Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / How to Have Maximum Impact in Your Business with Tara Landes

Transcript

How to Have Maximum Impact in Your Business with Tara Landes · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

• 0:00
  Three, two, one, zero.
• 0:04
  Ignition.
• 0:06
  Lift off.
• 0:09
  Ending small business failure.
• 0:11
  Welcome to the Small Biz Chat podcast with the number one small business expert, Melinda
• 0:17
  Emerson.
• 0:18
  Melinda's goal is to end small business failure, and she'll give you the information
• 0:23
  you need to succeed and live the life you dream of.
• 0:26
  Now here's your host, the small biz chat lady herself, Melinda Emerson.
• 0:34
  Have you subscribed to the small biz chat podcast?
• 0:37
  Well, it's time.
• 0:38
  Every Wednesday, we offer listeners bite sized actionable tips to start and grow a successful
• 0:45
  small business.
• 0:46
  In just twenty minutes or so a week, you can get a ton of insight and resources to propel
• 0:51
  your business forward.
• 0:53
  Be sure to subscribe to the Small Bitch Chat podcast today.
• 0:58
  Well, I'm gonna invite to the stage a young lady who is joining us from Canada.
• 1:03
  Thank God people in Canada still like people, right, in America.
• 1:07
  Anyway, alright.
• 1:09
  Tara Landis is the founder of Bell Rock Benchmarking, a Canadian consulting firm that
• 1:15
  specializes in solving complex business challenges, driving lasting organizational
• 1:22
  change.
• 1:22
  With over twenty five years of experience, she has advised 300 plus small business leaders and
• 1:27
  more than nearly a thousand people have graduated from Bell Rock's management training
• 1:32
  program.
• 1:33
  She holds lots of certifications in change managers, she's also a licensed influence
• 1:38
  trainer.
• 1:39
  She's a dynamic speaker and she has presented for organizations like TEC Canada and Engineers
• 1:45
  and Geoscientists and many more.
• 1:47
  For more information, go to bellrock.
• 1:50
  Ca because she is in Canada.
• 1:53
  Tara, welcome to the Small Bitch Chat podcast.
• 1:56
  Well, thanks so much for having me, Melinda.
• 1:58
  I'm glad to be here.
• 1:59
  All right.
• 1:59
  So tell us a little bit about your background and let's just talk about as a president, how
• 2:05
  can you have the greatest amount of impact in your business?
• 2:09
  All right, well, my background, as you said, I've been doing this for a long time.
• 2:12
  I advise small business leaders and owners and their managers.
• 2:17
  And so how does a president have the most impact?
• 2:20
  Well, I would argue that when somebody starts a company, they're working hard to try and just
• 2:28
  get their product out there, they're thinking or their service out there, they're thinking
• 2:31
  about the doing of whatever the thing is that they're doing.
• 2:35
  But as a leader, your job is to set the vision and communicate that vision to others so that
• 2:41
  they get on board.
• 2:42
  It really is all about influence and persuasion.
• 2:45
  You can have the best vision, mission, values in the world, but if nobody is listening to
• 2:51
  you, it's pretty hard, or they don't believe you, it's pretty hard to make a go of it.
• 2:55
  So that's what I would say is the most important role of a business leader.
• 3:01
  All right.
• 3:01
  So then what should their number one priority be?
• 3:04
  As the president of the business, what should your number one priority be in the business?
• 3:09
  Yeah, number one is setting that vision, is charting the way, is picking your minimum
• 3:14
  viable audience and going after them to prove whatever use case it is that you're going to
• 3:20
  need to prove.
• 3:21
  It's finding the right talent to put in those seats.
• 3:24
  Again, you have a lot of people start a business because they're a really great
• 3:28
  individual contributor.
• 3:30
  And they think, well, if I can do it for those guys, I can do it just as easy for myself.
• 3:35
  But that's not necessarily the case.
• 3:37
  Doing the work is definitely an important part.
• 3:41
  But leading people to do the work is a different kind of job and managing people to
• 3:47
  inspire them and motivate them to again, do those things that you need done.
• 3:53
  Those are different roles than actually just doing the work.
• 3:57
  So a lot of business owners struggle with this concept of working in your business versus
• 4:02
  working on your business.
