Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 52. Six Months on the Floor, Then a Business with Jocelyn Singer-Sargent

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52. Six Months on the Floor, Then a Business with Jocelyn Singer-Sargent · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:03
  What's happening, everybody? Welcome to Scrappy But Successful. It's a show where I sit down
• 0:07
  with your favorite consultants and we find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated
• 0:12
  or because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple
• 0:16
  Consulting Firm and of Pineapple Analyst AI, always helping small businesses become more data-driven. Fun
• 0:21
  fact of the day for our guest, Santa Fe, New Mexico was founded in 1607.
• 0:26
  It is the oldest capital city in the US, and believe it or not, it
• 0:30
  is the oldest European settlement. west of the Mississippi. They started there and they never
• 0:35
  looked back. But that's neither here nor there. Today I'm joined by my friend Jocelyn
• 0:39
  Singer Sargent. She's the founder of Jocelyn Singer Sargent Consulting. She's known as the work
• 0:44
  whisperer. So she's an HR consultant. She's a coach she's a speaker. My favorite of
• 0:49
  her titles is from Boomers to Zoomers. It's all about building collaboration across generations. Bottom
• 0:53
  line, she helps build effective people strategies. So Jocelyn, I'm pumped to have you on
• 0:58
  the show. Thank you so much for coming on. We know that you're successful today.
• 1:02
  Question we have for you. Do you think you fall more on the sophisticated side,
• 1:07
  more on the scrappy side?
• 1:09
  Yeah, thanks for having me on, Jack. Definitely on the scrappy side. I grew up
• 1:14
  in a small town in New Hampshire. there was no reason to own fancy shoes
• 1:20
  because they were just gonna get muddy. and I I think that's sort of the
• 1:26
  attitude I've taken and the approach when building my business is just jump in, figure
• 1:31
  it out, yeah, and and scrap.
• 1:34
  Yep. I love it. This
• 1:35
  Ha ha ha.
• 1:36
  is this is a guest made for the show, everybody. did you have any entrepreneurs
• 1:41
  in the family growing up?
• 1:43
  No, quite the opposite. everyone, yeah, it was everyone kind of worked for the for
• 1:48
  the company, you know. both my parents went to medical school. So my dad was
• 1:54
  a career physician. And not only that, but he worked at the same hospital. He's
• 1:59
  still doing some part-time work. He worked for the same hospital his entire career.
• 2:05
  Okay.
• 2:06
  my mom ended up doing a lot of work for state government. she's been working
• 2:12
  for the state of Vermont now for I don't know, 10, 12 years. my brother
• 2:18
  is a physician in the same department at the same hospital as my dad. so
• 2:24
  no, no but no entrepreneurs. nobody went out and started their own thing. It was
• 2:30
  you find a good job and hunker down. So I
• 2:34
  Okay.
• 2:35
  I feel like I I I would have gotten to entrepreneurship earlier. if it had
• 2:40
  been on my radar but just was not on my radar for a really long
• 2:45
  time.
• 2:46
  I this is so all right, pretty well educated household, pretty successful household it sounds
• 2:49
  like. were you like did they really instill like, hey, you gotta be, you know,
• 2:53
  good grades in school, or were you off kind of doing your own thing? Like
• 2:57
  did you did you have any like lemonade stand? Were you doing anything like that
• 3:01
  as a kid?
• 3:02
  No, nothing. And and yes, it as it was explained to me, my job growing
• 3:07
  up was to get really good grades, do all the things, and go to an
• 3:12
  Ivy League school, preferably the one that the rest of the family went to and
• 3:17
  that just happened to be in our backyard. So yeah, so that that was it.
• 3:22
  It was education was super important. no lemonade stands. My first job was my my
• 3:27
  senior year in high school. I worked for a women's clothing store in town. I
• 3:32
  mean you have to understand our town, it was a huge big deal in sixth
• 3:37
  grade when we got the gap. We thought we had really we had arrived. We
• 3:42
  had made it.
• 3:44
  You made it.
• 3:45
  We had made it. before that it was Kmart. So yeah so having this women's
• 3:50
  clothing store in town was you know, was a pretty big deal. So I worked
• 3:56
  there and I I realized that I really enjoyed getting a paycheck and making money.
• 4:02
  I really enjoyed making money. That you know, it it felt good. So when I
• 4:07
  was in college, I was very fortunate. I I was not paying for college myself,
• 4:13
  but I almost always had at least some job. You know, I like working at
• 4:19
  the fitness center or again working working in a little store or doing retail, something.
• 4:24
  but it just felt good having a little bit of cash flow coming in.
• 4:30
  Yeah. And learning that early is pretty important too. were you so go back to
• 4:35
  the the retail because that it sounds like big fancy store, not maybe not big
• 4:40
  fancy, but still like a a new thing in town. Did you like the actual
• 4:45
  retail process of interacting with customers? Really?
• 4:48
  I did. I loved it. I loved it. Yeah.
• 4:52
  Why?
• 4:53
  I really liked I really liked that consultative process. So my favorite thing, I worked
• 4:57
  a lot of women's retail in college. That was always my summer job, or you
• 5:02
  know, one summer I was in I lived in Boston and worked for a a
• 5:08
  big women two-story women's clothing boutique on Newberry Street. And my favorite thing was when
• 5:13
  People would come in and say, I need some help. And they would let me
• 5:19
  help them find. This was back when you're too young, but this was back when
• 5:24
  genes were first really cool. Because for a long
• 5:28
  Okay.
