Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 37. Sophisticatedly Scrappy: 10 Years of Beyond the Chaos with Susan Fennema

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37. Sophisticatedly Scrappy: 10 Years of Beyond the Chaos with Susan Fennema · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:03
  What's happening, everybody? Welcome to Scrappy But Successful, the show where I sit down with
• 0:06
  your favorite consultants and we find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated or
• 0:10
  because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple Consulting
• 0:13
  Firm and Pineapple Analyst AI, always helping small businesses become more data-driven. Fun fact of
• 0:17
  the day, this one blew me away. Only two-thirds of people have experienced deja vu.
• 0:20
  I feel like I've given that fact before, but that's neither here nor there. Today
• 0:24
  I'm joined by my friend, Susan Fenema. She's the founder of Beyond the Chaos. And
• 0:27
  we're gonna get all into her business. So I'm just gonna do a very short
• 0:31
  bio that's gonna create some intrigue. She is the Chaos Eradicating Officer, not your traditional
• 0:34
  CEO. So, Susan, we know that you're successful today, but the question we have for
• 0:38
  you, do you think you fall more on the sophisticated side or more on the
• 0:41
  scrappy side?
• 0:45
  Ha ha ha ha ha. Can I be sophisticatedly scrappy?
• 0:59
  I think that's allowed. Let's see if the data agrees.
• 1:04
  I think I'm a little of both. I definitely can, you know, I could throw
• 1:08
  a dinner party with a whole bunch of people and serve a, you know, seven-course
• 1:12
  meal with wine pairings on beautiful China. And I can get down and dirty and
• 1:17
  make things happen and and figure things out too. So I can be, I'm, I'm,
• 1:21
  I'm a split personality here.
• 1:26
  Okay, this is interesting. I love it. Let's check it out. Take us back to
• 1:29
  the beginning. Where did you grow up? Did you have entrepreneurs in the family?
• 1:33
  I grew up in Houston. my father Went to work out of Texas AM. He
• 1:38
  is a second generation Aggie, which makes me a third generation Aggie. he was an
• 1:44
  electrical engineer. He went to work for a big corporation and lasted about two or
• 1:50
  three years before he's like, I'm not doing this. And he started his first business
• 1:56
  probably when he was, I don't know, 25, 26 years old. Throughout the years, he
• 2:02
  has owned several. The last one he sold at eighty-four years old in March of
• 2:08
  last year. Very successful exit. And I learned a lot from watching him. Some I
• 2:14
  had to unlearn because I also looked at how hard he worked. how many times
• 2:20
  you went broke? And he always said, if you're not, if you're you're if you're
• 2:26
  not occasionally going broke, you're not doing anything. but watched all that and it gave
• 2:32
  me a sense of maybe I need the security of working for someone until I
• 2:38
  realized there's no security in that. You can make your own security if you own
• 2:44
  your own thing. So interesting thing to have learned and then gone back and understood
• 2:50
  how he came to it as well.
• 2:56
  Interesting. And so you and I have talked in the past too that the owner
• 2:59
  that brags about not being able to take vacation, and I I'm guilty of that
• 3:02
  for sure. I I think we've talked about that a little bit. That same seems
• 3:05
  to be a little bit stemmed from some something you had to unlearn from your
• 3:08
  dad, maybe.
• 3:12
  a little bit. He took vacations. He took pretty good vacations. and he he ran
• 3:12
  businesses really well. he he was a very structured business owner. He had manufacturing companies,
• 3:12
  so he had a pretty big staff. So he could take vacations, but it was
• 3:13
  the constant stress and the ups and downs and the weight of the world of,
• 3:13
  you know, I'm not only
• 3:14
  Okay.
• 3:38
  running a business and taking care of my family. I have to take care of
• 3:42
  all of my employees and all of their families. So that kind of integrity that
• 3:46
  he brought with him, that all that mattered, really it it it it can be
• 3:50
  scary if you look at it from that standpoint.
• 3:55
  Absolutely. Yeah. And so do you have the entrepreneurial spirit of seeing him kind of
• 3:58
  doing this while you're growing up? Like do you run a lemonade stand, selling candy
• 4:01
  at school, anything like that?
• 4:05
  I did not do many of those things, but I will tell you that, you
• 4:09
  know, if we had Girl Scout cookies or if we had, you know, candy to
• 4:14
  sell for a fundraiser, he was not taking them to the office. You know, this
• 4:18
  was a you better get out there and do it yourself. We're not we're not
• 4:23
  subsidizing this. And the beauty of that is what you learn from having those interactions
• 4:27
  when you're young. You know, if your parents are out there just selling them to
• 4:32
  their business people, that That's just an obligation that a coworker is fulfilling for someone,
• 4:36
  right? But if you as a child is out there, you learn how to speak
• 4:41
  to adults, you learn how to present, you know, a benefit of buying it, and
• 4:45
  you know, you can practice a little bit of selling technique, which you know, all
• 4:50
  of us are always selling. So learning that young is really important, I think.
