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Using Your Entrepreneurial Skills in Public Policy with Jane Bolin · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

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  I thought, I'm gonna go fix that.
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  Let me go and show them how women's professional football could actually be run.
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  And then I started my 1st business in law school.
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  So, I mean, I've taken every, you know, sort of term that they told you not to take.
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  And so that's that's why I started with my answer first, which is always me.
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  Yes.
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  Go for it.
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  Hi.
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  This is Melinda Emerson, the small biz lady host of the small Bizchett podcast.
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  I want to serve you this pandemic has been so hard on America's small businesses and on just
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  America in general.
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  If you're ready to start your dream business, boy, do I have a great offer for you?
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  I am giving away 1000 copies of my best selling book, become your own boss in 12 months.
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  Over a hundred thousand people have this book has been printed in multiple languages around
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  the world, and I wanted to find a way to serve America's small businesses in this pandemic.
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  And so I am giving away a 1000 copies of my book.
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  know, sign up for your copy.
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  I am so excited about this.
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  I wanna serve you grab your copy today.
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  Ending small business failure.
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  Welcome to the small biz chat podcast with a number 1 small business expert, Melinda
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  Emerson.
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  Melinda's goal is to end small business failure, and she'll give you the information
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  you need succeed and live the life you dream of.
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  Now here's the small biz lady herself.
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  Melinda Everson,
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  Hi, everybody.
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  I'm Melinda Emerson, the small biz lady.
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  America's number one small business expert, and I would like to welcome you to the tonight's
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  smallbizchat podcast.
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  The Small Business Chat podcast is a peer to peer interview show that gives small business
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  owners a way to get invaluable business insights, our mission is to end small business
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  failure.
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  The goal of the small biz chef podcast is to give our small business audience an opportunity
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  to hear sage advice, then grow your business and take it to the next level.
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  Let me introduce my next guest, Jane Bollin.
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  Jane is a successful attorney and entrepreneur, and she's the managing partner of her real
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  estate law firm, Peyton Brolin.
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  She is also the 1st female chair of the global governance committee for entrepreneur's
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  organization.
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  E.
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  O is a global nonprofit dedicated to helping entrepreneurs succeed.
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  For more information about her, you can go to paytonbolen.com.
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  Alright.
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  Jean, you've got such a crazy background.
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  I I can't even go there.
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  So not only ladies and gentlemen, is she a lawyer entrepreneur?
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  She's very heavily involved in E.
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  O.
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  She's also the mayor in her town.
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  So I I gotta understand.
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  Tell me how you, you know, cobble together this amazing background in here.
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  Melinda, thank you for having me on the show.
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  And I do have a bit of a renaissance background.
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  I think the answer to your question is really, I'm always a yes.
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  I'm a yes to big opportunities, and so I go after them, which is a little bit of how I got
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  to where I am now.
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  You know, it's it's a It's a strange journey when you start out as a young adult and you're
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  working in sort of the workplace.
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  And then what I decided to do was go to law school.
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  And but I did this after I played on the first women's professional football team.
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  So I went to law school and had to be a lawyer, with me an NFL agent.
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  I thought, I'm gonna go fix that.
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  Let me go and show them how women's special football club could actually be run.
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  And then I started my first business in law school.
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  So, I mean, I've taken every, you know, sort of term that they told you not to take.
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  And so that's that's why I started with my answer first, which is always be, yes.
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  Go for it.
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  You know?
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  I love it.
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  I love it.
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  Now just just a point of privilege I went to Virginia Tech.
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  Did I read that you went to Radford University?
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  I did.
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  I went to Radford University based on these political science.
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  Oh my goodness.
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  Me.
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  Are you are you from Virginia?
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  How did you get your answer?
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  I am.
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  Yeah.
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  I'm from Northern Virginia.
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  I I was born in Korea, but grew up in Northern Virginia.
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  Love it.
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  Love it.
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  Alright.
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  So cool hokey.
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  Just just come.
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  Oh hokey.
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  Alright.
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  So now so now tell me what drives you to keep going?
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  I mean, I know you say yes, but you've done you played professional women's football.
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  You work in television, you worked on some very successful reality shows, then somehow you
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  wound yourself to law school, I mean, you yeah.
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  I know you say yes, but what did you wanna be?
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  Like, I I just want, like, what did what was your goal initially when you started that out?
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  Yeah.
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  So I wanted to have a life of freedom.
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  I think, like, a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners, I wanted to be able to call
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  the shop And so with that, you know, I took opportunities.
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  When I was in law school, I asked the managing partner of the firm that I was working for to
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  give me $25,000 to start a company.
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  Seemed reasonable.
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  And he said, yes.