• 5:29
  time, genes weren't that cool. but then all of a sudden there started being all
• 5:34
  of these different brands and cuts. And so we had this whole wall of different
• 5:39
  women's genes. So, you know, helping people find the right genes, helping people. I remember
• 5:44
  one customer. came in and she was only trying on black and brown shirts. And
• 5:49
  she had just the most beautiful red hair. And so working with her to say,
• 5:54
  you know, will you just humor me and try on this purple shirt or this,
• 5:59
  you know, and when the light bulb would come on and she'd go, I love
• 6:04
  this. So I always really liked that almost co-creative process of connecting with a customer
• 6:09
  or a client and really listening to what it was that they need and want
• 6:14
  and perhaps providing some ways to get there that they hadn't thought of. And I
• 6:19
  feel like that thread has continued. I'd never made the connection until you just asked
• 6:24
  me this question, but I feel like that thread has has gone through my work
• 6:29
  when I go into organizations and when I work directly with people.
• 6:34
  It's so when I think about that, the consultative approach to the new style of
• 6:38
  jeans, you don't have Instagram, you don't have TikTok, you don't have like some
• 6:42
  Right.
• 6:43
  fashion icon or anything any influence or anything like that. It's just like, hey, like,
• 6:47
  I gotta figure out something that works. Let's kind of brainstorm through this together. In
• 6:52
  today's world and what you do now, it is pretty similar. Cause there's no guidebook
• 6:57
  on really how to handle employees because everybody's different. I'm there's billions of books, but
• 7:02
  You need that consultative approach. And so you've carried that. So all right, so give
• 7:07
  me 30 seconds on today. Like, what do you do for businesses today?
• 7:12
  Sure. So I I come in and I a little I initially I'm kind of
• 7:18
  like the the weather person. Like I I put my feelers out and say, what's
• 7:24
  really going on here and kind of assess the weather. I will look at everything
• 7:30
  from their employee handbook, their personnel files. I'll read their DEI strategy or lack thereof.
• 7:36
  I will have lots of conversations with different employees and really again sort of just
• 7:42
  feel into what's going on in the organization, what's working well, what's not, and how
• 7:48
  is that connected to people processes? for instance, do people understand what their roles are
• 7:54
  and expectations? Do they understand what their swim lanes are? Or are people getting upset
• 8:01
  at each other because they're inadvertently, you know, digging in each other's sandboxes and not
• 8:07
  knowing it. that's a process issue. So, how do we backtrack into that? Is it
• 8:13
  a communication problem? Do people not understand what's going on? or are the good intentions
• 8:19
  of leadership getting lost in translation and people aren't connecting the dots between the actions
• 8:25
  that leadership is taking and their intent and and the impact that it's actually having?
• 8:31
  So I don't know if that helps or if that's still too vague.
• 8:37
  No, I think so I I find it so interesting because I you and I
• 8:41
  are like opposite sides because I'm full data. I'm doing all this dashboarding stuff and
• 8:45
  full analysis. And if
• 8:47
  Yeah.
• 8:48
  people were to ask what do I do in 30 seconds, I'm like, I make
• 8:50
  sure the the goals go down to the entire team and everybody knows if they're
• 8:53
  doing good or bad. And there's role-based
• 8:55
  Yes.
• 8:56
  KPIs and people know what they're supposed to do. And like it's the exact same
• 9:02
  answer. But from HR and people to data and numbers and all that stuff, we're
• 9:09
  ending at the same point. It's beautiful. okay. So who are these clients that you're
• 9:16
  working with? Are they big organizations?
• 9:19
  Most of them no. Most of them are small and mid-size. In part that's because
• 9:24
  I have a lot of local business and there aren't a lot of big businesses
• 9:30
  in Santa Fe, New Mexico. So I I have a lot of organizations that are
• 9:36
  around 50 employees, 30 to 50. That seems to be a transition point for a
• 9:42
  lot of organizations where initially they could behave as a small business, which means Be
• 9:47
  completely obsessed with their customers, be totally externally focused. And, you know, maybe they have
• 9:53
  people processes, but they they can kind of get away not having them. There's an
• 9:59
  informality to how they do business and it works. And when you start to approach
• 10:05
  50 employees, there seems to be a turning point where what got you there won't
• 10:10
  get you to that next level as you scale. And so it tends to be
• 10:16
  a real growing pains point where I get tapped a lot to come in. And
• 10:22
  it's this moment where oftentimes organizations have to take a take a pause from being
• 10:28
  completely externally focused and become more internally focused to go, okay, how are we doing
• 10:34
  what we're doing? Is there a better way to do it? This has worked really
• 10:39
  well for 20 clients, but I don't think we can do this for a hundred
• 10:45
  clients. So that that pivot point and and people feel that it reverberates again all
• 10:51
  the way down. I'm sure with with systems, I'm sure you see it. And that's
• 10:57
  a a place where you come in and they say, help us, Jack. We need
• 11:02
  better processes. We need to automate some of this stuff, or you know, we need
• 11:08
  to understand our workflows better. And it it also happens with with people as well.
• 11:14
  You know, we we can't just rely on the water cooler for people to know
• 11:20
  what's going on. we we have to we have to approach how we are working
• 11:25
  differently. So it's that real pivot point from working in the business to working on
• 11:31
  the business is what I find.
• 11:34
  How do you get into this? Because it from from what we've heard so far,
• 11:35
  it's
• 11:36
  I
• 11:38
  it's a kind of a unique lane, which is a really cool lane. And was
• 11:41
  it kind of like following your passion of that consultative women's clothing approach and saying,
• 11:45
  all right, I'm gonna go work in a couple organizations and I'm gonna go with
• 11:49
  the things that just make me happy and now now you've built a business out
• 11:53
  of here? Like how how do you stumble upon this or how do you actually
• 11:56
  create this for yourself?
• 11:58
  Yeah. so I'm gonna go back a little bit farther. I did
• 12:02
  Please, yeah, yeah.
• 12:03
  not most people do not set out and say when I grow up, I want
• 12:08
  to be an HR. and and the people that do say that, I I think
• 12:14
  there's something wrong with them because it's not
• 12:17
  Yeah.
• 12:18
  because on the surface, it's not the most it's not the sexiest of jobs.
• 12:23
  Right.