• 4:55
  I totally agree. I think I I've had a lot of entrepreneurs on on this
• 4:57
  podcast and then, you know, just talking to them in the world too. The skills
• 5:00
  that people learn are on the fly and in real life. And I say this
• 5:03
  as a dedicated math nerd. I don't use algebra. I don't use calculus. I really
• 5:06
  don't. But like a skill like that of selling to somebody, putting yourself out there,
• 5:09
  it helps in like every aspect of life.
• 5:12
  Yeah.
• 5:22
  Did you barter with any friends growing up? Like, hey, like you come over, do
• 5:24
  the laundry, I'll do the dishes, I'll mow your lawn, you do this, like anything
• 5:27
  like that?
• 5:30
  Probably with my sister. I mean, there were definitely chores that I liked and she
• 5:30
  didn't, and vice versa. And we would trade off to get it done. you know,
• 5:30
  as far as chores trading with others outside the house, I don't know that my
• 5:31
  parents would have said that that was okay. So I don't think we did that.
• 5:31
  I think that was our responsibility.
• 5:32
  Okay. Mom, I'm just delegating. Come on. Okay. Was sister older or younger?
• 6:01
  She's younger and she's also a business owner. She owns an event center in Denver.
• 6:03
  And she and her husband recently have moved to Katy, Texas, and they own a
• 6:05
  pizza kitchen there. You know, she and her husband own an allergy clinic. So I
• 6:07
  got it from all sides. By the time I was ready to start my business,
• 6:09
  all of them were like, it's about time.
• 6:12
  Very cool. all right, so this is a full family of entrepreneurs. Okay, so let's
• 6:20
  we'll let's just jump throughout the timeline. When did you officially start? What was the
• 6:29
  moment you're like, all right, I I guess I gotta go do this?
• 6:38
  You know, I went to look for a job. I I've always worked for small
• 6:42
  business owners and I've always been kind of their right hand, somebody that was bringing
• 6:46
  the structure to the business. I didn't know what it was called. but once I
• 6:50
  started when I went to look for my last job, I had already been virtual
• 6:54
  for six years. So it was in I started virtual in 2010.
• 6:58
  wow.
• 7:03
  I'd already been virtual for six years. I started looking for these jobs and I'm
• 7:07
  like, I just don't want to spend the time and effort to get another business
• 7:12
  owner to trust me enough to do what I have done for these other owners
• 7:16
  and had been very successful at. But that it takes a while to earn that
• 7:21
  trust as an employee. It's interesting when you're a consultant, they just trust you for
• 7:25
  some reason, right? You're like, I'm a consultant. Okay, I trust you now. But as
• 7:30
  an employee, it's harder for them to to to to bring you into the fold.
• 7:34
  There's a little bit more protection. And so I was looking for a job and
• 7:39
  all of them were in offices. I'm like, I don't think I want to drive
• 7:43
  in traffic anymore. I don't think I wanna you know, waste extra time. I love
• 7:48
  the lifestyle that I had created. And I said, okay, it's just time. We're gonna
• 7:52
  stop serving one business owner at a time, and I'm gonna go out and serve
• 7:57
  the masses. So off we went, and Beyond the Chaos was formed in 2016. That
• 8:01
  is 10 years ago. We just passed our 10-year anniversary. Thank you.
• 8:06
  Congratulations. They say one year is an accomplishment. Ten is I don't know the percents.
• 8:09
  Maybe I should know this as a data person, but I gotta imagine it's like
• 8:12
  five percent of businesses make it ten years, maybe less. I don't know. So congratulations.
• 8:15
  That's really cool.
• 8:18
  Well, thank you. There's some some statistic that once you make it to ten, you're
• 8:22
  substantially less likely to go out of business. I don't know what that number is,
• 8:26
  but it's in there. But we made it that far.
• 8:30
  Okay. Tell about your your first clients. So you're like, all right, I I'm remote.
• 8:36
  I'm I'm kinda done working for somebody else. You know a bunch of business owners.
• 8:42
  Is one of them one of the first clients?
• 8:48
  no. I I knew my my first client was a former colleague of mine. and
• 8:53
  she's fine. She was great, but she owned a small percentage of this business. And
• 8:59
  she's like, man, they need you. They need you really bad. And and she pulled
• 9:04
  me into the fold. She's like, I'm so glad you're available. It's perfect timing. And
• 9:10
  it turns out that that guy was kind of a sociopath. It was bad. It
• 9:16
  was bad. I fired him. I I had learned from my former employer. he was
• 9:21
  a great value pricing consultant. And I learned a lot about putting together proposals working
• 9:27
  for him. And so my proposal had an exit. And it said two weeks notice
• 9:32
  either side, right? So I was so glad I had the wherewithal to have put
• 9:38
  that in there. It gave me the out I quit twice. The first time I
• 9:44
  quit, she kind of begged me to come back a little bit and that she
• 9:49
  would be the buffer. She knew he was like this. And the second time she
• 9:55
  said, I have never seen anyone handle such a horrible situation with such grace. And
• 10:00
  and I understand where you're off to. And so I I fired my first client
• 10:06
  within about four months. It was a rough start.
