Pod Insights Richmond Leadership Lab Mindy Flanigan, Inspiring HR About this episode Join us for the first episode of the Richmond Leadership Lab, where we feature dynamic business and nonprofit leaders from Richmond, VA. In this episode, we sit down with Mindy Flanagan, the founder and Chief Inspiration Officer at Inspiring HR. Discover her journey from the PEO industry to creating a company focused on enhancing workplace culture and offering strategic HR solutions for small businesses. Mindy shares her insights on the importance of effective HR practices, building strong employee experiences, and how small businesses can navigate the complex landscape of human resources while staying compliant. Whether you're a CEO, a business leader, or someone passionate about HR, this conversation will provide valuable advice and inspiration for creating a positive workplace culture. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell for more episodes that delve into the minds of Richmond's leaders! To learn more about Inspiring HR, visit https://inspiringhr.comRichmond Leadership Lab is Produced and Co-Hosted by:Taylor Quinn, CEO - Filmspirehttps://www.filmspirevideo.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-quinn-filmspire/Christian Mosier, President - BenXhttps://benxconsulting.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-mosier/To learn more about RLL visit our site:
Transcript 0:01 Speaker 02 Welcome to the Richmond Leadership Lab, featuring business and nonprofit leaders across Richmond, Virginia. Produced and hosted by Filmsfire and Bammax. Well welcome to the first episode.
0:15 Speaker 00 Thank you.
0:16 Speaker 02 Number one. I know. Richmond Leadership Lab.
0:18 Speaker 00 So honored that you thought to include me in the innovative episode.
0:21 Speaker 02 You are our first choice.
0:22 Speaker 01 Number one
0:23 Speaker 02 We were one for one. And you know how many times that happens in life? You know one for one.
0:27 Speaker 00 Yeah, well.
0:27 Speaker 02 Not many.
0:28 Speaker 00 I also didn't have to parallel park today, so I told Taylor I'm going to have to play the lottery, didn't I?
0:31 Speaker 01 there you go, yeah.
0:32 Speaker 02 Win win. So we have one of my good friends, Mindy Flanagan. I would call her good friend after the last few years. She is the founder and chief inspiration officer
0:42 Speaker 00 Yeah.
0:43 Speaker 02 at InspiringHR.
0:45 Speaker 00 Mm-hmm.
0:45 Speaker 02 And so we are thrilled to have her
0:47 Speaker 00 Thank you.
0:47 Speaker 02 first.
0:47 Speaker 00 I appreciate it. Very happy to be here.
0:50 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
0:52 Speaker 02 So for starters, we're going to dive into a few different things today. We're going to talk about your story, we're going to talk about your background. We're going to talk about some HR related advice and questions for other CEOs and other leaders in the Richmond community. But first, why don't you spend a couple minutes? Tell us a little bit about your background, where you you know, where you were born, where you're raised. Obviously, I know some of this. You're passionate about certain sports teams.
1:14 Speaker 00 Yeah. Uh thank you very much. Uh Mindy Flanagan, Chief Inspiration Officer with Inspiring HR. I don't even rem w we have been networking and collaborating long enough now that I don't even remember where we first met. Do you
1:28 Speaker 02 I don't either. It was it was probably five years ago somewhere.
1:30 Speaker 00 it's a good thing? Yeah.
1:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:31 Speaker 01 Love it when that happens. Yeah. You're just friends at this point. Yeah.
1:34 Speaker 00 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So
1:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:35 Speaker 00 uh I am born and raised in Syracuse, New York. Um decided I couldn't make the career for myself that I wanted in Syracuse, New York, and I also didn't want to live in six months of winter anymore. So I worked in the PEO industry, the professional employer organization industry for three years in Syracuse as a payroll representative, fresh off getting what used to be called personnel and labor relations. But technically is an HR degree from the State University of New York at Geneseo, one of the SUNY schools. Got three years of PEO payroll uh experience and then just decided Syracuse wasn't for me. This is the window to go. And
2:18 Speaker 00 I packed my entire little life into my little red Nissan Sentra, got on the auto train and moved to Florida. So
2:24 Speaker 02 Florida.
2:25 Speaker 00 Florida. Yep.
2:26 Speaker 01 Very different than New York.
2:28 Speaker 00 Very. Now, I had the benefit of my grandparents being very happened to open up their second bedroom to me for a period of time until I found my footing. And what happened? Went right back into the PEO industry. In fact, the parent company of the office that I worked in in Syracuse, New York was down in Florida. And for those of you who are familiar with the PEO industry, the mid to late 80s, um into the early nineties is when it really started to boom.
2:55 Speaker 00 So I had no idea three years of payroll PEO experience would really serve me well in Florida. But apparently it made me attractive hire and I finally got to do field account management and HR consulting work. And then eventually got promoted up to the corporate office in the Bradenton, Sarasota area, um, and was very dedicated in my career for a period of time. My mother got very anxious about are we going to get married here and give me some grandchildren? I mean, what are you doing here?
3:01 Speaker 02 Right
3:21 Speaker 00 So, and then at some point I realized through friends that sort of jabbed at me that I wasn't going to find Mr. Wright in Florida. And when a recruiter called and said, This PEO wants to hire you in Washington, DC, and they'll pay to move you, I'm like, Yep, I'll go. So
3:36 Speaker 02 to go.
3:36 Speaker 00 So I went. And what if you look at it, Syracuse, six months of winter, Florida, hot, seventy-five percent of the year. I had a lot of fun, made wonderful friends. I'm st I still keep in touch with
3:48 Speaker 02 Really hot too.
3:48 Speaker 00 really.
4:04 Speaker 00 Um, so they just relocated back to Florida. So she's not built for the Northeast, and not I'm not really either. So anyway, the mid-Atlantic has been a nice middle for me.
4:14 Speaker 02 Right.
4:14 Speaker 00 Like it's a little too cold in Richmond for me right now, I must say. Like I'm walking the dog and I'm like, I'm not built for this kind of cold anymore. So DC, sure enough, six months later, met who eventually became my husband, um, still working a lot, still working in the PEO industry.
4:33 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
4:33 Speaker 00 Then I had my daughter, and everything really changed because um I had a rough pregnancy and uh thankfully worked for a very progressive PEO at the time who allowed me to work from bed while I was on bed rest.
4:48 Speaker 01 That's amazing.
4:49 Speaker 00 This predates Wi Fi.
4:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:51 Speaker 00 We had that long cable from the Wi Fi downstairs running up the stairs to the heavy Dell laptop with the dial up citrix thing on my laptop. I had a little refrigerator that became my nightstand and husband and my husband was working full time for a home builder and trying to build our soon-to-be home at the same time. And now his wife's on bed rest. Super interesting time. That could be a whole nother story.
5:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:16 Speaker 00 But I tell this because this is what I learned during that period of time. For me, at that juncture in my career career, remote work works, and nobody was doing remote work then. I just had the good fortune of working for a rather progressive Brian McComas, if you're out there, thank you. Um Uh very progressive. We trust Mindy. We trust her to do the work from the bed. Thank God. I mean I can't even imagine watching soap operas and prices right every day for a three month period of time. So
5:42 Speaker 02 That's miserable.
5:43 Speaker 00 yeah. So anyway, but um true to form with me, I'm very type A. Um, new baby, sitting in the swing in my office in my new home, working while I'm out on FMLA.
5:57 Speaker 00 HR people should know better, but if you're type A, you're type A. Um But I I realized uh if I went back to work, my daughter would not know me. 'Cause I'm not disciplined enough with boundaries. I still struggle with it at home, but at least they're my boundaries to m s to set. So my husband came home, I said, I'm not going back to work. He said, Okay.
6:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:15 Speaker 00 Um did the stay at home mom thing for a few years, and then when he got an opportunity to move here to Richmond, that's that was my window to say, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do this. I'm um I started to form a business plan, I did the networking thing for a couple years from two thousand seven to two thousand nine, once we moved here. Um
6:32 Speaker 02 Interesting time to move.
6:33 Speaker 00 Yeah. Yeah, and that's when the home building industry crashed.
6:35 Speaker 01 Right. Yeah.
6:37 Speaker 00 I could tell you all kinds of stories. Like my husband and I love simple, yet we've somehow managed to navigate ourselves into complicated more than I'd like.
6:44 Speaker 01 Right, yeah.
6:45 Speaker 00 Um but anyway, I started inspiring HR in two thousand seven. Uh took no money out of it for the years that we grew it from two thousand seven to two thousand nine, made my first uh hire in two thousand eleven merely because I wanted to go on vacation. And I never looked back, and now here we are.
7:01 Speaker 01 Wow.
7:01 Speaker 00 Yeah. That's my story.
7:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:04 Speaker 00 No, you asked about Syracuse L yes, I love I love
7:09 Speaker 00 Still love Syracuse and still love me some Syracuse sports, even though the basketball team usually is my heart and passion, but they are struggling right now, yet the football team is flourishing. So this has been an interesting
7:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, that one gets very
7:21 Speaker 01 There you go.
7:22 Speaker 00 Yeah. Thank you, Fran Brown. Oh
7:26 Speaker 02 might make a run though. March Madness.
7:28 Speaker 00 no, no, no. Not this year.
7:30 Speaker 02 No. No. Okay.
7:30 Speaker 00 No. No. No. I I'm really pulling for Adrian Autry to succeed. But you know, I everyone complained about Jim Beheim until he retired, and I'm like, we're gonna have to give him some time. And basketball's different now than it was. These portals have changed college sports a
7:46 Speaker 02 Completely.
7:46 Speaker 00 lot.
7:46 Speaker 02 So each sport too.
7:47 Speaker 00 Yeah. Yeah.
7:48 Speaker 02 How would you say, like back in 2007, like taking it back to starting inspiring HR, did you have the idea for a while? Or when you moved to Richmond, you were like, ah, this is just what I'm gonna do now?
8:00 Speaker 00 I kind of like I accumulated all of these things over a period of time that for some reason I didn't let go of. You know, templates, guides, materials. But, you know, I had the good fortune in the PEO industry to be out in the field building relationships with small business owners early. Even when I was running payroll, they would depend on you. That you you know you built a relationship over a period of time as an account manager. Um, you know, and when you're a small business owner and you're trying to one stop shop away, payroll, payroll tax management, benefits, HR, work comp risk management. I mean, this is what PEOs are supposed to do. Um and it's a little and it was very different in the eighties and nineties than it is now, so 'cause mostly because of benefits changes.
8:45 Speaker 02 Right.
8:45 Speaker 00 Um and the work comp comp market and PEOs trying to bankrupt the work comp market. But anyway.
8:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:52 Speaker 00 Um yeah, I I I just saw this window. I saw this I saw a window between everything I had accumulated, my experience, loving the energy I got out of being out of other entrepreneurs and believing I could do something like that, or at least I could build something like that that worked for my life. You know, I had to be at it for a few years to say, okay, well, I created remote work works for myself. Why can't I create this for others? And it sort of aligns with growing a client base. So um And ultimately, I love client service. But if you really peel away at where my passion is, it's I really love to lead. Taking great care of clients,
9:33 Speaker 00 I believe, is a byproduct of what I was designed to do, which is have a vision and lead a group of people and provide skilled HR consultants the same opportunity I had to have your cake and eat it too. Love your HR career, build great relationships with clients. But for us, Thirty hours a week is full time. So I'm
9:53 Speaker 02 So
9:54 Speaker 01 Wow.
9:54 Speaker 00 I'm true to form with HR done differently.
9:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:56 Speaker 00 Yeah.
9:56 Speaker 02 I was about to say we can transition a little bit into like specifically inspiring HR. And I know Taylor will we'll take over some of this, but um the thirty hours a week and making that work
10:06 Speaker 00 Now that's not me. That's everybody else.
10:08 Speaker 02 that's what I'm saying.
10:09 Speaker 00 But it's also by choice. I mean again, remember I said I'm type A. Yeah.
10:12 Speaker 01 Hundred percent. Now Mindy, I saw your title on LinkedIn is uh Chief Inspiration Officer
10:19 Speaker 00 Yes.
10:20 Speaker 01 Which I love. You know, I I want to ask you about like wha like where did that come from? What does that mean to you? I it obviously aligns with your company. I liked it too because my company, FilmSpire. You know, our mission is to create films that inspire action, so have that inspiration piece in common, which I love.
10:34 Speaker 00 Well you and I are paired well. Anything that's got inspire and inspiration in it, I'm I'm I'm I'm here for it.
10:40 Speaker 01 So where did that idea like I'll be I'll the I'll be the chief inspiration officer and what does that really mean to you?
10:45 Speaker 00 I never really wanted chief title anyway, quite honestly. Um but if you're going to grow to scale and build out systems and processes and people management that supports that. Uh uh I don't think flat organizations work. I think it makes things really confusing. I think it really muddies the water with accountability. So whether I liked it or not, I needed a title. And I needed a title that um worked for a future hierarchy for which we could expand on. Um so I kept the chief, but I didn't want executive. So I just we're inspiring HR. I want to inspire people to do great work, I want and to inspire clients that you know. thinking they might need HR and I'd like to inspire them to want HR.