• 12:24
  And historically, I think HR has really gotten pigeonholed into being the police officer of
• 12:29
  the organization. Like, I'm sorry, Jack, but no, you cannot wear your sequin tube top.
• 12:35
  That is not business casual. right?
• 12:38
  Look so good on me though.
• 12:40
  Or Jocelyn, you really need to be bathing more often. those conversations. so I ended
• 12:45
  up in HR essentially because I was in a different job that I didn't like,
• 12:50
  and I was trying to figure out. A way to get out of it is
• 12:55
  the honest truth. So I have a background as a licensed clinical social worker. Have
• 13:00
  a master's degree in social work. moved from Santa Fe to New York City to
• 13:05
  get that master's degree. Thought maybe I'd stay back east since that's where I'm from
• 13:10
  originally, but missed the big skies, missed all my friends and the wonderful people and
• 13:15
  just the magic of northern New Mexico. So came back out. to Santa Fe after
• 13:20
  grad school and was working at a residential behavioral health treatment center. So essentially a
• 13:26
  rehab. and most of the people there were struggling with addiction and complex PTSD. So
• 13:31
  intense work. We were open 365 days a year, 24-7, kind of like a hospital.
• 13:36
  And they didn't, I I wanted to be a therapist, but they didn't have any
• 13:41
  therapist openings. But they had an opening in the admissions department. So I took that
• 13:46
  role and it was a lot of time, it was almost exclusively on the phone.
• 13:51
  So I had an you know a headset and an earpiece in, and I spent
• 13:56
  a lot of time talking to insurance companies, and I spent a lot of time
• 14:01
  talking to people in crisis, some of whom wanted help and some of whom did
• 14:07
  not want help. it was a very stressful job. There were only two of us
• 14:12
  when I started in the department. And so we were each on call for a
• 14:17
  week at a time every other week. So I would go home with the work
• 14:22
  cell phone. And that my that did not, my body did not appreciate that. I'm
• 14:27
  not somebody who can easily say, well, you know, if the phone rings, I'll pick
• 14:32
  it up, but otherwise I'm just gonna chill. you know, it felt like I was.
• 14:37
  I became a little bit hypervigilant. you know, and it just wasn't that rewarding because
• 14:42
  again, talking to insurance companies and talking to people in crisis, but without being able
• 14:48
  to be part of the solution. And then there was also this whole sales element,
• 14:53
  like you're trying to fill quotas and for yeah. So I mean, sometimes the
• 14:58
  That seems out of place.
• 15:00
  well, the healthcare industry, that's the thing about making it for profit, is that sometimes
• 15:04
  patient care, in my Limited experience can be in conflict with you know, the desire
• 15:09
  to make profits. so it only works when those two things align, that what's best
• 15:14
  for the patient or the client is also best for the bottom line. And sometimes
• 15:19
  that happens and sometimes it doesn't. So all of that kind in the mix. and
• 15:24
  over the course of of the first year that I was there, I realized I
• 15:29
  did not want to be a therapist there because there were It was a tough
• 15:34
  place to be a therapist. and they would get very different kinds of calls on
• 15:38
  the nights and weekends that were pretty challenging. And I would also have all of
• 15:43
  the therapists come into my office during their lunch breaks and and kind of lament
• 15:48
  that that it was such a hard job. we had a l really high turnover.
• 15:53
  And so I didn't know what HR was, but I felt I thought it was
• 15:58
  the social worker for the organization. I thought, man, our our employees kind of need
• 16:03
  a voice here. And so I pitched to the executive director, hey, I I, you
• 16:08
  know, you should make this position for me so that I can get out of
• 16:13
  being in admissions, which I don't like. but I want to stay working here. I
• 16:17
  like the people, like, put make, you know, I'll start an HR department for you.
• 16:22
  and so after a couple months of thinking about it, the executive director said, sure,
• 16:27
  start it. Go for it. and so that's how my HR journey began. You know,
• 16:32
  they said here's a here's a office and a box of a cardboard box full
• 16:37
  of forms that people have signed saying they read the employee handbook. figure it out.
• 16:42
  And so I was, you know, suddenly on the leadership team. I was in charge
• 16:47
  of this organizational function that I had never done before. and for me, and I
• 16:52
  know for a lot of people, this is probably true for you too, Jack, like
• 16:56
  I learn best. It's not comfortable, but I learn best when I'm just picked up
• 17:01
  by the shorts and thrown in the deep end and have to figure it out.
• 17:06
  Have you, you know, have you had those experiences in in your business where you've
• 17:11
  just or in your work life where you've just been sort of thrown in the
• 17:16
  deep end and had to figure it out?
• 17:19
  It's almost all of my experiences.
• 17:21
  Yeah.
• 17:23
  I I had a nice college experience and college degree and all that stuff, but
• 17:26
  a hundred percent of what I've learned, a hundred percent of what I do today,
• 17:30
  has been learned on the fly because a client needed it or a boss needed
• 17:34
  it or somebody needed it. It's like, okay, you know, I've never done it, but
• 17:38
  I'm pretty confident and I can figure it out.
• 17:41
  Yeah, that's it. yeah, I had I had a hunch that that might be part
• 17:46
  of how you learn also. Yeah, so so that's what I did. So I really
• 17:51
  came into HR with the perspective of I want to help make work work for
• 17:56
  people. So I had a
• 17:58
  Nice.
• 17:59
  I I've always had a a pretty employee centric view of of HR, which works
• 18:04
  most of the time and and You know, sometimes there are those situations where you
• 18:10
  I have to put a different hat on. but I really truly believe that happy
• 18:16
  employees, employees who feel supported, who have what they need to do the job, do
• 18:21
  really great work. And when they do really great work, then your business makes money.