• 10:12
  That's an amazing start. Also, a lot of sophistication coming up with the contract language
• 10:12
  off the bat, too. I that is that is like somebody told me very early
• 10:13
  on within my first year of consulting, they said you don't become a true consultant
• 10:14
  until you fire a client. And you're like, I'm gonna get that right out of
• 10:15
  the That's wild. Okay. And then business thrived after that within like the business that
• 10:16
  you fired that guy from. Business thrived. How did it do?
• 10:17
  Well, there you go. Good point. There you go. It only took me it only
• 10:23
  took me four months. We we grew pretty fast. I I had some good connections
• 10:30
  in a software development community and so a lot of them wanted me. They wanted
• 10:37
  me before I ended up quitting my previous job. So it was great to have
• 10:44
  those people to reach out to. I was able to to start to grow the
• 10:51
  company and real fast I realized this cannot just be me. If it's just me,
• 10:57
  I'm limiting everything. All I do is sit in a chair, do all the things.
• 11:04
  It's too much. And I missed, I had always managed people and been a leader.
• 11:11
  I missed doing that. I I didn't have anybody to lead but me, and that
• 11:18
  wasn't as fun.
• 11:25
  Especially when you don't listen to you. Terrible employee.
• 11:29
  It's true.
• 11:33
  Okay, so you've got a pretty good start here. how does your ICP change? Like
• 11:36
  did you nail it off the bat or has it evolved significantly over the past
• 11:39
  ten years?
• 11:43
  Definitely has not evolved significantly. The only thing is we've changed, we always have been,
• 11:44
  the whole goal is has always been to help the small business owner, the one
• 11:45
  that's buried under the weight of their own success.
• 11:46
  Okay.
• 11:57
  You know, they started their business because they were great at their trade. They loved
• 12:01
  what they did. they grew successfully because of that, but also in spite of themselves,
• 12:06
  right? They were just good at what they did. And then now all of a
• 12:11
  sudden, they might have three or four employees because that's all the people they can
• 12:16
  talk to in a day. They don't have any systems set up, everything runs through
• 12:21
  the owner's brain. and they're They're tapped already at four or five people. They can't
• 12:26
  grow more. there's another break at about probably 10 and another one at about 20
• 12:31
  people. And so we come in at those opportunities where those owners are struggling under
• 12:36
  the weight of their own success and help them create that business that they thought
• 12:41
  they wanted when they started and get them out of their own way, essentially. It's
• 12:46
  fun.
• 12:51
  It's okay.
• 12:52
  And we've we've always served that market. and I've been very true to it. I've
• 12:55
  had people say, but you could make so much more money if you served larger
• 12:58
  companies. I'm like, well, that's a different company than when I started. So that's not
• 13:01
  what we do.
• 13:04
  Yeah. Right. why does a business break at four or five employees? That first break,
• 13:09
  what's the what's the typical cause?
• 13:14
  The first break is that's all you can talk to in a day. You, you
• 13:14
  know, you can get people started and answer their questions and and point them in
• 13:15
  the right direction and then touch base and keep giving feedback. It it's over that,
• 13:16
  it's way too much. and so that's the first break. How much how many people
• 13:17
  can you communicate with regularly in a day or a week?
• 13:18
  Mm. Makes sense and the classic it was as a joke during COVID, when consultants
• 13:29
  were some were doing great, some were doing bad, but every consultant checked in, touched
• 13:40
  base, and circled back.
• 13:52
  Right. And there you go. That's what your that's what your business owners were doing
• 13:55
  at four or five people and that's all they can do all day, those three
• 13:58
  things. Right.
• 14:02
  I and those are minimal touch points. They're really like, Hey, do you need me?
• 14:05
  Okay, okay, cool. And then the employee probably doesn't want to say, Hey, I need
• 14:09
  you. you're so busy. I don't want to throw another thing on your plate. So
• 14:12
  it just becomes this I don't wanna say this non communicative culture, but not as
• 14:16
  much communication as there probably should be, I would imagine.
• 14:20
  Or maybe too much in some cases because the employee can't do the work without
• 14:26
  the input of the owner because everything is in his head or her head. Everything
• 14:32
  is nothing is documented. They don't necessarily know how to tell an employee what the
• 14:38
  expectation is as opposed to what to do next. It's almost just like delegate one
• 14:44
  task and come back to me.
• 14:50
  yes. What's the I think it's abdicate versus delegate and is that I think it's
• 14:50
  correct me if I'm I think abdicate is there's a problem, go fix it versus
• 14:50
  delegate is here I'm gonna I'm gonna teach you and train you how to do
• 14:50
  it and then you're gonna be able to solve it on your like the take
• 14:50
  a horse to water kinda kinda situation.
• 14:51
  Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And in the abdicate situation, you don't get back what you expected.
• 14:58
  And then then you're mad at the employee that they can't do the work. But
• 15:06
  it's your fault. You didn't tell them. You know?