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  So I just started down the road, and really what's compelling me today, I think, is know,
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  I've really developed myself as a leader as a leader in our community.
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  I've worked on many boards.
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  I lead my businesses, and I consistently work on, how does it look to be a better me?
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  And with that, I think leadership called you.
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  So for me running for office was just that natural next step.
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  Here I am leading 2 businesses, very successful, clearly government needs
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  leadership.
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  So I've started this brigade of how many more entrepreneurs can we get to run for office
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  because I think it makes a difference.
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  Alright.
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  But there isn't some big story behind why you decided to run for mayor of your town.
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  Like, tell me there was some zoning law that pissed you off, and you were like, no.
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  I'm a be the mayor.
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  I'm a part of
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  the system.
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  I will fix it.
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  Tell me what happened.
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  Let me tell you what happened.
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  November 9th 2016, I woke up and hadn't paid attention to politics at all and realized that
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  the election went the way it did, and this is not a, you know, a partisan thing.
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  This is just wow.
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  I had really didn't think that was possible.
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  And then I was like, where are all the leaders at?
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  And I started my journey then.
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  I walked into my business partners office that morning and said, I'm running for office.
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  They they said, well, Jane, what office?
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  I said, I don't know.
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  I'm gonna go figure it out of maybe my city.
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  And so there isn't a big fanfare story.
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  It was literally like, let me go learn how to lead in government because there are skills
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  that small business owners have that entrepreneurs have that are desperately needed
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  in public policy making.
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  And so that's why I did it.
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  And it took me 2 years.
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  I got elected in 18.
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  So it was you know, it takes a little bit of time, right, to get there.
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  So So did you have to run did you have to run twice, or it took you 2 years to sort of, like,
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  get the momentum and, like, write file the right paperwork to get on the ballot?
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  Like, what
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  Right.
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  So 18 was the election when the opportunity was there, and I won by the most votes.
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  So I became, I get put into our leadership line.
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  So I was a vice mayor last year, and I'm the mayor this year.
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  But not every commissioner gets to do that.
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  You gotta win by the most votes.
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  Oh, okay.
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  So it's a whole system.
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  Interesting.
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  Interesting.
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  Alright.
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  So tell me what lessons have you learned from being mayor that have helped you be better in
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  your business?
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  Oh, that's so great.
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  So I think All business owners can relate to this.
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  We get to call the shots.
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  At the end of the day, I pull the levers and dials of my business.
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  As a mayor or a commissioner, that's not what you get to do.
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  So everybody thinks that somehow I get to direct staff.
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  I don't get to do that.
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  The city manager is the CEO of our city, and we are policy makers.
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  So this is what I've learned.
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  Influence, shaping, informing how people move forward is so valuable, not just telling
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  people, like, what to do.
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  So that might sound you know, a little, woah, but the truth is, right, as entrepreneurs, when
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  you're running your business, you tell people what to do.
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  And when you're in a disposition, you want to create consensus.
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  You wanna shape informed decisions.
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  It's a very different skill set.
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  And I suggest all of you consider getting into public office because it's a It's mutually
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  reciprocal for a society to have you there.
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  I promise.
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  Right, Jane.
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  Cause I don't have enough to do.
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  Sure.
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  Well, listen, I I think it's awesome.
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  So tell me, I know that you have a strong belief that entrepreneurship has power to
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  uplift people and uplift and transform communities.
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  And I was wondering what kinds of things have you been able to get involved with there in
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  Florida that that you'd be able to kind of see this to fruition.
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  Yeah.
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  So there's a couple of spaces.
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  So first with entrepreneurs' organization, I'm heavily involved in helping with both our
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  incubator program accelerator and then just the organization itself through governance.
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  But from a policy point of view, I mean, it's really about supporting the idea that
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  entrepreneurship matters.
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  And we call that in government, business development.
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  I mean, it's crazy.
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  They it's they it's almost like synonymous.
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  It's funny.
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  But, you know, South Florida is becoming a tech corridor.
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  Everyone's been hearing about it.
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  There's a big boom.
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  So looking at how can our city create spaces for incubators.
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  How can we include incubation space in our facilities?
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  How can we provide for our residents?
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  Many solopreneurs started home.
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  I mean, I started my first business at home.
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  So how do you provide those that kind of support?
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  And I think it's a new space for government to really be looking at how do we help
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  entrepreneurship And I think it's really very American.
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  I mean, it is capitalism matters, and it's what is the engine of our country.
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  And So supporting entrepreneurship and seeing sort of, I I would say in the last 10 years,
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  really, you know, a a new, acceptance for entrepreneurship It's exciting.
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  Super exciting.
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  So that's what I do.
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  I keep pushing that drum and and working with our business community and trying to set up as
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  much incubation as we can.