11:29 Speaker 00 Um it just I don't know just worked. I might ditch it though.
11:32 Speaker 02 Mm. Change it up.
11:34 Speaker 00 Well because now that we're so and we're such big followers of EOS
11:38 Speaker 02 Right.
11:39 Speaker 00 um you know if you really look at the seat I now fill, it's the visionary.
11:44 Speaker 02 Right.
11:44 Speaker 00 So if I were to pivot it would see it would be C V O and not C I O. And the only reason I'd kind of do that is I really don't want to ditch CIO But a lot of other people have CIO titles, chief in information officer is what I mean, and it's I am not an IT person. I mean I know enough to be able to function, but I would never put any kind of formal IT like or tech title on my job description. So I don't know, we'll see.
12:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:11 Speaker 00 But like my marketing person always says, if it's working, leave it alone. So
12:15 Speaker 02 If it ain't broke.
12:16 Speaker 00 if it ain't bro, don't fix it.
12:18 Speaker 02 I had I had a baseball coach when I was eight. And he beat that in my head. He said, Look, son, if it ain't broke,
12:23 Speaker 00 Yeah.
12:23 Speaker 02 don't fix it.
12:24 Speaker 00 Yeah.
12:24 Speaker 01 Right.
12:25 Speaker 00 Right.
12:25 Speaker 01 Keep it simple, stupid.
12:26 Speaker 00 You can keep fine tuning it though.
12:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:29 Speaker 02 Right.
12:29 Speaker 00 But again, I I still am. I'm trying to take my team, our team. Increasingly on a journey of embracing this EOS business planning, business process system that I have really come to depend on that honestly just has made me a better business owner and a leader. So if we do that, now that we've hired what's called a fractional integrator and dial more into EOS, it it might make sense for me to switch to CVO. But
12:52 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
12:53 Speaker 00 either way, my job of inspiring and motivating people and trickling that down across our country, uh co company in a way that
13:01 Speaker 02 Country.
13:01 Speaker 01 And country.
13:01 Speaker 00 it's I don't know if I can tackle this country. But my company
13:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:06 Speaker 00 trickling that down um positively to team members, to support partners, to vendors, um, that outwardly spreads to great experiences for our client. I mean, that's that's my responsibility.
13:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, I love that. Now And you've been in business for several years at this point. I'm sure there have been great times and harder times, but I'd love to know like what is one of the biggest challenges you faced um as a CEO, you know, throughout your years of experience and really what did you kind of glean from that, learn from that experience?
13:37 Speaker 00 I didn't know how to manage my books properly. So
13:40 Speaker 01 Okay, talk about that.
13:41 Speaker 00 Well, what's interest and when I say proper properly, the the books have always been fine. We've been fortunate to always be cash positive. Um and we've had years where we've had really good health we've had healthy margins and we've had years that we've had thinner margins than I'd like, but we've never been in the red. We've n we uh the equity's all mine and we don't have any debt, which some people are just floral about. Yeah. But um I I and I had the good fortune of not having to take out a loan to start this.
14:11 Speaker 01 Right. Yeah.
14:11 Speaker 00 I had the good fortune of my husband having a very lucrative career for a period of time that allowed me that two to three year cushion to just forever for everything I made, I put it back into the business. And then I had that before we hired. So
14:23 Speaker 02 Amazing.
14:23 Speaker 00 that's not for everybody. You know, it's funny some people ask me, like, oh, how long do you drew a check? And I'm like, it's two years. And they're like
14:30 Speaker 02 Or
14:30 Speaker 00 Because some people get started and they're like, I need my pay made whole within ninety days. And I'm like, I get it, but then you're probably going to need a loan or an investor or somebody. So
14:40 Speaker 02 just don't worry about it right now.
14:40 Speaker 00 we've But what I've always pushed myself is to better understand the numbers so that I was making informed budgeting and forecasting decisions. And that's where my involvement in first a private CEO group and now a group that's associated with the Virginia Council of CEOs has really helped me.
14:58 Speaker 02 Right.
14:58 Speaker 00 Because I went on this long journey of working with different bookkeepers and CPAs, and quite frankly,
15:05 Speaker 00 there so many of them are like, you don't need to ask those questions. Just give me all your receipts and I'll tell you whether or not you have money at the end of the year. And I'm like, that's not good enough for me. I kind of am a little bit of the asshole in a way. Only 'cause I really want to understand things. So probably sometimes in too much detail and I struggle with getting too far into the weeds and perfection paralysis. And I have people I have Yeah. I have people around me that that help me correct that now. But I mean ultimately at the end of the day, what always nagged at me is when I pull up our PL at the end of every month or the end of every quarter, how am I feeling about is this organized correctly? How am I feeling about these numbers that I'm looking at? And then, you know, that pull of leading and lagging indicators. I mean, it's part of maturing as a business leader to make these informed decisions.
15:51 Speaker 00 But that that's been the most interesting journey for me. So a lot of the leadership stuff I'm not perfect at it, but a l I feel like a lot of it's instinctive. Um, from things that I learned up to the point that I owned a company. But it it has been. Ask my family.
16:08 Speaker 00 I mean if I say QuickBooks online at the dinner table, they're flying they're out the room. Like they just don't want to hear it anymore.
16:14 Speaker 01 Heard enough, mom. Yeah.
16:17 Speaker 00 And now I have a fractional integrator that's like, okay, enough is enough. You need a fractional bookkeeping service. And I just made a decision to move on that as of February the first.
16:28 Speaker 02 That's great.
16:28 Speaker 00 But I wouldn't hand it over until I actually had some semblance of what I wanted out of these QuickBooks reports, and I understood how I wanted to invoice clients and what I wanted reporting to look like. And I could trust somebody to handle our bank feeds and and categorize things properly. Nothing drives me more crazy than somebody that has our their hands in our books. And instead of asking me where something goes, we just dump it into a general sales category or a general expense category. And I'm like, no, no. We actually use these expense categories and we make sales projections based on our client type. So
17:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:03 Speaker 00 I'm I'm a little particular.
17:05 Speaker 01 That's great.
17:05 Speaker 02 It's really tough too when A lot of the data that you gather financially is like the past twelve months or the past quarter.
17:13 Speaker 00 Right.
17:14 Speaker 02 Right.
17:14 Speaker 00 Right.
17:14 Speaker 02 And I'm talking a fractional CFO's language right now,
17:17 Speaker 00 Yeah.
17:18 Speaker 02 but very few. It's it's very difficult as a business owner a lot of times, as you know, to like accurately project and accurately like model what the next three, six, twelve months, you know.