• 15:14
  Right. Right. the amount of times it comes up on this podcast and in life,
• 15:22
  the value of just setting expectations, it's like ninety percent of business, it feels
• 15:31
  Absolutely. And and you know, some people say, well, my team can't do it. And
• 15:35
  okay, well then one, you might not have the right team if that's true, but
• 15:39
  it's likely not. Most people want to meet or exceed expectations. They have to know
• 15:43
  what they are. And that's that's the bottom line. You just have to get to
• 15:47
  that.
• 15:51
  I a hundred percent agreed. I I I do a lot of like what like
• 15:54
  define success for me and then being the data driven person that I am, it's
• 15:58
  everybody in the or in the organization, every role should have some sort of definition
• 16:02
  of success that you can quantify. And then it's you know, the classic corporate like
• 16:05
  annual performance review is everybody dreads it because it's so subjective. But if they know
• 16:09
  that they had to sell a thousand dollars and they sold two thousand dollars, they
• 16:13
  did great. Do you help set things like that to build
• 16:17
  Right.
• 16:21
  not just the systems, but also like the structure to allow systems to work.
• 16:25
  So in some cases, yes. if it's clear, we are not leadership strategists. So if
• 16:30
  you're running an operating system like EOS, we know how to work in that and
• 16:35
  we can support it, but we're not gonna necessarily be your implementers, you know. We
• 16:40
  we can we can point you in the right direction. In small businesses, we can
• 16:45
  tell you when to scale it back because sometimes people invest in these huge operating
• 16:50
  systems when they're small. And now all of a sudden that's all they're doing is
• 16:55
  running the operating system. And they have not, you know, you you still gotta run
• 17:00
  the business. So that's when you still gotta go back to being scrappy and less
• 17:05
  sophisticated.
• 17:10
  Yeah, oversophisticated. Okay. are are you a fan of of EOS?
• 17:12
  Uh-huh. I think it has its time and its place. And if you're in a
• 17:18
  large enough company where the structure can be set up and and run and you
• 17:25
  have multiple leaders on your team, I I think there's a time and a place
• 17:31
  for it. And when it is run perfectly, it works. But I think it's very
• 17:38
  hard to run perfectly, especially when you're a smaller company, because you need to be
• 17:44
  scrappier. You can't You you you don't have the flexibility that you have in a
• 17:51
  larger corporation with people that that is their job is to do that part. In
• 17:57
  a smaller business, that is a teeny teeny piece of their job. Yeah.
• 18:04
  Okay, so let's let's talk a little bit more scrappiness. So in the early goings,
• 18:06
  it sounds like you hit the ground running and you had the one client off
• 18:08
  the bat got rid of him but stayed with the company. are there any like
• 18:11
  ridiculous marketing things that you did, like any any weird or hustle marketing things that
• 18:13
  were on a shoe shoestring budget kind of thing?
• 18:16
  Yeah. I have done so many different marketing things. I did a whole series of
• 18:23
  podcast guesting. I've done LinkedIn LinkedIn outreach. I've hired people to do cold calling. I
• 18:30
  will not do cold calling, by the way. But I did hire someone. We tried
• 18:38
  it. I have done I dabbled in LinkedIn ads. you know, so all of the
• 18:45
  things there, and a few Google ads, all of the things there were a struggle
• 18:53
  because that's that's not how our target is gonna be, is gonna receive it, right?
• 19:00
  They're busy, their heads are down. So finding them is our biggest challenge. And so
• 19:07
  we're looking now into more some targeted ads on more social. as opposed to to
• 19:15
  LinkedIn, as well as getting some of that AI SEO. I forget the is it
• 19:22
  GEO? I forget the name of it. But looking at that, because our our clients
• 19:30
  are asking AI for help. So if we can get some of that that GEO,
• 19:37
  that will help too. So we've we've been making some strides in that area.
• 19:45
  This is so interesting. So everybody has a an issue, so to speak, or whatever.
• 19:49
  Everybody wants to find their clients, right? Your clients intentionally are to your point heads
• 19:53
  down so swamped that they don't have time to think. So reaching them is harder
• 19:57
  than reaching just your average lead. Cause this is somebody who one needs to actually
• 20:01
  pull up a search engine or AI or whatever and actually search for something.
• 20:06
  Yep. Mm-hmm.
• 20:14
  Two has to be in a spot to actually hire somebody and three has to
• 20:18
  be mentally in the spot to delegate something or to bring in help or something
• 20:23
  like that. How do you how the heck do you talk to that person?
• 20:28
  Well, it's really interesting. in the sales calls, I mean, everybody thinks their problem is
• 20:31
  only them, but it's not. Everyone has the same problem. I get it. I already
• 20:35
  I know them. I have had people cry on my sales calls. I have had
• 20:38
  people angry and frustrated and just like, I don't know what to do. when they
• 20:42
  get to that point, that's really where we can help them. the person who cried
• 20:46
  a year later, I couldn't get a hold of her because she was on her
• 20:49
  year, she was on a vacation in Mexico unplugged. Look what we did. That that
• 20:53
  was a huge success story to me. but the burnout that that that we see
• 20:56
  in sales calls is real. And it's not only it's not only you. It's everyone,
• 21:00
  almost everyone is experiencing that same thing.