• 18:27
  your organization is successful. if you have miserable employees who don't feel appreciated, who don't
• 18:33
  have what they need to be successful, your business isn't gonna be successful. So that's
• 18:38
  really the the place that I try and target is that overlap in the Venn
• 18:44
  diagram between what's good for your people and what's good for your business. and that
• 18:50
  overlap is massive. That's that's most things. so in terms of how I got to
• 18:55
  do this type of work, yeah, some of it has just been what I would
• 19:01
  call wayfinding, which is just following. Do you know the book Designing Your Life? Have
• 19:07
  you? Heard of this book?
• 19:09
  I don't I don't think so, no. Okay.
• 19:11
  it's so good. it was written like over a decade ago by Bill Burnett and
• 19:16
  Dave Evans. They're two Stanford professors. They may be retired now, but they worked for
• 19:22
  the design school within Stanford. And they were original Silicon Valley guys. I think one
• 19:28
  of them helped design the hinges for the very first laptop. And for decades, they've
• 19:34
  been teaching. Among other things, at the design school, this class called Designing Your Life,
• 19:39
  which takes design principles and applies them to how do you create a life? And
• 19:45
  and now they have books like Design Your Work Life or Design the New Work
• 19:51
  Life after COVID. and so how do you take those principles and use them to
• 19:57
  design a life that you love? and there were some great exercises in there that
• 20:02
  I found over a decade ago around tracking my own personal levels of energy and
• 20:08
  engagement. So what are those tasks throughout the day that really fill my cup, that
• 20:14
  get me excited, that get me energized where I'm in the flow? And then conversely,
• 20:20
  what are those tasks in my job that just suck the life out of me?
• 20:25
  and so how do I job craft to be able to do more of the
• 20:31
  things that Are life giving and less of the things that suck the life out
• 20:37
  of me. And that's really how I approached my work in organizations before I went
• 20:43
  out on my own. I, you know, in my HR roles, I worked for a
• 20:48
  credit union for a while and ended up leading the HR department for the credit
• 20:54
  union. but I also got to do stuff in performance excellence, where we were looking
• 21:00
  at continuous improvement and creating. systems and processes that were repeatable, where we were looking
• 21:06
  at metrics and data driven decision making and and all of that. And that's just
• 21:11
  because I nerded out and and you know got myself invited to a meeting that
• 21:17
  was interesting. And then I just kept following my nose. So what I find happens
• 21:23
  today, this is a long answer, my apologies. What I find happens
• 21:28
  You're good. This is great.
• 21:29
  today is oftentimes organizations will start out saying, I need a handbook. or they say,
• 21:35
  my gosh, I don't know. There are so many employee relations issues. I I don't,
• 21:41
  you know, this feels out of control. I need somebody to help with this, but
• 21:47
  I don't know what that is. I often say, I have a guy in my
• 21:53
  in my I have a networking group and he's a business consultant and he every
• 21:59
  time I I talk about my work, He goes, my gosh, this is your you're,
• 22:06
  you know, my blood pressure is rising because my scopes of engagement are often like
• 22:12
  fairly loose.
• 22:13
  Ha ha.
• 22:14
  and it just you can see his eye twitch. because f most of my clients,
• 22:20
  if they knew exactly what they needed from me, they wouldn't need me.
• 22:27
  That's
• 22:28
  Makes sense because they go, I don't know, there's people stuff, it's kind of a
• 22:32
  mess. I don't know what's going on here. I need some help. And so we
• 22:37
  scope it to where, okay, well, I'm gonna come in and check it out and
• 22:43
  then provide some help, but we don't know what that looks like yet. so that's
• 22:48
  been my approach, and yeah, it's been pretty organic. And don't get me wrong, I
• 22:53
  still have a few customers where or clients that, you know, I'm Putting together handbooks
• 22:59
  for them, or, you know, revising their handbooks or those sorts of things. I have
• 23:04
  a benchmark salary survey, you know, that I'm need to finish for a client. But
• 23:09
  I'm finding more and more the work that's coming to me. Is this more creative,
• 23:15
  nuanced, kind of this is where the work whisperer comes in, kind of like feel
• 23:20
  into the organization a little bit and identify. what the issues are that are kind
• 23:25
  of underneath the surface. So what are the what's really the root cause here? You
• 23:31
  know, it may look like these two people aren't getting along, but why? Like what
• 23:36
  what's what's really going on? Is it a process issue? Is it a communication issue?
• 23:42
  Do we need manager training? What the heck is going on?
• 23:46
  How how do you politely pry to do that? So like
• 23:49
  Ha ha
• 23:50
  they, you know, hey, I need an employee handbook because somebody told me I need
• 23:53
  a handbook and so whatever HR's the the people police or whatever the terminology you
• 23:57
  used earlier, let
• 23:58
  Right.
• 23:59
  me just check the box and do it. How do you actually go a little
• 24:02
  bit deeper and see what's going on for real?
• 24:05
  Yeah. first of all, not everybody's open to that.
• 24:09
  Fair.
• 24:10
  some of it is, you know, talking about within their policies, you know, like their
• 24:15
  their policy on performance reviews. So how have those been working? is it helpful? what
• 24:21
  about your corrective action plans? Do you do you use these a lot? What what
• 24:27
  is the conversation like when you have an employee who isn't who isn't being successful.
• 24:32
  like how how does how does that happen? How does that roll out? some organizations
• 24:38
  say, no, we've never done a you know a pip, we've never done a performance
• 24:44
  improvement plan. Okay. So then how do you handle it? so just having some conversations
• 24:50
  about these policies in action, what does that look like? And that can even be
• 24:55
  even benefits are a foray into that because you know how's your turnover? Are your
• 25:01
  Is your compensation and benefits do you feel like they're attracting and keeping the employees
• 25:07
  that you want to have? so it it's if you ask them about not just
• 25:13
  the surface of the policy, but is the policy accomplishing what it is that you
• 25:18
  want to accomplish? That's part of it. another thing I This is probably there, there
• 25:24
  will probably be HR people who listen to this podcast and go, my God, this
• 25:30
  makes me she makes me so nervous.
• 25:33
  Yeah.