17:29 Speaker 00 So what was helpful for me, and I'll again I'll credit EOS for this, is when you follow the EOS system, yes, it's, you know, what's your ten year
17:38 Speaker 00 what's your ten year vision, your three year target, and your one year plan. I might have gotten that wrong, Courtney. If I got that wrong, I'm sorry. But the point is, if you're proactively planning and at least getting the one year planning down correctly, we got our to a point that our books and our we had enough traction going and we were organized enough and we had defined our marketing and sales process enough to make some reasonable next year's sales projections, total revenue projections hour. And we analyzed capacity. Um, and all of this was not solved overnight. I'm talking about years of conversations of getting comfortable with Who's your CPA and what are you using to business plan and plan ahead and motivate people to hit goals?
18:21 Speaker 00 That we just, you know, like we said, 10%. 10% revenue growth is what we want next year based on what we've learned to date. So October 1st, we said we're sticking with 10% for 2025. Where are we likely to land this year? What's 10% more of that? And then what does that mean for our marketing sales, closed deals, and client retention? numbers to make that number a reality. So so I I credit EOS for that. Because EOS says, you know, do a revenue goal. Okay. We're going with 10%. We know we can handle that capacity wise. So
18:54 Speaker 01 Great.
18:55 Speaker 00 and you can kind of build out from there. But we also have goals for managing gross margin, you know, because we're professional services. You know, it's mostly billable time. But what can we live with in terms of unbillable time? So we have targets for that and gross margin and where does does the best thing I've learned is where does the CEO Me. Where's my pay belong on the PL? I'm not doing client service anymore. Where is that supposed to go? What what should my marketing budget be?
19:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:23 Speaker 00 Um and so all this just took some thought and research and organization. So yeah.
19:28 Speaker 01 Great question.
19:28 Speaker 00 It's a process.
19:29 Speaker 01 Great answer. Similar question, but greatest success you feel like you've you've you've had, or uh you know something that was a big milestone that you guys accomplished, or you know, a big victory you guys had for yourself, for your team, and really what did you kind of glean and learn from that experience as well?
19:43 Speaker 00 Hitting a million.
19:45 Speaker 01 Amazing.
19:46 Speaker 00 Yeah.
19:47 Speaker 02 You buy lottery tickets after that or something? How do you
19:49 Speaker 00 No. Well the funny story behind that is we we had wanted the million for a while. So but I don't want the million In a way that it burned anybody out. So I'm it's that push and pull of I'm impatient, I'm hungry for growth, but I also care about my team and I don't want client service or team culture to suffer. So so sometimes slow and steady. Again, wins the race. But at the end of twenty trying to figure this out. At the end of twenty twenty three? What year are we in?
20:20 Speaker 02 twenty five
20:21 Speaker 00 Might have been end of twenty twenty two. No, it was end of twenty twenty two. Wanted to hit the million. Told everybody at the retreat. We hit the million, everybody gets a thousand dollar bonus. And then I could join the council of CEO.
20:32 Speaker 02 Yes. Yeah.
20:33 Speaker 00 Where'd we land at the end of 2022? Anyone care to take it again?
20:36 Speaker 02 Nine five.
20:37 Speaker 00 Close, 997. Well
20:38 Speaker 02 Yeah. Wow.
20:39 Speaker 00 so funny, somebody's like, that's a million. I'm like, no, it's not.
20:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:43 Speaker 00 So it wasn't long after that. By February of 2024, we had had twelve consecutive months of one million and we haven't looked back since. So but that was you know, it was like, you know, that number that keeps evading you, and you finally hit it.
20:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:57 Speaker 00 It was great.
20:58 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah, what what did that feel like?
21:00 Speaker 00 Oh god, it was I thought it
21:04 Speaker 00 we celebrate it was like kind of the same as like the the Like Notre Dame winning last night. They celebrated last night, right? Which I was rooting for Penn State, honestly, but I'm happy for Notre Dame. But it's kind of the same as the coach's like, okay, we're gonna celebrate tonight, but then it's on to the next thing, start tomorrow. So it's it's it's kinda like that.
21:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:23 Speaker 00 Yeah.
21:23 Speaker 02 But it's a culmination of like so many years
21:26 Speaker 00 Yeah.
21:26 Speaker 02 work. You know, I think I feel like that's probably what's most rewarding was like it wasn't like and I feel like that's what people get wrong a lot of times about like business CEOs or what like whoever it might
21:35 Speaker 00 But these false finish lines?
21:36 Speaker 02 correct. It's just like, oh, like, you know, it within two years or within three, you know, but it's like a lot of times it's so many years and like looking back on you're probably like when you hit the million, I would imagine, just like looking back on the last like decade of just like hard work and been like
21:49 Speaker 00 Well that's what's so sobering sometimes. Like we've been in QuickBooks long enough now that I'm like, I'm I think I was so I keep These pending folders of don't forget about these things eventually, folders all over my desk. And in the last week in December, I'm like, I'm going to go through this stuff. And I started pulling out folders where I had bothered to print like our PL from like 2015 and 2016. And I'm like, oh, how quaint.
22:13 Speaker 00 But it's but it it does make you stop and reflect sometimes that particularly if you're having like a tough time, like we only grew four percent in twenty twenty four. And that made me sad because we wanted to grow at ten. But if then if you look collectively at how far we've grown from twenty fifteen in particular to present, it's I'm proud of it.
22:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
22:34 Speaker 00 I really am proud of it. That's great. And we're a far more informed business now than we were then in terms of where are we spending our time and our dollars. 'Cause
22:42 Speaker 02 Probably just the value you give clients.
22:44 Speaker 00 Yeah. Yeah, far m far more defined on that. And really proud of how we've landed on, you know, the value we want to land for our clients. And a specific lane. Not trying to be everything to everyone. Yeah. Which is something I'm proud of.
22:58 Speaker 01 How d how for that question, I you know, that statement, you know, how how how did you get to that conclusion? How did you get to that conclusion that we can't be all things to everyone, things like that? Like what was that process like for you to learn that?
23:09 Speaker 00 I apply a lot to inspiring HR, right or wrong, based on my own experiences as a consumer.