• 21:04
  Love it.
• 21:24
  And there is help. And there's help not only, I mean, we're we're operations, but
• 21:29
  there is other fractional help. And I think that that is what the COVID period
• 21:34
  taught us, is that there are fractional people out there that can do incredible things
• 21:39
  at a much lower price. And so don't try to go in on your own.
• 21:44
  Which is such a tough thing to wrap your head around as the business owner
• 21:47
  who's proud that I I I even work Saturdays, you know, something like that. To
• 21:51
  bring in help, I it it's it's such a foreign concept to that person, I
• 21:54
  imagine.
• 21:58
  Yeah, it's it's definitely a they feel like they should be able to do all
• 22:03
  these things, but nobody's good at all these things. You have to know HR, finance,
• 22:09
  marketing, you know, your job, your ops, all of that together, there's more legal, keep
• 22:15
  going, right? You cannot be all those things. And So I always suggest pick the
• 22:21
  thing you hate the most first and get rid of that. Yeah.
• 22:27
  Yeah. Easy start. Okay, so so in the beginning of your company, couple first few
• 22:30
  months, first year, what was the thing that you hated that you got rid of
• 22:34
  first?
• 22:38
  Day-to-day project management, which is shocking because I'm really good at it. And that's what
• 22:38
  I thought I was starting. But that was what kept me glued to my chair
• 22:39
  and unable to do anything else because project management is very reactive in some cases.
• 22:40
  It's definitely in the weeds most of the time. And I loved it and I'm
• 22:40
  very good at it. That's who I hired first, was an incredible project manager. And
• 22:41
  she made a huge difference in the trajectory our company took.
• 22:42
  Yeah. W two higher or ten ninety nine? Okay. Okay. How big is the team
• 22:56
  today? How big is the team today?
• 23:10
  1099. Yep. Started that way. When? Today we have four people and some 1099s, but
• 23:16
  the four people are employees.
• 23:23
  Okay, so you're at that point. Do you brag about not taking vacations? How do
• 23:25
  you how do you work your schedule today?
• 23:27
  Come on, I can take a vacation. I can take a vacation. we are very
• 23:28
  structured. We eat our own dog food. So I actually am very organized about it.
• 23:29
  It's built so the team knows exactly what to do, whether I'm around or not.
• 23:30
  We have not really even talked about what to do. Everybody knows
• 23:31
  what to do.
• 23:32
  vacation during that, but
• 23:33
  Nice.
• 23:56
  they know what to do and it it will keep running without me while I'm
• 23:59
  gone, which is wonderful.
• 24:03
  That's too cool. That's that's that's so it's incredible. ten years or one year or
• 24:05
  a hundred years to be able to have that is really cool. So congratulations. in
• 24:07
  the early scrappy days, anything anything like you had to play the credit card timing
• 24:09
  game where you have to wait till tomorrow to charge something because that's next month's
• 24:11
  statement.
• 24:13
  statement.
• 24:15
  Thank you. No, because the other thing I learned was always get paid up front.
• 24:25
  So from day one
• 24:35
  Okay.
• 24:40
  I was billing in hours, hourly banks initially. and I you paid the hours before
• 24:45
  you did the work. So when it was just me, that's okay. No big deal.
• 24:51
  There's no much ever overhead there. But when you start hiring people and now you
• 24:56
  have to pay them before your client pays you, that doesn't work that great. So
• 25:02
  we have always taken payment in advance. It really helps that. I've only had to
• 25:07
  tap into my LOC. Once in the 10 years. And we floated over a couple
• 25:13
  of months. And that was more because I had more employees than I needed at
• 25:18
  the time. So unfortunately, we had to have some layoffs to rectify that. But you
• 25:24
  know, you have to adapt and and grow. And we made it. So I guess
• 25:29
  we handled it right.
• 25:35
  They yeah, it's it's really tough, especially in a small business where that's I I
• 25:39
  I'm not of the mindset that like the sitcom mindset where small business it's a
• 25:43
  family and everybody's best friends and stuff like that. I I'm not of that mindset,
• 25:47
  but it's still really tough to let somebody go. But to your point.
• 25:51
  It really is. And especially in a small business where you are, I mean, we
• 25:56
  believe our values, we live by our values, and we're all on the same page.
• 26:02
  And when you have to say you're really good at this and I'm sorry, I
• 26:07
  can't drive enough business for you. That is a really hard, rough thing to do.
• 26:13
  but you know, it's that or lose the whole thing. So yeah.
• 26:19
  exactly. Yeah, it's it's kind of cut off an arm to save the body type
• 26:23
  situation, but still tough. tapping into the line of credit only once though, pretty good.
• 26:28
  Having the line of credit in the first place, pretty sophisticated. It sounds like
• 26:33
  That was one of the fur right? See, I told you I was sophisticatedly scrappy.