• 25:34
  because you know, I I also see see like the employee handbook as as a
• 25:45
  an artifact of organizational culture. So it's part
• 25:51
  Okay.
• 25:52
  of how you present your organization. Are you leaning heavily on hey, I trust you
• 25:56
  as an employee. you know, I'm I'm grateful that you're here. here's what we want
• 26:02
  to do to support you to be successful. Is that the tone of of your
• 26:07
  employee handbook? Or is it more if you do this, your hand gets slapped? If
• 26:13
  you do this, your hand gets slapped. Is it, you know, so so sort of
• 26:19
  what's that spirit that's coming through? And that really does come through. and you know,
• 26:24
  when it comes to HR. you know, a lot of decisions are about risk management,
• 26:30
  which is true, right, for data, it's true for anything. But so if you have
• 26:35
  a a more I don't know, if if you if you have a looser policy
• 26:41
  around, let's just say taking time off, you open yourself up to some risk that
• 26:47
  that could be abused, that You know, people will take advantage of it. And so
• 26:52
  that is a that is a concern. However, on the other side, there's also risk
• 26:58
  involved to writing a super buttoned up time off policy. One, if people don't follow
• 27:04
  it, then that's on you. Cause if you write a policy and you say you
• 27:09
  do something, you gotta do it. And two, yeah.
• 27:13
  I think I wouldn't force him.
• 27:15
  And two, When you lead with this kind of rigid disciplinary approach, you risk creating
• 27:21
  employees and an and an organizational culture that feels punitive, that doesn't feel empowering, where
• 27:28
  people go, Okay, all I do is I color within my lanes, and that's it.
• 27:35
  Right. I don't do anything extra. I don't because this is a place where they
• 27:42
  have You know, they've really defined where the edges are. And so you're going to
• 27:48
  attract people who just wanna again color between the lines and and there anyways, there's
• 27:55
  a relationship between how you position yourself as an organization and the types of employees
• 28:02
  that you attract and the types of employees that stay and the work that they
• 28:09
  do while they're there. So I try and I try and introduce those kinds of
• 28:15
  nuance and conversations and ask those types of questions, even in a situation like with
• 28:22
  an employee handbook.
• 28:24
  Take me to the start of your business. You've got all this knowledge coming in,
• 28:27
  you've been HR in a bunch of different ways. And then twenty twenty three, if
• 28:30
  I remember correctly, you start the business. Okay.
• 28:32
  Yes. Here's here's how it happened. So in twenty twenty one, COVID had happened. I'm
• 28:38
  sure IT was a miserable. I I mean, I just have so much compassion for
• 28:44
  anyone who was working in IT when the pandemic hit, and all of these organizations,
• 28:50
  like the credit union that I was working for, overnight became a remote organization. And
• 28:56
  IT had to facilitate all of that. and in in a largely invisible way. so
• 29:02
  it it it's like the classic if they were doing their job, nobody thought about
• 29:08
  them. But if something went wrong, right, they were the scapegoat and and they heard
• 29:14
  about it. HR was very similar in that way. That, you know, I mean, everything
• 29:20
  from in in New Mexico, tracking recommendations for social distancing or for testing and the
• 29:26
  testing protocols. And how long do you have to wait after a positive test? And
• 29:32
  I get another right. And it was changing sometimes weekly. And so it was a
• 29:38
  pretty miserable time to be an HR. and to be quite honest, I I burned
• 29:44
  out. I really did. So the end of 2021, I said, I this is not
• 29:50
  sustainable for me. I need to step away. I left my credit union job and
• 29:56
  I thought, okay, this is when I'm finally gonna start consulting. I'm I'm gonna I'm
• 30:02
  gonna do it. I'm gonna jump in to the thing I wanted to do. and
• 30:08
  instead I I slept on the floor with my dogs for six months. True story.
• 30:14
  I went to the dog park and napped on the floor. and and before I
• 30:20
  I could pick myself up and go, okay, now we're gonna start this thing, a
• 30:26
  headhunter reached out and said, Hey, I there's a job. do you want it? And
• 30:32
  in all honesty, I thought, well, I do still have a bunch of dental work
• 30:38
  to get done. So yeah,
• 30:41
  Yeah.
• 30:42
  I'll go ahead, right? This is like the non sexy adulting stuff. It's like, well,
• 30:46
  sure, I'll get some dental insurance and get, you know, finish getting my teeth. And
• 30:51
  I did. I got all my dental work done. So that's good. I
• 30:56
  She had a goal and she did it.
• 30:57
  did it. Yep. I got it done. but the organization I I joined, it just
• 31:01
  was not, it was not a good fit in in terms of culture and in
• 31:06
  terms of just my lens of of how I approach HR. And so I was
• 31:10
  there for a little bit. then there was an opportunity to do something new, which
• 31:15
  You know, I I always love opportunities to do something new and learn something new.
• 31:19
  so I ended up as the director of the project management office, which I had
• 31:24
  never done before, but I had never done HR when I started in HR. So
• 31:29
  Okay, okay.
• 31:30
  I figured what the heck. And they were they were looking to transition their project
• 31:36
  management office from being an IT project management office to being an enterprise project management
• 31:42
  office. So they really wanted someone who could. build relationships across departments, and who could
• 31:49
  do the the people stuff. but
• 31:52
  I'm laughing because I've seen this so many different times when they're like, This works
• 31:55
  really well for IT and there's an agile structure and we're gonna follow it. Now
• 31:59
  let's introduce people and people nope, absolutely not.
• 32:02
  Right, right. So they were like, maybe this is the piece of the puzzle to
• 32:07
  have somebody who can massage the people part of this. however, right after I took
• 32:12
  the job, I think actually two days before I was I transitioned to that new
• 32:17
  role, it was announced that there's a CEO transition happening. So all enterprise projects went
• 32:22
  on hold. And the only projects that continued to move forward were IT projects. So
• 32:27
  having interviewed as okay, if you need somebody who's tech savvy, who's an IT person,
• 32:32
  I'm not your person. And they said, no, no, no, that's not what we're, you
• 32:37
  know, that's not the role at all.