23:16 Speaker 00 I I've and it could be what I learned from the PEO industry, because I've been in I've been in the PEO industry or affiliated with the PEO industry long enough to watch watch some PEOs and the PEO sales team try to be everything to everyone and it ends up in a lousy client experience. And because I've always been on the service and operations side of the PEO business as much as I love spending time around these salespeople, I've always been more on the operations and sales side and forever trying to get sales and operations and service to play nice in the same sandbox. But I just watched you try and be everything to everyone. It's it doesn't give your sales team specific messaging. It does you don't end up in good client outcomes. And for all that time you spend on marketing and sales, you got a client angry
24:02 Speaker 00 at you for not being able to live up to the promises made during the sales process. Now you've lost that, lost them as somebody that potentially could refer you more business in the future. And you've also it's like employee turnover. Client turnover in the first year of service is expensive. So I just and and I you know, as a consumer I've also dealt with plenty of companies like, oh we can do this, we can do this, we can do that, and I'm like, so basically it's a com no one's good at anything and it's completely diluted. I mean it's and I so I worry about that as a consumer and and I applied it internally to my own practice as well.
24:35 Speaker 01 We'll be right back after this short message.
24:38 Speaker 02 Are employee benefits a headache for your company? At Bin X, we simplify benefits so you can focus on growing your business. From custom benefit solutions to cutting edge technology, we make it easy for companies to take care of their teams. Visit BinxConsulting.com to see how we can simplify benefits for your growing company.
25:00 Speaker 01 Your story is powerful, but is it reaching the right audience? At FilmSpire, we create compelling videos and provide marketing strategies to make sure they drive real results. From crafting your message to amplifying it, we help you connect with your audience like never before. Ready to inspire? Let's tell your story. And now back to the show.
25:23 Speaker 00 Yeah.
25:24 Speaker 01 Well, last question I kinda had, I know for me, that was kind of on my list. I think you answered one of them already, but I'll move on to just kind of like talking about the HR landscape as a whole in you know the industry, you know, specifically around Richmond, you know, because we're in Richmond and things like that. Do you kind of have a sense in terms of what the landscape is like for the HR industry in kind of the Richmond area?
25:42 Speaker 00 Well, is it just me or I feel like Richmond is like and I know Chesterfield County is exploding right now, but I think r Richmond is really Exploding.
25:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:51 Speaker 00 Yeah.
25:51 Speaker 02 I agree.
25:51 Speaker 00 Yeah. I think it's um
25:53 Speaker 02 I think on multiple fronts, population
25:55 Speaker 00 We gotta fix our water before any more people r work here.
25:58 Speaker 02 We're one snowstorm away from everything falling apart.
26:01 Speaker 01 Seems like it, yeah.
26:02 Speaker 00 Well if you think about it, if anyone's been paying attention. I mean, uh what what do we hear all the time? We gotta fix infrastructure, gotta fix infrastructure and it just keeps getting punched and down to the next administration and at some point it's gonna catch keep up with catch up with you, so
26:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:16 Speaker 00 But um I'm really encouraged by not just some of the bigger corporations coming into Richmond, but the influx of entrepreneurial enthusiasm in Richmond and more and more people wanting to venture out on their own and and create create a culture, create a team, much like on the journey I've been on. Um it's interesting just in America as a whole. We love our corporations, but by and large they don't provide a great employee experience. And if you're not providing a great employee experience, how are you taking great care of your customers? Um and I say this only because going back to corporate America would never be for me. Because I've I've found such a passion in being able to create
27:00 Speaker 00 a great culture for my small small organization for which I know, I do know this. It's a great experience for our clients if we've done marketing and sales correctly and found the right fit for our lane of services. Um that I I love buying small. I mean, I'm just I'm just more I'm just dialed further into small business, small business, small business because It this is the waters I swim in, but you know, they care.
27:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:27 Speaker 00 And there's less less layers, right? You try and get a credit or a refund from a small business. Sometimes even still me, I'm like just writing a check and mailing it to them. You don't have to fill out a form and wait for corporate approval and
27:40 Speaker 02 Four to six weeks.
27:42 Speaker 00 Yeah, five different customer service reps that you call to follow up with this have no idea what you're talking about. I mean this is I just worry worry about all these layers in corporate America that really just make things really difficult for consumers. Like that poor guy stuck in that Waymo cab in California.
27:57 Speaker 02 I saw
27:58 Speaker 00 Trying to call in and he's talking to AI on the phone to try and let him out of this cab. I mean it's just like, come on.
28:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:05 Speaker 00 Yeah.
28:06 Speaker 02 Yeah. One of the stats I
28:07 Speaker 00 Or calling Comcast, because you know that's always fun. Yeah.
28:11 Speaker 02 one of the stats I always love and and I always get it wrong, but it's like forty-eight percent of of uh workers work for a small business. And I think they defined small business. It's either under a hundred or under two fifty
28:20 Speaker 00 Yeah.
28:23 Speaker 00 It's probably two fifty.
28:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, I forgot the exact number of employees, but it's like MasterCard did a study and it was like forty-eight percent. of workers are employed
28:32 Speaker 00 Mm-hmm.
28:32 Speaker 02 by small businesses.
28:33 Speaker 00 Yeah. Yeah.
28:34 Speaker 02 And it's like that's a bigger number than a lot of people think. There's like I forgot how many millions of small businesses.
28:40 Speaker 00 Yeah.
28:40 Speaker 02 Um
28:41 Speaker 00 And that's what I'd always encourage people to look at. Like big corporate America. I mean look, I'm guilty of buying a lot of stuff through Amazon, just like everybody else. But I can't help but wonder if we're not increasingly on the shift with the younger generation coming in of Yeah, painfully aware how poorly some of those Amazon employees are treated. Yeah. And right or wrong with social media a lot that it gives a spotlight to the what you how employees used to be treated was masked. It's not so masked anymore. So uh it's gonna be a super interesting time for HR, for me in particular, to see where all of where any level of company culture heads, what small business owners choose to make of a culture,
29:24 Speaker 00 um, and where these large corporations will go and what will be the pushback. I mean, you know, Chase Bank, Jamie Diamond, he gets plenty of headlines, you know, he's mandating return to work five days a week, and I'm just I don't agree. It's not my call to make, but I'm super I'm super curious what three to five years of data will tell us following this demand to return to office. Did he lose a lot of intellectual capital over this or were they really better off?
29:49 Speaker 02 right?
29:49 Speaker 00 But I don't think we're gonna know for a while.
29:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, I agree. So kind of shifting a little bit more towards like the specific HR advice. Obviously that is your lane of expertise for sure.
30:00 Speaker 00 Well, I kinda know it less now.
30:02 Speaker 02 Yeah. Fair enough.
30:03 Speaker 00 I had this whole team that remembers ADA and FMLA stuff that I don't even remember anymore. But yeah.
30:08 Speaker 02 Yeah. Um
30:09 Speaker 00 But I'm you know, I'm always good for an opinion.