• 26:37
  That was one of the first things I set up with my business bank. I'm
• 26:42
  like, need it L O C. I know that. And so, you know, that was
• 26:46
  just from I I think the experience of working for the small business owners and
• 26:51
  listening to my father for so long, all of that just absorbed into me. So
• 26:55
  I just knew it, you know, which really helped to get things off. I wasn't
• 27:00
  starting from a complete lack of knowledge. That made a big difference.
• 27:05
  Yeah. Did you did you push off tapping into the line by like reducing your
• 27:09
  own salary or anything first? Yeah.
• 27:14
  For sure. Yeah. Cause the i if you have great people, the last thing you
• 27:19
  want to do is lose them. And so I would have rather I looked at
• 27:24
  it as this is an investment I'm making in my company by by cutting my
• 27:29
  salary. but at some point I you even get to the point I'm like, I
• 27:34
  well, I can't take down to below zero. So we still have to do something.
• 27:39
  and that that was a that was a little bit of a rough go there
• 27:44
  but as my father said if you don't go through that you're not doing anything
• 27:49
  so there you go I went through it
• 27:54
  good for you and and coming out unscathed. I should maybe I shouldn't say unscathed,
• 27:54
  but made it through. There you go. Yes. There you go. Yeah. that's really cool.
• 27:55
  All right. Let me hit you with some scrappy versus sophisticated some lightning round questions
• 27:56
  here. Alright, take me inside the office. If the if your dog shows up in
• 27:56
  the background, you say, so sorry, the dog, whatever, or do you say, Hey, like
• 27:57
  that's our director of HR?
• 27:58
  Not on screws, but successful. Yeah. Okay. I'm not a director of HR, but I'm
• 28:05
  usually like Shelby, be quiet. So I don't know, is that sophisticated or scrappy? Or
• 28:13
  scrappy? Luckily my mic though, usually will block out the noise. So if I just
• 28:20
  keep talking, no one even knows.
• 28:28
  I don't I don't it's somewhere in the middle. Okay. Okay, there you go. How
• 28:35
  many monitors are on the desk that you use?
• 28:43
  Two monitors and a phone.
• 28:45
  And a phone. Okay. Are the monitors the same make and model?
• 28:49
  no. No. The I I'm on a Mac computer and I don't know what this
• 28:49
  monitor is, but it's not Apple. I was like looking to see if the name
• 28:50
  was on the prep, but it's not.
• 28:51
  Okay. Yeah. man, a known name monitor. All right, let's keep digging in. Do you
• 28:55
  use a docking station or a bunch of wires going into the computer? Okay. Okay.
• 29:00
  Any ridiculous office lighting where you've got like a lamp on a bar stool to
• 29:04
  make sure the lighting's okay.
• 29:09
  docking station. So yeah. I because of the way my office is set up, you
• 29:12
  can see the windows behind me, which isn't really good for lighting. So I have
• 29:16
  a ring light that that lights me up. Yeah. I also have an overhead light
• 29:19
  straight above me that can make really bad shadows. So luckily the ring light fills
• 29:23
  those in for you too.
• 29:27
  Okay. All right. Nice. That's very good. And as you could tell, longtime viewers will
• 29:32
  be able to tell I'm not in my normal setup. As we were talking, I
• 29:38
  was scrambling and very scrappy to get on here, so I don't have my normal
• 29:44
  lighting, but I'll normally put a literally a lamp on a bar stool to make
• 29:50
  sure that I don't have the crazy shadows.
• 29:56
  nice. I did do that. during COVID, I was trying to move around more and
• 30:01
  be in different areas just because, you know, we're trapped anyway. and so I did
• 30:06
  some creative lighting, like, okay, I'll stand in the dining room and have the light
• 30:12
  hit me and I'll put my computer up on 12 books. You know, so there
• 30:17
  are some things like that.
• 30:23
  Nice, I like that. Okay. any business cards currently on the desk?
• 30:29
  not on the desk. I have no paper on my desk, but I do carry
• 30:34
  business cards and I do believe in them as opposed to digital connections at events.
• 30:40
  explain that. Let's dive into that. Why the physical card?
• 30:43
  The physical card gives you something to take home with you to remind you, to
• 30:47
  follow up with the person. There might be notes on there that help you. If
• 30:52
  somebody says, let me just put my name in your phone, I'm like, great, you're
• 30:57
  just in there with like 200 other people. I don't even remember your name. I
• 31:02
  will never find you again. The same thing with connections on LinkedIn. You know, and
• 31:07
  that works, you're now connected, but there's no structure of how are you following up
• 31:12
  and continuing that networking with someone? How are you reaching out to them, saying you're
• 31:17
  glad you met them? U i in if you just have that digital connection, it
• 31:22
  it immediately you know, it's just gone from your purview. Now, if you have the
• 31:27
  card, I also, you heard me say there's no paper. I also believe in digital.
• 31:32
  The card goes straight into a CRM, but there's a process that I'm following after
• 31:37
  every one. And I believe that that makes a big difference in that continued ability
• 31:42
  to network with people.