• 32:40
  Yeah.
• 32:41
  I ended up as an as director of an IT PMO. So that was just
• 32:45
  not a good fit. So after after almost a year of that, you know, we
• 32:50
  we parted ways and it it was just and it was such a relief. it
• 32:55
  it's terrible to be in a job that it's like wearing a pair of shoes
• 32:59
  that just does not fit. And so that felt like, okay, this really is the
• 33:04
  time. and actually my credit union circled back and said, Hey, we wanna we want
• 33:09
  you to come back, you know, we'll we'll make a role for you. You can
• 33:14
  be VP of Performance Excellence and you can do you know, and it's weird, Jack,
• 33:18
  but like my whole body was like, We can't do it. Not gonna happen. You
• 33:23
  you
• 33:24
  Would rather sleep on the floor with the dogs.
• 33:26
  Right. If you make us do that, we're gonna sleep on the floor with the
• 33:30
  dogs. And I thought, well, that's not gonna work. So I so I just started
• 33:34
  telling people I was doing HR consulting. I honestly, that and and anytime I have
• 33:38
  a new idea to do something, the first thing I do is make business cards.
• 33:43
  So I go out on VistaPrint. So
• 33:45
  Yeah.
• 33:46
  I I went out on VistaPrint and made myself a new business card for something
• 33:49
  that did not yet exist. And and just started telling people and my first client.
• 33:54
  Was word of mouth, it was someone from the the organization that I had just
• 33:58
  left. she knew somebody you know, who she met at a networking event who was
• 34:03
  looking for a New Mexico HR consultant. And so this woman emailed me and said,
• 34:08
  Is it okay if I give her your information and tell her you're an HR
• 34:12
  consultant? I'm like, sure, tell her I'm an HR consultant. and you know, and that's
• 34:17
  how and that's how that happened. I had a meeting with her. She introduced me
• 34:22
  to the the brand new president of a of a company here in Santa Fe
• 34:26
  who needed some support. And and, you know, we we signed a contract that I
• 34:31
  had to email other HR consultants and be like, Do you I know this is
• 34:36
  terrible, but will you send me your contract and can I just
• 34:40
  Yeah.
• 34:41
  take your name out and put my name in and use it? You know, total,
• 34:46
  total scrappy route.
• 34:47
  this is as crappy as it gets. I love it.
• 34:50
  Yeah, super scrappy. so so I didn't for about the first year, I think I
• 34:55
  I would people would say, what do you do? And I'd be I'm an HR
• 35:00
  consultant, and I would use air quotes because I I I still wasn't sure if
• 35:06
  if that's what was happening and that's you know, if it would stick, but it
• 35:11
  but it stuck. and over time I've gotten a few more clients and yeah, I
• 35:16
  I mean my LLC wasn't formed until August 21st of twenty twenty three, so I'm
• 35:22
  coming up on just barely two years of yeah, but it's it's working. So, you
• 35:27
  know.
• 35:28
  I'm such a big fan of this. I love it. because
• 35:30
  Ha ha ha.
• 35:31
  it's like, hey, I'm gonna go try this thing and I'm gonna tell people I'm
• 35:34
  a consultant. And somebody's like, my god, you're a consultant? Boom, immediately hired.
• 35:38
  Yeah, and and I've been very fortunate. I mean, I I have had a very
• 35:43
  high close rate in terms of if I get a conversation with somebody, unless they
• 35:49
  just I'm out of their price range and they just really don't have budget for
• 35:55
  it. I've been I've been very lucky. I have not I I've won most of
• 36:01
  the conversations that that I've had, most of the business. So
• 36:06
  Pretty good. I mean, you're a very likable person from the get-go. And so I
• 36:09
  can see that, especially bringing like
• 36:11
  Thank you.
• 36:12
  a scary HR, just HR just like a scary department for business owners, right? And
• 36:16
  then you come in, you're like, hey,
• 36:19
  Yes.
• 36:20
  what's up? How are you? And like, okay. This girl's pretty cool. I could definitely
• 36:22
  see that.
• 36:23
  Yeah. Thanks, Luku.
• 36:25
  Where are you getting your clients from? Is it all referral-based friends? What do we
• 36:30
  got going on?
• 36:31
  Mostly referral based. so so yeah, a couple of you know, I told you the
• 36:36
  story, but I'll I'll share again. I've been working for a contemporary arts museum. have
• 36:42
  had a 90-day contract with them to come in and provide some support after they've
• 36:48
  gone through a lot of really exciting growth in the past couple years. and they
• 36:54
  haven't had an HR. dedicated HR person. So they wanted somebody to come in, sort
• 36:59
  of do an assessment, and make a recommendation for what they needed going forward in
• 37:05
  terms of HR. and that one came about, I there was a woman that I
• 37:11
  had met maybe twice because I knew her husband, who I grew up with him
• 37:17
  and was reconnected with him at the at the Santa Fe Dog Park, which is
• 37:22
  by the way, a fabulous place to network and do business.
• 37:27
  Yeah, apparently.
• 37:28
  For all of you business owners out there. I I know it's it's sort of
• 37:32
  stereotypical that you you get a dog and you you meet a significant other at
• 37:37
  the dog park, but it also works really well for for networking. So yeah, good
• 37:42
  Okay. Gotta get a dog.
• 37:44
  good to know. Yep, go get a dog. so anyways, I knew this this man.
• 37:49
  I'd gone to middle school with him, hadn't seen him in twenty-five years, bumped into
• 37:54
  him at the dog park a couple years ago. And saw him once or twice
• 38:00
  with his wife. And LinkedIn, you know, six months ago popped up saying suggesting that
• 38:05
  I connect with her. and and so I did. And then a couple days later,
• 38:11
  she sent me a LinkedIn message saying, Hey, I I had no idea you were
• 38:16
  an HR consultant. Turns out we're we're looking for one and we're we're interviewing some.