30:11 Speaker 02 yeah. So the last few minutes I want to make sure to touch on because a lot of the listeners um of this show and of this podcast are gonna be like CEOs, small business owners, um leaders in Richmond. And so I want to give you a couple couple quick questions on the HR side. Um one thing, the f I guess the first question is what is one thing most small business owners get wrong about HR? And I'll define small business as under a hundred employees,
30:42 Speaker 00 I can play catch me if I can. I don't need to I with labor law compliance and I really don't want to harp on labor law compliance, but um
30:52 Speaker 00 I didn't I think they think I didn't know is a defense and I can do whatever I want because no one's gonna catch me.
30:58 Speaker 02 like in the compliance regard.
30:59 Speaker 00 In the compliance regard. Yeah. Um, you might be right. I mean, everyone asked me, for example, about posters. Yes, you're technically supposed to have posters up. Now here's the reality. Is somebody from the Department of Labor randomly walking around Richmond Business Parks finding people for not having their posters up? No. But the thing is you keep getting compliance wrong and make enough employees soon to be ex employee angry. Eventually them complaining to one of those government agencies might get you. Might, might get you audited and fined. So I don't I'm and I'm more of the why take the risk.
31:36 Speaker 02 It was actually funny, I saw that with the company.
31:38 Speaker 00 Did you?
31:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:39 Speaker 00 Interest
31:39 Speaker 02 A couple years ago. That uh I won't hit him on air, but a couple years ago one of their employees was disgruntled. Uh I forgot why, but um that employee then uh went to the DOL.
31:50 Speaker 00 yeah.
31:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:51 Speaker 00 That'll open up a can of worms.
31:53 Speaker 01 Okay.
31:53 Speaker 02 Can you imagine? Yeah, going to the DOL. I mean then then everything,
31:56 Speaker 00 Was it failure to pay overtime?
31:59 Speaker 00 Because that's what the DOL wants. They want to hear failure to pay overtime and now I'm gonna go look at your books for the last three years and see who else you failed to pay. That can get expensive.
32:09 Speaker 02 that's the big thing 'cause the second employee goes, it's not like this one little tiny situation, like they're gonna look at everything.
32:15 Speaker 00 Yeah. Right.
32:15 Speaker 02 Right? So anyway.
32:17 Speaker 00 Uh so to that regard, and I really don't want to focus on compliance, because it's you know, labor following labor laws and follow and come following compliance standards, it's a bummer. I get it. And I know everyone it's funny, I was in a room the other day doing a training, I think it was in Blackstone,
32:34 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
32:35 Speaker 00 and I always have this fun little question which state has the most employment regulations? And it's like you gotta choose from four. Everybody in the room said Virginia, and I'm like, not even close.
32:46 Speaker 02 It's like
32:46 Speaker 00 California and New York come first.
32:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
32:48 Speaker 00 Um, but still, I mean uh regulations, sometimes unnecessary, can be burdensome. But yeah, we also have to remember at the heart of a lot of regulations that aren't overreach, somebody was a jerk. Or enough people was a jerk and missed making decisions that are on a human decency level, and then laws were passed. And unfortunately then laws get passed by people who have never owned a small business, so they have no idea what kind of burden and cost that will be. But that's that's sort of the push and pull with compliance. So Um, but it is a part, like the the tricky thing with compliance, or what we like to do, is we don't want to focus on compliance as much as we want to help you build out an HR infrastructure, people management infrastructure,
33:34 Speaker 00 systems, policies, practices, leveraging technology that aligns with your culture, retains your top talent, and just happens to also comply with labor laws. So it's it's a little bit of an art more than science.
33:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's a full process.
33:49 Speaker 00 Yeah.
33:49 Speaker 02 It's like
33:50 Speaker 00 Yeah.
33:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's like these things, but also the compliance is
33:53 Speaker 00 The other thing they get wrong. At a very basic level for our target client. Look, uh just because you went and hired a controller or your spouse to, hey, run payroll for me, that doesn't make them skilled at HR. And benefits, right. Yeah. Or even how to renew the work comp policy, right? Yeah, or what do I do about a workplace injury? I mean, there's there is a people management infrastructure for the sake of your own peace of mind getting away of those getting rid of those 3 AM thoughts and growing to scale for which, yeah, I mean it's worth the investment.
34:39 Speaker 02 right.
34:39 Speaker 00 And I would say, and don't do the fluffy stuff first. A lot of people want, you know, I need an employment law agreement and a fancy executive compensation study to hire a COO, right? Which you probably do. Do you have job descriptions in handbooks? Like it's just like, you know, use job descriptions as A meaningful tool to guide who you hire and how you hold them accountable. And they don't need to be complicated and they don't need to be expensive. And for the handbook,
35:07 Speaker 00 I love so many employment law attorneys out there, I really do, but you guys don't know how to write handbooks. I'm sorry. No one wants to read all of that legalese.
35:15 Speaker 02 Right.
35:15 Speaker 00 There is a way to demonstrate policy that follows labor laws without making it this scary, contractually binding $4,000 document that just sits upon a shelf and nobody wants to open.
35:26 Speaker 02 Right.
35:26 Speaker 00 So yeah.
35:27 Speaker 02 And employees like sign the employee handbook, they don't even look through it and they just sign it.
35:31 Speaker 00 Right. And that's like, I would rather like, here's our employee handbook. The first few pages are actually really worth reading. It'll reinforce a lot of the things you learn during interviewing. There's a welcome letter from the CEO. We restate our vision, mission, and values because all of that trickles down into how you will feel here as an employee. And yes, there's benefit information in there, and it'll answer questions about paid leave. And and yes, we do have policies in there that remind you to not harass or discriminate against anyone around here. But you know, and it's also not complicated. So plus even yesterday I was in a sales call and a gentleman said I hate our handbook and I said, Well, what's the number one thing you hate about it?
36:11 Speaker 00 Well, I paid an attorney thirty five hundred dollars for it and it doesn't even have a table of contents that allows me to click through it. And I'm like, What? This is a really basic Microsoft Word function. So he's like, I hate it, I want to scrap it. I'm like, Well, at least it'll answer our customization question, so go ahead and send it to me.
36:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
36:29 Speaker 00 Yeah.
36:30 Speaker 02 Yeah. Well, it it's it'll be interesting to see like kind of as you mentioned earlier, like the post COVID world.
36:35 Speaker 00 Mm-hmm.
36:35 Speaker 02 Right? Like now that Amazon and some larger companies and and even some companies I know around here are now mandating If it's not five days, it's three days, right? Or four days in the office.
36:44 Speaker 00 Right. Which I'm I'm good with hybrid. I think that's I think hybrid's good.
36:49 Speaker 02 Because you your team is has done a great job remote, what advice would you give other business owners and other HR leaders in Richmond how to manage a remote team or a hybrid team, right, effectively? Like how do you keep the culture, how do you manage them effectively?