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  Love it.
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  Love it.
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  So tell me about your your business, Peyton, brolin, and, it's a real estate law practice.
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  And I know you guys have been in business for how long?
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  So Peyton Ball has been in business 13 years.
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  Our title company has been 7 years.
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  And, you know, I started that just myself and my business partner, and we grew it.
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  So we did what a lot of entrepreneurs do.
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  We grew it fast.
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  We hit that ink 5000 in 2015.
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  And then I was like, Oh, you know what?
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  And I think Scott said this earlier.
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  I don't want all the clients.
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  I want the right clients, and I also want the right staff.
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  I don't need a 100 attorneys to say that I have a successful business.
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  I need 6 really good attorneys who know exactly how our culture works, how we support our
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  clients and how we change what it's like to interact with attorneys.
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  I think that's super important, but I needed that.
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  I needed to go through that expansion, right, to really get the feel of all of that, what
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  that's all like, and then say, oh, scaling isn't everything, but that's just for the law
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  firm.
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  The title company, we're scaling away.
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  Love it.
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  Love it.
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  Well, with the real estate boom, you guys ought to be, like, crazy right now.
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  So tell me, you know, those skills that you have in your your business and then the skills
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  you have as the mayor, Like, what has now been, like, the hardest thing about being the mayor
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  and running your 2 businesses?
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  Oh, so I would say the first thing is separation.
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  Right?
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  So people wanna talk to me about everything, and it really it's required from an attorney
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  client privilege point of view to be separate from a city point of view, public records.
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  We are in the sunshine state with the most transparent, you know, elected official laws in
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  the country, in my opinion.
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  So it's separating those things.
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  And then, honestly, it's managing all of it.
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  Right?
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  Like, I'm managing 3 major things.
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  So I learned, I think, about 10 years ago.
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  I did productivity and performance coaching.
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  I was coached, and then I became a coach.
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  So I love putting things in my calendar.
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  I live out of it.
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  I'm very clear.
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  And, you know, I have time to think.
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  I have time to contemplate I have time to just be.
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  So, yes, it is, but it's still a challenge to say it's not a challenge.
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  It's totally a challenge.
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  I love it.
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  I love it.
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  Alright, Jane.
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  What is your favorite podcast?
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  I love Fullproof Radio.
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  So a state of high performance with Dave Asbury.
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  I think it's amazing all about biohacking yourself.
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  I love it.
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  I like that.
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  What is it called again?
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  What is it?
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  Bulletproof Radio.
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  Bulletproof Radio.
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  Alright.
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  That sounds really, really good.
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  What is your favorite business app?
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  A new one.
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  It's called Kahoot, and it allows you to do on the fly surveys and to, like, really, deal with
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  teams and have people give results while you're giving a talk or doing a meeting, and it's
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  super easy, and I love it.
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  Kahoot.
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  That's cool.
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  I have Kahoot.
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  I haven't heard of that one.
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  Jane, what's your favorite old school marketing too?
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  Yeah.
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  So I think, acknowledgment matters.
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  So you can use that as giftology.
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  Know, get really good at acknowledging people's big moments in life, or you can use staff tip
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  and start sending letters and thanking people with a card.
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  It that stuff makes a difference.
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  No doubt about it.
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  I completely, completely agree with you.
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  I believe in cards.
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  For everyone in my life.
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  So I I agree.
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  People like to be appreciated.
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  Love it.
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  Love it.
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  Love it.
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  Jane, what's your favorite quote?
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  Sure.
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  The 3 Beth Business Book is the 3 laws of performance by Steve Zaffron, not widely known,
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  and I would highly recommend it.
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  It is really around the idea that integrity is like the foundation that then creates
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  workability, which then creates performance.
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  So if you wanna improve your performance, Don't worry about all the doing.
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  Worry about how who you're being, and I think it's incredible.
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  So love to share that with everyone.
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  I love that book.
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  That sounds like a great book to read.
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  Alright.
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  Listen.
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  This has been awesome.
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  Thank you so much to my guests.
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  Thank you all for joining me for this episode of the small fish tab podcast.
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  If you wanna know more about how to start and grow your small business, head over to small
• 14:23
  business lady university and sign up for my course how to sell and market online to get
• 14:27
  your business going in the right direction.
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  Thank you all for being here with me tonight.
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  The mission of small fish chat is to end small business failure.
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  I'm Melinda Emerson, the small business leader, your host, till next time, remember this.
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  You never lose in business, either you win or you learn.
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  God bless everybody.
• 14:48
  Thank you for listening to the Small Biz chat podcast with Melinda Emerson.
• 14:53
  For more resources and small business success strategies, visit succeed as your own boss.com.
• 15:00
  Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and join us next Wednesday.