• 38:21
  Would you be interested in having a conversation? And so that's how that came about.
• 38:27
  I do have one client who's the husband. Of one of my good friends. He
• 38:32
  bought a business and is a brand new business owner as of a year and
• 38:38
  a half ago. So been working with him, doing some executive coaching. I'm trying to
• 38:43
  think. yeah, a lot of word of mouth. I spoke at a local HR association
• 38:48
  meeting back in January of 25. you know, there were only 15 people there, but
• 38:54
  one of the people there worked for a a Pueblo here and she reached out
• 38:59
  to me a couple months later and said, Hey, I saw you talk. we need
• 39:05
  somebody to come in and do manager training. And then after that I did customer
• 39:10
  service training for them. so that was where a speaking engagement led to, you know,
• 39:15
  a client and and some work. And so the speaking engagements also I really encourage
• 39:21
  people. to if you have opportunities, whether it's a your local chamber of commerce and
• 39:26
  and you go and speak for free to a bunch of business owners or those
• 39:32
  sorts of things, that has also been a a a great opportunity to expand my
• 39:37
  network. And just again, the the word of mouth it is can be really impactful.
• 39:43
  100% agree. I'm a big fan of the speaking engagements as well. And they're a
• 39:46
  long sales cycle if you're like if you're tracking it. I don't know
• 39:50
  Yes.
• 39:51
  when the person came from you, but but in January twenty-five, I had somebody reach
• 39:53
  out to me. There was a three-year-ago presentation and they reached out to like
• 39:57
  Wow.
• 39:58
  the organizer. They're like, Who is that data nerd? And I'm still
• 40:00
  Yeah.
• 40:01
  doing the data nerd stuff. So we reached out and we you know, we've we've
• 40:04
  been working together since. But
• 40:05
  Yeah.
• 40:07
  All right, let me hit you with some scrappy versus sophisticated lightning round questions.
• 40:10
  Do it. Let's go.
• 40:12
  If one of your dogs pops up at the background, do you say, like, like,
• 40:15
  hey, sorry about that? Or do you like, hey, sorry, that's our that's our VP
• 40:19
  of operations back there?
• 40:20
  Yeah. I'm not clever enough to introduce him as the VP of operations, but he
• 40:26
  definitely becomes a participant in in the Zoom. yes, so he's he's definitely introduced. you
• 40:32
  know, the the backstory is provided and nine times out of ten I then get
• 40:39
  to meet their pet who's off camera.
• 40:42
  Yep. It's an easy way to bond even virtually. all right. Staying inside the office.
• 40:48
  How many monitors do you have on your desk? Is it just the laptop?
• 40:54
  have one one additional monitor. Yeah. Which
• 40:56
  Okay, okay.
• 40:57
  actually my I I use a Mac and my Mac will only support one additional
• 41:01
  monitor. So the other one is in the storage unit because I tried to have
• 41:06
  two but it yeah wouldn't support it. So just one.
• 41:10
  Okay. Shout out to Mac for that, making PCs look even better.
• 41:14
  Yep.
• 41:15
  how many business cards are currently on the desk?
• 41:20
  well I have a drawer, so I'm pretty good at keeping them off the desk,
• 41:22
  but I'm terrible about keeping them out of the drawer. So
• 41:25
  Okay.
• 41:27
  I don't know, you tell me. There's like
• 41:29
  Yeah.
• 41:30
  there's a lot. Yeah.
• 41:33
  Got a bunch. Okay. Any ridiculous office lighting setup where you got like a a
• 41:36
  lamp on a bar stool in the corner or something like that?
• 41:40
  yeah, I have a I have a a a lamp back here. I have a
• 41:45
  a light for my laptop, but lately it's been fritzing out, so it ends up
• 41:50
  being a strobe light. So I decided to just that, you know, maybe maybe it's
• 41:55
  time has passed and I just need to invest in a new light. yeah, and
• 42:01
  and you know, my my office is also our guest bedroom. So what looks like
• 42:06
  very well organized cabinets behind me is actually the Murphy bed. So last
• 42:11
  I
• 42:12
  month when my mom came to visit, I was kicked out of my office for
• 42:16
  a week because she took over she took over the space. So you know, then
• 42:21
  you're just you're you're shuffling a little bit. My my husband has a has an
• 42:26
  office spot upstairs in our loft. So that's always the backup, but yeah.
• 42:31
  Okay. I love it. This is great. anything really unique in the office, aka the
• 42:37
  second bedroom. Any trinket, anything from a client or a past girl or anything? A
• 42:43
  slinky? Is that what okay.
• 42:45
  A slinky. I have a mini slinky. Years ago, I do not know, I cannot
• 42:50
  remember how I I got a mini slinky, but when I worked at the credit
• 42:55
  union, someone at some point gave me a mini slinky and it became just the
• 43:00
  the best thing to play with to keep my monkey mind occupied while I'm having
• 43:06
  conversations with people. so that's it's kind of like my fidget spinner or whatever that
• 43:11
  might be is is the mini slinky. I highly recommend. what else? I almost always
• 43:16
  have at least two beverages within reach, one caffeinated,
• 43:20
  Right.
• 43:21
  one water-based, you know. very important. And yeah, and this is also my my painting
• 43:27
  studio. So I I also have a bunch of out of view, I have a
• 43:33
  bunch of paintings stacked up all over the place in the corners. So that's kind
• 43:40
  of fun.
• 43:41
  I'm guessing they are just out of view by like maybe a foot. Yeah. I
• 43:44
  love it.