37:04 Speaker 00 I'll give a learn and then some advice. Here's the learn.
37:09 Speaker 00 Not to generalize, but I would have a hard time believing that a professional with less than five years experience is ready to work remote. I think you are a more effective remote work works professional. When you've already developed good autonomous, disciplined time management, I can fend for myself. I don't need to ride with the rise with the tide skills. I think I was ready for remote work works because I had been in the office for a long time. Um and I embrace it as an opportunity to get things done without what we affectionately call the hallway ambush.
37:48 Speaker 02 Right.
37:49 Speaker 00 Right? The things that derail you throughout the day, right? If you're type A and you want to get stuff done, you don't want people derailing you. You don't want to be pulled into meetings that you don't need to be a part of. Or meetings that could have been an email and Right, right, right, right. And that's that's always the tricky part, right? If you're in person, you don't want to be dismissive to people.
38:10 Speaker 02 Right.
38:10 Speaker 00 Like I had to work with people a long time before I'm like like this guy Frank that I used to work with. Um learned so much from him, but by Friday afternoon he wanted to talk and I'm like, You guys get the hell out of here. I don't want to work this weekend. Go. I'll meet you later for a drink. So yeah.
38:30 Speaker 00 Which is funny. Yeah. Yeah. And I was surrounded by a lot of Franks for a period of time. And I love that because they knew I liked to talk sports and and I want to have fun.
38:38 Speaker 02 Right.
38:38 Speaker 00 But I don't want to have so much fun that what could be a thirty-five hour week is now a fifty hour week because of all of these other wastes of time. But I had to experience all of that to be disciplined enough to say this is what productive remote work work looks like for me. And by the way, I can replicate this for other people.
38:54 Speaker 02 Well even the training, right? Like I feel like that, like a new employee or younger employee or someone who's new to an industry, right?
39:00 Speaker 00 Mm-hmm.
39:01 Speaker 02 That is s very difficult to do, I've seen remotely.
39:06 Speaker 00 I don't know.
39:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:08 Speaker 00 No, I don't know.
39:08 Speaker 02 You don't think so?
39:09 Speaker 00 I think you can get lazy with training if everybody's in the office. Because I think when you say we're training new employees, it's easy to say, Welcome, day one, here's your desk, here's the senior level employee that's gonna shadow you for the next two weeks. Sit and take notes, and that's it. And we don't it's phoned in. Not always, but it's kind of like we've relied on a long time before remote work that people learn through osmosis. I learn by listening in to how somebody else is answering the call or I I learn by sitting and watching how they're navigating the HRIS system or filling out paperwork or whatever. First of all, everyone's learning style is different,
39:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:50 Speaker 00 right? So we make it a point when we hire to try and understand someone's learning style. And then we have a very robust new employee onboarding checklist with multiple people involved throughout the first 30 days to do all of these things. But understanding someone's learning style and then accommodating that by Saying, okay, when I screen share, you want to watch me or do you want to do it and I'll help you, right? Um do you are you a type of person that wants to read standard operating procedures? I don't, but we have them, and some people like we have a new employee who started a year and a half ago, and she said, I'm still reading the SOPs, and I'm like, Oh, good for you, but you know, I don't I know what I'm doing.
40:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
40:31 Speaker 00 So But if you've bothered with HR infrastructure and you've bothered to understand their learning style and Sort of to the question you've asked. We've invested over a period of time in a very connected, supported, collaborative culture that leverages technology well to do that.
40:48 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
40:49 Speaker 00 I think you can succeed in new employee envi in onboarding in both environments. I think you just have to figure out what is the recipe that makes that employee feel you're not just checking a box. How do they feel during their first week, their first thirty days, their first sixty days, their first ninety days? And what's what's your goal? How self-sufficient do you need them to be by when? And how do you want them feeling about the company, the choice they made, and their onboarding experience to succeed in their role after that period of time? You think those things through and you figure out the resources, tools, and people you have around you to support that.
41:27 Speaker 02 Right.
41:28 Speaker 00 Yeah.
41:28 Speaker 02 It also just amazes me like the amount of companies that don't look at HR and you you know you're preaching to you, but the the the amount of companies that don't look as HR is like a long term strategy.
41:38 Speaker 00 Well, it's definitely still looked at as a finish line.
41:40 Speaker 02 Correct.
41:40 Speaker 00 Yeah.
41:40 Speaker 02 Well it's like
41:41 Speaker 00 What what somebody once told me with the session I did with JJ White, um, somebody in the room said Well we let the controller do HR Lite and the controller happened to be there and he just smiled and he's like, Yeah, I can handle the HR Lite And I'm like, Well what's HR Lite? And he's like, Oh, well the the new employee onboarding module, you know, like you know, I g I go into iSolved with Dominion Payroll and I send them a link to fill out, you know, th their payroll information. Yeah. And I said, Okay, yeah. Transactional things have a finish line, right? But what about HR strategy? What are do you are you planning on defining your values or changing them in as a company in the next 12 months? Are you thinking about creating a brand new department? Like these conversations about
42:26 Speaker 00 aligning with your culture and how you're staffing and retaining talent, or you have the capacity and skill to handle your growth plans, that's not HR light. I mean, that's that those are strategic conversations. And if you don't have um someone at the table who is skilled at people management, and it doesn't have to be necessarily an HR trained professional. I mean, we know what we're doing on our team. But there are some H there are some people out there who have given themselves an HR title, but it's merely because they were interested in HR. It's not because they have multiple years of experience in HR. I've seen people that I've had business owners admit to me they were an office manager and they weren't great at it. So we just stuck them in HR because that was instead of firing them, we just stuck them in HR.
43:10 Speaker 02 Right, because it's the lowest priority.
43:12 Speaker 00 Interesting.
43:12 Speaker 02 Right.
43:12 Speaker 00 Right. Right. But again, they're looking at it as transactional HR. They're not looking at strategic HR. And that's what's exciting in my industry right now is more and more businesses, particularly with emerging leaders.
43:23 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
43:24 Speaker 00 they're em embracing
43:25 Speaker 02 And people are. Like even the US, right? Right. People. Right seats.
43:29 Speaker 00 and people is actually one of the sixth one of the six parts of the wheel and yes the pursuit of the right people in the right seats.
43:36 Speaker 02 So many things like go into the people arena. Like you just said, right? The culture goes into it. The compensation goes into it. The way they feel goes into it. Are they appreciated? Like 'cause turnover is a real thing.
43:49 Speaker 00 Oh yeah.
43:50 Speaker 02 And cost is a real thing.