• 4:05
  So what point can they pull away from the day to day and really be more strategic in the
• 4:12
  business?
• 4:13
  Well, it's interesting the way you framed that.
• 4:15
  I don't think that they can ever pull away from the day to day.
• 4:19
  They have to have their finger on the pulse.
• 4:22
  It's a question of priority.
• 4:25
  So there's only one person in the whole organization that can set the strategy and the
• 4:30
  vision, and that's the leader, that's the president.
• 4:33
  They're the only one that can do that.
• 4:35
  Lots of people can do the marketing, lots of people can do the sales, lots of people can
• 4:40
  create the product, but there's only one person who's leading the whole business.
• 4:45
  And so it's less about getting out of the business, and more about making sure that that
• 4:51
  on the business piece is the priority that they deal with every time.
• 4:57
  But I don't know a business owner that has a struggle with delegation with like, you gotta
• 5:04
  get you some help in here because
• 5:06
  we can get into the nobody can do it as good as me stuff.
• 5:10
  And I think there's a lot of people, including this girl right here who struggled with that
• 5:14
  for a long time.
• 5:14
  And I remember when my business, when I was a video production company, I remember the time I
• 5:20
  hired a freelance producer to produce something.
• 5:22
  And I was like, Lord, why did I wait so long to do that?
• 5:25
  Like, why did I believe that I was magic?
• 5:28
  Talk a little bit about when to hire, how to hire.
• 5:35
  Who are some of the people you need to bring in to take some of the pressure off of yourself?
• 5:41
  Yeah, again, I think that's a really good question because one of the mistakes I think
• 5:45
  that business owners make is their hire is an assistant, right?
• 5:50
  Well, I've got all these very low level tasks, I'm going to find an assistant so I can hand
• 5:54
  that stuff off.
• 5:55
  But really what they need is more of a in command or almost a partner, someone that they
• 6:01
  can hand off actually important managerial activities, so they can focus on the leadership
• 6:08
  activities.
• 6:08
  You know, I like to think of the different roles in an organization as sort of there being
• 6:13
  three tiers.
• 6:15
  There's the individual contributor, they're the ones that do the work.
• 6:18
  And then there are the managers.
• 6:20
  And the managers are there to organize the resources, whether that be the money or the
• 6:24
  tools or the equipment or the people or the intellectual property, whatever those things
• 6:28
  are.
• 6:29
  The manager's job is to organize those and run them efficiently.
• 6:33
  But again, it's the leader's job to set the vision and chart the way of where those
• 6:38
  resources are going.
• 6:40
  And so the hire ideally, instead of being at that lower level of individual contributor or
• 6:46
  assistant, really should be a manager to manage the resources as they come in.
• 6:52
  That's going to give the leader the greatest leverage for their time.
• 6:57
  Now you're one of the people I have ever heard say that.
• 7:03
  I really think that, now I'm gonna fight you a little bit because I believe the person that
• 7:12
  people need to think about hiring is someone to support their sales operations.
• 7:17
  Because for me, if you don't have sales, you don't have money to hire another manager.
• 7:23
  In my personal opinion as the small business lady, America's number one small business
• 7:27
  expert.
• 7:27
  Now, here's what I think about that though.
• 7:30
  I mean, because you've gotta get some kind of VA person to like kind of help you with like
• 7:35
  administrivia stuff that you might not have the skill or time to do.
• 7:39
  But the like hardcore person in the business to me is sales support.
• 7:44
  Might not be a sales person, it might be an appointment center, it might be a closer, but
• 7:49
  somebody else has gotta be concerned about how this business makes money other than the
• 7:53
  business owner.
• 7:55
  So I'm gonna
• 7:56
  disagree with I'm Canadian, so I want to be polite.
• 8:01
  I can't like aggressively disagree with you.
• 8:06
  But I will say, typically, the person who started the business is pretty good at sales.
• 8:13
  Typically, that's how hold on.
• 8:15
  Hold on.
• 8:16
  Hold on.
• 8:16
  Alright.
• 8:16
  Alright.
• 8:17
  Typically, they're pretty good at sales.
• 8:19
  That's how they got the thing going.