• 43:45
  Uh-huh. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. yeah, you know, just all the all the usual all the
• 43:51
  usual stuff. And and to be honest, I I really w prefer to be working
• 43:57
  somewhere not in my office. If I have dedicated calls, obviously like I'm in here,
• 44:03
  but sometimes even a coffee shop or you know, it's just too easy to make
• 44:09
  unnecessary trips to the refrigerator or you know, start worrying about the load of laundry
• 44:15
  that's in, or the dogs start barking, or so I'm I'm one of those people
• 44:21
  that really likes getting out of the office, even if I'm it's, you know, AirPods
• 44:28
  and and sitting at a coffee shop having my call there. that that helps me.
• 44:34
  I like I like to be out and about.
• 44:38
  Okay, okay. I I'm a I'm a big fan. This is great. last one for
• 44:43
  you. Does your phone currently have any cracks or screen issues? Somehow
• 44:48
  yes, absolutely.
• 44:52
  I knew, Jocelyn.
• 44:54
  Yeah, so okay, so a couple years ago, when I got this phone, I only
• 44:58
  got this phone because my husband insisted we were going to Italy. And he he
• 45:03
  said, You have to get, you know, an upgraded phone so you can take good
• 45:08
  pictures. And also, my last screen was so cracked it was starting to cut my
• 45:13
  finger. and it was held together with a probably seven or eight pieces of scotch
• 45:18
  tape. and so he
• 45:20
  Nice.
• 45:22
  put his foot down. But I find sh cell phone shopping so stressful. I mean,
• 45:26
  you practically have to medicate me and you definitely have to bring snacks
• 45:31
  Right.
• 45:33
  because it always takes longer than you think. And there are 4,000 different questions. And
• 45:36
  so he has to take me in there like a child and basically babysit me
• 45:40
  to get a new phone. And when I got it, they, you know, they're like,
• 45:44
  okay, great, you have a new phone. You know, what kind case do you want?
• 45:48
  And I was like, I want the case that you give to all of the
• 45:52
  contractors and the handyman people. And
• 45:54
  Yeah.
• 45:55
  they're like, you, you know, they're like, okay. So, so you want the otter box.
• 45:59
  And I was like, That is correct. and I even broke that one. So then
• 46:04
  I went into Target and showed them my phone with the cracks, and they go,
• 46:09
  you want the defender? I was like, I do want the def I felt so
• 46:14
  seen in that moment, Jack. I was like, You see me. Like, yes, I need
• 46:18
  the defender. So, So I have yeah, I have an otter box that is almost
• 46:23
  always the same case that you know, when when we have somebody come to to
• 46:28
  fix our washing machine or those sorts of things, we always have the same phone.
• 46:33
  yeah. It's
• 46:34
  This fantastic. I this is you are made for the show, Jocelyn. This is perfect.
• 46:38
  And I this is mostly me asking you questions, but if you were asking the
• 46:42
  reverse to me, we're a hundred percent in the same boat for pretty much all
• 46:46
  this.
• 46:47
  Really? I don't know. You look you look like you've you've got it all together.
• 46:52
  I that surprises me that your phone is cracked.
• 46:56
  I you know, it's cracked and I'll tell you this the what you can see
• 46:59
  in the background is the only decorations I have up in the entire place. So
• 47:03
  like just
• 47:04
  Ha ha
• 47:05
  one foot out, it's just blank wall. It's all
• 47:08
  Yeah. Well it
• 47:09
  a pot.
• 47:11
  It just tells me you're a pragmatist.
• 47:13
  Sure.
• 47:15
  You know, it's yeah, that's that's how I am. And it's funny because I've in
• 47:19
  early in my career I had jobs where I was an administrative assistant and my
• 47:23
  job part of my job was to keep the copy machine running. And we had
• 47:27
  this finicky old copy machine, and so it was I was always having to go
• 47:31
  in there and take out parts and put it back in. And when that was
• 47:35
  my job, I had endless patience for it. But now I barely have the patience
• 47:40
  to replace the toner in my printer. If it because it's just an obstacle to
• 47:44
  the actual work that I'm trying
• 47:46
  Yep.
• 47:47
  to do. And so I I yeah, at one point I was under the illusion
• 47:52
  that I was a patient person and and that illusion has been shattered. It's
• 47:57
  A copier or a printer will do that pretty quick though.
• 48:00
  Yeah. Yeah, I so relate. You're probably too young, but did you ever watch what
• 48:04
  was it, Office Space where they took
• 48:07
  I have, yeah.
• 48:08
  the where they took the printer out to the the copy machine out to the
• 48:11
  field
• 48:12
  Yeah.
• 48:13
  with the baseball bat. Very cathartic. Yeah.
• 48:16
  Yep. I believe it. I believe it. Awesome. Well, unfortunately we gotta get you out
• 48:19
  of here, but tell us I a hundred percent scrappy. I mean, what are we
• 48:23
  doing? A hundred percent scrappy. I love it.
• 48:26
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 48:28
  What's going on? what do you want to promote? What's what's happening soon for you?
• 48:31
  What do you want the folks out there to know?
• 48:34
  Yeah, I'm about to speak at a at a number of different conferences. So if
• 48:39
  you happen to be in Biloxi, Mississippi, August 3rd through 5th, I'm speaking at a
• 48:45
  Sherm conference there. If you happen to be in Honolulu the end of September, I'm
• 48:51
  speaking at the National Native American HR Association Conference. I'm speaking at the Michigan Sherm
• 48:57
  Conference the end of October. So those are fun if you happen to be in
• 49:03
  the area. And if you need someone to to come and and talk, I promise
• 49:09
  to tell embarrassing stories. but I am available for for keynotes and would really enjoy
• 49:15
  speaking with people, so would love to have the opportunity to come and speak to
• 49:21
  your organization or team or association.
• 49:24
  And as you could tell folks, it's gonna be a good time.
• 49:27
  Ha ha ha.
• 49:28
  Jocelyn Singer Sergeant, thank you so much for coming on. A hundred percent scrappy. I'm
• 49:34
  a huge fan. Thanks so much, everybody, for listening and stay data driven.