxic self is getting on others? We all have behaviors that are brought out when we’re stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, or even just hungry. And the same is true for our employees. But when does a toxic behavior become something that you address in a staff member? And how do you identify and control your own toxic behaviors before they start?
In this episode, we identify a few toxic behavior patterns that we have seen in a variety of situations to help you identify and address them in your own workplace.
Nothing makes us feel better than giving. But when you’re starting and running your own business, you need to be selective and strategic with your giving. With so many deserving organizations, who do you say no to?
Michelle and JoyGenea get honest about volunteering, giving, and the various ways they have used community involvement to help grow their businesses, including the mistakes they made along the way.
How did JoyGenea go from kindergartner with Dyslexia to successful entrepreneur? Sideways and with lots of professional detours. Seriously, JoyGenea’s life will be the best biography of the century.
Learn about JoyGenea’s connections to the community and how her past has shaped her present and future as Michelle interviews her co-host in this episode of ‘If These Heels Could Talk.’
How is Michelle working to build BadCat through building community? How does a person start a business in a new town and connect to potential clients? And how did Michelle pick the name BadCat for a digital marketing agency?
Answers to these questions and more as JoyGenea interviews Michelle so you can get to know her better.
Boundaries are more than lines on a map. Boundaries are about respecting each other’s limitations. But when it comes to family, boundaries create all kinds of feelings like rejection, fear, shame, and guilt. In reality, boundaries with family are no different than with clients or vendors. Clear communication about what you are able to provide and what you can handle or not handle is a gift worth giving to yourself and those around you.
In this episode, JoyGenea and Michelle discuss their varying degrees of success with family boundaries, how to spot a need for boundaries, and how the holidays can remind us why boundaries are so very necessary in relationships.
SNL Video referenced in the podcast. Michelle was right, it is a 2018 video.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WvwX18oMR4
JoyGenea mentions in the show about watching someone have a nervous breakdown. This is a very good video about a mental breakdown. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC3uUGCJpqs
Chronic, long-term health needs in your immediate circle will change your business, whether you are a solopreneur or have employees. When you’re running the ship, what happens when you aren’t available to the captain?
JoyGenea and Michelle discuss their plan B’s - how to make a backup plan for unexpected life events, so the anxiety about your business doesn’t make an emotional situation harder to handle.
Michelle and JoyGenea go into detail about their experience as a non-athlete to make taking care of their bodies a priority.
If you are not an athlete you will totally get this conversation and realize you are not the only one having these thoughts. If you are an athlete who works out at a gym, maybe it will help you appreciate what it takes for someone who is not to start to create this as a habit.
Michelle shares a quote she was given “Physically Fitness is being fit to do what you want to do physically.”
In the middle of this whole podcast, we entrepreneurs came up with a whole plan to take over the gym world.
We somehow segway into talking about role-playing games.
If you want to laugh and relate to non-gym people trying to figure this whole thing out you need to listen to this and share it with your friends.
What’s the difference between sales and marketing? And why are both equally important?
Hear about JoyGenea and Michelle’s start in both sales and marketing, as well as their challenges working with several clients who don’t understand the difference between the two. During this podcast, we will discuss lead to cost ratios, marketing and sales funnels, and how to calculate the gamble you make on each from a business perspective.