• 8:21
  Usually what they actually need is someone to take care of the backend, someone to take care
• 8:27
  of the delivery, because while they may have gotten in business because they're good at that
• 8:31
  delivering, most of the time what they need help with is delivery.
• 8:36
  And I'll even go a step beyond that.
• 8:38
  And I'll say, if it were me, if it were my business, and I were advising one hire, if all
• 8:44
  you could do was one, the mistake that I think most small business owners make is, okay, you
• 8:51
  get into business to make money, right?
• 8:53
  Like, that's why they do it.
• 8:55
  They get into business to make money.
• 8:57
  And then they decide they don't need anyone to help them with their finances.
• 9:00
  They don't need a bookkeeper, professional bookkeeper.
• 9:03
  They don't need a controller who helps them figure out costs and things like that.
• 9:08
  And usually they don't have any expertise in that.
• 9:12
  That's the thing.
• 9:13
  They can sell a bit, probably a lot, but at least
• 9:17
  a bit.
• 9:17
  And they can do the work a bit, but
• 9:21
  very rarely do they have training on the money side.
• 9:24
  And the money side is the reason they're there in the place.
• 9:27
  So if I had to pick one, it would not be on the sales side, it would be on the finance side.
• 9:33
  Well see, okay, so I'm just gonna speak on this one more time and then we'll get off of it.
• 9:38
  But the revenue solves so many other problems in the business.
• 9:43
  Yeah, assuming that you're selling things for more money than it costs you to make it.
• 9:48
  Well, we pray that they're doing that, right?
• 9:51
  But I'm saying that
• 9:52
  No, I don't think they should pray.
• 9:54
  Think they should take care of
• 9:56
  that Figuratively speaking.
• 9:59
  But what I'm saying is that once you develop the sales systems in a business, then you have
• 10:06
  the resources to fan out the rest of the team.
• 10:10
  That's all I
• 10:11
  hear what you're saying and listen, I mean, twenty minutes, I'm gonna leave this podcast
• 10:16
  and go do sales training.
• 10:17
  So I'm not opposed to sales, but if you have to stack rank them, I think if they got into
• 10:24
  business, if they made enough money to be able to hire one person, they must be able to sell.
• 10:31
  We'll have to agree to disagree.
• 10:32
  You know what, I don't think what you're saying is completely far fetched, right?
• 10:38
  It's just not what I teach people.
• 10:40
  That's fair.
• 10:41
  I teach people fix the dog on sales systems, But that's me.
• 10:47
  But let's talk about the leadership team.
• 10:50
  So I've hired this manager, who's next?
• 10:53
  Like what is the next person in the lineup that you typically need after this manager?
• 10:58
  Yeah, well, there's five positions that are critical.
• 11:03
  There's the leader, the CEO, the president, whatever you wanna call them.
• 11:06
  They set the vision, they chart the way.
• 11:08
  There's the manager, which is the general manager, COO, again, whatever title, but
• 11:14
  they're really the integrator.
• 11:16
  They're taking the 700 crazy ideas that that leader has and plucking out the two or three
• 11:22
  viable ones, and then executing on them.
• 11:25
  So those are the top two.
• 11:27
  And then in any business, I don't care what industry you're in, there's three other main
• 11:31
  sort of legs to the stool.
• 11:34
  There's sales and marketing, as you just pointed out, very important.
• 11:38
  The revenue engine, but also the marketing, positioning, audiences are you going after?
• 11:44
  It's more than just getting the sales.
• 11:46
  And then there's operations, that's the delivery team, right?
• 11:49
  They got to do the work, somebody's got to deliver.
• 11:51
  And then there's that finance leg, which is bookkeeper, controller, maybe CFO.
• 11:56
  It depends on the size and what the goals are of that organization.
• 12:00
  But those are really the top five.
• 12:03
  And then those people can build their teams out underneath them.
• 12:07
  The other one that doesn't get talked about a lot, and I think it should, because it's not a
• 12:11
  full time role and it's not often paid, is the advisory board.
• 12:15
  So when you're thinking small business, having an advisory board, which may cost you dinner
• 12:21
  every once in a while, but treating them as professionals, that can be a huge, huge help to
• 12:27
  any small business leader in getting from where they are to where they wanna be.
• 12:31
  Now that you and I completely agree on.
• 12:34
  I talk about why every small business should have a kitchen cabinet of advisors.