• 31:47
  Okay. Have you ever given out a metal business card? Have you ever received one?
• 31:50
  No. I don't think so. But that seems like overkill.
• 31:55
  Okay. Yes. It's the the first one I ever got was, Hey, we've had a
• 31:58
  really good conversation and I don't give this out to everybody, but I really want
• 32:01
  to make an impression. So here's a metal business card. And I have no idea
• 32:04
  who that person was.
• 32:08
  Okay. Seems like they had too much money.
• 32:12
  Yep. if you walk into a networking event, big crowd of people, whatever, what is
• 32:18
  the first thing that you're doing? Grab a drink, say hi to somebody.
• 32:25
  the first thing I'm usually doing is looking around the room to see if there
• 32:29
  are already people there that I know. because those get you the best introductions, right?
• 32:33
  If you can approach somebody you know and they know somebody, that gets you a
• 32:37
  better introduction than just a cold hi, you know. If I don't see anybody right
• 32:41
  off the bat, I'm definitely a go to the bar, let's get a drink and
• 32:45
  let let because it just I am a very outgoing person, but I also just
• 32:49
  need a little bit of with new strangers. Give me a little take it down
• 32:53
  a notch.
• 32:58
  a hundred percent. I'm the same. Dash of liquid courage and then I'll I'll sit
• 32:58
  at the bar and wait. Like I'm extroverted enough, but there's always somebody way more
• 32:59
  extroverted who's gonna come up and talk to the person who's alone at the bar
• 33:00
  anyways.
• 33:01
  Yeah. Yep, every time.
• 33:13
  all right. So drink in hand, you're talking to people. How do you get out
• 33:16
  of a conversation that's pretty much run its course?
• 33:20
  Hey, let me go speak to that person. It was great to talk to you.
• 33:21
  The sleeve is is kind of a you know, a surprise that you've seen somebody
• 33:22
  that you know that you need to step away from. It takes a little bit
• 33:23
  of the sting out of it, I think. And and I have had conversations where
• 33:24
  they were good conversations, but
• 33:25
  Quick and clean, just out, okay. Yeah. Yeah.
• 33:43
  it was going too long and you needed to meet more people, where I would
• 33:46
  just say, Hey, it's been great to talk with you, but I think we both
• 33:49
  need to go meet some more people, you know. Yeah.
• 33:52
  Ha ha. Think it's better for both of us, you know? all right. Do you
• 33:56
  still do do you do any in person meetings, in like in person lunches or
• 34:00
  anything like that?
• 34:05
  Occasionally, but I limit it. I'm in the I'm in McKinney, which is north of
• 34:07
  Dallas. And so going anywhere for me, let's just say adds two hours to my
• 34:09
  day. By the time I I by the time, you know, I have to do
• 34:11
  all this. By the time I do all this and get in
• 34:13
  the car and go there and come back, that's two hours without the meeting.
• 34:16
  Yeah.
• 34:29
  So it it has to be something special. I'm not usually going to meet somebody
• 34:34
  for the first time that way. usually never for the first time. but you know,
• 34:40
  colleagues that I want to stay in touch with, that's definitely worthwhile. Or if there's
• 34:46
  something specific that we really need to hammer out, that those I'll do.
• 34:52
  Okay, makes sense, makes sense. On the topic of something special, maybe maybe a celebration,
• 34:56
  maybe hit a ten year milestone, for example. What do you do as a celebration?
• 35:00
  A nice fancy dinner, vacation? What do you do?
• 35:04
  I had a party at my house last weekend to
• 35:04
  celebrate it. I flew in team members that wanted to come, even invited former team
• 35:05
  members that contributed to our success, even some of those that were laid off, and
• 35:06
  they came. invited some colleagues, some local colleagues, and and you know, my the co
• 35:07
  author of my book flew in from South Carolina. my marketing
• 35:08
  Nice.
• 35:33
  Woman came, she lives nearby, but not close. We're in Dallas. It's huge. so we
• 35:39
  had a pretty good turnout, and my husband smoked us some meats and we had
• 35:45
  some day drinking and out by the pool, and it was lovely.
• 35:52
  That sounds pretty great. That's that's a great Saturday, any Saturday, let alone for a
• 35:54
  celebration like that.
• 35:57
  It was really fun.
• 35:59
  Awesome. take me inside the inbox. How many emails unread is too many.
• 36:05
  one. I'm a zero inbox person at all times. I would be surprised if there
• 36:05
  were more than three in there right now. And I have an executive assistant who
• 36:05
  handles a lot of it for me. So some of it I never ever see.
• 36:05
  She can even respond to people and they don't know it's not me, which is
• 36:05
  fantastic. She knows my voice, she knows what we're saying. you know, it it helps
• 36:05
  a lot if you don't have somebody who can do that.
• 36:06
  Wow. Okay. Right.
• 36:35
  Consider it. It is so much better than AI doing it. it's it makes a
• 36:39
  huge difference when people can just take the next step.