43:52 Speaker 00 Right.
43:52 Speaker 02 Right?
43:52 Speaker 00 Right. Yeah. And it really stings
43:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
43:55 Speaker 00 when you lose we sadly lost a ten year employee to a competitor this past July and You know, for anybody that thinks we have it all figured out, we don't. We have experience in this. But again, these are these are people you're dealing with. It's it's not all that predictable all the time. But if you keep playing the infinite game and you keep fine tuning your culture and you've put in particular the right leaders in place to challenge employees to continuously improve, but you're not making them feel like they're a number, they're an add value part of the recipe that makes the company work. Then that's what we see as the worthwhile endeavour endeavors. And it it's funny you mentioned the the numbers thing, um, because you think about all different shapes and sizes and types of clients we work with.
44:40 Speaker 00 Still to this day this continues to resonate with me because lots of small businesses get some kind of private equity injection or angel funding or investment cap.
44:48 Speaker 02 Typically it's investment or debt.
44:50 Speaker 00 Three times in the last two years, I've heard something along these lines. Or if I asked, why are you investing in HR now? We told we were told we couldn't get our next round of funding until we got HR because we've run out of friends and family to hire. So yeah.
45:08 Speaker 02 There you go. Now we need to actually hire. We need job descriptions. We need
45:09 Speaker 00 Yeah.
45:11 Speaker 00 Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it you know, we can get them on board with not being reluctant to it if we actually say, you know those job descriptions you see on occasion on LinkedIn? Yeah, that's not the way we do job descriptions. I mean there's a compliance aspect to job descriptions for sure. But like when we say, okay, what are your values? Now let's translate those values into the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities you need out of someone to succeed in this environment. Now we're looking at soft skills far more than technical expertise. And that's where the alignment with right people in the right seats comes in.
45:47 Speaker 02 awesome. Well, Manny, this has been a phenomenal conversation.
45:51 Speaker 00 I loved it. It was great.
45:52 Speaker 02 Yeah. I mean, ranging from um your story to some HR advice, which I think everyone needs, even if they don't realize it. Uh last thing is we have a question presented by the Virginia Council of CEOs.
46:06 Speaker 00 Yes, I'm familiar with them.
46:07 Speaker 02 Yeah. Have you ever heard of them?
46:08 Speaker 00 I have heard. Hi Scott.
46:12 Speaker 02 As a CEO, it can be lonely on the top.
46:15 Speaker 00 Very
46:16 Speaker 02 How do you deal with that challenge?
46:19 Speaker 00 I'll deal I'll answer that by telling a story. Long before I hit the million, I was already lonely, and as much as I am transparent with the leader team. Then and now, there's still certain things you don't talk to them about. I mean it's just it's the element of how business works. So I started with a business coach, outgrew a business coach, found a private CEO group before I qualified for the Virginia Council of CEOs, and then eventually migrated my way up to the Virginia Council of CEOs. So, like anything, it's a journey of what makes sense for me now versus what am I aspiring to get involved with when I'm ready and I qualify. That was my own experience. But if
47:01 Speaker 00 I went from business networking mastermind groups to saying, I need a more direct collaborative partner to bounce these confidential things off of, but I don't want to give away equity. So now what am I going to do? Right?
47:15 Speaker 02 Right.
47:15 Speaker 00 And that's where I started with a business coach. So that that's been my journey. But if you can admit it's lonely up top, you look for people that can be your allies, whether it's in a group or an individual that can help you. Overcome some of your own head trash. For me, it was better boundary management so that I wasn't working as much. I mean, as silly as that sounds, but
47:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:38 Speaker 00 it took a year of a coach to say, Your husband's gonna keep being mad at you unless you actually decide you're gonna be w done with work at a certain period of time, and when you shut the home office door, you don't go back in there. Like sometimes we just can't get out of our own way. And we don't know what we don't know. Yeah. Like how to set a marketing budget.
47:57 Speaker 02 Right.
47:57 Speaker 00 I operated for years without I'm like, oh, we're just gonna guess at this, right? And even like the research I did online, I wasn't getting an answer.
48:04 Speaker 02 That feels right. Yeah.
48:05 Speaker 00 Enter a CEO group and I'm like, Look. I just looked at them and I said, I'm not happy with my PL, and in particular, I don't know what I'm doing here with marketing. And I just looked at the group, there's twelve of them, or eleven of them, and I said, How does a professional services company set a marketing budget? And somebody a guy who owns a marketing firm says, raised his hand, it's five to seven percent of gross revenue. Awesome, thank you. Now I have a marketing.
48:32 Speaker 02 I think there's some lane that I need to
48:35 Speaker 00 Because it's like there's online and you think it's right and you hope it's right and I read and I listen to podcasts, I do all of these things to expand my knowledge. But when the head of a successful marketing firm looks me in the eye with a specific answer like that and think that's it. That's what we're doing.
48:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
48:48 Speaker 00 Yeah.
48:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, especially with the insure, right?
48:50 Speaker 00 Yeah.
48:50 Speaker 02 Like that's yeah, that's so important. Well, Taylor, do you want to mention uh the nonprofit real quick?
48:51 Speaker 00 Yeah. Yeah.
48:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, so one thing we're doing with the show for the Richmond Leadership Lab is that every guest that we have come on to the show, we want to ask them what's a nonprofit that you that you really love and support, because we want to donate uh to that nonprofit of your choosing, basically. So Mindy, is there a nonprofit that particularly rings true for you? I know you work with a lot, but yeah, is there what's a nonprofit that you would
49:14 Speaker 00 What's hard for me is we have the good fortune of working with so many,
49:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
49:18 Speaker 00 um, it would be really hard for me to choose. So I'm just going with the recency effect off the top of my head. Um, particularly given the time of year, and I know people are are struggling with housing, particularly people who are um looking to get out of uh bad situations. Um Housing Family First would be who I'd love to see that donation go to. Beth Turnbull and team, they do a nice job there, and Will Melton, who's a friend of mine, is on their board, so that's my choice.
49:45 Speaker 01 Know them both. Great, great choice.
49:47 Speaker 00 Yeah.
49:47 Speaker 02 You can
49:47 Speaker 01 Great choice.
49:48 Speaker 02 we'll let 'em know.
49:49 Speaker 00 All right.
49:49 Speaker 02 Thank you so much.
49:50 Speaker 00 Thank you for having me, guys. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. Yeah, really fun.
49:54 Speaker 01 Thank you, Mindy. Appreciate it. Thanks for coming.
49:56 Speaker 00 Yeah, you're welcome.
Next Todd Mawyer, TK Promotions Page updated September 27, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