• 12:39
  That we are perfectly aligned on.
• 12:42
  And I call them a kitchen cabinet because they'll work for food.
• 12:44
  Now, the last question I wanna ask you is what are the top three high value activities that
• 12:52
  you think any president should do in their view?
• 12:55
  Okay,
• 12:57
  of all, they need to figure out that vision.
• 12:59
  So specifically, they need to have language around their core values.
• 13:05
  Core values are the behaviors that we do not stray from, that people like us do things like
• 13:11
  this, and if you don't, it's a fireable offense.
• 13:14
  So getting really clear on that so that it gets spread throughout the organization.
• 13:19
  Having some sort of brand promise.
• 13:22
  So buying from our company is different than buying from our competitor because of what?
• 13:28
  What is it that makes us unique?
• 13:30
  And what's the promise behind that?
• 13:32
  And I think it's incredibly important for them to have goals, like a big hairy audacious goal,
• 13:39
  or where do they want to be when they grow up?
• 13:41
  They need some sort of compass to guide them in their progress.
• 13:46
  So I think, of all, setting that vision, and that's what I meant by the vision.
• 13:50
  of all, finding and building a coalition of the willing.
• 13:54
  So finding people that are inspired.
• 13:58
  Go get your apostles, right?
• 14:00
  Cause one person cannot spread the gospel in the way that many others can.
• 14:04
  So finding that coalition of the willing, and then their main job is just communicate,
• 14:11
  communicate, communicate, communicate on that vision.
• 14:14
  Inspire others.
• 14:15
  You know when you've said it enough, when they roll their eyes at you and go, well, there's
• 14:20
  Melinda again talking about the kitchen cabinet, know, oh my goodness.
• 14:25
  That's when you know you've done it enough and that's when you know they'll start using that
• 14:29
  language again to spread it to the masses.
• 14:32
  I love it.
• 14:33
  And what's the best business advice you've ever been given?
• 14:36
  Just get started.
• 14:38
  Just get started.
• 14:39
  Don't sit around and plan.
• 14:41
  I can't tell you how many people that I speak to who are like, well, as soon as I figure out
• 14:46
  my website, I'm going to go.
• 14:48
  As soon as I get the legal stuff figured out, I'm going to go.
• 14:52
  Make your thing, see if someone will buy it, or see if someone will buy it and then make it
• 14:57
  after the fact, as Michelle said earlier.
• 15:01
  Just get started.
• 15:03
  I love it.
• 15:03
  I love it.
• 15:04
  Well, Tara, you have been an amazing guest.
• 15:08
  I have got to have you back.
• 15:10
  We got to duke it out some more.
• 15:12
  I love talking to other business coaches and consultants because we all have different ways
• 15:16
  that we do things, but I really, really appreciate what you have brought to this today
• 15:23
  because, hey, I'm today years old learning a new strategy and I fully, fully appreciate it
• 15:29
  and I appreciate you.
• 15:31
  And anyone who wants more information about Deborah should go over to bellrock.ca because
• 15:39
  she's in Canada.
• 15:40
  All right, But
• 15:40
  But I could help you in America too.
• 15:44
  Absolutely, absolutely.
• 15:46
  And thank you all for joining me for this episode of the Small Biz Chat podcast.
• 15:52
  If you wanna learn more, head over to our website, Small Biz Lady University.
• 15:57
  And if you're a woman owned business and you're looking for a confidential community to support
• 16:02
  you in your business journey, please consider joining Small Biz Lady Academy.
• 16:07
  We have content there in English and Spanish, and I wanna support you in your journey as your
• 16:13
  coach.
• 16:13
  So check out smallbizladyacademy.com.
• 16:17
  And I'll leave you with this.
• 16:18
  You never lose in business.
• 16:20
  Either you win or you learn.
• 16:23
  God bless everybody.
• 16:24
  Thank you so much.
• 16:29
  Thanks for listening to the Small Biz Chat podcast with Melinda Emerson.
• 16:34
  Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, and join us next Wednesday for
• 16:39
  more fantastic information and interviews.
• 16:42
  You can find more sources and small business success strategies by visiting Melinda's
• 16:47
  website, succeedasyourownboss.com.
• 16:50
  Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next week.