• 36:44
  Yeah, yeah, I I hear ya. have you ever sent an email that's just the
• 36:48
  subject line, nothing in the body?
• 36:52
  I'm pretty sure I have. I've probably also sent an email that I've certainly sent
• 36:54
  some that I was in the middle of writing and accidentally hit send. I'm like,
• 36:57
  it's not done yet. And I have to come back and say, okay, that one
• 37:00
  got away from me and try again. Doesn't happen often, but yes, definitely sometimes.
• 37:03
  Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Not bad. all right. This one I'm very curious.
• 37:10
  So you get up in the morning, start your day. What is the first time
• 37:18
  you allow yourself to look at your emails?
• 37:26
  I'm an in-bed person. I'm not even out of bed. Somebody we have questions of
• 37:26
  the day in our Slack channel, and one of them is, what do you do
• 37:26
  without thinking about it? And I'm like, I check my phone when I wake up.
• 37:26
  And if I thought about it, I know I wouldn't do it. Cause I know
• 37:27
  that that's not good for you, you know. And I would advise everyone not to
• 37:27
  do that. in my case, it's three emails though, usually, and most of them end
• 37:27
  up being personal.
• 37:28
  geez.
• 37:54
  So that that does take a little bit of the edge. I'll give myself an
• 37:59
  excuse for that, but don't do as I say, not as I do.
• 38:05
  does that phone have any cracks in it currently or any screen issues? Okay. Sounds
• 38:06
  like that would never fly in your house.
• 38:08
  No, absolutely not. It would never fly. If it was cracked, it would be replaced.
• 38:15
  Okay. All right. This is maybe the last one here. you're going through your day
• 38:19
  and you've got towards the end of the day, a thirty minute meeting cancels. Out
• 38:24
  of the blue, last minute just cancels. What do you do with that thirty minutes?
• 38:29
  it it if it's at the end of the day, I just wrap it up
• 38:32
  and and I go back into my other room. So if it's if it's like
• 38:36
  at three when you're like, now what do I do? I always have things to
• 38:40
  fill my time. As as the owner, my job is sales and it's marketing and
• 38:43
  it's coming up with the next idea. Right. And so there's always something that I'm
• 38:47
  kind of building. You know, right now we're trying to automate our sales process a
• 38:51
  little bit more. So what can we put? Can I build a zap? I love
• 38:54
  building zaps. Can I automate something so I never have to do it again? those
• 38:58
  kinds of things. They never take the half hour. They always take longer than that,
• 39:02
  but that always is what I end up starting on.
• 39:06
  Yeah. Okay. It's pretty sophisticated. A scrappy piece here and there, but overall I gotta
• 39:15
  say it's pretty sophisticated.
• 39:24
  Yeah. Okay.
• 39:30
  let's Let's go one more. when you're growing up, you had a big test in
• 39:32
  school or anything like that. did your parents ever tell you to eat some brain
• 39:35
  food before that test? Never, okay.
• 39:38
  Yeah. no. No. I was raised I was a Gen Xer. We ate horrible food.
• 39:50
  It's lucky that any of us are alive. My parents wouldn't know brain food.
• 40:03
  okay. in in the super early days of life, did you collect anything that you
• 40:08
  thought might make you rich someday?
• 40:13
  that made me rich? Probably not. But I c I collected rocks and shells. I
• 40:14
  I did that. I had a pet rock in the 70s. Yeah, that one I'm
• 40:16
  sure that made somebody rich, but it wasn't me. I purchased a pet rock.
• 40:18
  Okay. Okay. you purchased the pet rock. Man, what a genius idea.
• 40:34
  Right?
• 40:38
  okay, last one here. Any show that the family watched that you actually like took
• 40:41
  some life lessons from?
• 40:45
  Gilligan's Island? I don't, I don't think so. Don't go on a three-day tour with
• 40:45
  or three-hour tour with people who are incompetent. We were say, we were sailors. We
• 40:46
  grew up. My my dad had a sailboat. We sailed a lot. And so you
• 40:46
  watch that show and we're like, how did this happen? This would not happen. This
• 40:46
  is crazy.
• 40:48
  Okay. Yeah. Things not to do. Okay. I love it. The chaos eradicating sophisticated Susan
• 40:51
  Fenema. thank you so much for coming on, Susan. What do you want to promote?
• 40:55
  I know you've got the book out there. I hope people reach out because there's
• 40:59
  a lot of people in that target market for you. And I hope they listen
• 41:03
  to this. I hope they find time to do it. I hope they reach out.
• 41:07
  But anything you want to promote.
• 41:11
  Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Go to our website, beyond the chaos.biz. You can find all of
• 41:20
  our contact information there. reach out, we'll help you. My book information's on that page
• 41:29
  too, if you want, if you're interested in your business is holding you hostage or
• 41:38
  in efficiency amplified, which is more about writing process.
• 41:48
  Nice. I love the titles. I love the titles. Again, thank you so much for
• 41:51
  coming on, Susan. Everybody, take care and stay data driven.
• 41:55
  Thanks, Jack.